Service-Learning to Empower Second Graders as Change Agents

• In Event: Exemplary Elementary Social Studies in an Age of Standardized Testing

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this presentation is to bring researcher, practitioner (Lori), and administrator (Shannon) perspectives together from one school site to discuss the mechanisms that promote empowering young citizens, in both practical and theoretical terms. Employing the construct of empowerment, we seek to reconceptulaize the positioning of the youngest, specifically through service-learning. In the case presented, first and second grade students developed a relationship with the local homeless shelter, confronting their own perceptions of where homelessness existed and what they could do to help.

Perspectives

Addressing the civic empowerment gap should be about repositioning minority students (Levinson, 2012). Simultaneously, civic empowerment is a critical issue of giving younger people meaningful roles in societies.

Methods and Data sources

For one year, a research team that works closely with the elementary school as part of their Professional Development School program collected observational notes of the year-long evolving service project, visiting when the project was scheduled into the class agenda. The team interviewed Lori three times in a semi-structured format. The team copied samples of student work and sat with students as they worked, taking anecdotal observations.

Results

Lori’s classroom demonstrates how service-learning can be a meaningful vehicle for empowering experiences. The service project created new and meaningful content for math, science, art, and writing. For instance, students wrote a survey to Centre House residents to find out their needs. Questions included, “Would you like us to send more food?” and “Do you need anything specific for the children at Centre House?” Students were most motivated when they learned children lived at Centre House and focused on their needs. We show how empowerment can and should happen in the early elementary years by giving students chances to make decisions and supporting them in new processes. Yet by positioning children as naturally egocentric and only able to focus on that which is most near to them first (as in the Expanding Horizons approach), theory and research are missing key opportunities for creating empowered citizens from their first schooling experiences.

Lori’s instruction yielded many of the 15 Common Practices of exemplary elementary social studies teachers:

1.establish a learning community
3.value depth over breadth
4.foster narratives and discourse around powerful ideas
5.balance constructivist and transmission teaching
6.employ a range of assessment tools
7.approach standards holistically
8.emphasize skills instruction
9.model intellectual curiosity
10.promote critical thinking
11.promote intellectual responsibility
12.integrate meaningfully social studies and other subjects
13.attend to civic mission of social studies in a democracy
14.reflect on student understandings to assess her practice
15.is supported by professional development that promotes a learning culture, is meaningful, ongoing, and allows for teacher discussion and choice about curriculum and instruction

Significance

Student voice in the younger years is rarely studied, let alone civic empowerment for young citizens. This work gives important practical and theoretical implications to the field of civics and social studies education.

Levinson, M. (2012). No citizen left behind. .

Authors

• Stephanie C. Serriere, The Pennsylvania State University

• Dana L. Mitra, The Pennsylvania State University