The paper presents the experience of teaching innovation on Learning Service (LS) conducted at the Department of Education of the University of Jaén (Spain). The project arises from the view of the University as a space and a transforming agent of the society (Andrea and Miller , 2010).
Social reality demands that the University and the training that it offers have a clear social and ethical component. In the same way that Esteban and Martinez (2012) argue, we believe that the University should have a social and ethic commitment, It should be linked to their community by promoting the transformation and upgrading the environment.
From this perspective, considering the need to incorporate active methodologies in our teaching and the commitment to professional and personal development of our students as engaged citizens, we have been planning plan how to combine the initial training of teachers with new methodological approaches and social environment. In order to implement our ideas we opted for the LS as a training model, because we think that this is the best approximation to our approaches.
We agree with Martinez (2010 ), who states that the proposed LS involve an exercise of social responsibility, seeking, in addition to quality , the common good and the achievement of a more just society .
This methodological approach joins two different aspects: the service provided and the learning experience from the service. Both of them are related to and support each other, "service-learning is an educational approach that combines learning and service whit the community in a single project which is organised and in which participants are working on real needs of the environment with the objective to improve it " (Puig et al 2007 , 20) . Following these authors, we state some assumptions that characterize LS and our proposal:
. The service is designed as a response to the real needs of the community through the application of acquired knowledge. It can be applied in both formal and informal areas, considering the possibilities and characteristics of each institution.
. The tasks of community service must be completely related to the educational content, at intellectual, emotional or behavioural level, and with the competences that should be developed. To achieve this, are vitally important planning and organizing the teaching and learning.
. The guiding principles on which the LS is based are: direct relation to practice, active participation of all those involved in the process, development of critical reflection and in each of the phases of the process , interdisciplinary work for analysis and collaborative problem solving , and the acquisition of values by all participants for their personal and social development.
Our objectives are focused to develop the skills of the Teacher Training Course in our students. These skills will serve them for their future careers by providing a service that covers real needs, all of which in a planned and integrated way into their curriculum.
Thus, the possibility of offering a real service to the community that allows learning and collaboration in a context of reciprocity will enable to know and respond to specific needs while they are offered the opportunity to learn from and in the practice of two specific Schools of Elementary and Early Childhood Education. All these action aim to improve both: the students and the reality in which they providing that service.
With this methodological proposal we put students in contact with schools in order to promote a more real and comprehensive student learning, while the students provide a service to the community.
