Start Date
6-6-2013 9:30 AM
End Date
6-6-2013 10:40 AM
Description
Service learning was introduced to Japan in the 1990s as both an educational philosophy and as an instructional method imported from the United States. As an educational philosophy, service learning reflects the belief that education should develop social responsibility in students and prepare them to be involved citizens in a democratic society. As an instructional method, service learning involves the blending of service activities with academic curricula, which allows students to learn through active engagement while addressing real community needs. Service learning has been used for first-year students in some colleges and universities in Japan, and has been encouraged by the central government. One of the weakest areas of service learning/community engagement research done in the US is the measure of its impact on communities (Giles and Cruz, 2000). This issue will become important when service learning is introduced in more educational institutions in Japan. The study was designed to interview staff and faculty at six universities in Japan that are taking the lead in applying service learning to curriculum, to understand how schools measure the impact of service learning on communities. The results of this study found that the challenges described by the institutions are rooted in the difficulties of measuring the impact on communities. The challenge is not only measuring the impact during a given period of time, but also measuring the impact over the long-term. Introducing objective third party evaluations was a second important theme for institutions. A third focus was the potential to burden community organizations. Almost all higher education staff expressed a need to improve communication between organizations and colleges. Therefore, they tried to collect information related to the impact on the community from evaluations of students' performance and learning. In Japan, one good deed leads to another, and it is customary to contribute to the community without expecting anything in return, therefore it is difficult to evaluate or measure the community impact of service learning. A future challenge of the study will be to ask community organizations hosting service learners how they prefer evaluation or feedback from colleges.
Recommended Citation
Miyazaki, T., Ito, A., Topor, S., & Madokoro, K. (2013, June). How schools measure the impact of service learning on communities: Through the investigation of higher education institutions in Japan and the US. Paper presented at the 4th Asia-Pacific Regional Conference on Service-Learning: Service-Learning as a Bridge from Local to Global: Connected world, Connected future, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China.
Included in
How schools measure the impact of service learning on communities : through the investigation of higher education institutions in Japan and the US
Service learning was introduced to Japan in the 1990s as both an educational philosophy and as an instructional method imported from the United States. As an educational philosophy, service learning reflects the belief that education should develop social responsibility in students and prepare them to be involved citizens in a democratic society. As an instructional method, service learning involves the blending of service activities with academic curricula, which allows students to learn through active engagement while addressing real community needs. Service learning has been used for first-year students in some colleges and universities in Japan, and has been encouraged by the central government. One of the weakest areas of service learning/community engagement research done in the US is the measure of its impact on communities (Giles and Cruz, 2000). This issue will become important when service learning is introduced in more educational institutions in Japan. The study was designed to interview staff and faculty at six universities in Japan that are taking the lead in applying service learning to curriculum, to understand how schools measure the impact of service learning on communities. The results of this study found that the challenges described by the institutions are rooted in the difficulties of measuring the impact on communities. The challenge is not only measuring the impact during a given period of time, but also measuring the impact over the long-term. Introducing objective third party evaluations was a second important theme for institutions. A third focus was the potential to burden community organizations. Almost all higher education staff expressed a need to improve communication between organizations and colleges. Therefore, they tried to collect information related to the impact on the community from evaluations of students' performance and learning. In Japan, one good deed leads to another, and it is customary to contribute to the community without expecting anything in return, therefore it is difficult to evaluate or measure the community impact of service learning. A future challenge of the study will be to ask community organizations hosting service learners how they prefer evaluation or feedback from colleges.