Individuals with Disabilities and Service-Learning: Selected Resources

This bibliography highlights online resources, websites, and print resources about service-learning and individuals with disabilities performing service.

Source: National Service-Learning Clearinghouse, January 2008.

Service-learning projects can be an effective tool to actively engage students with learning disabilities while also providing needed community service. This article details a five-phase construction plan designed to guide students through the process of planning service-learning projects with students responsible for all steps and the teacher assuming the role of facilitator and guide. Service-learning projects are encouraged as a means of including students with disabilities in their community while building academic skills and assuming personal responsibility.

An experiential learning program for secondary moderate and severe mentally handicapped students allows them to learn practical skills and habits needed for adulthood. The program incorporates meaningful jobs within the school, on school grounds, and within the community. Components include a classroom store, practical reading lessons involving shopping lists and form completions, walking field trips, overnight trips, and activities using the telephone. The development of good work habits is stressed. Students are placed in community job training sites and their performance is monitored. Program involvement is specified in the Individualized Education Program.

This article examines the effects of active participation in service-learning on adolescents with disabilities. Through a survey of special education teachers, effects on students’ socialization, behavior, attitudes, attendance, academic skills, functional skills, and relationships with non-disabled peers are explored. Promising results are found for adolescents with mild disabilities in attendance and academic skills, and for adolescents with moderate to profound disabilities in socialization and relationships with non-disabled peers. Implications for school inclusion of students with disabilities are addressed and recommendations for areas of future study are made.

Service-Learning NETWORK takes a look at schools and community groups that are applying service-learning to special populations. Cynthia McCauley describes an innovative program at Bay County High in Florida where special-education and mainstream students work in cooperative-learning groups to address community needs. Oregon teacher Bev Jackson writes about an effective program that uses service-learning as a key teaching methodology to keep at-risk students in school. Cynthia Belliveau and Sarah John of the Pennsylvania Student Service Alliance discuss the importance and feasibility of creating strong service-learning partnerships and collaboratives in their special-education initiatives. Cathleen Micheaels describes the newly opened East Bay Conservation Corps Charter School (EBCC) in Oakland, a pioneering school and research institute with a mission to incorporate service-learning and citizenship education throughout its curriculum.

In this resource, ideas are provided for students with mild disabilities, severe, or multiple disabilities, as projects to transition to the workplace, and ways of getting started.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether key elements of high school service learning programs (HSSLPs) cited in the literature were viewed as important by stakeholders in HSSLPs that included students with and without disabilities. Implications for practice suggest the need to link service learning to the academic and life skills curriculum, eliminate barriers to including students with disabilities, increase the inclusion of students with severe disabilities, embrace an inclusive philosophy, and engage in continuous program evaluation.

This article discusses the efficacy of service-learning for students with emotional or behavioral disorders. It answers the questions: Can service-learning provide a structure for students to access skills that will transition into future community living success? Can students with emotional or behavioral disorders work successfully with a community-based partner to implement projects that meet community needs? Can these students realize the connection between community needs and their classroom academic activities? Can students with emotional or behavioral disorders develop a sense of caring not only for themselves, but for others?

The movement for full inclusion is often hindered by the lack of creative and alternative teaching methodologies in regular classrooms. Service-learning not only offers an alternative to traditional classroom teaching methods, it is also a vehicle to provide inclusive community based instruction, to promote the development of communities, and to provide functional skills in training. This paper defines service-learning and its components while also discussing applicability of service-learning for all students.

This paper presents a case study of two collaboratively taught special education courses that incorporated service-learning as a response to students' self-identified learning needs. It describes instructors' and students' learning outcomes related to their participation in service learning. The study examines how service learning contributes to student development of critical competencies, such as advocacy and leadership, associated with the role of special educator.

A 40-minute short video presentation designed to inspire support for service-learning projects that use an inclusion model, in which special education students and regular education students work side-by-side. It is the true story of a high school student with significant disabilities who participates fully in a water quality testing project.

Describes successful service club programs serving adolescent boys with social, emotional, and learning problems who reside at Philadelphia's Pathway School. Considers strengths and weaknesses, power and helplessness, worthiness and worthlessness, and giving and dependency. Provides examples from programs and their participants.

Traditionally students with special needs have been viewed as recipients and beneficiaries of service-learning projects. This article demonstrates that service-learning pedagogy can be used to transform the traditional "deficit" model into a "reciprocal empowerment" model. The authors employed a qualitative and quantitative design. Using the qualitative method, "Portraiture," each project was analyzed and categorized under the "deficit," "empowerment," and "reciprocal empowerment" categories. The results showed a significant decrease in the percentage of projects under the "deficit" model, whereas the "reciprocal empowerment" model perspective became more prominent over the four years of the study. The authors conclude that by re-conceptualizing and deliberately structuring the service-learning environment educators can provide opportunities for all students to become contributors, problem solvers, and partners in improving communities.

Service-learning can be adapted for high school students with moderate to severe disabilities. It provides benefits for students (work-related skills, self-esteem), teachers (sense of service, raised expectations), and the community organizations in which they serve (exposure to diverse populations).

