How Does Academic Service-Learning Help Students Learn in the Classroom and from the Textbook?

Abstract

It happens every semester. A student will ask, “how did you get into reading? I thought you were a psychologist.” I respond that I’m a motivational psychologist, and I specialize in working with children who are struggling or failing in reading. I design group-centered prevention programs that teach children how to rebuild their self-efficacy as they learn to read. The basis for my focus on reading is that reading failure is one of the underlying reasons for drop** out of school before graduation, youth aggression and crime, and even teenage depression and suicide. The key to overcoming reading failure is to use teaching methods that work with the brain rather than teaching methods that work against the brain. We’ve even had children move up four grade levels in reading in one year during our year-long after-school program. We have a similar problem in university classrooms. We often use teaching methods that work against how the brain processes information instead of methods that work with the brain. Academic service-learning works with the brain to produce higher student outcomes (GPA, test scores, and knowledge), better retention and graduation, stronger student engagement, commitment, persistence, and improved self-efficacy.  Have you ever wondered how academic service-learning produces better student outcomes?  Or why academic service-learning works better than other teaching methods? The answer lies in how we learn.  When we work with the brain, not against the brain, we are teaching students in the way the brain learns best.