Service Learning Commons^™

Opportunity For All: Linking Service-Learning And Business Education, Edward Zlotkowski

Higher Education

A major criticism of contemporary business education centers on its failure to help business students achieve sufficient educational breath, particularly with regard to the external environment of business. The service-learning movement offers business faculty an excellent opportunity to address this deficiency. By developing curricular projects linked to community needs, faculty can further their students' technical skills while helping them simultaneously develop greater inter-personal, inter-cultural, and ethical sensitivity.

Downtown As A Classroom: Social/Architechtural History Of Beaufort, Lady's Island Middle School

Project Summaries

We live in a town rich in history and architecture, yet nowhere in the 12-year curriculum are these subjects taught. The students and staff of Lady's Island Middle are working to rectify this omission. The purpose of "Downtown As A Classroom" is to discover (via oral histories and written records), write, illustrate and publish a top-quality children's account of folklore and fact based on Beaufort's architectural past and present.

The basic premise is that every building tells a story. It is these family stories which 150+ eighth graders, representing the full spectrum of student population, will learn and preserve. By …

Guides To Developing Service-Learning Programs, Gail Klosterman

Bibliographies

This document lists those guides in our collection which are most pertinent to service-learning. Each citation provides bibliographic information, an indication of the type of guide, a program grade level, and the source or sources where the guide can be obtained. If an abstract was available from the ERIC database or the author it is included. The next edition of this document will include a greater number of abstracts as our staff continues to abstract and index materials. The guides included in this document meet the following criteria:

1. NSLCC has a copy of the resource on hand for reference by …

Experiential Education And Civic Learning, Robert H. Mckenzie

Civic Engagement

not only demands experiential education; civic learning reinforces for us the nature of experiential education. To explore the relationship between the two, we must understand a number of factors: the nature of the contemporary challenges to civic learning; the relationship of the purposes that educational institutions choose to that civic challenge; the pedagogical choices available for learning civically; and the relationship of learning theory to the centrality of choice that lies at the core of civic learning. At the end of this investigation, we will find some important guiding principles that civic learning suggests for how we engage in experiential …

Experiential Education And Civic Learning, Robert H. Mckenzie

Civic Engagement

The nature of civic learning not only demands experiential education; civic learning reinforces for us the nature of experiential education. To explore the relationship between the two, we must understand a number of factors: the nature of the contemporary challenges to civic learning; the relationship of the purposes that educational institutions choose to that civic challenge; the pedagogical choices available for learning civically; and the relationship of learning theory to the centrality of choice that lies at the core of civic learning. At the end of this investigation, we will find some important guiding principles that civic learning suggests for …

Community Service To The Elderly A Service-Learning Model: Guidelines For Replication, James M. Mccrea, Sherry G. Cottom

Curriculum

At the University of Pittsburgh, Generations Together, an Intergenerational Studies Program develops programs that bring young and old together in ways that benefit both generations. The University Challenge for Excellence Program (DCEP) works with entering students who are often first generation, mostly African-American, and who may be in need of special assistance during their first year. UCEP seeks ways to raise their self esteem, give them a sense of purpose, connect them to the University, and ultimately to retain them at Pitt through graduation. In 1994, these two university programs joined together with the Housing Authority of the City of …

Animal Tracks Water Action Pack, Karen Romano Young, Charles Wilkinson

Curriculum

This guide contains: Discovery, Awareness, Action and Appendices.

Community Service Leadership Conference, Bill Sigismond, Gary Thompson

Curriculum

Materials from the Community Service Leadership Conference, Saturday, February 3, 1996.

Developing Reflective Learners: Serendipity And Synergy At Wheaton College, Hannah Goldberg, Daniel Golden, Victoria Mcgillin

Evaluation/Reflection

For the past decade, Wheaton College, a small liberal arts institution located in Norton, Massachusetts, has been creating, refining, and integrating a range of initiatives designed to develop students into active and reflective learners. Some of these initiatives grew out of explicit institutional commitments to teaching and learning innovation, while others were in fact happy accidents of circumstance, or situations where an individual interesting program idea took hold, spread into other units of the College, and was itself transformed in the process.

Evaluating Service-Learning Programs, Andrew Furco

Evaluation/Reflection

What we know about service-learning programs regarding impacts on students, communities, institutions:
• little systematic data analysis has been done;
• most existing findings are anecdotal;
• findings that exist are narrow in scope and are typically nongeneralizeable to other programs;
• most studies on service-learning have focused on the impact of service on student (service provider) development;
• there are a growing number of service-learning evaluations that are assessing the impacts of service on communities (service recipients);
• assessments of the impacts of service-learning on institutions are negligible
• regarding impacts on students, we know that service can impact …

Measuring Program Outcomes: A Practical Approach, United Way Of America

Evaluation/Reflection

If yours is like most human service agencies or youth- and family-serving organizations, you regularly report on how much money you receive, how many staff and volunteers you have, and what they do in your programs. You know how many individuals participate in your programs, how many hours you spend serving them, and how many brochures or classes or counseling sessions you produce. In other words, you document program inputs, activities, and outputs.

