Purpose -As a fundamental notion of transmitting civic responsibility with leadership, preparing service learning into the transformative experiential education aims to link classroom and community as an initiative in transforming civic responsibility among students. This paper aims to examine the insights of service learning to transmit the civic responsibility-based leadership.Design/methodology/approach -This paper builds on recent reviews on ethical engagement for service learning to underlie in performing civic responsibility. This literature review stage critically investigates service learning for contributing leadership-based civic responsibility. In-depth analysis from referred books, journals and conferences using keywords such as service learning and leadership-based civic responsibility was conducted. Meta-synthesis was conducted from findings by searching for information organized using substantive keywords.Findings -There are three core stages to understand and provide insight into the importance of civic responsibility-based leadership: strengthening commitment to work with a strategic plan in community engagement, nurturing creative thinking and professional skills with experiential leadership and enhancing leadership awareness with rational problem-solving. This study is supposed to contribute to the theoretical construction of civic responsibility with insights from service learning.Originality/value -Civic responsibility-based leadership is mainly seen as a comprehensive method of putting individual and societal basis in experiential learning. It aims to give insights to enhance the personal and social awareness to get involved in the community engagement by which to be the citizen with responsible essences.