A portrait of school community service programs in Canada

Agnes Meinhard,Steven Brown

doi:10.32920/ryerson.14638785

Abstract

Although community service programs are to be found across the Canadian landscape, there have been no national initiatives to standardize programs. Thus, the place and nature of community service in high school curricula vary significantly among the 13 educational jurisdictions in Canada. The greatest differences however, are to be found among individual schools within each jurisdiction. This paper presents findings from interviews with key-informants to provide a more in-depth portrait of the programs in Canadian schools. Community service practices in Canadian schools are then discussed in the context of “best practices” as described in the literature Keywords: CVSS, Centre for Voluntary Sector Studies, Working Paper Series,TRSM, Ted Rogers School of Management Citation:

Highlights

Promoting civic development in young people through school-based community service programs has become a key educational goal in many countries (Arenas, Bosworth & Kwandayi, 2006)
In educational jurisdictions the world over, governments are actively promoting the inclusion of community service programs in the curriculum, often as a mandatory component towards graduation
The final question in our interview asked the respondents to reflect on what best practices they would recommend to schools and agencies when setting up a community service program

Summary

A Portrait of School Community Service Programs in Canada

Steven Brown Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy, Wilfrid Laurier University. Community service programs are to be found across the Canadian landscape, there have been no national initiatives to standardize programs. The place and nature of community service in high school curricula vary significantly among the 13 educational jurisdictions in Canada. The greatest differences are to be found among individual schools within each jurisdiction. This paper presents findings from interviews with keyinformants to provide a more in-depth portrait of the programs in Canadian schools. Community service practices in Canadian schools are discussed in the context of “best practices” as described in the literature

Introduction

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion