Suchergebnisse

Service learning is a powerful pedagogical tool using community or public service experiences to enhance traditional course content's meaning and impact. This approach is valuable for two interrelated reasons: 1) it provides a form of practical experience enhancing learning in all potential curriculum areas and 2) the community service experience can reinforce civic and moral values desirable in society from serving others (Zlotkowski, 1996a, 1996b). This paper presents a brief description of service learning and describes a unique application of this pedagogy at a military service academy. A special offering senior capstone course involving engineering systems design and program management, where the final project (a small satellite) is actually placed in orbit, is used as a vehicle for service learning. Also experience-based insights into improving service learning implementation are presented with suggestions and demonstrations for making this approach part of the curriculum.

This article examines service learning in the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. The authors show that students who complete their two courses—Poverty, Homelessness, and the Urban Underclass as well as Field Experience—make significant contributions to the community service organizations they serve. Not only do their students learn, but the organizations benefit from the knowledge the students bring. Furthermore, through service learning, many of the students develop a long-term commitment to social justice and continue to work for social change years after leaving the university.

Anyone who has seen the hungry or homeless on city streets or in rural areas is likely to be touched by the hardship they see. A growing number of schools are incorporating service learning into their curriculum. These programs heighten the students' sense of community and engage them with a sense of service and civic responsibility. Readers of this book will learn about ways that service learning can help people suffering from hunger and homelessness. The detailed examples provided provide excellent starting points for an individual's or a school's exploration into service learning

Intro -- TABLE OF CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION -- CHAPTER TWO: THE FIRST NATIONAL COMMUNITY IN ACTION YOUTH SUMMIT -- CHAPTER THREE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CONSORTIUM BREAKFAST ON RELATIONSHIP VIOLENCE: WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? -- CHAPTER FOUR: A NON-TRADITIONAL SERVICE-LEARNING APPROACH -- CHAPTER FIVE: NEW DIRECTIONS IN SERVICE-LEARNING -- BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Borrows from the domains of service learning, study abroad, and international education to create a new high-impact pedagogy, with the potential to improve students' academic attainment, contribute to their personal growth, and develop global civic outcomes.

Social scientists' initial forays into the field of political socialization were directly linked to goals of creating good citizens beginning in childhood (Merriam 1931, 1934; Sears 1990; Wallas 1908). With the advent of behavioralism, however, researchers began viewing the study of political socialization as an end in itself (Ball 1995). The emphasis on objective, scientific analysis caused researchers to abandon participant observation, in-depth interviews, and classroom experiments, thus precluding the collection of interesting and valuable data that could be used to inform the development of civic education programs. Further, the dominant theoretical model assumed that political orientations are transmitted from family members and teachers to young people. This model led to rather sterile debates about which agent was the most influential, rather than to discussions about how agents might successfully inspire the development of democratic citizenship values in children and adolescents (Torney-Purta 1999).Problems of theory and method, contradictory research findings, and evidence of the volatility of political orientations over time contributed to declining scholarly interest in the field of political socialization in the 1980s, especially investigations of preadults (Cook 1985; Merelman 1986). However, political socialization research is currently experiencing a renaissance sparked in part by concerns about citizenship education, of which service learning is an important component. Networks such as the APSA Task Force on Civic Education have been formed to unite educators and researchers. These networks allow for an unprecedented exchange of ideas linking academic inquiry and service learning.

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.

Trends in the political engagement of America's high school students present a paradox. At the same time that an unprecedented number of opportunities exist for American adolescents to get involved in activities with a political flavor like student governments, model United Nations, model Congress, Young Republicans and Young Democrats, and debate clubs, both interest and participation in political activities among high school students is low and declining. This is not unlike what has been observed among adults in the general population. A proliferation of advocacy groups has not resulted in more Americans getting involved in politics. Nor has a never-ending supply of political news on TV and radio, in print, and online led to an increase in the nation's attention to political matters.It would be too presumptuous for me to claim that there is a direct causal connection between an increasing supply of opportunities for extracurricular political activities among young people and their declining rates of civic engagement. A more modest claim does seem plausible, however: politics has increasingly become a niche activity, pursued by that relatively small slice of the population who are, as Robert Dahl (1961) famously put it, "homo politicus," i.e., "political junkies." Television channels provide a telling analogy. Whereas once, events like national political conventions and presidential press conferences would preempt all network programming, they are increasingly shunted off to all-news cable channels and C-SPAN. Ironically, a greater supply of political news has meant that it is easier for people who are not pre-disposed to seek out politically-oriented programming to avoid it.