Keywords

Civic engagement, service learning

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between service-learning and civic engagement in the 2- year college and also investigated specific differences between service experiences to determine whether those differences moderated the relationship between service participation and civic engagement outcomes. The study yielded 110 matching pre- and post-Student Civic Engagement surveys from service-learners in five different course subject areas at a large southeastern community college. The findings of the paired-samples t tests suggest that students experienced significant gains in four of the seven dimensions of civic engagement after participating in service. Students in comparable courses in subject matter but without service-components were also surveyed, yielding 117 matching pre- and post-surveys. A comparison of the mean differences between pre- and post-responses of the non-service-learners and service-learners suggests that the service-learners had a higher tendency than the non-service-learners to participate in the majority of assessed civic engagement activities. The data were sorted by subject area to allow for an analysis of the service-learners and the non-service-learners in comparable courses. Those results, however, were inconclusive, and no clear trends emerged. ANOVAs and independent-samples t tests were used to determine the relationship between gains in civic outcomes and select variables. The findings suggest that the type of service-learning activity, the duration of the service experience, the participant-perceived quality of the service experience, the amount of required student reflection, and the teacher’s frequency of use of active and passive instructional strategies significantly moderate the relationship between service participation and a number of measures of civic engagement.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2013

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Hewitt, Randall

Degree

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

College

College of Education and Human Performance

Department

Dean's Office, Education

Degree Program

Education

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0004706

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0004706

Language

English

Release Date

May 2013

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Education, Education -- Dissertations, Academic

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