The Self, Social, and Subject in Service Learning and Environmental Studies

Abstract

This article describes the process of curriculum conceptualization and follow-up research on teacher learning, which resulted from a three-week summer environmental service-learning program for ninety diverse young people from a large metropolitan area in the Midwest. Twenty adults from a variety of community-based environmental groups, area school districts, Vista and Teach For America, and a regional consortium on service learning collaborated over several months to conceptualize the curriculum, implement it, and then to evaluate the program using tenets of transformative curriculum leadership. Focus groups conducted with the adults and an analyses of their journals provided the data. Findings included analyses of adults' perceptions of teaching to facilitate learning in this setting. These adults articulated their amazement at young people's eagerness and keen ability to form cross-racial, cross-ethnic friendships, and their self-growth through highly valued self-directed experiential learning in nature.