Service-learning focuses on cooperative experiences rather than competitive ones, thereby promoting skills associated with teamwork and community involvement.
St. Xavier's High School's high-quality service-learning is a part of the school culture, where children are given opportunities and experiences to enable them to make a difference in their community while gaining a sense of self-efficiency along with increasing their classroom learning. Students are able to look at the academic curriculum in the context of a real-world service experience.
Service-learning offers children opportunities to engage themselves in problem-solving by gaining knowledge with respect to their service-learning activity and community challenges, rather than by only having to draw upon generalized or abstract knowledge that might come from just a textbook. As a result, service-learning provides excellent opportunities for acquiring important traits such as critical thinking; i.e. the ability to identify the most relevant questions or issues within a real-world situation.