As American schools pitch in with an array of charitable projects in response to the tsunami in South Asia, experts say educators and students should consider carefully how they can most effectively support relief groups, avoid fund-raising scams, and incorporate their efforts into service-learning programs. When students returned to school after…

Service-learning courses can be powerful instruments for cognitive, affective, and moral transformation. This chapter examines the strengths and weaknesses of service-learning as an agent for cognitive, moral, and interpersonal development and its ability to promote civic or social engagement.

Two current movements of experiential learning receiving attention in mainstream educational reform are service-learning and outdoor education/adventure programming. Although sharing common philosophical roots, these movements have branched out into a variety of different applications and approaches. With increasing pressures on educational reform…

The rhetorical nature of the challenge to convert people to the cause of community development is illustrated in the discussion of three of the leadership portraits that students created for Urban Matters. The way these leaders persuade the residents to transform the negativity of a housing project into the positivity is analyzed.

The Banneker History Project was a service learning project in which students investigated the history of the Benjamin Banneker School, a segregated school that operated from 1915?1951 in a Midwestern college community. This article discusses the research these students conducted and the perceptions they adopted as a result of their work.

The Duke TIP Leadership Institute was developed specifically for a 2-week summer experience; however, the model can be applied to today's high school classroom. Through a combination of fundamental leadership skills and guided service learning, students identify important unmet needs within their community and begin working to address them. This…

The American Youth Policy Forum event -- one of three in a series -- focused on the research justification for integrating community service and civic education with academic goals. The evidence is there; these initiatives do enhance academic learning. But speaking in the August hearing room of the U.S. House of Representatives, most of the…

A consortium of teacher education professors worked together in a 3 year project to infuse service-learning into their courses. Although they had participated in the same preparatory workshops, they largely integrated it in ways that appeared to eclipse S-L orthodoxy. To understand their variances we examined the choices and contexts that shaped…

This essay turns to feminist ethnography and postcolonial theory to address how the figure of "the stranger" haunts the project of community service learning. By explicating the immediate and broader relations of power that structure these "strange(r) encounters," we are more likely to produce the kind of agitated pedagogy that creates…

The Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) is a very successful senior secondary school qualification introduced in the Australian state of Victoria in 2002. Applied learning in the VCAL engages senior students in a combination of work-based learning, service-learning, and project-based learning and aims to provide them with the skills,…

Middle school history teachers confront the same challenge every day: how to convey the breadth and depth of a curriculum that spans centuries, countries, and cultures. In "Making History Mine", Sarah Cooper shows teachers how to use thematic instruction to link skills to content knowledge. By combining thought-provoking activities and rich…

When Dayton Public Schools committed to return to neighborhood K-8 schools, the community organized to refocus many youth programs in schools and neighborhoods. This article describes the planning and implementation of Dayton's Neighborhood School Centers. Special emphasis is placed on the role of the University of Dayton, especially the Fitz…

"The Complete Guide to Service Learning" is the go-to resource in the fast-growing field of service learning. It is an award-winning treasury of service activities, community service project ideas, quotes, reflections, and resources that can help teachers and youth workers engage young hearts and minds in reaching out and giving back. Author, and…

This study of 14,252 college seniors from 50 institutions representing 25 states and the District of Columbia explored the influences of higher education on eight leadership outcome measures theoretically grounded using the social change model of leadership development. Hierarchical regression models explained between 31% and 40% of the variance…

The purpose of this article is to review a partnership between a teacher education department and a dropout prevention program. The partnership developed from a variety of communities' needs, no less of which was that of reconnecting marginalized youth at a local dropout prevention school with their community through cultural and civic…