Evaluating Service‐learning Activities and Programs

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2001), "Evaluating Service‐learning Activities and Programs", Library Review, Vol. 50 No. 4, pp. 202-203. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2001.50.4.202.3

This is a book about three things. Service‐learning reflects links between school and community, curriculum and real‐life relationships and issues in the community, and the forms of active learning to identify and encourage knowledge based on personal experience. It has grown up in the USA through the 1990s, and is now a significant part of the 3rd‐5th‐grade curriculum. Typical issues in service‐learning programs are community responsibility, public safety, the environment and nature. The second thing is evaluating such programs, as part of designing and implementing them. Various forms of evaluation are described and discussed (such as summative and formative), and their validity, appropriateness and cost examined. Evaluation is applied to the knowledge young people can and should acquire on such programs, and the performance outcomes they should demonstrate. Affective matters like attitudes and opinions are also taken into account.

The third thing is research methodology. Such programs often take the approach employed in naturalistic or ethnographic research, and, as such, can be applied and evaluated in terms of validity and reliability, research design and data interpretation. Examples range from the content analysis of students’ work to the creative portfolios they develop. Payne has a background as an educational psychologist, and previous works on educational assessment and measuring outcomes, and this shows through in his discussion of research design, data analysis, and attitude testing.

The work indicates one direction in which US curriculum development and evaluation is going, and is intended for library/information specialists working with teachers on such programs. Case studies of applications in typical schools help Payne make his case. Schools, and educational systems, less oriented to this form of evaluation will find the approach remote for all its thoroughness. Information specialists interested to adapt appropriate research methodologies into their daily work with colleagues and users, perhaps in qualitative research or action research, will almost certainly turn to works on research methods as such, without the localised applications. This is a recherché work which will travel poorly into other educational cultures, and which offers a mixture of the obscure and the obvious by turns.