Character Development Through Service And Experiential Learning

In the new environment of the 21st century, academic achievement alone is not sufficient. Different sets of socio-emotional skills are required of our youths to operate and thrive. When students learn through the experience of doing, contributing to the community, and relating to their peers while getting their hands dirty, it helps to develop the total person, something which many education systems have been striving to address through moral and character education. This type of learning equips students with useful skills and values for the real world. Many educational institutions are now embarking on service and other experiential learning strategies for precisely these reasons, often with the tacit backing of the state and non-governmental organisations. This book, arising from the first International Conference on Character Development through Service and Experiential Learning in 2007, is a collection of selected papers that provides a wide array of service learning models attempted by various institutions in Singapore and other countries including Canada and the US. This book is recommended as a useful reference volume for educators, teachers, policy makers and service-learning students for models they can adapt and use in their own settings as well as service-learning research they may conduct to evaluate their project outcomes.