Education Commons^™

Reasons Faculty Teach, Or Do Not Teach, Service-Learning Courses In A Pandemic: The Role Of Faculty Investment And Clues For The Future Of Service-Learning, Melissa C. Garvin, Emily Acosta Lewis

Higher Learning Research Communications

Objectives: Current issues impact the number and type of service-learning courses (SLCs) offered across universities. Our research aims to address the barriers and offer solutions to implementing SLCs.

Methods: Instructors (n = 117) in the California State University system, the largest in the United States, who taught SLCs in fall 2019 and spring 2020 were contacted to understand why they chose to continue, or discontinue, teaching SLCs in Fall 2020.

Results: The majority of participants continued to teach an SLC. Those who had more experience teaching SLCs were more likely to continue. Additionally, female participants trended …

Experiences, Reflections, And Applications Of Service-Learning Among Rookie Police Officers, Jacqueline Smith

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Public safety is put at risk when police officers do not positively engage with community members. Though police officers learn how to deescalate volatile situations in police training, some officers still rely on use of force (UOF) and are not fully incorporating positive engagement to deescalate volatile situations. Service-learning provides one way to learn positive modes of engagement. The problem addressed in this project study was that service learning has not been adopted as a widespread teaching practice in criminal justice professional development in a Southeastern local setting. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences, observations, conceptualizations, …

Effect Of Service-Learning Participation On High School Attendance And Science Achievement, Julia Roscoe

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Students at an alternative high school located in a northern Midwest state demonstrated low science achievement and high rates of student absenteeism. Students who do not attend school regularly and achieve in science courses are at risk of not graduating from high school, so teachers at the study school implemented a 16-day service-learning project embedded in a Grade 10 environmental science unit. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of 10th-grade students' participation in the service-learning project on student science achievement and attendance. The theoretical framework was Kearsley and Shneiderman's engagement theory. Archival data from school and …

Improving High School Service-Learning To Increase Long-Term Impact On Volunteerism, Tracey Boldemann Tatkin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Passage of the Kennedy Serve America Act in 2009 led to wide support for service-learning programs in high schools. The effectiveness of these programs on future volunteerism in college, however, has not been established. In the absence of research clarifying the variables that might influence programming effectiveness, it is difficult to design and adapt such programs to increase their impact. This study explored how high school service-learning programs could be improved to encourage greater student participation and to motivate continued volunteerism in college. A multiple case study methodology was used that included face-to-face interviews with 7 teachers and service-learning coordinators …

College Faculty Experiences Assigning Service-Learning And Their Inclination To Continue, J. Shannon Chamberlin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The academic benefits and enhanced social responsibility that students derive from service-learning (SL), defined as experiential learning that ties community service to academic courses, have been well documented. However, for a college to fully institutionalize SL, a high proportion of faculty needs to include SL in their courses. Based in Kolb's experiential learning theory, the purpose of this study was to enhance planners' understanding of how college faculty's past experiences assigning SL influence their inclination to assign SL in future courses. In this basic qualitative interpretive study, data were collected from 13 individual interviews with faculty who assigned SL at …

Keeping Students In By Sending Them Out: Retention And Service-Learning, Iris M. Yob

Center for Faculty Excellence Publications

This review of recent literature examines the research on the impact of service-learning on student retention. The theoretical framework of the review draws on both Tinto’s model of student attrition and Knowles’s theory of adult learning, which together suggest that academic and social integration, active participation and engagement in learning, and application and relevancy of the subject-matter under study are key factors in student success. The role of these factors has been confirmed in a growing body of research around learning experiences in general and, as this review shows, particularly in service-learning experiences. Suggestions are made for how future research …

Keeping Students In By Sending Them Out: Retention And Service-Learning, Iris Mae Yob

Higher Learning Research Communications

This review of recent literature examines the research on the impact of service-learning on student retention. The theoretical framework of the review draws on both Tinto’s model of student attrition and Knowles’s theory of adult learning, which together suggest that academic and social integration, active participation and engagement in learning, and application and relevancy of the subject-matter under study are key factors in student success. The role of these factors has been confirmed in a growing body of research around learning experiences in general and, as this review shows, particularly in service-learning experiences. Suggestions are made for how future research …