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Service-learning is an approach to experiential education where students apply knowledge & skills that they learn in the classroom by providing needed service to the larger community in which they live. One goal of service-learning programs is to develop citizens who are engaged & involved in the political process. This paper examines the effects that service-learning programs have on students' political participation. The data we use come from the Civic Education & Political Participation Survey gathered by the Indiana Department of Education. This pre/post survey includes students from the 5th through the 12th grades from five states. The survey allows us to examine the change in political participation for students involved in service-learning programs. Using a political socialization perspective on participation & education theory that draws from Dewey, Piaget, & Kolb, we use an expansive definition of political participation that includes much more than the simple act of voting. Specifically, we examine whether students, through their involvement in service learning, (1) engage in political communication, (2) will participate in acts of civic support, (3) will contact public officials, & (4) will vote. We find that service-learning does appear to make students more likely to participate in the future. The effects of service-learning are even greater when students had leadership in the project. 2 Tables, 7 Figures, 50 References. Adapted from the source document.

How might a service-learning course help child language brokers (Tse, 1996) minimize negative effects and maximize the cognitive and academic benefits of language brokering? This question is answered with data from an ethnographic case study of a high school service-learning course in translation and interpreting. Heritage speakers of Spanish and less commonly taught languages serve as volunteer interpreters at local schools while learning the skills, habits and ethics of professional interpreting in this course. The theoretical lens of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977; 2006) is used to analyze how this curriculum affects students. This article also contributes to evolving definitions of service-learning for heritage language speakers, arguing that language brokering that students do for their families and communities should be seen as a pre-existing "service" that can be utilized in the prepare-act-reflect cycle of service-learning. Analysis of the data shows that this cycle is key to supporting students in building the confidence and skills to pursue careers in professional interpreting and helping them manage their family interpreting experiences. Students demonstrated increased self-efficacy perceptions in terms of interpreting, academic achievement and general life events, although the role that service-learning played in the latter two outcomes is still unclear.

Negotiation is one of the most popular elective business courses offered across tertiary educational programs today. Yet, in many undergraduate and graduate programs, the "practice" of negotiation takes place solely through role-plays and simulations. The purpose of this article is to provide a "how to" template for negotiation instructors who are interested in extending their students' experiences beyond the sole use of in-class role-plays and simulations into the real world. The project described in this article is a semester-long, undergraduate service-learning group consulting project that has been used and refined over an 8-year period.

This paper is the result of a voluntary service-learning component in a qualitative research methods course. For this course, the service-learning project was the evaluation of the benefits to volunteers whom work a crisis hotline for a local crisis intervention center. The service-learning course model used in this paper most closely resembles the problem-based service-learning course model where students work as consultants. This paper focuses on the processes involved and the benefits to students in improving their qualitative research skills through the service-learning project.

Hour after hour, box by box, and bag by bag, the team of students
transferred the thousands of food items warehoused in a second-floor
conference room at the Fletcher Library on Arizona State
University's West campus. Employing techniques they had developed
over the six weeks of a campus-wide food drive, they formed a chain,
tossing food back from the conference room to a waiting cart, then
down an elevator, to a 16-foot rental truck waiting at the library
loading dock. There, another student team, most sweating profusely
in the 95 degrees of a spring day in Phoenix, rolled the items into
the truck and stacked them. Ultimately, the truck would sag under
the weight of tens of thousands of food items beginning the first
leg of a journey to a community center that serves hot lunches to
children in some of the poorest shantytown neighborhoods of Nogales,
Mexico. The authors would like to
thank for their support and guidance in the project Barbara
Tinsley, Ila Abernathy, Esther Torres, Francisco Trujillo, Jessi
Pederson, Lisa Steenson, Emily Taylor, and Esmeralda Gonzalez;
and for their helpful comments the anonymous referees for this
journal.

The weak economy will continue to cause great fiscal distress among state and local governments around the US. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, at least 48 states have addressed or are facing shortfalls in their budgets for the new fiscal year totaling $194 billion or 28% of state budgets. Cities, counties, and states must find solutions for looming cutbacks in essential services, public work projects, social service, and parks and recreation programs, to name a few. One possible solution is for public managers to build collaborative partnerships with higher education institutions for service learning and other service programs. The term service-learning has a wide range of definitions and has been used to characterize an array of experiential education endeavors -- from volunteer and community service projects to field studies and internship programs. Many service-learning programs are integrated into the academic curriculum. Adapted from the source document.

Service learning is typically distinguished from both community service and traditional civic education by the integration of study with hands-on activity outside the classroom, typically through a collaborative effort to address a community problem (Ehrlich 1999, 246). As such, service learning provides opportunities and challenges for increasing the efficacy of both the teaching and practice of democratic politics. To better understand these opportunities and challenges, it is necessary to make explicit the goals of service learning and to consider how these goals intersect those of more traditional approaches to teaching about government and politics. We believe that one place these sometimes competing models could find common ground is in the learning of factual knowledge about politics.Underlying the pedagogy of service learning are the beliefs that a central mission of civic education is to produce active, engaged citizens and that this mission is more likely to be accomplished by allowing young Americans to directly experience "politics" as part of their education. As noted by Frantzich and Mann, this view is very compatible with the stated mission of the American Political Science Association:The founding of the [APSA] in 1903 marked the evolution of political science as a distinct academic discipline in colleges and universities. At the time, two educational objectives were claimed for the emerging discipline: citizenship and training for careers in public service…. For the student, direct experience was recommended to supplement formal instruction in government and politics. (1997, 193)