A Study of Curriculum Management of Service-Learning in USA : Focusing on Collaboration between Schools and Community

Abstract

In the studies of Curriculum development, it is focusing on the field between "Curriculum-Maker" and "Curriculum-User", it doesn't pay attentions to the field "management of the curriculum". Then, we need to develop the research field call the "Curriculum Management". The Curriculum Management study was mainly concerned about the school organization level, the study in USA, some case of nonprofit organizations have an initiative for the curriculum development and management. Especially, Service-Learning curriculum has a tendency to have collaborations between the schools and community agencies (Including NPO). When the study is considered the collaborated curriculum management including the idea of partnership between the schools and the community agency, the Service-Learning curriculum is very valid research object. The Service Learning is the curriculum to help the students learn the voluntary attitude of good citizenship by partnership between the schools and the community agencies. In this study, it is discussed that the partnership defined "external collaboration" which is focusing on the Service-Learning collaboration between community agencies and schools. On the other hand, it discussed about "internal collaboration" which is inside of school organization from the points of views of professional culture, which has great impact for school improvement. And this study has a assumption that is the collaborations from internal and external sides on the Service-Learning curriculum management is effective to school improvement, also it tried to prove the theorical framework. This study discussed what is main management organization of Service Learning which is able to develop schools and communities. In the Service-Learning curriculum management, the partnership has important factors whose relationship was affected by "internal collaboration". As a result, from the points of the views of two collaborations, this study tries to prove the framework of curriculum management of Service-Learning. Also, the result is proving that the two factors of collaboration are very effective for improving school.