Prelims

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SERVICE-LEARNING: ENHANCING INCLUSIVE EDUCATION

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INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON INCLUSIVE EDUCATION

Series Editor: Chris Forlin

Recent Volumes:

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INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON INCLUSIVE EDUCATION VOLUME 12

SERVICE-LEARNING: ENHANCING INCLUSIVE EDUCATION

EDITED BY

SHANE LAVERY

DIANNE CHAMBERS

GLENDA CAIN

The University of Notre Dame Australia, Fremantle

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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First edition 2018

Copyright © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78714-185-8 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78714-184-1 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78714-912-0 (Epub)

ISSN: 1479-3636 (Series)

List of Contributors

About the Authors

Shelley H. Billig, Ph.D., is Vice President of RMC Research Corporation in Denver, CO, USA. She has conducted international, national, state, and local studies of service-learning and other educational initiatives for the past 25 years. She is the author of the K-12 standards for service-learning quality and has published over 50 articles and co-edited 13 books on service-learning and other education-related topics. She specializes in research on closing the achievement gap, especially among groups of varying socio-economic circumstances.

Glenda Cain, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer at the University of Notre Dame Australia in the Bachelor of Education degree and postgraduate courses. Her PhD thesis was entitled Service-learning as a way of developing pre-service teachers’ knowledge, perception and cultural awareness of Aboriginal Education. She has presented her doctoral studies at the International Association for Research on Service-learning and Social Engagement, a conference in the United States. Her interest in Aboriginal education and service-learning has seen partnerships develop with Clontarf Aboriginal College, the Tjuntjuntjara School and community, and the Ngaanyatjarra Lands School Community. She has worked with the Western Australian Government Department of Child Protection and Family Support to assist in the development of a program of support for children in care, who has faced trauma. This program is named the “Whale of a Tale” Reading Mentor program. It is a unique service-learning partnership between pre-service teachers and children in care.

Suzanne Carrington, Ph.D., is a Professor and Assistant Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. Her areas of expertise are inclusive education, service-learning, disability and teacher preparation for inclusive schools. She has engaged in research to inform policy and practice in Australian and international education contexts, more recently extending this research to the South Pacific and Asia. She has broad knowledge of education research, and her publication list provides evidence of extensive collaboration with education, health and medical research. She is currently the Program Director of Program 2: Enhancing Learning and Teaching for The Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC). This is the world’s first Cooperative Research Centre focused on autism across the lifespan.

Dianne Chambers, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and coordinates and teaches into units on catering for students with disabilities, inclusion and behaviour management at undergraduate level. Postgraduate teaching areas include adaptive education, behaviour management and social skills, children with special needs, contemporary issues in special education and educating students who are gifted and talented. She also supervises students within the School of Education Masters and PhD programs. She has published in the field of inclusive education, assistive technology, service-learning and children with ASD. She has also consulted with UNESCO on guidelines for persons with disabilities and Open and Distance Learning using open solutions (published), and teacher education for global citizenship. She is current National Councillor of the Australian Association of Special Education (WA Chapter).

Anne Coffey, Ph.D., is the Coordinator of Secondary Programs at the University of Notre Dame Australia, Fremantle Campus. She has over 20 years’ experience in teaching at the secondary level in a variety of metropolitan and country government schools. She has held a variety of positions at the district level for the Department of Education and Training. She teaches units in both the Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary), Bachelor of Education and post-graduate programs. She has a particular research interest in the area of early adolescence and, in particular, the transition of students from primary to secondary school and is a journal editor for the Australian Journal of Middle Schooling (Adolescent Success). Other research interests include service-learning, education policy, school organisation, youth mentoring and educational reform.

Maureen Connolly, Ed.D., is the co-author of Next Generation Literacy: Using the Tests (You Think) You Hate to Help the Students You Love; Getting to the Core of English Language Arts, Grades 6-12: How to Meet the Common Core State Standards with Lessons from the Classroom; and Getting to the Core of Literacy for History/Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects, Grades 6-12. She currently works for the School of Education at The College of New Jersey. Before that, she was an English teacher and service-learning coordinator at Mineola High School, in New York, for 15 years. She believes that at the core of her profession is the need to develop purposeful learning that opens students’ eyes to the potential for positive change in themselves and in their local, national and global communities.

