Blending Science and Service-Learning

This month’s edition of the National Science Teachers Association newspaper features cover story highlighting stories from teachers that are “Blending Science and Service-Learning” 

 

An excerpt: “Kari Murad, who teaches immunology, microbiology, and pathology at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, turned to service learning when she realized “no matter how riveting my lectures or how engaging my labs, there was still a portion of students not understanding why the science I was teaching was important.” In an editorial in the Science Teachers Association of New York State’s (STANYS) The Science Teachers Bulletin (Spring 2009 issue), Murad writes that with service learning incorporated into her teaching, “my students seem to study and/or retain the scientific information better because it has a larger context than simply a fact in a textbook. Additionally, they also begin to understand the budgetary, political, and social constraints that muddy the waters of even the best scientific ideas (concepts that I do not have time to teach in a science class but are important civic lessons nonetheless).””

 

The article includes examples from middle and high school science programs.  To read the full article, click here: http://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=56458