Adults As Allies, Barry Checkoway

Partnerships/Community

Young people are creating community change! They are tutoring in the schools, working in health clinics, and serving meals in soup kitchens. They are cleaning up the environment, rehabilitating houses for the homeless, and formulating strategies for neighborhood revitalization. They are solving problems, planning programs, and involving people in decisions at the community level.

Service-Learning: A Balanced Approach To Experiential Education, Andrew Furco

Service Learning, General

For over a quarter of a century, education researchers and practitioners have struggled to determine how to best characterize service-learning. In 1979, Robert Sigmon defined service-learning as an experiential education approach that is premised on "reciprocal learning" (Sigmon, 1979). He suggested that because learning flows from service activities, both those who provide service and those who receive it "learn" from the experience. In Sigmon's view, service-learning occurs only when both the providers and recipients of service benefit from the activities.

Is Service-Learning Really Better Than Community Service? A Study Of High School Service Program Outcomes, Andrew Furco

Service Learning, General

In their 1981 study, the Experiential Education Evaluation Project, Dan Conrad and Diane Hedin investigated the impact of a range of experiential education programs on secondary school students. The study, which involved more than 1000 secondary school students, compared the effects of five different types of experiential education programs-community service, internships, political action, community study, and adventure education on students' psychological, social, and intellectual development. The study found that the various programmatic forms of experiential education showed significant, positive effects in all three student outcome areas. It also revealed that certain programmatic features, such as clearly articulated program goals and …

Service-Learning And School-To-Work: Making The Connections, Andrew Furco

Service Learning, General

Recently, much attention has been focused on two federal initiatives that encourage students to explore learning opportunities outside the classroom. The National and Community Service Trust Act and the School to Work Opportunities Act provide states with assistance to develop and implement school programs in which elementary, secondary, and post-secondary students are engaged in learning experiences that are hands-on, meaningful, and connected to the real world. Although the acts differ on their intended educational purposes, both are based on similar educational philosophies, principles, and pedagogies. These fundamental similarities suggest that the two reforms can work synergistically to establish powerful and …

Service Learning: Developing A Curriculum For Caring, Sally R. Beisser

Service Learning, General

This article defines service learning and provides summary data on a federal grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service to implement service learning in the classroom. The author identifies and describes four categories of successful service projects and provides examples of integrating the curriculum content to identify and meet community and school-based needs. She then suggests instructional strategies and follow-up resources for professional use.

Community-Based Learning: A Foundation For Meaningful Educational Reform, Thomas R. Owens, Changhua Wang

Service Learning, General

Many of today's leaders in education, business, and community development are coming to realize, even more than in the past, that schools alone cannot prepare our youth for productive adulthood. These leaders are ready to try new approaches that link learning activities in classrooms with a full range of learning experiences available in our communities.

A Glipse Of A New Experiential Learning Theory Paradigm, John S. Duley

Service Learning, General

A pseudo NSIEE Occasional Paper printed as memorabilia for the Wingspread Service Learning History Project Conference, December 2-4, 1995. This was first presented as the closing Keynote address at the 1980 NSIEE conference in San Francisco. It was reworked on the basis of correspondence with Bob Sigmon and conversations with other illuminaries. I reworked it in its present form in June 1988 and submitted it to the then editor of Occasional Papers. For probably several good reasons of which I am not aware, it was not published. So on this occasion I have taken the liberty as a former editor …

A Study Of Community Interaction, Ernst W. Stromsdorfer, Grant Forsyth, Richard Oxley

Partnerships/Community

This study analyses selected aspects of the community impact of the Kitsap Community Action Program projects entitled ''The Public Awareness of Kitsap" (PACK). PACK was initiated as a response to a downsizing of Department of Defense activities in Kitsap County. With PACK, the Kitsap Community Action Program (KCAP) joined hands with the Washington Service Corps in an effort funded by the Defense Conversion Assistance program to revitalize the local Bremerton and Kitsap County economies.

Applied Learning: Giving African-American Students An Edge In The Job Market, Jennifer Jones

Diversity

Applied learning experiences such as internships, cooperative education or public service programs offer significant benefits to African American college students. Students gain exposure and develop contacts in various industries prior to graduation. Applied learning also helps students evaluate their career interests and objectives as well as improve both their pre-employment and job survival skills.