Patrick Devlin, after exploring a variety of employment options including Youth Worker, Farm Hand, Stage Technician and Small Business Owner, finally decided to listen to the advice of his grandmother and become a teacher. He has been working in education, mainly in the area of Science, for 21 years. He expanded his role to become a service-learning coordinator in 2005. He enjoys the dynamic challenging nature of this role and in how it enables students to engage and immerse themselves with the wider community and other cultures in an inclusive manner. When he has time to relax his interests include music, having a good laugh, reading, travel and sport.

James M. Frabutt, Ph.D., is the senior advisor to the provost at the University of Notre Dame. He supports the provost in the development and implementation of strategic projects, coordinates academic leadership teams, guides strategic initiatives and major communications in collaboration with officers and other campus leadership, and coordinates operations. He is a faculty member in Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives, where he has been in its Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) since 2007. He served, concurrently, for two years as director of academic community engagement in the Office of the Provost, developing strategies to leverage the intellectual assets of faculty to benefit local communities. The author or co-author of four books, he has employed action-oriented, community-based research approaches to areas such as parenting and child development, delinquency prevention, school-based mental health, teacher and administrator action research, racial disparities in the juvenile justice system and community violence reduction.

Cathryn Berger Kaye, M.A., CBK Associates, is an international education consultant, who gladly shares her expertise on service-learning, effective approaches to teaching and learning, dynamic advisory programs, youth leadership, organizational development, and social and emotional development (and more) to schools, universities and organizations worldwide. She is known for her engaging style of presentation whether a conference keynote or a multi-day education institute, always providing theoretical frameworks with practical applications. A former teacher, Cathryn is the author of The Complete Guide to Service Learning available in English and Chinese, two books with environmental advocate Philippe Cousteau, and numerous articles and book chapters. While her home is in Los Angeles, California, Cathryn considers being a global citizen a critical concept to pass on to youth, so we protect our planet and take every day actions to benefit others.

Megan Kimber, Ph.D., is a Senior Researcher and Service-learning Program Coordinator in the Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. Her publications traverse inclusive education; service-learning; public management and educational administration, leadership, and policy; Australian politics, and ethics and ethical dilemmas. With Neil Cranston and Lisa Ehrich, she has published on the ethical dilemmas experienced by leaders in public organisations. With Suzanne Carrington, she has published on inclusive education and service-learning.

Shane Lavery, Ed.D., coordinates the postgraduate programs in the School of Education, The University of Notre Dame Australia, Fremantle Campus. He teaches service-learning, social justice and ecological studies at undergraduate level. He also coordinates the pre-service secondary service-learning program and the pre-service primary service-learning specialisation. He is actively involved with the annual service-learning immersion to a remote Aboriginal school and community at Tjuntjuntjara. He is a Red Cross volunteer. His postgraduate teaching areas are educational leadership, research methods in education and ecological studies. He has successfully supervised higher degree by research candidates to completion in the fields of educational leadership, religious education, overseas trained teachers, Indigenous education and study aboard. He has published in the fields of educational leadership, service-learning, student leadership and ecological education. He is a member of the editorial board of the eJournal of Catholic Education in Australasia.

Sandra Lynch, Ph.D., is Director of the Institute for Ethics and Society and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney campus. She is a moral philosopher whose research interests lie in applied and professional ethics, values education, critical thinking and friendship. Her publications include Philosophy and Friendship: Thinking about Identity and Difference (Edinburgh University Press, 2005); Strategies for a Thinking Classroom (Primary English Teachers Association, Australia, 2008); ‘Friendship and happiness from a philosophical perspective’ in Friendship and Happiness (Springer, 2015), ‘Philosophy, play and ethics in education’ in Philosophical Perspectives on Play (Routledge, 2016) and co-edited collections, including Conscience, Leadership and the Problem of ‘Dirty Hands’ (Emerald, 2015), and Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Play from Birth and Beyond (Springer, 2017).

Connie Snyder Mick, Ph.D., is the academic director of the Center for Social Concerns and co-director of the Poverty Studies Interdisciplinary Minor at the University of Notre Dame. She works with faculty to design and implement academic community engagement courses across the University, informed by pedagogical research on engaged teaching and learning. She awards community-based learning Course Development Grants and Faculty Fellow positions to foster sustainable engaged teaching and scholarship. She also leads a three-day Community Engagement Faculty Institute. Her research interests include assessment of community engagement to measure impact on student learning and community development, the role of writing in social change, the rhetoric of poverty and the pedagogies of community engagement. She published Poverty/Privilege: A Reader for Writers, Oxford University Press in 2015. Her full argument rhetoric and reader with Oxford University Press, Good Writing: A Rhetoric and Reader for Argument, is forthcoming 2018.

