As a service learning project, social work graduate students prepared a college information seminar and scholarship fundraiser for 15 youths in foster care. The project illustrates how students can apply learning and make a meaningful contribution to the lives of others. (SK)

Increasingly students are coming to campus with a range of experience in community services and are often ready for an expanded role. Some may consider ways to improve or reform the institutions where they serve. This article discusses the role of the campus in building on a student's experience in order to provide more ambitious programs. (JDM)

Describes four important aspects of critical thinking as: identifying and questioning assumptions, seeking a multiplicity of voices and alternatives on a subject, making connections, and fostering active involvement. Discusses theoretical links between critical thinking and ethics. Concludes with a large-scale service learning project that…

This article details a five-phase construction plan designed to guide students through the process of planning service learning projects with students responsible for all steps and the teacher assuming the role of facilitator and guide. Service-learning projects are encouraged as a means of including students with disabilities in their community…

Service learning components have increased markedly in the curriculum of both public and private schools in the past few years. In fact, according to a 1999 report by the National Center for Education Statistics, 64% of all public schools have students participate in service learning. Here we offer an in-depth look at how video production can be…

Most university administrators acknowledge the need to engender social responsibility among students. College mission statements feature this goal front and center, and higher education is trying to address this challenge through both ethics courses (theory) and service programs (practice). The author of this paper contends that many of the…

Five days in East Timor visiting orphanages changed the lives of five young men from Youth Off The Streets. The children in these orphanages run by the Salesian order of the Catholic church are products of the Indonesian invasion, which began in 1975 and continued until 1999. Massive destruction occurred throughout the country. Buildings at the…

American high school and university students perform community service in record numbers. According to the most recent survey of incoming university freshman, more than 80 percent of students undertook volunteer work in high school. While volunteering is on the rise, political interest and engagement among youth is declining. These two trends lead…

This constructivist study explored service-learning as a contextual influence on identity development and self-authorship. Analysis of data from interviews with 8 participants, each of whom completed an undergraduate service-learning course 2 to 4 years prior to the study, suggested that an enduring influence of service-learning was construction…

Three large and diverse data sets were used to study the relations among 6th?12th grade students' community service and service-learning experiences, academic success, and socioeconomic status (SES). Principals in high-poverty, urban, and majority nonwhite schools were more likely to judge service-learning's impact on student attendance,…

This paper discusses the implementation of an intergenerational service-learning (IS-L) project with a mentorship component for graduate students at Western Michigan University's Gerontology Program. Two classes of students, one graduate and one undergraduate, taking introductory gerontology courses were brought together to complete IS-L projects…

Presents the results of a national study designed to gain an understanding of the status of service-learning in teacher education programs. Concludes that although service-learning exists in the language and curriculum of the majority of teacher education programs - approximately 60 percent address the subject - it still resides largely on the…

Discusses the development of a survey instrument designed to measure the impact of service learning on student development, specifically students' sense of caring, ethics, connectedness, collaboration, diversity, reciprocity, and self-efficacy. The authors invite other service-learning practitioners to utilize the instrument, and if they wish, to…

Presents a model that combines research and service learning. The Community Based Research Institute is an interdisciplinary summer academic experience in which undergraduate students and community partners collaborate to meet a community-defined research need. Finds that students are less likely than faculty to recognize the connections between…

Evaluates the outcomes of the service-learning component in two undergraduate courses in which some students identified their own service-learning sites and others chose one of three pre-arranged sites. Concludes that all students experienced a greater understanding of the course content and their roles as citizens, but students who arranged their…