Impact of Service-Learning on Civic Attitudes and Behaviors of Middle and High School Youth: Findings from Three National Evaluations

The purpose of this chapter is to summarize and discuss finding from three major evaluations of national service-learning initiatives and to ask what kinds of conclusions we can draw from them about the value of service-learning as a tool for civic development of young people. The evaluations are of the Serve-America and Learn and Serve programs - two federally funded initiatives supporting service-learning for school-aged youth - and the Active Citizenship Today (ACT) program, a foundation sponsored initiative aimed at integrating civic education and service-learning for middle and high school youth. The parallels between the studies offer the opportunity to ask whether there is any consistency in the findings and to begin to draw tentative conclusions about the impacts from service-learning on the civic attitudes and behaviors of participating youth.

Chapter from Service-Learning: the Essence of Pedagogy