Educators, policymakers, and other concerned adults share an interest in promoting lifelong patterns of community service in youth. Practitioners and researchers alike highlight the importance of youth participation in afterschool service activities so the author's focus in this paper is on youth involved in PeaceJam, an innovative…

The practice of service-learning is growing. However, service-learning activities seldom involve high school students with moderate mental disabilities working with peers without disabilities. The purpose of this case study was to gain an understanding of the experiences of personnel who work in partnership with students with disabilities and…

Why, if service learning has "come a long way," has it not had the impact on the university or on the community that proponents expected? This article details interviews with eight teachers at Virginia Tech who use service learning in their classrooms, with particular attention to the convergence of literacies that occurs when teachers,…

Service-learning is promoted widely by professional organizations (NCSS, 2001), but often with little reflection on the nature of meaningful student participation and the impact of teacher leadership styles. The authors studied mixed-age "small school" advisory groups involved in service-learning at one elementary school; observational, interview,…

The purpose of this paper is to identify how students gain "real-world" experience via service-learning projects. This article describes the results of a pilot study conducted with over 75 business graduate students to investigate the effects of service-learning curriculum at the collegiate level. The following qualitative data was…

This qualitative, grounded theory study focused on the perspectives of high school seniors, college freshmen, and working young adults in Orange County, California, to create a useful and practical theory about high school students' civic participation as it relates to students' enrollment in postsecondary education. Data collection consisted of…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the perceptions of university students serving as volunteers in an oncology ward at a local children's hospital. The implementation of this project was guided by the body of literature regarding service learning. Data were collected from the five students using a structured interview and was…

To promote student engagement, professors must actively seek to create the conditions that foster engagement. Chickering and Gamson (1987) suggest that good practices in undergraduate education are ones that: encourage student-faculty contact, develop reciprocity and cooperation among students, encourage active learning, provide students with…

At its core, service-learning is about creating opportunities for students to apply theory they learn in the classroom to real-world problems and real-world needs. A service-learning project was initiated with the CEO of the Brownsville Chamber of Commerce. The project required 2nd-year business communication students to interview community…

Discussion of service learning for gifted adolescents offers a service learning typology based on degrees of student involvement and reviews the research findings on service learning. Focus group interviews with three gifted adolescent participants highlighted the importance of service learning to them and identified the following themes:…

This issue of "Service-Learning Network" looks at the ways that service learning can transform local government into a learning laboratory for civic education. The first article, "Creating the Missing Link: Local Government, Service Learning, and Civic Education" (Todd Clark), introduces the issue. "Service Learning and Local Government" (Ann…

George Jacobs holds a doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. He has taught courses on English, cooperative learning, curriculum design, environmental education, and multiple intelligences in the U.S., Thailand, Singapore, Nicaragua, and China . Dr. Jacobs has published more than 100 articles, book chapters,…

This study examines the importance of structured reflection in service-learning courses. The study consisted of interviews with 15 faculty and 72 students from three different higher education institutions; interviews were conducted between October 1998 and March 1999. Focus group interviews with faculty gathered information about course design,…

Seventy-five students from five medical schools participated in structured interviews to elicit their community service history and opinions regarding the relationship of community service to the medical school admissions process and the medical school curriculum. An analysis of responses indicates that service leaders were: (a) influenced by…

Service learning has been identified as a promising approach to reduce sexual risk behavior, among other outcomes. This study used qualitative data analysis to offer suggestions for optimally integrating service learning into a program to reduce sexual risks among alternative school students. Data were collected from student participants in the…