|
Glossary of Terms
This key listing of terminology and definitions
is provided courtesy of the National Service-Learning
Clearinghouse (NSLC).
The NSLC is a clearinghouse project of ETR Associates
funded by Learn and Serve America, Corporation
for National & Community Service that supports
the service-learning community in higher education,
kindergarten through grade 12, community-based
initiatives, and tribal programs, as well as
all others interested in strengthening schools
and communities using service-learning techniques
and methodologies. Contact toll-free at 1-866-245-SERV
(7378); www.servicelearning.org.
Assessment
The process of gathering information in order
to make an evaluation. An evaluation is a decision
or judgment about whether an effort is successful
and to what extent that effort has or has not
met a goal. Evaluation of effects of service-learning
on students who take classes that employ service-learning
as a pedagogy, on the community partner or
agency that delivers services students assists
with, on faculty members who teach those courses,
and on the institution under whose auspices
service-learning courses are offered. Assessment
may be descriptive or evaluative; involve conventional Likert-type items or narrative reports; and
be directed toward above-named stakeholders.
Civic Responsibility
The commitment of a citizen to his or her community
to take responsibility for the well-being of
the community. Service-learning and community
engagement are often cited as developing students'
civic responsibility.
Co-curricular
Signifies community service that is not explicitly
connected to an academic course.
Community
Community can be used in a number of ways to
apply to almost any group of individuals. It
is often used to describe a geographic group
whose members engage in some face-to-face interaction.
The term community can also be used in a more
meaningful sense to emphasize the common bonds
and beliefs that hold people together.
Community Development
Community members working together to achieve
long-term benefits for the community and an
overall stronger sense of community. Effective
development has four important characteristics:
- It is predicated upon the importance of social
and economic institutions in the lives of community
members.
- It is planned and achieved with representation,
input, and guidance from a cross-section of
community members.
- It builds efficient, self-sustaining, locally
controlled initiatives to address social and
economic issues in the community.
- It promotes the economic self-reliance of community
members and of the community as a whole.
Community Engagement
A central value affirmed by the service-learning
movement. Colleges, universities, and community
colleges cooperate with nonprofit agencies,
government agencies, faith-based organizations,
and individuals to improve the community in
which the institution resides. Service-learning,
faculty participation, and student volunteers
represent community engagement. This ethic
of service affirms the responsibility of educational
institutions to bring their resources to impact
gaps in community services.
Community Partner
The agency that acts as a conduit for bringing
resources into the community, e.g., government,
nonprofit agency, or faith-based agency, bringing
needed services to the community via existing
distribution channels while taking responsibility
for students work. Often a community partner
identifies community needs and utilizes its
existing infrastructure for project implementation.
Community Service
Community service is volunteerism that occurs
in the community—action taken to meet
the needs of others and better the community
as a whole. Programs of all types, such as
scouts, schools, or YMCAs, often perform “community
service.”
Engaged Campus
A college or university that emphasizes community
engagement through its activities and its definition
of scholarship. The engaged campus is involved
in community relationships, community development,
community empowerment, community discourse,
and educational change.
Experiential Education
Emotionally engaged learning in which the learner
experiences a visceral connection to the subject
matter. Good experiential learning combines
direct experience that is meaningful to the
student with guided reflection and analysis.
It is a challenging, active, student-centered
process that impels students toward opportunities
for taking initiative, responsibility, and
decision making.
Mentor
In the context of community service, the term
mentor is often used to refer to a specific
type of relationship between an adult and a
youth. Mentors act as role models who offer
youth the friendship and guidance of a caring
adult. Mentors provide youth with examples
of life experiences that can show younger people
what to aspire to. Mentors support and enable
a young person to become whomever and whatever
they choose.
Peer Helping
Peer helping programs began in the early 1970s
in response to the great increase in guidance
needs for youth. Popular uses of peer helpers
within the schools are peer tutoring, cross-age
education, mentoring, welcoming new students,
parent education, teen theater, and conflict
mediation. Such programs almost always involve
people helping people, and utilize strong training
and reflection components to produce significant
gains in both knowledge and skills among the
participants. Because of this, peer helping
is considered a type of service-learning program.
