Abstract:
Service-learning has garnered a great deal of attention as a teaching methodology with the potential to influence students' development as citizens while providing them rich contexts in which to learn academic material. Many believe that servicelearning is related to gains in academic achievement, though the mechanisms underlying this relation are not well understood. In this research, an attempt was made to clarify a mechanism by which servicelearning may foster gains in academic achievement. Science majors enrolled in a K-12 service-learning partnership completed a quantitative instrument, the Inventory of Learning Styles. Participants reported that views about their own learning changed significantly during the service-learning program, such that they became more conceptual in their approaches to learning content and began to take responsibility for their own knowledge construction. These changes in learning views have been correlated with greater academic success in previous research.
Keywords:
service learning, learning styles, students
 Download Article | [ ] | 132 kB |
