Surveyed college students about the quality of feedback they received at their service-learning workplace, their personal dispositions toward feedback, and the extent to which their key service learning goals were attained. Found evidence supporting the proposition that both the quality of feedback and students' dispositions to approach or avoid…

This qualitative, interpretive case study used ethnographic techniques to explore preservice teachers' experience of service learning in a multicultural education course. Three roles and perspectives related to multicultural learning are described and analyzed: playing it safe, teacher/helper, and companionship. The study concluded that preservice…

Evaluated a service learning course that matched preservice teachers and older adult literacy learners and aimed to address widespread attrition in adult education programs and the need for multicultural education for preservice teachers. Data revealed two essential elements of successful, reciprocal learning relationships: connecting across…

Proposing that faculty configure service learning as a course text, uses interdisciplinary theory to help faculty formulate detailed responses to: "What type of service text should I assign?" and "How will I meaningfully incorporate the service text with other texts used in the class?" In so doing, it focuses on the "learning" side of the service…

Discusses community-based research (CBR) as a pedagogical strategy for courses in social science research to show how service learning enriches discipline-based learning. Explores how CBR engages students with epistemological debates by modeling alternatives to conventional assumptions about why research is conducted, how best to study people, and…

Explores why service-learning students have only rarely been engaged directly as neighborhood organizers, then employs John Dewey's understanding of democracy to analyze one program which has succeeded in making widespread use of college students as front-line organizers. Describes how the complementarity between what students do at their…

Describes a campus-based model of service learning in the unique environments of university art galleries. Preservice teachers served as facilitators with visiting schoolchildren to explore feelings about and interpretations of various works of art; preservice teachers benefited from the experience and had changed views of art, teachers, and…

Uses research and theory on intrinsic motivation to suggest that some service learning practices may be counterproductive over the long term. Offers suggestions about the structure of service learning requirements concerning: (1) choice and control over community assignments; (2) choice and control over how activities are undertaken on site; and…

Offers suggestions to community service coordinators on how to encourage the use of service learning projects among business faculty in the form of consulting for non-profit organizations. Provides examples of projects in marketing and management courses and discusses how to implement this type of activity in a business course. (EV)

Describes a partnership between the Jane Addams School for Democracy in Minnesota and two institutions of higher education to address the problems of rapid student turnover in service learning. Promising strategies have two dimensions: to the extent possible lower academic and financial barriers to students' participation, and foster a community…

Asserts that service learning proponents are divided over direct charity versus justice advocacy models, with many claiming a need for justice advocates to moderate their philosophy in order to secure long-term support. Claims that despite justice advocacy's trouble institutionalizing itself (e.g., Settlement House, Students for a Democratic…

Compares the educational and philosophical theories of John Dewey and Paulo Friere, articulating how each deals with two key relationships: action to reflection and individual to society. Their theories of experiential learning largely overlap, but they depart on the larger ideological purposes of education, with Freire more inviting of critical…

Studied community perceptions of students and faculty involved in service learning and campus outreach activities through a survey of 65 directors of community service programs in which students participated and followup interviews with 30 agency personnel. Findings suggest that campuses and communities generally enjoy positive relationships, but…

Studied the impact of a seminar on environmental problem solving among 39 alumni who took the course between 1980 and 1997. Respondents' reflections on how the course and its service learning activities affected their later activities are used to make recommendations for maximizing the benefits and minimizing the frustrations of seminar…

Studied the Community Service Writing program at San Francisco State University to explore the relationship between the knowledge students acquired in school and the knowledge they needed when writing for community-based organizations. Results for 25 students suggest that service learning program developers should attend not only to the transfer…