Reciprocity
A central component in service-learning and community
engagement that suggests that every individual,
organization, and entity involved in service-learning
functions as both a teacher and a learner.
Reflection
The critical component of successful service-learning
programs is “reflection.” Reflection
describes the process of deriving meaning and
knowledge from experience and occurs before,
during, and after a service-learning project.
Effective reflection engages both teachers
and students in a thoughtful and thought-provoking
process that consciously connects learning
with experience. It is the use of critical
thinking skills to prepare for and learn from
service experiences.
Service-Learning
Even though there are many different interpretations
of service-learning as well as different objectives
and contexts, we can say that there is a core
concept upon which all seem to agree:
Service-learning combines service objectives
with learning objectives with the intent that
the activity change both the recipient and
the provider of the service. This is accomplished
by combining service tasks with structured
opportunities that link the task to self-reflection,
self-discovery, and the acquisition and comprehension
of values, skills, and knowledge content.
Click
here for an expanded definition of service-learning.
State Commission
The 15-to-25 member, independent, bipartisan
commissions appointed by governors to implement
service programs in the states. Funding for
national service programs is provided by the
Corporation for National & Community Service.
^ TOP OF PAGE
Hurricane
Katrina Resources
-
NEW! "Universities Rebuilding America Partnership" Toolkit. See
www.compact.org
home page.
-
For up-to-date information about the National
Service response to Hurricane Katrina, visit
www.americorps.gov and
www.usafreedomcorps.gov.
-
The National Service-Learning Clearinghouse has
collected resources and tools to help students and
teachers develop a service-learning or community
service project to assist with the Hurricane
Katrina relief effort.
See
http://www.servicelearning.org/nslc/hurricane_katrina/index.php.
-
The Mississippi Commission for Volunteer Service (www.mcvs.org)
now has a good deal of reliable post-Katrina info
pertaining
to volunteers, donations, and finding loved ones.
-
United Way encourages visiting its
website (www.unitedway.org)
to learn about volunteer opportunities with
organizations relative to assisting with the
individuals and families who have been evacuated
as a result of Hurricane Katrina.
-
FEMA is now directing people to the various state
donations and volunteer hotlines. AmeriCorps
members are managing the lines in Mississippi and Alabama. The
numbers for the states are:
Alabama
877-273-5018
Mississippi 866-230-8903
Louisiana 866-334-8304
-
The
National Emergency Resource Registry is
now
www.nerr.gov
(no
longer
www.swern.gov).
-
People looking for housing or people wanting to
offer housing to evacuees are encouraged to
register at
www.katrinahousing.org or
www.hurricanehousing.org.
Toll-free number for Hurricane Housing:
800-638-4559.
-
Organizations in need of volunteers can register
with United Way on
www.volunteersolutions.org/uwamerica/agency. The organization can then be matched with
volunteers who sign up seeking opportunities to
serve. They will be able to describe exactly what
their volunteer needs are, and, of course, they can
update this information as they learn more about
community needs. The organization
has the ability to screen volunteers once
they self-direct themselves to the organization's
posted volunteer opportunities.
-
With its strong
history of community service and volunteerism,
Western Washington University is helping Gulf
Coast area students and others in need following
the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina. See
www.wwu.edu/katrina.
CIRCLE Paper on Service-Learning Effects
CIRCLE released a new study on
the effects of service-learning authored by
Shelley Billig, Sue Root, and Dan Jesse of RMC
Research Corporation. The study found that
service-learning students scored higher than
comparison students on several outcomes, although
most of the differences were not statistically
significant.
Service-learning students were significantly more
likely to say they intended to vote and that they
enjoyed school. The study suggests that
service-learning is effective when it is
implemented well, but it is no more effective than
conventional social studies classes when the
conditions are not optimal. Being implemented well
meant that it was of sufficient duration (at least
a semester), that it was linked to standards,
involved more direct contact with service
recipients, and had cognitively challenging
reflection activities among other components.
The study also showed that service-learning had an
effect beyond other active learning techniques.
The study compared more than 1,000 high school
students who participated in service-learning
programs with those who did not participate in
schools matched for similar demographics and
student achievement profiles.
