Creating Sustainable Service Learning Programs: Lessons Learned from the Horizons Project, 1997-2000

In 1997, the American Association of Community Colleges began a three-year grant project to increase the number, quality, and sustainability of service learning programs in community colleges nationwide. Fourteen colleges—selected in a national competition for grants ranging from $4,000 to$10,000 per year— worked together in AACC’s project, Community Colleges Broadening Horizons through Service Learning, to overcome challenges and learn valuable lessons in developing and sustaining academically based service learning programs

Community Colleges Broadening Horizons through Service Learning, 2003-2006

The goals of Community Colleges Broadening Horizons through Service Learning, supported by the Corporation for National and Community Service and administered by the American Association of Community Colleges, are to build on established foundations to integrate service learning into the institutional climate of community colleges and to increase the number, quality, and sustainability of service learning programs in colleges nationwide. The Horizons project features model programs, national data collection and dissemination, and an information clearinghouse. In addition, Horizons provides professional development opportunities and technical assistance through regional workshops on service learning and civic responsibility, chief academic officer summits, mentoring, presentations, publications, a Web site, and a consultant referral service

Improving Student Learning Outcomes with Service Learning

Growing numbers of community colleges are incorporating service learning into the curriculum. While research has documented many benefits to those who participate in this experiential pedagogy, a primary goal of service learning is to increase students’ learning of course material

An American Mosaic: Service Learning Stories

The goals of Community Colleges Broadening Horizons through Service Learning, supported by the Learn and Serve America program of the Corporation for National and Community Service and administered by the American Association of Community Colleges, are to build on established foundations to integrate service learning into the institutional climate of community colleges and to increase the number, quality, and sustainability of service learning programs in colleges nationwide. Service learning combines community service with classroom instruction, focusing on critical, reflective thinking as well as personal and civic responsibility. Service learning programs involve students in activities that address local needs while developing their academic skills and commitment to their communities. The Horizons project promotes the value of service learning not only to students and faculty, but also to college administrators and community members

Transcending Disciplines, Reinforcing Curricula: Why Faculty Teach With Service Learning

Service learning as a teaching methodology has a growing following among faculty in higher education. Service learning combines community service with classroom instruction, focusing on critical, reflective thinking as well as personal and civic responsibility. Service learning programs involve students in activities that address local needs while developing their academic skills and commitment to their communities

Improved conceptual generation and selection with transcranial direct current stimulation in older adults

Normal aging is associated with deficits in various aspects of spoken language production, including idea generation and selection, and involves activity in frontal brain areas including left inferior frontal cortex (LIFG). These conceptual preparation processes, largely involving executive control, precede formulation and articulation stages and are critical for language production. Noninvasive brain stimulation (e.g., transcranial direct current stimulation, tDCS) has proven beneficial for age-related fluency and naming deficits, but this has not been extended to conceptual preparation mechanisms.We investigated whether tDCS could facilitate idea generation and selection in 24 older adults aged 60-80\ua0years. In the first phase, participants completed an idea generation test and a selection test with no stimulation. In the second phase they completed an alternate version of the tests in conjunction with either active or sham stimulation. Active stimulation applied 1-mA anodal tDCS over LIFG for the test duration (10\ua0min).\ua0 Responses were faster following active stimulation than following sham. Furthermore, improvements were specific to test conditions involving novel generation (p\ua0=\ua0.030) and selection (p\ua0=\ua0.001) and were not observed in control conditions for which these mechanisms were minimally involved.\ua0 We concluded that tDCS benefits conceptual preparation mechanisms. This preliminary evidence is an important step for addressing age-related decline in propositional language generation, which is integral to conversational speech. This approach could also be extended toward rehabilitation in neurological patients with deficits in these processes

Attitudes to motherhood and working mothers in South Africa : insights from quantitative attitudinal data.

M.A. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2014.Motherhood ideologies are rooted in cultural and historical contexts, and encapsulate attitudes towards the roles and expectations of mothers. In South Africa, with many languages and deep racial and socio-economic divisions, it is likely that these attitudes are informed by a number of motherhood ideologies. This study explores the extent to which ‘intensive’ mothering ideology – intrinsic to the nuclear family ideal and predominant in Western literature – informs attitudes to mothering practice in South Africa. Within intensive mothering ideology the ‘good’ mother is positioned as exclusively responsible for the emotional and physical nurture of her child; and the centrality of the child supersedes her needs. This creates an inherent conflict for mothers who interpret their mothering role through this schema and undertake paid work, thus seemingly compromising on fulfilling their caring duty. However, research suggests that the ambivalence experienced by many Western women regarding engaging in paid work, may not have the same salience in societies whose cultural conception of motherhood embraces collective mothering, where responsibility for childcare is shared among family and community members. This is a hallmark often of extended, as opposed to nuclear, families. Thus it might be expected, in South Africa, that where African society has traditionally been characterised by extended family formation, intensive mothering ideology would not hold the same sway among Africans as qualitative South African research suggests it does for the White, middle-class. Furthermore, it might be expected that this would be balanced, among Africans, by extant support for collective mothering. In this analysis of quantitative attitudinal data, agreement with the statements ‘A child under five years suffers if his/her mother works’ and, ‘All in all, family life suffers when the woman works’, are used as indicators of intensive mothering ideology. The choice of a grant, paid to a friend or relative to care for the preschool child of a working single mother, as the best care option, is used as an indicator of support for collective mothering ideology. The findings of this study suggest that in South Africa, there is a higher prevalence of intensive mothering ideology among White women, and to a lesser extent men, than among Africans. The low level of support for a grant, paid to family members or friends for the care of a working single-mother’s pre-school child, suggests that a disjuncture might exist between the preference among Africans for collective mothering, and its assumed prevalence