Issues, Driving Forces and Barriers of the National Hualien Vocational High School of Agriculture toward Promoting Service-Learning Projects： Viewpoints of Stakeholders
| Autor: | Chin-Wei Wu, 吳清偉 |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2008 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 96 This research is to study the problems and opinions originated from promoting Service-Learning(S-L) at the National Hualien Agriculture Vocational High School（HLAHS）with the standpoints from the stakeholders and their clients. Research methodologies include literature analyses, personal experiences when practicing the S-L cases, interviews and focus group interviews. Collect and deduce the perspectives toward advocating issues, driving forces, and barriers, with the points of view coming from the students, faculties and staffs, parents or custodians, and community members. Furthermore, discuss the practicability of 6 types of S-L projects, and (at last) put forth the proposal to improve such conditions. The results show that the issues HLAHS faces include students’ low achievement in academics, deviation of value concept for life, relatively passive attitude towards study, the confined course system, low sociability, teachers tending to lose S-L passion, curriculum seemingly hard to arrange for S-L, poor supporting system, safety risk as a whole, teachers’ low trust in students, community organizations’（NGOs’）ideals set too high, parents’ care of students’ safety consideration and competitiveness. Analyses regarding driving forces and barriers include that, deeming HLAHS an ideal place to participate in S-L project as prerequisite, arrangement of the programs is to support teachers’ ideas and assists them to undertake risks. Curricula should be applicable in living, interesting in learning, able to be interactive, full of achievements and self-confidence, and without affecting entering to university, and so on. In practice, community organizations should be aware of their roles and effective communication, and prevent teenagers from becoming victimized. Parents believe not only that S-L can improve the students’ academic learning plus positive effect on their interpersonal development and help get involved in the society, but also that the academic background of vocational high school graduates is still somewhat not enough so that entering college is still inevitable. With the low wills of both parents’ participation and students’ study, the teacher that participated in focus group interviews responded that the relationship between teacher and parent has to be enforced to avoid misunderstanding. Results of this study suggest that HLAHS should establish special sector to coordinate S-L projects and to promote them with a top-down approach, attempt to get higher proportion of school-prescribed credits, encourage teacher to pursue further education, augment the flexibility for students to plan programs for themselves, and enhance relationship between teacher and student both parties. Community organizations must launch the S-L projects under the good environment of communication. S-L projects must have parents’ understanding and endorsement. By analyzing the types of S-L, we find that ' The regular service of students’ clubs' can fortify the exchange among schools, help teachers highly promote students’ participation, but should avoid being labeled negatively and build up the atmosphere inside clubs. HLAHS has already assigned the credit to ' Intermediary's specific service of the school'. Parents were reassured about this kind of activity. S-L needs special sector to integrate and coordinate in order to increase more chances and spaces to be developed. Teachers need give students more trust. Sectors within school should decrease their own position consideration and improve efficiency in their work procedure. HLAHS has already arranged S-L activity like ' Art performance' that can expand the vision of students, but this needs more communication to prevent creating conflict from cultural value and fund shortage. ' Students arrange service for themselves' can place positive values on students themselves and therefore becomes beneficiary to community, but students’ needs to make a living and to entry university may influence the will of participating in S-L. Therefore, they need the service chances with pay, and for this, NPOs should strengthen their marketing strategies. HLAHS can arrange S-L activities during school hours, but need to interact with parents to get their supports to promote students’ self-confidence and morale. The hardship to control students’ behavior outside school needs risky supplementary measure to make the teacher more willing to attend. ' School arranges classified services' can make students validate their learning experience in the course of selling products that they have made, set up their self-confidence and improve the mutual relationship between teachers and students, but students’ negative performance would ruin the school’s reputation and decrease the will of industries’ cooperation with school, besides students might have the negative feeling of being exploited. Thus, implementing student's working discipline is a must. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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