Maximizing Civic and Academic Outcomes: Understanding What Works In Service-Learning

A Forum — November 4, 2005

Background

Over the past few years, research has shown that students who engage in high quality service-learning have higher levels of civic and academic engagement. However, the particular components of quality were not tested to see which were associated with the highest outcomes. Results from a recently completed national study found that: 1) service-learning had an impact above and beyond the implementation of active learning strategies alone; 2) duration of the project and teacher experience made a difference; and 3) certain types and components of service-learning had a greater association with positive outcomes than others.

RMC Research Corporation led this three year national study of the impact of service learning on civic and academic engagement among students. The study was funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement).

Two sites in the Miami Dade County Public School district showed the highest impact of service learning on students’ civic engagement. An intergenerational oral history project at Turner Technical Arts High School was featured during this forum. Students involved in the project researched a particular era by filming and transcribing interviews of elders in the community. These transcribed interviews are donated to the people who were interviewed as well as to local archives in universities, museum, and libraries.

Research Goals and Methods

Shelley Billig, Vice President of RMC Research Corporation, said the early results of the study show statistically significant differences in test scores between students involved in service-learning and those who are not. The research specifically asked

• To what extent do students who participate in service-learning show increased civic and academic engagement as well as knowledge and skill acquisition relative to nonparticipating peers?
• To what extent do aspects of the service-learning program and experience affect outcomes?
• To what extent to characteristics and practices of specific teachers affect outcomes?

Sixty percent of the students surveyed were high school seniors; of more than 1000 students surveyed, 645 had had a service-learning experience. A large percentage was Hispanic because the survey included the Miami Dade school district. Other sites in the survey were Ft Myers, FL; Anoka, MN; Tillamook, OR; Humble TX; and Menasha, WI.

Research Results

Service-learning students scored significantly higher on many survey items, but only when the quality of the service-learning experience was taken into consideration.  When students took part in a high quality service-learning program, they valued and enjoyed school more, felt a greater attachment to their community, developed an ethic of service and reported more civic knowledge. In some cases where students said they enjoyed school less after their service-learning experience, Billig concluded that the service-learning experience was so much more interesting than regular school that students give their regular school program a lower rating when they return. 

The RMC study identified many factors affecting the quality of a service-learning program.  Duration is important: less than a semester has little impact, especially programs that last less than a month. Young people do better if they have a choice or projects, giving them some ownership of their learning.  When the service-learning programs have a strong link to standards, students do better on assessments that test those standards. When students work with teachers who have more experience, students do better: there is a learning curve for teachers to coordinate successful service-learning programs. Teachers make the biggest difference in the area of reflection, especially when the reflection requires advanced thinking skills rather than just journaling. Students who have direct contact with those being served have better outcomes.

 

 

 

 

The type of activities in a service-learning program also made a difference. Students who participated in civic or political action had higher post-test civic knowledge. Students who performed direct service had higher scores on community attachment.  Students who provided indirect service had higher levels of academic engagement.

Billig highlighted one group of students that adopted a homeless shelter. The students provided indirect service by researching Vitamin D deficiencies in children who lived in the shelter.  They obtained infant formula fortified with Vitamin D and then tracked the incidence of disease in the shelter – it went down to zero. “This was a powerful activity that had huge academic results,” said Billig. “Kids learned how to do research, learned about corporate contributions, wrote persuasive letters and ultimately made a difference. But by having no direct contact, they did not see the people who benefited the most. Results would have been higher if the students had had direct contact.”  

The RMC research also concluded that active learning strategies make a difference. These include service-learning, debates, and field trips rather than passive strategies like worksheets and textbook assignments.  Teachers who used active strategies, especially service-learning, scored higher on all measures of instructional quality. 

Service-Learning in Action

Two schools in the Miami-Dade School District just “took off”, said Billig, in terms of their service-learning impact, even those these schools had some of the lower performing classrooms in the study.  Students and staff from these schools shared their experiences in this forum.

Kathy Hersh, Intergenerational Program Consultant in the Office of Community Services in the Miami-Dade School District, said the Miami-Dade district includes families who speak 150 different languages. Some parents, explained Hersh, consider themselves “exiles rather than immigrants, which has a great impact on student attitudes toward the community…Service-learning provides a way for these children to find their place in our culture and society.”  She talked about an oral history project at Turner Tech High School in which World War II veterans were interviewed. Students transcribed and published the interviews along with original portraits which are given to the veteran during a recognition luncheon.

