I found an article called “The Impact of Participation in Service-learning on High School Students’ Civic Engagement” done by the RMC Research Corporation in May 2005.

The study addressed investigated the extent to which students that participate in service-learning show increases over time in a variety of aspects of civic engagement and academic and civic knowledge and skill acquisition. They compared students that did participate in service-learning with other students in the same or matched schools that participate in classes on the same subject matter and do not participate in service-learning. Also the study investigated what teacher characteristics and practices serve to moderate outcomes of the service-learning projects.

Students in service-learning classes and students in non-serving learning classes in the same content area and grade level completed surveys in the fall and spring. Teachers completed surveys in the spring. Also, students and teachers participated in focus groups, classrooms were observed, and administrators were interviewed to collect data for the study.

A few of the findings the highlighted the benefits of service-learning are:

-Service-learning students were significantly more likely than comparison group members to report that they intended to vote.

-The hypothesis that service-learning was inherently engaging was supported in some schools and in some ways. Over half of the participants in service-learning said that they often or always work hard on their service-learning projects, pay attention, and try to learn from them.

-Duration of the service-learning experience was also significantly related to most of the outcome areas. Generally, those service-learning activities that were one to two months in duration had the highest academic impacts while those that were a semester long had the greatest civic impacts.

-Teacher characteristics were also found to be related to outcomes. Number of years of teaching experience was significantly related to students’ valuing school, enjoying math and science, civic skills, and civic dispositions.

-Service-learning teachers were more likely to use a variety of active strategies more often than teachers that did not implement service-learning. The use of active strategies, in tum, was highly related to student outcomes in the areas of valuing school, attachment to school, enjoyment of content areas, acquisition of civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions, and civic engagement.

I really enjoyed this article because while it looked at the benefits of service-learning, it concentrated on how good service learning programs are maintained. It’s no surprise that the teacher him/herself has a huge responsibility of making the program successful. These teachers in the study were carefully screened to be a good and experienced Service-learning teachers. I wonder what type of training or program these teachers participated in (if any) to become so successful in implementing service learning in their class. Another aspect I found to be interesting is the duration of service-learning programs. The study found that one to two month service learning projects had the highest academic impacts. The longer service-learning projects though had greater civic impacts. I’m interested to see if schools value higher academic or civic impacts and which duration they would choose given the research.

The link to the article is below.

 

http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=slcek12