Suchergebnisse

Experiencing Citizenship Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Political Science -- Contents -- Foreword -- Introduction -- The Decline of Democratic Faith -- Teaching/Theorizing/ Practicing Democracy: An Activist's Perspective on Service-Learning in Political Science -- The Work of Citizenship and the Problem of Service-Learning -- Examining Pedagogy in the Service-Learning Classroom: Reflections on Integrating Service-Learning Into the Curriculum -- Community Service-Learning as Practice in the Democratic Political Arts -- Service-Learning in the Study of American Public Policy

For the past decade, concern about a crisis in civic education and engagement, especially among young people, has been rampant. In 2003, The Civic Mission of Schools report sounded a clarion call for greater attention to citizenship education in K–12 schools and touched off a national campaign, joined by such luminaries as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, advocating improvements in the way we educate American youth for participation in democracy. Two years later, the work of the American Political Science Association's Committee on Civic Education and Engagement culminated in the publication of Democracy at Risk, which examined growing trends toward civic disengagement and proposed reforms to reinvigorate political participation in the United States. Just last year, a joint effort by the US Department of Education and the Association of American Colleges and Universities produced A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy's Future, once again chronicling a "civic recession" across the land and issuing a "National Call to Action" for higher education to do more to educate young citizens for democracy.

Public education is one of the most important "public goods" of a democratic society. In recent decades, public policy analysts, public intellectuals, and politicians have debated the state of public education in the United States and have argued about the sorts of public policies that might best promote the academic achievement, educational success, and political socialization of youth. Terry Moe and John Chubb have been important contributors to these debates. Their 1990 book, Politics, Markets, and America's Schools, set the terms of much subsequent discussion about the importance of school autonomy and "educational choice." Moe's Special Interest extends these arguments through a more frontal critique of the role of teachers unions. This book represents an important contribution to public discussion of school reform. It also incorporates a distinctive perspective on the relationship between power and public policy, and between the role of states and that of markets in the provision of public goods and services. In this symposium, we feature a range of serious commentaries on the book's central arguments about educational policy and politics and on its approach to "engaged" or "applied" political science.

Over a decade has passed since the practice called "service learning" began its ascendance in higher education. While internships have long been used as an experiential teaching tool in the discipline, it is only recently that political scientists have grappled with using community-based service experiences as vehicles for teaching students about politics. In many ways, political scientists have led the way in advancing the theory and practice of service learning, publishing one of the first volumes in the AAHE series on service learning in the disciplines (Battistoni and Hudson 1997), and designing and reporting pioneering efforts to link service to the academic curriculum (e.g., Barber and Battistoni 1993; Beamer 1998; Koulish 1998; Ehrlich 1999). Tony Robinson's essay in this volume stands as yet another bold attempt to challenge political scientists to "do politics" through advocacy-based community service work.This symposium is offered to advance service learning yet further. The featured authors highlight recent research on the impact of service learning on students' political knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, and draw new connections between service learning and important perspectives in political science scholarship and teaching.The first essay, by Mary Hepburn, Richard Niemi, and Chris Chapman, thoroughly details current research on how service learning affects the civic outcomes traditionally advanced by college-level political scientists. They draw lessons from the research about what service learning does and does not do for political education, and also raise important questions for future political science research.