Handbook Of Research On Service Learning Initiatives In Teacher Education Programs

Teacher education programs serve traditional and non-traditional students and develop teachers to enter a range of teaching environments. Approaching teacher education through community involvement and learning objectives helps to effectively prepare teachers to serve local and community needs. The Handbook of Research on Service-Learning Initiatives in Teacher Education Programs provides emerging research on the methods and techniques for educators to strengthen their knowledge regarding the intersection of service learning and field placements. While highlighting topics, such as cultural competency, teacher development, and multicultural education, this book explores the benefits, challenges, and opportunities for employing community service as the driving framework for field experiences. This publication is a vital resource for practitioners, educators, faculty, and administrators seeking current research on the opportunity of field involvement to enhance teacher candidates’ experiences and provide a channel for meaningful learning.

Transforming Teacher Education through Service-Learning provides a fresh look at educational reform through the lens of teacher preparation. It poses the question “Why service-learning now?” as it discusses the meaningful ways service-learning pedagogy can transform the approaches used to prepare teachers to educate tomorrow’s children. The pedagogy of service-learning has significant implications for teacher education. Its transformative aspects have far reaching potential to address teacher candidate dispositions and provide deeper understanding of diversity. Knowledge of the pedagogy and how to implement it in candidates’ future classrooms could alter education to a more powerful experience of democracy in action and enhance the civic mission of schools. The current and ongoing research found within this volume is meant to continue support of the notion of educational reform. Because the vision we hold becomes the reality we experience, it is imperative to consider the question—Why service-learning now?—as we adjust teacher preparation programs to promote engaging opportunities for today’s youth.

Educators and those who prepare teachers are facing increased scrutiny on their practice that include pressures to demonstrate their effectiveness, meet the needs of changing demographics and students, and adapt to ever-changing learning environments. Thus, there is a need for innovative pedagogies and adoption of best practices to effectively serve the needs of digital learners. The Handbook of Research on Innovative Pedagogies and Best Practices in Teacher Education is an essential research book that takes an in-depth look at the methods by which educators are prepared to address shifting demographics and technologies in the classroom and provides strategies for focusing their curricula on diverse learning types. It takes a look at the use of innovative pedagogies and effective learning spaces in teacher education programs and the decisions behind them to enhance more inquiry learning, STEM initiatives, and prove more kinds of exploratory learning for students. Covering topics such as higher education, virtual reality, and inclusive education, this book is ideally designed for teachers, administrators, academicians, instructors, and researchers.

Teacher education is an evolving field with multiple pathways towards teacher certification. Due to an increasing emphasis on the benefits of field-based learning, teachers can now take alternative certification pathways to become teachers. The Handbook of Research on Field-Based Teacher Education is a pivotal reference source that combines field-based components with traditional programs, creating clinical experiences and “on-the-job” learning opportunities to further enrich teacher education. While highlighting topics such as certification design, preparation programs, and residency models, this publication explores theories of teaching and learning through collaborative efforts in pre-Kindergarten through grade 12 settings. This book is ideally designed for teacher education practitioners and researchers invested in the policies and practices of educational design.

This volume makes two important contributions: First, it provides a framework grounded in theory and best professional practice that middle and high school teachers, their students, and community partners can use to design, implement, and evaluate service-learning projects that address authentic community needs. Second, it demonstrates ways collaborative service-learning can enhance students' intellectual development, promote their academic achievement, strengthen their citizenship skills, and accelerate the kinds of educational accountability and reform initiatives emphasized in the national educational standards movement, and the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act. Serve and Learn: Implementing and Evaluating Service-Learning in Middle and High Schools: *provides what may be the only comprehensive guide to implementing, assessing, and celebrating service-learning in today's middle and high schools; *emphasizes and explicates a collaborative approach to service-learning in which teachers, students, and community partners team together to advance learning and meet genuine community needs; *demonstrates how service-learning teams use key elements of standards-based education, multiple intelligences theory, and cooperative learning to guide project development, implementation, assessment, and evaluation; *offers optional designs for service-learning projects that are suitable for use by interns and beginning teachers, as well as by experienced and master teachers, and that can be used in a developmental sequence by school and community partners to build from small, individual projects toward school, system, and community wide projects; and *includes end-of-chapter activities that help those who use the book as a text to practice the model and its strategies, and use results to create their own service-learning projects. The book is organized in three parts that present service-learning along a theoretical to practical continuum. Part I lays the foundations for the method by proposing a collaborative model for service-learning. Part II explicates this model and explains the four sets of processes that teams use to commit to a project, cooperatively determine students' project outcomes and ways to measure them, develop learning activities to help students achieve outcomes, and then evaluate their projects and celebrate growth. Part III provides resources for carrying out the collaborative model. A wide range of educators will find this book useful. Its distinctive contributions and features are particularly valuable for teacher educators, students, and community partners already committed to service-learning projects; to those who are introducing service-learning into their practice; and to instructional supervisors, school administrators, and community agencies seeking to create a climate for service-learning or to enrich initiatives already underway.

This practical guide is intended for faculty and service-learning directors, combining the how-to information and rigorous intellectual framework that teachers seek. What distinguishes this volume is that the contributors are writing for their peers. They discuss how service-learning can be implemented within teacher education and what teacher education contributes to the pedagogy of service-learning. The book offers both theoretical background and practical pedagogical chapters which describe the design, implementation, and outcomes of teacher education service-learning programs, as well as annotated bibliographies, program descriptions and course syllabi.

Ensuring doctoral students receive a well-rounded and thorough education is critical for their future success. Service learning within the doctoral program is one of the many aspects that helps shape students’ experiences and prepares them for life after graduation. Co-Constructing and Sustaining Service Learning in Graduate Programs: Reflections from the Field captures the experiences of doctoral students who were involved in socially just and sustainable service-learning projects and what it meant for them to be engaged in scholarship through service-learning. The book also illustrates what service-learning looks like and should look like in higher education particularly given the inequities that exist in the field of education. Covering key topics such as online education, academic identity, and sustainable learning, this reference work is ideal for administrators, policymakers, researchers, scholars, practitioners, instructors, and students.

The purpose of this series of books is to advance the knowledge in the service-learning research field. More importantly, this research is to be used to transform the field. This transformation will come from realizing both the history of service-learning and trying to imagine what the future may look like. The chapters in this book all demonstrate just how far service-learning research has come. Researchers, practitioners, and students alike have benefited from its dissemination and use the research to improve practice. The research does not simply inform educators how to create a better pedagogy. Rather, it informs a service-learning practice that can transform both individuals and institutions.