Purpose – This investigation sought to identify learning outcomes for undergraduate students at a US college enrolled in community-based learning courses. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to examine the similarities and differences between American students' and international students' development of leadership skills through senior level service-learning (SL) courses and analyzed the role of teaching methods on those outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach – Over 150 SL courses from students representing 30 countries were examined at a major university in the USA. US and non-US student leadership and learning outcomes were cross-tabulated with instructional techniques to analyze for statistically significant differences.

Findings – Facilitating leadership skill development is a function of utilizing transformational rather than traditional classroom teaching techniques.

Practical implications – Transformational teaching and learning methods such as collaborative projects, student-selected readings, and group decision-making in SL courses help transform students' views of themselves, their communities, and the world as they consider their roles as leaders in an unscripted future.

Originality/value – Few studies have examined the instructional elements in SL that transform student knowledge and leadership skills especially across such a breadth and variety of SL courses and student cultural backgrounds.