The development of student civic engagement has featured in Indian educational policies for decades as a critical goal of schooling. However, the narrowness of the prescribed K-12 curricula, and the intense focus on competitive exams, do not support such an outcome. To overcome this problem, ABC School in India decided to pilot service-learning in…

This research recounts a scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) project aimed at facilitating students' empathic development while also offering ways to identify and assess students' written expressions of empathy. I ground this work in an exploration of the many processes labelled as empathy and the reasons for including empathy as a course…

Service learning has been established as a promising method of teaching and learning that engages youth as change agents in their schools and communities. But service learning has not been widely implemented or studied in rural K-12 schools. This study explores the case of a service learning curriculum, the Working Together Project (WTP), in a…

A relatively new pedagogical approach termed "faith and learning in action" (FLA) involves crafting an assignment to include faith integration (FI) in a way that inspires the learned action of an academic subject through service-learning (SL). This study incorporated experiential learning methods in the employment of FLA into a…

Although service learning has been documented as a promising pedagogy for middle grades learners, it remains the exception rather than the rule in many middle schools. This qualitative study examined fifth grade students' experience of a service-learning class. Using the tenets of service learning and experiential learning theory as the…

The Collaborative Multimedia Service-Learning (CMSL) model, based on the "learning by teaching" approach, was created in an effort to design a pedagogical intervention to promote pre-service teachers' multimedia design/development skills. This paper reports on the development of the CMSL and presents the findings of the implementation of…

Does service learning impact the personal growth of middle grades students in grades 4-8? If so, in what ways? A review of the literature indicates that it does, in terms of the development of empathy, responsibility, civic engagement, and self-efficacy. In addition, findings include growth in students' communication with parents and teachers. In…

This article examines the impact of a service-learning program based on positive youth development and social and emotional learning principles in two high-poverty urban middle schools. A longitudinal mixed-methods design was implemented, and qualitative data analysis yielded unexpected results associated with the professional development of…

This article is based on a study that assessed Teach for America (TFA) candidates' dispositions toward service-learning before and after they developed and implemented a service-learning project with their students. This article may be used to understand the significance of raising alternative certification teacher candidates' community awareness…

This qualitative self-study examines the incorporation of service learning in 2 sections of a middle childhood undergraduate methods course. As a beginning teacher educator, I used self-study to explore the following research questions: (a) How does engaging in a service-learning project during a field experience influence middle level preservice…

The purpose of this action research study was to restructure and implement an effective middle school advisory model. This was conducted at a Middle School in Painesville Township, Ohio consisting of approximately 800 students. In order to meet Adequate Yearly Progress and adapt to the changes of the 21st century, a way to help the school progress…

The purpose of this manuscript is twofold: First, the authors explore the nature of the learning in which their students engaged during a service-learning experience in efforts to understand the meanings of teaching and learning they constructed, and how the context of this experience interacted with their candidates' previously constructed…

This article reports on a longitudinal study of a two-semester middle school environmental learning course that departs from traditional Mexican expository pedagogies through the incorporation of experiential and service learning approaches. In the short term, course participants acquired a heightened awareness of environmental issues, augmented…

This study reaffirms the potential and power of service-learning as a strategy for simultaneously engaging young people in civic and community life, promoting their healthy development, and strengthening their education. It reveals a core of school leaders who believe strongly in the importance and power of service-learning--even in the face of…

As educators have sought instructional strategies for fostering student proficiency in higher order thinking and subject-matter integration, schools have developed a broad range of real-world experiences. However, the degree to which efforts to involve students in the community have been fully integrated or coordinated with classroom instruction…