Education Commons^™

A Phenomenological Approach To Examining Perceptions Of Middle School Students And Their Educators About Their Service-Learning Experiences, Mccafferty, Anita J. Stewart Mccafferty

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A primary purpose of public education is to ensure that all citizens have the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to participate in a democracy. Service learning is a democratic, constructivist, instructional strategy that connects academic learning with community needs. This phenomenological study described: (a) how youth, their educators, and community partners who experience service learning perceive its effects on themselves, their schools, and their community lives and (b) how professional-development opportunities need to be structured in order to encourage high quality civics education instruction. The problem this study addressed was how to solve youth civic and political disengagement. This study relied …