High Leverage Practices (HLPs), as a core set of teaching practices, represent important instructional priorities and provide instructional guidance for students' engagement in practice-based instruction. The goals of this research were to: (1) understand how an epistemic community (the people designing and leading courses and programs) viewed the…

Service-learning literature regularly recommends small group activities as a learning tool but rarely examines the use of a broader application of a small group dynamics framework into a service-learning course. In this research, we explore the integration of small group dynamics frameworks into a service-learning classroom; this pedagogical…

Extending and challenging Arun Appadurai's anthropocentric "scapes," this article converses with feminist posthumanism, ecofeminism, and the political ecology of education to develop a more-than-human ecopedagogy in/for/with animalScapes. After outlining the article's theoretical framework, I briefly discuss the research cases informing…

Historically there has been a relative dearth of social science research into civic education--even in political science, a discipline that had civic education as one of its founding objectives. This is partly due to the mistaken impression that civics instruction has no effect on civic and political participation, a conclusion that was once…

American education's journey has witnessed the rise and fall of various progressive education approaches, including service-learning. In many respects, however, service-learning is still undergoing formation and adoption as a teaching method, specifically in School-Based, Agricultural Education (SBAE). For this reason, the interest existed to…

This paper explores the possibilities and challenges inherent in employing community service-learning as a pedagogy for engaging undergraduates in theology and religious studies courses that contribute to racial reconciliation. The paper summarizes research from the scholarship of teaching and learning on best practices for structuring…

This study contributes to the service learning (SL) literature by providing new empirical evidence of learning from a problem-based SL research project conducted in a developmental research methods course. Two sections of the course taught in a traditional manner were compared to two sections of the course taught with an integrated SL project…

Although research suggests that service learning (SL) is being incorporated into the college classroom at an increasing rate, faculty often report that they are not convinced of its educational values. There is a lack of research on, and awareness about, what SL is, how it can be incorporated into the curriculum, and the outcomes on student…

The researchers described in this case study how Service Learning was incorporated within the context of an early childhood program where the teachers used the Project Approach. The Service Learning project was embedded in an investigation about water and was designed to help tsunami victims in Asia. Participants included two teachers and 12…

This introduction will provide a thematic overview of the major issues raised by Grosse and Voght (1991), "The Evolution of Languages for Specific Purposes in the United States," and the contributions in this Focus Issue that address those issues from a 2011 perspective. It will also explore contemporary (largely praxis-oriented) languages for…

Many universities around the world are using service learning in courses to enhance their students' mastery of course content and commitment to social justice. Teacher education faculties have additionally experimented with service learning as a way of providing authentic field experiences at inner city schools for their teacher candidates. This…

Purpose--Academic sustainability programs aim to develop key competencies in sustainability, including problem-solving skills and the ability to collaborate successfully with experts and stakeholders. These key competencies may be most fully developed in new teaching and learning situations. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the kind of, and…

What is service-learning and how can students and community benefit from it? With the pressure of covering all of the content, passing tests, meeting standards and making AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress), how is it realistically feasible to make learning more meaningful so that students are able to take it and utilize it in real life? There is no…

This article reviews research-based knowledge about service learning in social work education. Student learning outcomes common to both service learning and social work education are examined, and the research-based literature on service learning in social work is analyzed. Service-learning practice issues in social work education are described:…

Recommends bringing practitioners and researchers together to strengthen future service learning research, suggesting a more empirically based approach to practice and more practical approach to research. The empirically based approach would help practitioners strengthen programs and influence the direction of research. The practice oriented…