It found a very interesting article about the implementation of a community based program called “Service-Learning: Implications of Empathy and Community Engagement in Elementary School” by Katherine Scott and James Graham. The article recounts an experiment that the authors conducted about the benefits of incorporating service into the academic environment. I considered this as an aspect in the community/place-based education that I have slowly been mapping out, but I didn’t think that having as the focus would be beneficial. I read this article to compare my own opinion to that of a group of people that have already put together and executed an experiment about the results of a service based education. In this article, the goal was to increase community engagement, therefore increasing interest in the students which would increase the test scores. They also predicted that the students would have an increased level of empathy which would make them more tolerant and productive members of society.

The researchers gathered written consent from parents so that their children could participate in the study. The program that was introduced included a lesson about different aspect of community service and then was followed by some sort of project that related to that area of study. For example, what are some current issues that the students can help in, what are different ways that the students can help someone else out in the community? The goal is to educate about social issues while also giving the students the knowledge to help eliminate those issues within their own community. In assessing their findings, researchers gathered the demographics of each student such as age and socioeconomic status. These are gathered to better understand how the absorption of the material is taken based on students with different situations. The community engagement was pretty simply measured by word-of-mouth/interviews. The amount of empathy gained by each student was calculated by asking students questions and analyzing the responses. They also implemented the Garton & Gringart’s scale modified for each age group. They were asked to respond to certain questions posed by the researchers.

In the end, the results were that the community engagement and empathy overall, but it was only in the fifth graders that they reported a development in cognitive empathy. Cognitive empathy being the ability to feel or understand the emotions that an individual is experiencing. Personally, I conclude that this article is important for me to continue to analyze and include in my ultimate conclusion about my research topic. This is because I still believe that place-based education, the education that takes into account the place in which the students are taught and incorporating aspects of the surrounding community into the classroom to make lessons more relevant. Although there was more community engagement, it still comes back to the fact that classrooms need to be able to relate to the student. Service is important to build empathy and also motivation to help the community, but education needs to be able to relate to the students and a service-based learning environment focuses on other people.