Student Service Learning (SSL) provides students the opportunity to actively participate in the community and build the skills they need to be successful students and citizens. This booklet provides information about the Maryland State Department of Education SSL graduation mandate. Completing 75 SSL hours is a requirement for high school…

Community Service Learning (CSL) is, potentially, the most powerful and far-reaching educational reform movement in recent memory. Yet, that potential has yet to be realized. One major reason for CSL's limited success is found in its runaway conceptual confusion: in becoming everything to everyone, CSL has lost its philosophical bearings and, not…

In this paper four final-year education students describe one aspect of their science pathway course, a place-based experience in an urban ecological setting. The aim of the place-based experience was to combine community service and science knowledge to focus on critical, reflective thinking and civic responsibility. The assessment task required…

This manuscript reports on efforts to introduce beginning college students to the modern nanoscience field. These include: implementing selected experiments into sequencing core first-year and second-year chemistry laboratory courses; providing students with a first research experience; and engaging them in service learning and outreach programs…

This paper is the result of a voluntary service-learning component in a qualitative research methods course. For this course, the service-learning project was the evaluation of the benefits to volunteers who work a crisis hotline for a local crisis intervention center. The service-learning course model used in this paper most closely resembles the…

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) documents dimensions of quality in undergraduate education and provides information and assistance to colleges, universities, and other organizations to improve student learning. Its primary activity is annually surveying college students to assess the extent to which they engage in educational…

The Cultural Immersion Projects at Indiana University offer teacher education majors the opportunity to be placed in culturally-diverse settings, where full-time student teaching, required community participation, ongoing reflection, and academic reporting combine to provide experiences that go well beyond the common foci of conventional student…

The Duke TIP Leadership Institute was developed specifically for a 2-week summer experience; however, the model can be applied to today's high school classroom. Through a combination of fundamental leadership skills and guided service learning, students identify important unmet needs within their community and begin working to address them. This…

This paper describes how the literacy methods course at Washington State University was modified in light of critical literacy and service learning perspectives. The goal has always been to teach preservice teachers literacy development strategies within units of instruction of their own design, units they construct that integrate content and…

The value of reflection on experience to enhance learning has been advanced for decades; however, it remains difficult to apply in practice. This paper describes a reflection model that pushes students beyond superficial interpretations of complex issues and facilitates academic mastery, personal growth, civic engagement, critical thinking, and…

This monograph highlights the projects that high school and middle level students have initiated when they have seen a need in their communities, researched the need, and then figured out a way to answer the need. The monograph categorizes these state and national award-winning, self-initiated community projects as follows: aiding the…

Democracy is more than a creed or a doctrine. It must be a continuing force in the daily thinking, working, and living of all our citizens. American schools and colleges can strengthen democracy by practicing it--by showing concretely the basic advantages it offers to human beings. It is in the homes and in the schools, in home towns and local…

This book gathers the comments of 27 contributors who are organizers, coordinators, participants, students and staff on a University of Michigan sociology praxis course, which combines community service with seminar-related opportunities for reflection, relevant readings, discussion questions and activities, journal assignments and meaningful,…

Most people see a tactical barrier to implementing service learning (SL), which is how to create the infrastructure that makes SL possible without placing undue burden on schools, people, and teachers. Teachers must be shown how SL can be seamlessly incorporated into their teaching. The media are not especially concerned with SL, but coverage is…

The 27 chapters of this book provide presentations, conference transcripts, manuals, and reflections by organizers, coordinators, participants, students and staff of service-learning sociology and education courses at the University of Michigan. The chapters are: "What National and Community Service Mean for Higher Education" (Goodwin…