 

 

 

 

Hersh recalled one student who had interviewed a former Tuskegee airman. The student wrote to the airman that “You fought for your nation and you fought for equality as well. For me personally, you have inspired me to work harder and to become someone important so I can go into classes and talk about my experiences.” 

Hersh believes students are the greatest source of untapped energy and knowledge in this country and service learning is a way to tap into that energy. She and the principal at Turner Tech also credit student involvement in service-learning with raising the level of civic engagement among students: the school raised 363% of its goal in its last United Way fundraising campaign.

Chris Kirchner, an English teacher at Turner Technical Arts High School in Miami, said she noticed that her students were “very good at cheating...were losing whatever they learned very rapidly…and knew more about Incas and Marsh than Miami City Hall or how to apply for FEMA aid.” She said she stumbled on interviewing as a way to give her students authentic writing tasks. Noting that her students were all born in the late 1980s, Kirchner realized that the “civil rights movement is as far away from them as Beowulf.” With a focus on Miami’s “huge history of integrating and desegregating,” her students began developing an oral history archive on civil rights that grows every year. Her principal began to see the value of the project when a 90-year old lady holding a baptism gown stood in the school office saying, “I’m waiting to be interviewed and my grandkids will have a tape of me.”  Kirchner says the students are performing a valuable community service, gaining technical skills, and becoming engaged. In addition, their writing scores are among the highest in the district.

Kirchner recounted another anecdote in which the Miami Herald had written about a 90-year old civil rights activist. Turner Tech students who had previously interviewed the same man used the article and their own videotaped interview to introduce the entire oral history project to new students. The new students concluded that “the Turner Tech kids did a better interview than the Miami Herald” and their pride in their own school skyrocketed.

Kirchner believes the oral history service-learning project is having a direct impact on those scores and has also addressed the culture of cheating. “You can’t cheat on this kind of work,” she says. Kirchner added that service-learning can also be powerful for teachers, inspiring teachers to stay in the field in spite of the extra work it requires.

 

 

 

Fanny Olmo is a student at the University of Miami and a graduate of Turner Technical Arts High School.  A Cuban-born immigrant who arrived in the United States at age 13, Olmo discussed how she and two other high school students worked with a professional videographer to create a documentary about the civil rights movement. “We could feel the power of the person’s emotions and capture it with a camera lens.” Olmo later became a student senator at Miami Dade Community College and is now a broadcast journalism major at the University of Miami.

Francisco Pardo is a freshman at George Washington University and a graduate of South Miami High School.  After a class discussion about what students liked and didn’t like in their community, Pardo said the students organized political forums where mayoral candidates answered student questions. Students developed questions for the candidates based on classroom lectures as well as visits to a local senior center. “One student asked questions about lobbying in the county hall and this became a defining issue in the campaign,” said Pardo proudly.  

Policy Implications

Francisco Pardo is working to institutionalize service-learning. “Teachers had something up their sleeve to make students learn and it worked,” he said. He successfully lobbied the Florida House of Representatives to pass a resolution supporting service-learning. Now, Pardo says, it should be supported with laws and funding. Chris Kirchner suggested that the same kind of Perkins law legislating vocational education nationally should now be put in place to support service-learning. In addition to funding district-wide support staff, Kirchner believes service-learning should be part of teachers’ job description so that they are given time to plan high quality experiences.

Other Resources

CIRCLE – The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement

http://www.civicyouth.org/

Summary of service learning research by RMC Research Corporation

http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/Newsletter/v.3.i.1.1.pdf

Service-Learning Quality Review tool produced by RMC Research

http://cart.rmcdenver.com/assessment

RMC Research Corporation research on civic engagement

http://www.rmcdenver.com/output.asp?xid=27

“The Relationship Between Quality Indicators of Service-Learning and Student Outcomes: Testing Professional Wisdom” , Chapter 6 in Improving Service-Learning Practice: Research on Models to Enhance Impacts by Billig, Root & Jesse, published by Information Age Publishers in Greenwich, CT.

The National Service-Learning Clearinghouse

http://www.servicelearning.org/resources/fact_sheets/k-12_facts/policy/

Restoring the Balance Between Academics and Civic Engagement in Public Schools

A 2005 publication of the American Youth Policy Forum and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

http://www.aypf.org/pressreleases/pr28.htm

Presenters

Shelley H. Billing, Vice President of the RMC Research Corporation

Kathy Hersch, Intergenerational Program Consultant, Office of Community Services, Miami-Dade School District

Chris Kirchner, an English teacher at Turner Technical Arts High School in Miami

Fanny Olmo, a former student at Turner Tech

Francisco Pardo, a former student at South Miami High School

 

 

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