Urban education is a complex system that is often shrouded in stereotypes, labels, and barriers. Service-learning is well-entrenched in suburban institutions, but is a fledgling or grassroots organization in the urban education community. Often, suburban service-learning initiatives have taken the tone of community service in that it is often…

The partnership between science and the environment in service-learning projects helps students to make greater connections to the world around them. Service learning provides many benefits to students, faculty, and communities within the context of a college course. However, to prevent frustration, it is important for faculty members to make a…

Several years ago, Elon University set out to better understand experiential learning on campus. At the time, there was a pragmatic need to collect data that would inform revisions to the core curriculum, including an experiential-learning requirement (ELR) that had been in place since 1994. The question was whether it made sense to raise the…

The practice of mixing grade levels in school settings is increasing (Nishida, 2009) and one third of classrooms worldwide already combine two or more grade levels (Cornish, 2006a). However, many teachers are assigned such mixed-grade groupings without training, and there is some evidence that this may be particularly true for art teachers…

In many parts of the less developed world it is women and girls who are expected to provide water for their family. Frequently, young girls are unable to complete school or get jobs because water scarcity means they are forced to walk miles daily to obtain this most basic need. Since the creation of the United Nations Millennium Goals, progress…

The authors explore service-learning as a pedagogy to promote bullying prevention within schools. Specifically, they explain the preparatory experiences necessary for students in an undergraduate Experiential Learning Principles of Management course to interface with high school freshmen and the reciprocal impact that students at both levels had…

Service-learning has been shown to have benefits for both students and faculty, however, it is quite rare in the mathematics classroom. At Concordia University Irvine we have established a relationship with the Village of Hope--a local non-profit organization designed to help homeless families transition to a self-sufficient status via temporary…

This essay provides a critical analysis of the Community Service-Learning in Women's Issues (CSLWI) course and its impact on California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) students and the Long Beach community-based organizations (CBOs) that they worked with between 2008 and 2013. Specifically, it offers a pedagogical approach to creating…

New England's long winter and seemingly interminable wait for spring has this author thinking about what colleges could do with their campuses during the summer. The options are almost infinite, although the cost-benefit analysis clearly varies. For some students, being on campus in the summer is preferable to going home, where the environments…

Within the fields of kinesiology and physical education teacher education, there is a growing number of courses and curricula that utilize service-learning as a pedagogical strategy. However, these courses and curricula are often constructed, implemented, and evaluated without a strong framework based on literature in the field, which has led to…

How can we support campus-based practitioners of civic and community engagement in moving from normalized engagement toward practices that engage others democratically and respectfully across borders created by social race, class, gender, status, and other markers of difference? The article presents a framework derived from practice theory, a…

Adopting a Freirean perspective, the purpose of this autoethnography is to reframe the typical relationship between university educators and communities in poverty by highlighting the educative impact of such a community on a university professor's academic, cross-cultural critical and civic learning. By reframing communities in poverty as sources…

Public speculation about bioterrorism and the increasing obesity epidemic are examples of current public health issues that continue to be illuminated in the spotlight. Major public health threats continue to drive the health job market and impact higher education health curricula (e.g., public health, health promotion, community health). Also,…

As many have noted, we are seeing the continuing marginalization of Social Foundations of Education (SFE) courses and programs to the point at which some are disappearing completely. SFE can play a vital role in helping universities establish relationships with their local communities that are equitable and based upon the voices and needs of the…

Nationally, the recent focus has been on adopting state-developed standards in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics that build toward college and career readiness. Of the states that have elected to adopt the Common Core State Standards (CCSS; National Governors Association, Council of Chief State School Officers, 2012), states either (a)…