Quality schoolyards provide opportunities for the physical challenges, exercise, sensory play, fantasy play, organized sports, and unsupervised free play that allow for healthy, well-rounded development. Schoolyards should be safe places where children practice social skills and develop an appreciation for the feelings of others and the…

Poverty is widespread and its consequence of poorer health increases the likelihood that nurses will provide care for poor clients and their families in many health care settings. Although the importance of understanding attitudes toward the poor is recognized, there have been few studies of attitudes of nursing students. The purpose of this…

The purpose of the present study is to summarize the research to date and report additional findings on a successful alternative model for urban middle level education that is incorporated in NativityMiguel schools. These schools, designed particularly to meet the educational and social developmental needs of young adolescents at risk because of…

We use survey data from all accepted applicants to Teach for America 1993-98 to assess the longer-term effect of youth service on participants' current civic attitudes and behaviors. While TFA "graduates" score higher than the two comparison groups--"drop-outs" and "non-matriculants"--on a broad range of attitudinal items measuring civic…

Few reports have been published about the deliberations on classroom curriculum conducted by teachers. This qualitative case-study explored the curriculum deliberations of three fourth-grade teachers who met weekly to plan social studies and science lessons. The teachers participated voluntarily and routinely produced viable plans for the coming…

In 1964, the Freedom Summer Project brought nearly one thousand volunteers to the South, most of which were northern white students, to facilitate Black voter registration. Allowing northern Whites to take part in the Movement created a tension within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as "two principal concerns were whether they…

Objective: In many parts of Uganda, the demand for health education is greater than the conventional health sector can provide and community health education volunteers fill the gap. Using two case study non government organizations (NGOs) that heavily rely on volunteers as health educators, this article shows the problems of unsystematic…

This paper is the result of a voluntary service-learning component in a qualitative research methods course. For this course, the service-learning project was the evaluation of the benefits to volunteers who work a crisis hotline for a local crisis intervention center. The service-learning course model used in this paper most closely resembles the…

The author experimented with a different type of parent involvement that turned out to be surprisingly positive and constructive by changing how parents, teachers, and the principal interact with one another. The initiative, a math parent volunteer program, followed a parent survey that highlighted the need for differentiated instruction in the…

The Co-mentoring Project matched developmental psychology students with older adult volunteers for an intergenerational learning experience. Students conducted a biopsychosocial life review to increase understanding of older adult development and the continuity in lifespan development. Each student developed a summary paper containing the older…

Over the last 11 years, the Literacy Action Center, a traditional community-based adult literacy organization that focuses on educating English-speaking adults with low functioning literacy skills, has seen a transformation in the enthusiasm of the learners. The Literacy Action Center is also a learner-centered organization driven by the wants and…

Development rhetoric sometimes appears to take little account of the contingencies of relationships, activities and events, as if human interaction and understanding is being written out of the process. At the same time, practices such as volunteering, which foreground the human subjects involved in development, are often ignored by development…

The ability to read fluently is a skill that is critical to reading and that is receiving increased attention in the special-education and literacy literature. The authors describe how one elementary school initiated an effective low-cost reading fluency intervention program with parent volunteers who served as reading tutors. Parent, teacher, and…

The purpose of this applied dissertation study was to determine the relative impact of parental involvement, parental school perception, student generation status, and Caribbean adolescents' own attitudes and behavior towards academic achievement and reading comprehension skills. For this study, 45 Caribbean parents from Grenadian, Guyanese,…

The Blind Childrens Center provides the ideal environment to educate young students. This year, Second Grade was added with a combined First/Second Grade class. Next year, the center will have a dedicated First Grade and Second Grade which will require a full new classroom. This paper presents the accomplishments and activities achieved by the…