Embedding Character Education into an Early Childhood Classroom through Service-Learning

Abstract

Historically, service-learning has been linked to helping children connect the curriculum through projects that deal with real community needs, and with an emphasis on building relationships and making connections, allowing teachers to maximize children's strengths, which allows all learners to be successful (Lake & Winterbottom, 2010). For example, children with challenging behaviors, English language learners, and children with exceptional needs have all benefited from using a service-learning pedagogy. This chapter examines the experiences of both teachers and students in an early childhood classroom that used a service-learning pedagogy for a year and investigates if the integration of this type of teaching methodology had an impact on the character development of the young students participating in the classroom.