Hannah Nickels is a graduate teacher working in metropolitan Perth. She is very involved in her local church and continually looks for new ways to serve others through her teaching and volunteer networks. She grew up in a close-knit family with seven siblings. Being home educated throughout her primary and secondary years allowed her to pursue various areas of interest such as history, religion, music and dance in addition to fostering her close relationship with family. She enjoys learning about the positive impacts people have made throughout history and how their contributions have made the world a better place. These inspirational stories alongside her faith fuel a strong desire for the improvement of human rights and social justice. She is also a prolific reader and enjoys outdoor pursuits. Her next big adventure is learning how to better serve the needs of local communities with her newlywed husband, Stephen.

Damien Price, Ph. D., is a Christian Brother of the Oceania Province. He is based in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. He grew up in Proserpine – a small sugar cane town in North Queensland. He was a primary and secondary school teacher for over 30 years. He is passionate about the power of story to change people’s lives. He has worked extensively with children at risk, people who are homeless and refugees and asylum seekers. At present Damien is the Coordinator of Developing Nations for the Province assisting in the Brothers’ work in the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Timor Leste. He completed his doctoral studies in the field of service-learning and secondary school education.

John Richards has been the Director of Christian Service-Learning, Aquinas College, since 1997. He was National Chairman of the Youth and Education Advisory Committee for the Australian Red Cross, 1996–1999. From 2000 to 2004 he developed and facilitated ‘Love in Action Workshops’ for secondary teachers on the subject of Christian Service-Learning and has presented workshops across Australia, New Zealand, Philippines and most recently, the Asia Pacific Christian Service Learning Conference, Surabaya, Indonesia. He is the recipient of numerous awards including Service and Distinguished Service Medals from Australian Red Cross, Service Award (Perth Rotary, 1999), Western Australian Government 25 Year Volunteer Badge (2016) and a finalist for the Premier’s Active Citizenship Award (2014–2015) and Australia Day Awards (2016). He is married and has two daughters and continues to be active in parish life at the Parish of Saints John and Paul, Willetton.

Sandro Sandri works part-time at The University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, teaching service-learning, social justice and sustainability studies at undergraduate level. He has taught extensively in secondary schools, holding positions as Director of Christian Service-Learning, deputy principal and acting principal. Sandro has had local, national and international experience as a volunteer worker with the homeless and poor in Boston (USA) and Peshawar (Pakistan) as well as a volunteer educator in Wewak (Papua New Guinea). He has been actively involved with a service-learning immersion to a remote Aboriginal school at Kiwirrkurra (Western Australia). He continues to be engaged with the running of spiritual retreats for secondary students. He has worked with the regional committee of the Edmund Rice Network, assisting with the co-ordination of voluntary service programs. Recently, he gained a Masters of Counselling, and volunteers as a drug and alcohol counsellor at a local residential rehabilitation Centre.

Marta Vernet is the daughter of one of the founding teachers of the American School of Barcelona. She attended ASB for the first time when she was three. Her academic background besides her days in ASB encompasses a Bachelor in Public Relations from the University of Barcelona and a Master in Education from Framingham State College. As a convinced believer in lifelong learning, she also regularly participates and presents at seminars, conferences, workshops and accreditation processes, both locally and internationally. She started working in ASB in 1987 while attending university. She had many different positions at ASB, including Teaching Assistant, Athletic Director, Alumni Coordinator and After School Activities Program Coordinator, which led her 10 years ago to the job she has at the present, Head of Activities and Community Service. She is passionate about connecting students and school with the community and has developed educational programs in the Barcelona community through strategic partnerships and institutional collaborations. Marta has been a key player on the school’s incredible growth in experiential learning and service-learning programs.

Paige Warner is a secondary school teacher from Perth, Western Australia. She spends most of her days teaching English Literature. Her involvement in the Beagle Bay Immersion Program originated out of a desire to immerse students in cultures different from their own. She firmly believes that reconciliation begins at home, and to embrace and celebrate the strengths of multiculturalism, we must strive to understand the frameworks with which others view the world. Only then can we truly value the richness that comes from embracing diversity in our own society.