Bridging Two Worlds: Professional Service And Service Learning, Deborah Hirsch, Ernest Lynton

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

Authors of this essay, also published in the NSEE Quarterly, argue that proponents of service-learning and faculty professional service should join forces to pursue a common agenda of community outreach. At a time when colleges and universities are being urged to help solve society's problems, the faculty represents a virtually untapped resource. Certainly, there are presently - and always have been - individual faculty working in the community as consultants or as supervisors and guides for students. If the campus is to make a significant impact, however, the institution must be able to deploy departments, divisions, interdisciplinary centers and …

A Paradigm Change In Higher Education?, Goodwin Liu

Higher Education

In the past decade we have witnessed steady progress in the development of service-learning programs on college campuses across the nation. As the director of a federal program that supports these initiatives, I was often" asked to describe the national context in which these initiatives take place. The national context can be sketched in many ways. Sometimes I used a historical perspective to explain how the service-leaming movement came to be. With other audiences, I used a policy perspective to explain how the Corporation for National Service and other national organizations are working to expand and sustain the movement.

Writing The Ties That Bind: Service-Learning In The Writing Classroom, David D. Cooper, Laura Julier

Higher Education

Recognizing, as John Dewey observed, that democracy begins in conversation, the Service-Learning Writing Project views the writing classroom as a place where rhetorical processes and democratic practices naturally converge. Informed by complementary disciplinary conversations in public culture studies and composition research, the project's interdisciplinary curriculum and pedagogical methods seek to shape habits of heart and mind that advance the development of critical discourse skills, the refinement of civic sensibility, and the promotion of students' ethical responsibility for the public good.

"Promoting Peace And Preventing Violence" Lions-Quest Skills For Action, Rich Cairn

Special Topics, General

Students at Bishop Ford Catholic Central High School in Brooklyn, New York have completed several violence-prevention service projects as part of their participation in the Skills for Action program. Seniors facilitated eight-week sessions to orient freshmen, including conflict resolution and role playing.

Language, Culture, And Violence In The Education Crisis Of U.S. Latino/ As: Two Courses For Intervention, Frances R. Aparicio, Christina Jose-Kampfner

Diversity

This article discusses the educational crisis of U.S. Latina/as and argues for the recognition and understanding of the extent to which institutional racism and violence are exercised by schools against this cultural sector. It then describes, as forms of intervention, a course which trainsfuture Spanish teachers in developing Latino cultural competence, and a community service learning course which offers tutoring and emotional support to at-risk middle school students.

Journal Writing In Service-Learning: Lessons From A Mentoring Projects, Martha De Acosta

Evaluation/Reflection

Journals contribute to learning by focusing students' attention on elements of their community service and by providing a quiet space for reflection on their actions. Writing helps students to engage in observation, questioning, speculation, and self-awareness, and to gain an overview of their community service. Lessons about enhancing the quality of students' journal writing in service-leaming are discussed.

The Prudential Spirit Of Community Youth Survey: A Survey Of High School Students On Community Involvement, Wirthlin Group

School K-12

Most of today's high-school teens (62%) feel their communities are good or very good places to live. But more say that conditions in their communities are getting worse (30%) than getting better (25%).

Crime and violence are the most pressing problems facing communities today, according to 36% of students. Other areas of concern are drug and alcohol abuse (cited by 18%), education (7%), economic problems (7%) and lack of youth programs (6%).

More than six teens in ten (62%) say the solutions to such problems lie in individual action rather than government programs. Only one in three (33%) favor government …

Yac Tracks: A Step-By-Step Guide For Organizing Community Youth Action Coalitions, Kansas Office For Community Service, Points Of Light Foundation

Special Topics, General

YAC Tracks, a step-by-step Guide for organizing Community Youth Action Coalitions, is the result of a ten month study on developing local youth service organizations. The first step for this manual was the discovery of: How to Start Your Own Youth Council", a publication of the New York State Youth Council. This information provided the base to create an outline for YAC Tracks in December 1995. Since that time, YAC Tracks has evolved and changed considerably! This manual consists of a process for mobilizing Community YACs at home and includes examples, activity ideas and practical suggestions. Contributors to t:his effort …

Tip Sheets: Risk Management In School-Based Service-Learning, Lisa Gray

Curriculum

Included in packet:

• Risk Management and Liability Tip Sheet
• Service Leaming Program Coordinator Job Description
• ASLER Standards for School-Based Service-Learning
• Students In Action (SIA) volunteer application
• Service Leaming Volunteer Contract
• Student Progress Report
• Parental Approval form
• Medical Release form
• Service Leaming Agreement and Release form
• Volunteer Driver Checklist

Native American Science Outreach Network Resource Guide, Native American Science Outreach Network

Tribal Nations Documents

By the spring of 1994. the Outreach Programs of the UW Department of Chemistry resembled the proverbial elephant as described by three blind people. The National Science Foundation funded a program to train middle school scienceteachers of Native American students. The Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education funded a linked program to train high school teachers and preservice teachers. Other funders ensured that there would be equipment and supplies for the program and for teachers to take to their home schools; university students would assist with water monitoring; community liaisons and university students would work with tribal communities; …