Purpose: While most language departments of the university offer service-learning (SL) subjects based on language teaching, such as "Teaching Chinese as a Second Language in Local Schools" and "Serving the Community through Teaching English," this paper aims to argue that teaching students to teach language(s) is yet to be the…

University students who were required to engage in academic public service during college were surveyed just before completion of their undergraduate studies. Views of the graduation requirement remained positive, as they had been at college entry and after two years of study. Civic attitudes, knowledge, and skills were quite stable over four…

As school districts and communities struggle to increase civic engagement for their students, a medium-sized suburban school district implemented required community service hours as part of their high school graduation requirements. The purpose of this qualitative program evaluation was to investigate how the community service program was meeting…

Students entering Tulane University in 2006, 2007, and 2008, the years following Hurricane Katrina, were surveyed soon after arriving on campus and again after they had been at the university for two years. Attitudes toward a new public service graduation requirement, established after the storm, remained positive after students had completed two…

Volunteering implies free choice, but people in some situations can feel compelled to volunteer. Hypotheses about students' volunteer work focused on self-determination and sufficiency of justification for their behavior. We examined required versus nonrequired volunteerism, internal and external motivation for volunteering, and attitudes of…

As New Orleans began to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, Tulane University also began its recovery process. A new initiative in the recovery was the establishment of a public service graduation requirement for undergraduate students. Attitudes toward the requirement were assessed for 290 first-year and 257 advanced students in fall 2006. The…

This article presents the findings from a narrative inquiry exploring the perceived outcomes associated with a high school service-learning graduation requirement from a diverse group of college students. In particular, we were interested in participants' stories related to their experiences meeting the requirement, the meaning they made of the…

In 1999, the Ontario provincial government introduced into its high school curriculum a requirement that students complete 40 h of volunteer community service before graduation. At the same time, the high school curriculum was shortened from five years to four. Consequently, the 2003 graduating class of Ontario high school students contained two…

Young people in the United States today are much more likely to be involved in volunteer work of an apolitical sort than in politics. As part of a study on political engagement, the author and other colleagues surveyed students at a diversity of colleges and universities and asked them why they and many of their peers are so much more likely to…

An evaluation of Chesapeake Bay Foundation's environmental education programs provides context for this study exploring the role of student self-determination in service-learning. Research questions include (1) How do self-determination-related characteristics of service-learning programs affect students' attitudes toward service-learning (ASL),…

In a recent survey sponsored jointly by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement and the Council for Excellence in Government, several questions regarding young people's attitudes towards civic education and community service requirements were asked. These included questions asking if students were favorable or…

This action research study examines student reactions to a sixty-hour community service graduate requirement at an all-girl, Catholic high school; identifies reasons for the apathy and disdain with which students view the requirement; and suggests creating a service learning environment that will increase students' investment and interest in…