Foreword

In the Executive Summary of one of the Australian Values Education Program reports, we find the words ‘Service learning is a pedagogy that aids the development of young people as they learn to engage in the worlds of others and then participate in civic service. It is a form of experiential learning which is integrally related to values education, and helps young people to empathise, engage and take their place as civic-minded, responsible, caring and empowered citizens in our community’ (DEEWR, 2008, p. 34). These words capture persistent worldwide findings about the effects of carefully planned and implemented service-learning programs and their potential impact on holistic learning and development. The intentions and ambit of service-learning appear to fit well with updated findings in the field of neuroscience wherein the role of sociality as an essential feature of human development, and therefore learning, has been highlighted. As such, service-learning should not be seen as an optional extra in the business of learning but, rather, as an inextricable element in it. In other words, the affective benefits that are most apparent should not be seen as separable from the cognition associated with successful learning, including that related to academic achievement.

Service-learning can and does take many forms but the high quality and most effective programs are characterized by a pedagogy that combines community service with reflection on action. The service component makes for vital connections with the world outside the school or academy, with the student experiencing a sense of agency in being able to help, support or advocate for a worthy community-based cause. This in itself can be transformative for student growth in confidence, self-esteem and sense of usefulness in their community; it also has capacity to inform and enrich their understanding of the wider world in which they live and are preparing to play an active part. The reflection component ensures that maximal attention is given to these experiences through recalling, pondering on and discussing them afterwards and in preparation for ongoing service, hence ensuring optimal learning potential.

Research into the effects of service-learning has uncovered additional, specific benefits attached to a range of developmental features, including the formation of social, personal and civic responsibility, communicative competence and meaningful relationships with adults, as well as growth in the kind of awareness that extends to empathic understanding and altruism. Furthermore, involvement in service-learning has been shown to incline students to broadening their career aspirations and grasping opportunities, stimulate enhanced civic involvement and leadership, and generally impel the maturation process. The capacity of service-learning to break down cultural barriers and form positive relationships with people beyond one’s usual social reach is attested to in multiple studies. In similar fashion, undertaking service-learning has been shown to be associated with attitudinal change towards people with disabilities and to instil depth of appreciation of the elderly. In a word, service-learning would appear to constitute one of the most effective holistic learning tools available to schools and other learning institutions. While its capacities in this regard are clearly the subject of growing appreciation, it would be true to say that service-learning still remains an under-utilized element in too many education settings. Hence, the importance of books such as this one, edited by Shane Lavery, Dianne Chambers and Glenda Cain.

This collection, covering service-learning in a range of educational settings from primary school through secondary and onto pre-service teacher education, offers the reader an array of updated research in the field. Dianne Chambers and Shane Lavery begin with an introduction that summarizes the field, introduces the idea of inclusivity in education and then proceeds to illustrate the important role that service-learning can play in this regard. Suzanne Carrington and Megan Kimber combine consideration of Kiely’s (2004) notion of ‘transforming forms’ with reflection on the logs and experiential journals of six pre-service teachers completing an international service-learning exercise. Hannah Nickels takes up the theme of inclusivity in reflecting on her experiences of volunteering in the service-learning component of her own teacher training. Sandra Lynch also focuses on the notion of inclusivity and the particular role that the reflective component of service-learning can play in developing attitudes of inclusiveness.

Shelley H. Billig, an especially prominent international exponent and researcher of service-learning, summarizes much of this research in elementary settings, offering guidance on practical ways to maximise the effects of a service-learning program in the ways it is structured. Glenda Cain explores the effects of a particular service-learning exercise, the Whale of a Tale Reader Mentorship Program, designed to reach out to primary aged children on the margins in order to enhance their inclusion. John Richards describes a particular service-learning program attached to the Religious Education curriculum in the primary school program of his school.

The collection continues with Cathryn Berger Kaye and Maureen Connolly summarizing the effects of a ‘Dynamic Service Learning Approach’ that offers differentiation in the program in order to heighten its relevance to secondary students and so maximize the learning effect. Damien Price offers another high school case study, illustrating how the service-learning program worked to strengthen the school’s inclusive culture. Marta Vernet reflects on the impact that service-learning in her International School in Barcelona had on participating institutions as well as on the school, working to strengthen ties and enhance the school’s reputation in its community. Patrick Devlin and Paige Warner speak to a Christian service-learning program designed to provide opportunities for secondary students to experience the cultural diversity to be found in remote Aboriginal communities of Western Australia.

In one of the later chapters, Dianne Chambers reprises the theme of inclusivity as a key goal and component of service-learning, showing how Azjen’s (2002) Theory of Planned Behaviour can be utilized in setting up a program with the best parameters for impelling inclusivity with pre-service teachers. Connie Snyder Mick and James M. Frabutt move to a higher education setting in showing how understanding of poverty and mental health issues can be strengthened through a service-learning program. Finally, Shane Lavery, Anne Coffey and Sandro Sandri draw the collection to a conclusion with a chapter that summarizes findings from an evaluation of a service-learning program in the context of a teacher education program, findings that confirm the beneficial effects postulated throughout the collection.

