Service-Learning at the American Community College by
This volume brings together a breadth of new research on how service-learning - combining community-based experiential learning with classroom instruction - can best be employed at community colleges. It discusses outcomes and best practices for all involved, covers both theory and practice, and draws on both qualitative and quantitative methods.
Understanding Service-Learning and Community Engagement by
A volume in Advances in Service-Learning Research Series Editor IARSLCE There is an increasing proliferation of service-learning courses in colleges and universities in the U.S. and internationally, and research in the field has seen significant growth in diverse geographic areas in the past decade. Membership organizations now exist to convene scholars and practitioners across the globe. Chapters in this volume are based on presentations given at the 2010 annual conference of the International Association for Research on Service Learning and Community Engagement held in Indianapolis, IN. The conference theme "International Perspectives: Crossing Boundaries through Research" was chosen to highlight ways in which research crosses all kinds of boundaries: disciplinary boundaries, cultural boundaries, and national boundaries. Although service-learning is valued as an active learning strategy across the globe, little is known about the ways that service-learning is similar or different in varied contexts. Understanding service-learning and community engagement from cross-cultural and crossdisciplinary perspectives will improve both research and practice. Together, these chapters represent the diversity, complexity, and creativity evident by scholars and practitioners in this field of study.
Experiencing Service-Learning by
A unique resource for students and professors alike, this book reveals the important practical, educational, and emotional benefits provided by college programs that allow students to help others through service work in inner-city classrooms, clinics, and other challenging environments. Filled with vivid first-person reflections by students, Experiencing Service-Learning emphasizes learning by doing, getting into the field, sharing what one sees with colleagues, and interpreting what one learns. As the authors make clear, service-learning is not a spectator sport. It takes students "away from the routines and comfort zones of lecture, test, term paper, exam" and puts them into the world. Service-learning requires them to engage actively with cultures that may be unfamiliar to them and to be introspective about their successes and their mistakes. At the same time, it demands of their instructors "something other than Power-Point slides or an eloquently delivered lecture," as no teacher can predict in advance the questions their students' experiences will raise. In service-learning, students and teacher must act together as a team of motivators, problem solvers, and change agents. While most of its personal vignettes come from service-learners who have worked as mentors in elementary schools, the book also includes a chapter in which coauthor Michele Gourley describes at length her experiences at a faith-based health clinic in Honduras. In offering such stories--along with a succinct introduction to basic concepts, an assessment of how service-learners can effect transformational change, and project examples--this text will not only prepare students for the adventures of service-learning but also aid professors and administrators tasked with developing service-learning courses and programs. Robert F. Kronick is a professor of educational psychology and counseling at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and the author of Full Service Community Schools. Robert B. Cunningham is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. His books include Agendas and Decisions: How State Government Executives and Middle Managers Make and Administer Policy, coauthored with Dorothy F. Olshfski. Michele Gourley is a physician and public health professional with a background in rural community health and state health policy.
Democratic Dilemmas of Teaching Service-Learning by
A college student wants to lead a campaign to ban a young adult novel from his child's elementary school as his service-learning project in a children's literature course. Believing the book is offensive to religious sensibilities, he sees his campaign as a service to children and the community. Viewing such a ban as limiting freedom of speech and access to information, the student's professor questions whether leading a ban qualifies as a service project. If the goal of service is to promote more vital democratic communities, what should the student do? What should the professor do? How do they untangle competing democratic values? How do they make a decision about action? This book addresses the teaching dilemmas, such as the above, that instructors and students encounter in service-learning courses. Recognizing that teaching, in general, and service-learning, in particular, are inherently political, this book faces up to the resulting predicaments that inevitably arise in the classroom. By framing them as a vital and productive part of the process of teaching and learning for political engagement, this book offers the reader new ways to think about and address seemingly intractable ideological issues. Faculty encounter many challenges when teaching service learning courses. These may arise from students' resistance to the idea of serving; their lack of responsibility, wasting clients' and community agencies' time and money; the misalignment of community partner expectations with academic goals; or faculty uncertainty about when to guide students' experiences and when direct intervention is necessary. In over twenty chapters of case studies, faculty scholars from disciplines as varied as computer science, engineering, English, history, and sociology take readers on their and their students' intellectual journeys, sharing their messy, unpredictable and often inspiring accounts of democratic tensions and trials inherent in teaching service-learning. Using real incidents - and describing the resources and classroom activities they employ - they explore the democratic intersections of various political beliefs along with race/ethnicity, class, gender, ability, sexual orientation, and other lived differences and likenesses that students and faculty experience in their service-learning classroom and extended community. They share their struggles of how to communicate and interact across the divide of viewpoints and experiences within an egalitarian and inclusive environment all the while managing interpersonal tensions and conflicts among diverse people in complex, value-laden situations. The experienced contributors to this book offer pedagogical strategies for constructing service-learning courses, and non-prescriptive approaches to dilemmas for which there can be no definitive solutions.
Research, Advocacy, and Political Engagement by
Each volume in this series is organized around a specific community issue, and provides multiple perspectives on both the theoretical foundations for understanding the issues, and purposeful approaches to addressing them.The contributors to these books-who represent disciplines in the sciences, humanities and social sciences-offer vivid examples of how they have integrated civic engagement in their courses, explain their objectives, and demonstrate how they assess outcomes.
Teaching Writing with Latino/a Students by
Chapter: Building on the richness of a South Texas community : revisioning a technical and professional writing program through service learning.
Learning Through Serving by
Intended for college-level students who are engaged in service-learning. This book aims to enable the reader to derive the benefit from the experience - in terms of providing service to the community partner, developing his/her skills and knowledge, connecting back what she or he learns to course objectives and the framework of their discipline.
Service Learning by
This book presents not only a historical perspective, but it also debates the theories and issues surrounding the conflicts inherent in those theories. One theory, based on a philanthropic model, engages students in a commitment to serve others from a sense of gratitude for their own good fortunes or from a desire to give back to communities from which they have benefited. Typically, service-learning programs based on the philanthropic or communitarian models deal with the overt needs of community members. In contrast, the civic model requires deeper analysis of the various political and social issues that may be the cause of social conditions that require the help of the more fortunate. Opponents of the civic theory fear that proponents see the classroom as a forum for advancing particular political agendas, conceivably indoctrinating students to a particular view of social injustices. This book presents the theories and critiques their merits and liabilities, providing insight into the widely divergent curricular applications. It also examines the reasons professors should consider service-learning components in their classes and provides resources for further investigation of both theory and practice.