This manual contains templates, training materials, and research citations for planning and implementing inclusive service-learning projects. There is a discussion of exemplary practices and challenges in different phases of the service-learning process: Preparation, Action, Reflection and Celebration (PARC). This work also contains case studies of both students and programs in the New York State Inclusive Service Learning Program.

The author presents informed insights about service-learning and “diverse needs learners” and special education teachers.

The guide introduces service-learning as a method of teaching citizenship, instilling a service ethic, and helping students acquire skills. The fundamentals of an effective program - preparation, action, reflection, and celebration - are explained.

Supporting efforts by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) to increase the participation of people with disabilities in national service programs, Emily Miller, a 2000-2001 CNCS Fellow, documented the exchange of talents and opportunities between national service programs and individuals with disabilities. It is a multimedia resource, part documentary and part training tool, featuring voices, images, and ideas meant to bolster the inclusion of people with disabilities and the communities in which they serve. This section offers concrete examples of the contributions and gains of people with disabilities in service programs in their own words.

Project SUCCESS is a multi-state, community- and school-based service-learning program that pairs school-aged students into two-person service teams. By design, each team is comprised of one youth with a disability and one youth without a disability. Working together, these teams research and assess community needs. Once an issue is identified, the students develop and coordinate a community service project that benefits the community. Each team member takes on essential roles during planning and implementation. They work as equals-collaborating to overcome obstacles and embracing their team's diversity.

Service-learning programs involving students with emotional/behavioral disorders (E/BD) are becoming increasingly popular. This paper provides a review and critical analysis of 11 service-learning programs with children and adolescents with E/BD. Results of the review indicate that direct and indirect service activities as well as broad-based and specific, individual program descriptions dominate the literature. Despite a few notable exceptions, anecdotal reporting is the primary methodology used for assessing program outcomes and information about the specific procedures for gathering data is often extremely limited or missing entirely. In spite of these limitations, there is sufficient evidence to support one conclusion--both students and teachers are extremely satisfied with service-learning and students feel empowered by their experiences. Unfortunately, limitations in the research designs prevent anything more than guarded optimism regarding the effects of participation on students' academic and cognitive, civic, social, and moral, and/or personality development. More rigorous research is needed to assess whether these programs can live up to their potential.

This article acquaints practitioners with the practice of service-learning as a method for enhancing the curriculum and meeting the academic, social, and emotional needs of students with challenging behavior. Teachers, administrators, and mental health professionals will be presented with both a rationale for incorporating service learning into their programs along with information that will allow them to begin the process.

Transcript of NCSET teleconference call held on October 16, 2002 discussing the use of service-learning as a tool in transition planning and IEPs for disabled individuals.

The article describes the efforts of New Jersey middle school teacher Peter Jennings. Jennings has been integrating community service with special education for four years. Projects have included literacy, quilting, and intergenerational activities.

This brief resource looks at how to make service-learning programs more inclusive and accessible for all community college students.

Service-learning is powerful in special education as students with disabilities are allowed the opportunity to give, instead of receive, help and support, and therefore gain independence and self-esteem. This article outlines the steps involved in implementing a service.

This issue of Impact features articles on volunteerism and service by those with developmental disabilities. Includes a short piece on service-learning, including some example activities.

Project SUCCESS engages youth from local school systems, community youth organizations and disability groups in a unique service-learning curriculum that addresses team-building, diversity and attitude awareness, personal responsibility, civic leadership and community service. During the Project, two-person community service teams are created by matching a youth with a disability to a youth without a disability. These youth teams work together to independently research, plan and execute local service projects. This integrated service-team design provides youth with and without disabilities an opportunity to work, as equals, towards the improvement of their own communities.

Describes research findings that support the idea that service-learning can play a positive role in shaping the personal development of youth and helping youth make positive social decisions.

This curriculum, serving junior high youth with and without disabilities, intends to encourage self-determination among youth of varying abilities to become full contributing members in their community. There are four chapters to the curriculum based on subject: challenges, kids and video, drama, and environmental awareness. Each chapter is written with class to class instructions including, the goals, materials required, lesson, and reflection.

A program in which 12 seventh- and eighth-grade students with learning disabilities and/or culturally diverse backgrounds participated with nondisabled peers in service-learning is described. The students improved their social skills and self-esteem through community service with younger students and senior citizens. The article offers a rationale and program development guidelines.

Service-learning allows students to simultaneously meet academic, nonacademic and transition requirements in the classroom while remaining on the general curriculum track. Most importantly, the Department of Education report strongly encourages this type of integrated learning, stating that, "IEP teams must work to ensure that high expectations are maintained and students are afforded opportunities to develop skills through a wide range of curricular options, including vocational education, service-learning, community work experience, and adult living skills." When implemented properly, service-learning maximizes the potential of success in learning and in life skills for children with special needs.

Service-learning can play a two-fold role in accessibility issues, functioning as a medium to examine the issues of accessibility and educate the community about these issues, and serving as a means to actively practice accessibility in the classroom and in service-learning itself. Classrooms that usually do not include special needs children can co-create projects with special needs classes that utilize the talents and skills of all students. In this way, teachers can avoid placing special needs students in the "needing" and "receiving" end of service, a position that people with disabilities often unwillingly or unhappily occupy. Instead, all students, disabled or not, have the opportunity to help the community at large and each other.