As suggested, this book adds substantially to the growing volumes of published research about service-learning as a particularly powerful tool in the business of holistic education at all levels of learning. It is characterized by an unusual blend of theoretical and practical dimensions, often to be found in the same chapter but certainly across the collection. This renders the book as a useful addition to readers of various sorts, from academics to those engaged in higher education training and through to classroom teachers, parents and volunteers in school settings. The collection adds considerable weight to proffering that service-learning should be seen as a component of learning far too valuable to be left to chance or the enthusiast. Granted the high order of goals imposed on the outcomes of modern learning institutions, service-learning should be regarded as a sine qua non in such settings. Along with an increasing body of other research, this book shows why this is the case!

Terence Lovat

Emeritus Professor, The University of Newcastle, Australia

Honorary Research Fellow, The University of Oxford, UK

Series Introduction

The adoption internationally of inclusive practice as the most equitable and all-encompassing approach to education and its relation to compliance with various international Declarations and Conventions underpins the importance of this series for people working at all levels of education and schooling in both developed and less developed countries. There is little doubt that inclusive education is complex and diverse and that there are enormous disparities in understanding and application at both inter- and intra-country levels. A broad perspective on inclusive education throughout this series is taken, encompassing a wide range of contemporary viewpoints, ideas and research for enabling the development of more inclusive schools, education systems and communities.

Volumes in this series on International Perspectives on Inclusive Education contribute to the academic and professional discourse by providing a collection of philosophies and practices that can be reviewed in light of local contextual and cultural situations in order to assist educators, peripatetic staffs and other professionals to provide the best education for all children. Each volume in the series focuses on a key aspect of inclusive education and provides critical chapters by contributing leaders in the field who discuss theoretical positions, quality research and impacts on school and classroom practice. Different volumes address issues relating to the diversity of student need within heterogeneous classrooms and the preparation of teachers and other staffs to work in inclusive schools. Systemic changes and practice in schools encompass a wide perspective of learners to provide ideas on reframing education to ensure that it is inclusive of all. Evidence-based research practices underpin a plethora of suggestions for decision-makers and practitioners, incorporating current ways of thinking about and implementing inclusive education.

While many barriers have been identified that may potentially inhibit the implementation of effective inclusive practices, this series intends to identify such key concerns and offer practical and best practice approaches to overcoming them. Adopting a thematic approach for each volume, readers will be able to quickly locate a collection of research and practice related to a topic of interest. By transforming schools into inclusive communities of practice all children should have the opportunity to access and participate in quality education to enable them to obtain the skills to become contributory global citizens. This series, therefore, is highly recommended to support education decision-makers, practitioners, researchers and academics, who have a professional interest in the inclusion of children and youth who are marginalized in inclusive schools and classrooms.

Volume 12 in this series Service Learning: Enhancing Inclusive Education is focused on an approach to improving attitudes towards and perceptions about diverse populations through service-learning practices. Increasingly, the use of service-learning at all levels, from primary through to tertiary, provides students with practical experiences through engagement with people with diverse needs and is an excellent foundation for enhancing inclusive education. By combining community engagement with structured reflective practices, those participating in service-learning have been found to demonstrate enormous growth in understanding and empathy towards others. Simultaneously, the recipients in the process have experienced vast satisfaction in being able to engage in opportunities that otherwise may have not been available to them. It is evident from the writings of the highly experienced authors in this book that the process for undertaking service-learning varies considerably depending upon the age of the participants and the context in which they find themselves. This book, therefore, is invaluable as it explores a wide range of models of service-learning, with the authors providing detailed information about how to further inclusive practices through these various approaches, while accommodating the diversity of need to be found across regions and countries. These examples deliver many prospects for the reader to select a specific model or to take an eclectic approach to establishing their own service-learning practices. Decisions regarding the models are evidence-based and supported by research. As a teaching methodology, the authors in this book clearly demonstrate that service-learning has enormous potential for supporting inclusive educational practices. They explore in detail how service-learning can be embedded within curricula at all levels to provide a worthwhile and invigorating learning experience for all involved. This book is an essential reference guide for all stakeholders working towards enhanced inclusive practices using service-learning both within schools and in the wider community and I highly recommend it to you.