To creatively and competently utilize community resources and to work successfully for the benefit of all students requires that educational leaders develop positive diversity dispositions. This study explores the effect of school community relations instruction in enhancing educational administration candidates' skills, beliefs, and connections…

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…

This article discusses extra-curricular social studies in an Open Air History Museum. Open Air History Museum, Conner Prairie Interpretive Park in Fishers, Indiana, is a cultural institution that encourages and supports talented students as they participate in an extra-curricular program. Ten-to sixteen-year-old youths "apply for jobs"…

This article explores the particular challenges and possibilities of service learning pedagogy for basic writers. Because a number of scholars of service learning and basic writing (Adler-Kassner, Arca, and Kraemer) are concerned primarily with developing underprepared students' academic literacies, I investigated how the students in a service…

Learning is neither limited to what is formally taught nor to time spent in classrooms. It occurs whenever and wherever the learner interacts with the surrounding environment. All facets of the community (not just the school) provide learning opportunities--thus the term learning community. This brief provides in-depth answers to the following…

Service learning is both a pedagogy and a philosophy; the central idea is to provide students with a setting for meaningful learning through a specific, curriculum-based community service activity. It is a "win-win" situation for everyone because students get to apply their knowledge and skills in "the real world," a nonprofit…

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) documents dimensions of quality in undergraduate education and provides information and assistance to colleges, universities, and other organizations to improve student learning. Its primary activity is annually surveying college students to assess the extent to which they engage in educational…

The Foundation for Excellent Schools supports a nationwide project, the Century Program, to link 100 rural and inner city schools middle schools with 100 colleges and universities. The TDP goal is to increase college going awareness among middle school students from families where going to college is not a family or community tradition. This paper…

The purpose of this research was to study the development, implementation, assessment, and revision of an integrated social justice curriculum with the goal of providing an understanding of the elements which supported and hindered social justice education from the perspective of an elementary school teacher. The research procedures used in this…

As Gail Bush reports, "each section of this monograph includes articles that invite the reader to explore his or her own response to the authors' messages... The purpose here is not to set in stone principles and practices to be followed blindly but to present a disposition toward intellectual behaviors that seriously consider our responsibilities…

Classrooms across the country are discovering the power of service-learning--the ideal way to help students develop social and academic skills while giving back to their community. Now for the first time, there's a practical how-to guide on using serving-learning to promote inclusion and differentiate instruction for students with and without…

Based on ten months of ethnographic fieldwork, including more than 65 in-depth interviews with Chinese university students and higher education administrators, this study examines the roots of an emerging community service learning movement in mainland China. The dissertation focuses on a case study of a pioneering Chinese Party State-sponsored…

Service learning is an effective instructional strategy in preservice teacher education programs for engaging students more actively in the learning process. In spite of the extensive studies on service learning in teacher education programs and courses, few studies are devoted to investigating the implementation of service learning in special…

This document reports on the 9th seminar of the State Education and Environment Roundtable (SEER). It consists of brief overviews of the daily discussions and presentations that were made at the seminar. Topics discussed include connecting service learning and the Environment as an Integrated Context for learning (EIC), and reports from states on…

Cultural activism--such as that promoted by cultural studies pedagogies--is often missing in both the theories and pedagogies of service learning. Ignoring the action potential inherent in cultural studies and its potential contributions to service learning may very well subvert a potentially radical and critical pedagogy into merely a trend.…