Seeking teachers for civic education pilot

Posted by on July 8, 2005

[posted from National K-12 Service-Learning listserv]

I hope that your school year is wrapping up well or that you are enjoying the start of your summer. My name is Bernadette Chi and I write to invite you to participate in an exciting project to develop and pilot assessments for civic development at the elementary level.

The East Bay Conservation Corps (EBCC) has been funded by CIRCLE (the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning Engagement) to partner with Abt Associates and Brandeis University to identify, develop and pilot test measures of developmentally appropriate civic outcomes for elementary school students (K-5). The product from this project will be a set of tested valid and reliable measures of civic knowledge, skills, attitudes and/or behaviors that will be shared with researchers and elementary school educators across the country assessing the impact of service-learning and other civic education programs.

We are currently recruiting teachers and program coordinators who may be interested in administering the assessments in fall of 2005 and then reporting the data and feedback about their experiences to us. Teachers at the EBCC Charter School will be piloting the initial versions of the instruments this spring. Based on the pilot phase, the assessments will be revised over the summer.

We anticipate developing the following tools:
. Three versions of observation checklists for grade spans Kindergarten/First, Second/Third and Fourth/Fifth to document students’ civic skills and behaviors
. Student survey for grades 4 and 5 to assess students’ attitudes about personal and community responsibility, leadership and other civic skills and knowledge
. Content assessments tied to the state and national social studies/civic education standards for each grade level
. Opportunity to learn checklists to assist teachers in planning and evaluating their curriculum and instruction to explicitly foster a variety of civic outcomes

We hope you will consider joining us in this exciting project to offer an important contribution to the larger service-learning and civic education fields. Please contact me directly at bschi@comcast.net to register your interest in reviewing the assessments this summer and potentially piloting them this fall. We welcome all elementary level teachers or program coordinators who are implementing service-learning or other initiatives that foster personal, social and civic responsibility in the elementary grades.

And please feel free to forward this information to your colleagues if you think they would be interested in participating.

If you have any questions, please contact me at 510-992-7960 or by email at: bschi@comcast.net. I look forward to hearing from you!

Bernadette Chi