Purpose: Service-learning (SL) is a widely accepted pedagogy that can enrich the learning experience for students in higher education while they apply their skills in a meaningful community service. This research is part of a larger project that aimed to motivate educational achievement among youths living in a priority neighborhood through SL.…

South African university students (n = 18; aged 21-28) participated in the LifeMatters train-the-trainer (TTT) workshop. Ten trained participants (n = 10; aged 21-23) then implemented the program as youth facilitators at three local schools. The study aimed to describe changes in participants resulting from the TTT and implementation experience.…

Day camps are a powerful context for youth development. The American Camp Association and Leave No Trace have been integral in supporting youth development by identifying outcomes associated with participation in outdoor recreation. Recreation majors in the programming class used the camp as a service-learning component of the class that offered…

Adventure-based learning is used by behavioral health providers to connect clients to therapeutic activities outside traditional settings. These approaches often aim to build internal and external assets that support positive youth development. Here we evaluate the impact of an experiential learning curriculum on youth development and identify…

Pre-service teachers rarely receive training on how best to serve lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) high school students. We tested whether participating in LGBTQ-focused service-based learning or LGBTQ-focused didactic training improved pre-service teachers' knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and skills for serving LGBTQ…

The purpose of this reflective essay is to encourage the discussion of community-engaged scholarship (CES) that does not progress as planned. Insufficient attention is given to lessons gleaned from missteps and outright failures experienced by scholars in the field, which results in a paucity of documented cases and recommendations for…

Even as service-learning has become more prevalent in higher education as a high-impact teaching methodology, barriers still exist to its implementation by some instructors. One concern is the perception of these types of activities infringing upon course content. This article outlines an example of an introductory service-learning project for an…

The traditional teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic alone will not fully prepare students to lead with integrity, govern fairly, analyze problems, and work collectively with people different from themselves. Social emotional learning (SEL) has been described as one of the missing links in academic education, but a restrictive approach to…

Constructivism theory (Crotty, 1998) served as the framework to investigate the reciprocal nature of a service-learning project that involved physical education pre-service teachers and urban underserved youth. Participants included three physical education teacher education (PETE) candidates and 15 youth between the ages of 6 and 13 who were…

Describes benefits of service learning for middle school students. Describes the Community Problem Solving (CPS) Program, a competitive program in which students use the creative problem- solving process to identify community problems and develop and implement solutions. Differentiates community problem solving from other service learning…

Experiments in using outdoor education to affect juvenile development and deter crime abound. Most of these outdoor adventure programs use a setting of developed challenges and perceived risk situations in order to create a life-changing experience. However, these "adventures" remain contrived events and require significant interpretive…

Canada World Youth enables young Canadians to live in another part of Canada with youths from a developing country for several months while volunteering in community projects. Then they move as a group to the partner country for several months where the program structure is the same. Participants acquire the skills and values necessary to…

This paper reviews service learning definitions and principles to illustrate common threads connecting service learning philosophy across contexts. Although there is general agreement that service learning occurs in school-based and community-based categories, it cannot be universally defined. Definitions from K-12, higher education, and adult…

Nonschool youth groups can serve many purposes for young people, especially promoting maturity and development and helping youth to build productive lives. Simply attending youth groups may not be enough, however. Studies have often failed to show beneficial effects of youth group membership versus youth who have not been members; but the studies…

The High/Scope Institute for IDEAS began in the early 1960s as a summer camp program and is now a dynamic learning program for teens that emphasizes working with them in an environment which supports emotional, social, and intellectual development. The High/Scope model for adolescent programs is based on the following principles: (1) adolescents…