Introduction

My involvement with community service learning in my classes started with an invitation: an invitation from the coordinator of our stand-alone Community Service Learning (CSL) program and the school principal. It was nice to be asked. So often educational initiatives are mandates, not invitations. I was flattered. The teachers chosen to pilot this CSL in the classroom initiative at Spaulding High School were viewed as flexible and innovative. I was curious. I had thought about developing more CSL type learning experiences in my classes, but how? I was skeptical. How would I find time to do the planning and development that would be necessary to make this an effective addition to the curriculum? The answer to this question turned out to be a great selling point for my involvement in CSL.

I particularly like this CSL in the classroom initiative because it allowed me to make more direct connections between curriculum content that I was already teaching, and a practical and relevant application of this course content. This was motivational for the students and beneficial for the school community. The CSL component was not a replacement for what I was already teaching, but an addition that enhanced what I was teaching. It was a project that became part of my curriculum, not a replacement for it.

From a short brainstormed list of CSL projects I settled on one for the sociology course that I teach. I wanted a project that could involve the entire class, would enhance the content that I already teach, and could be an ongoing project for future sections of sociology. Our Curriculum and Instruction Director (Jeff Maher) had just begun a survey of recent Spaulding graduates to determine how these alumni viewed the quality of education at Spaulding High School. He hopes to use this information as one of many evaluative tools for making decisions about educational programming. He recruited members of the National Honor Society to conduct telephone interviews of the classes of 2000 and 2002. Mr. Maher became our client for this CSL project. The task for my class was to analyze the data from these phone surveys and report our analysis to the school's Action Planning Committee (the Action Planning Committee is a standing committee of school administrators, parents, community members, faculty, and students who make recommendations for school improvement at Spaulding High School).

A number of the students in the section of sociology that was first involved in the CSL project has been involved in making the survey calls, so the data analysis was another step in the process for them. Others in the class were motivated by this project because of the direct application to school improvement. Here was a clear way that they could help make student voices be heard about the quality of education they were receiving. Students were interested to see if the opinions of recent graduates about the quality of education at Spaulding differed significantly from their own experience. I was excited about this as an enhancement of a unit on survey research methods where I already had students look at education survey data and test scores. The CSL project allowed us totake this informative, yet purely academic exercise and transform this learning into a way to actually contribute to the decision making for school reform at Spaulding.

For the students, adding a CSL project to the research methods component of my sociology course has proven to be a highly motivating activity. They were able to be involved in a process that will provide data to the school's Action Planning Committee, which will make decisions for school improvement. While they will not see the fruits of this effort immediately, the students were excited about the process of looking at raw survey data and in being one of the core groups that were involved in interpreting this data.

Timeline and Description of Student and Program Participants

This project has been completed by two sections of a one-quarter sociology class in the spring semester 2003. Sociology is an elective half credit course. Approximately 35 students have been involved in the CSL project to date.

Materials and Resources Needed

The essential resource for this project is the telephone survey data. The National Honor Society students who conducted the survey provided the data. A parent volunteer then tabulated the raw data. Mr. Maher provided our class with the copy of the survey and the tabulated data. Resources and descriptive and inferential statistics were also helpful.

Essential Questions

How can graduate survey data be used to help improve education and school environment at Spaulding High School?
Will student analysis of telephone survey data provide a unique perspective and be useful to the Action Planning Committee?

Focusing Questions

How can survey data be organized?
What questions from the survey are most important to focus on from the students' perspective?
How will this information be presented to the Action Planning Committee?

Rationale

Make a direct contribution to the process of school improvement by providing student perspective on the quality of education at Spaulding High School.

Culminating Activities

Student develop component of survey analysis to be presented to Action Planning Committee by class representatives.

Addressing Service Learning Best Practices

Curricular Goals

  • Students will learn fundamental concepts in descriptive and inferential statistics.
  • Students will work and communicate effectively in teams.
  • Students will demonstrate problem-solving skills through analysis of survey data.

Assessment

  • Teacher evaluation of student work (student teams' suggestions for methods of data analysis' student teams' suggestions for survey item analysis, student teams' draft graphs, student teams' final graphs, and student teams' analysis write-up for presentation).
  • Student self-evaluation of analysis process.

Service Goals

  • Identify community needs to be met.
  • Organization and interpretation of survey data from student perspective.
  • Contribute to data driven school improvement process.
  • List service goals.
  • Describe how the need can be met.
  • Analyze survey data, develop presentation for the Action Planning Committee, and deliver presentation.
  • Identify students' role in meeting the need and how they could work toward a lasting solution to the need.
  • Students will be one of the groups (stakeholders) analyzing this data (annual surveys will be conducted).

Challenges

  • Students must consider cognitive (effective solution and application of descriptive statistics), physical, social (presentation anxiety), emotional, and ethical challenges.
  • Student must consider new roles and/or responsibilities in unfamiliar settings.

Participation

  • Students work in analysis teams with three or four members in each team. Student evaluation is based on group work. Each team member must sign off their approval of work submitted by the group. Teacher observation of student teams as they work is also part of the evaluation process.

Diversity

  • Discuss/value differences.
  • Interact with a variety of individuals/groups.

Community Connection

  • Build knowledge about the community and its resources.
  • Cultivate contacts with community partners and resources.

Preparation

  • Group class discussion in descriptive and inferential statistics.
  • Discussion, planning, and implementation of effective ways to present data analysis.

Reflection

  • Analysis teams form and brainstorm how data might be organized and analyzed.
  • Analysis teams brainstorm items on survey that they will select for analysis.
  • Each team focuses on one analysis question generated from survey data.
  • Teams create two graph formats and compose written interpretation of data analysis in computer labs.
  • Teams select graph formats that they feel will best communicate information to audience and make revisions to written interpretation that will be the basis for presentation to Action Planning Committee.
  • Teams brainstorm recommendations for future surveys.

Celebration

  • Presentation for Action Planning Committee.