Click here for full CIRCLE
Working Paper 33, May 2005
^ TOP OF PAGE
Voting Resources - 2004
"Many of you will have the opportunity to
vote for the first time in a national and state
election this year. Please exercise that right!
Through the years we may change jobs and careers
many times, but there is one lasting
responsibility we have for our entire life: our
role as citizen."
-Toni Murdock, President of Antioch University
Seattle and national Campus
Compact board member.
From a speech given in May 2004 to graduating
high
school seniors at a Rotary meeting.
"This country cannot afford to educate a
generation that acquires knowledge without ever
understanding how that knowledge can benefit
society or how to influence democratic decision
making. We must teach the skills and values of
democracy, creating innumerable opportunities for
our students to practice and reap the results of
the real, hard work of citizenship."
-from the Campus Compact
Presidents' Declaration on the Civic
Responsibility
of Higher Education
Campus Compact urges all of its members to use
their campus resources to encourage students to
participate in local and national elections by
registering, getting informed, and voting. The
national office offers a host of resources to
assist in this effort, including:
-
online registration opportunities
-
ideas for organizing substantive dialogues
-
ways to provide get-out-the-vote activities on
Election Day
-
tools for continuing the dialogue about student
civic engagement
Election 2004 & the
New Voters Project
This site includes campus model practices, campus
voter strategies, and voter mobilization
resources.
http://www.compact.org/nvp/
Campus Compact's
Youth Vote Initiative
This site includes registration, education, and
get-out-the vote resources, as well as information
about connecting service with voting and a host of
links (including civic sites, academic and
statistical information, and voter mobilization
sites).
http://www.compact.org/vote/
NAICU's Our Voice
Another key resource, available for download from
http://www.naicu.edu/VoteVoice2004/index.htm
Rock the Vote
To set up a quick online registration system that
will help you keep track of how many students
register to vote, use this free resource
from Rock the Vote:
https://secure5.ctsg.com/rtv/partners/index.asp?appstate=1
Commission on
Presidential Debates
To
organize opportunities for students to watch the
presidential and vice-presidential debates, all of
which are scheduled to happen on college campuses,
see the commission's nonpartisan website:
http://www.debates.org/pages/dwtips.html#universities
The Chronicle of
Higher Education
The Chronicle has had a series of articles
about student voter registration on college
campuses. (Subscription may be required to read
these articles.)
Barriers to Student
Voting
(NY Times Editorial)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/opinion/28tue1.html
Reform of Voting
Registration Rules
Young Han, a college student in New York State,
talks about his efforts to reform voting
registration rules. Han tried to register in the
town where he attends school, but, like many
students, was told he should vote absentee where
his parents live more than 2,000 miles away. Han
argues that full-time college students pay sales
taxes, sometimes income taxes, so why not cast
ballots? NPR's Renee Montagne talks with Han.
http://www.npr.org/rundowns/segment.php?wfId=4052263
CIRCLE (The Center
for Information and Research on Civic Learning and
Engagement)
These items and other research can be found on the
CIRCLE website:
http://www.civicyouth.org/whats_new/index.htm
-
Young People Seem Primed to Vote
A new survey of 18-29 year-olds shows a strong
majority intends to vote, a plurality favor
Kerry,
and more than twice as many young registered
voters are paying "a lot" of attention to the
campaign this year compared to 2000. Young
voters are paying about as much attention to the
campaign as they were in 1992, when youth
turnout spiked. The press release, a short fact
sheet, or the full report with toplines can be
downloaded from
www.civicyouth.org/
-
Cost Effective Ways to Mobilize Young Voters on
Election Day
CIRCLE and the New Voters Project released a
study by Donald P. Green of Yale University that
found that personally contacting young people on
Election Day can significantly increase
youth voter turnout, but only if they've already
expressed interest in voting. The study is an
evaluation of an extensive experiment conducted
surrounding last fall's elections in New
Jersey. It was designed to see what gains could be made when young
voters contacted leading up to the election were
urged to vote on Election Day. Download the
report from
http://www.civicyouth.org/research/areas/pol_partic.htm
^ TOP OF PAGE
|
