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Undergraduate and graduate-level internships are critical experiences for ensuring that students are able to transfer learning to real-world settings. Yet a wide variety exists in internship design and not all experiences are equally educative. For experiential learning to be effective, educators must ensure a tight alignment of learning objectives with field experiences and provide a structured and intentional process to allow learners to construct meaning. This chapter focuses on the graduate Human Development Counselling (HDC) and the undergraduate Human and Organizational Development (HOD) Capstone Internships. These experiences embody the deepest meaning of experiential learning highlighting careful educational design. The chapter offers a description of both internships, examining the unique objectives, challenges, and strengths of each, while demonstrating a shared commitment to best practices in experiential education. This chapter may serve as a model for readers interested in developing their own professional or academic internships.

This chapter focuses on the most common intensive experiential opportunity the new communal and Conservative Jewish day high schools in North America offer — the Shabbaton. The Shabbaton is a retreat focusing on the communal celebration of the sabbath. These Shabbatonim are a distinctive form of experiential Jewish education. Yet despite their widespread implementation and the growth of experiential educational efforts in day schools, they have been given little attention in the educational literature. To address this lack, the chapter draws on experiences in training school-based experiential educators in order to discuss the educational goals of these Shabbaton programmes, the principles of running a successful programme, and the challenges faced by the experiential educators who are charged with planning and implementing these programmes.

This chapter focuses on the Singaporean experience in service-learning, which explores varied curricular designs and ways of learning by doing. The reflections are based on the experiential learning framework of David Kolb, whose theory describes learning as successive stages of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation.

This book began with the hypothesis that a definable segment of America’s youth is so disadvantaged that this group will not be able to grow up into productive adults unless they receive immediate attention. An analysis of successful prevention programs has documented that enough information is now available to launch the necessary interventions to change the prospects for many of these young people. In Chapters 3 to 7, the prevalence and overlap in high-risk behavior were described and quantified; Chapter 8 reviewed the organizational structure that defines categorical programs; and Chapters 9 to 13 compiled extensive information on successful prevention programs. In this final chapter, we build on those findings to outline specific procedures that may lead to the development of more rational and effective strategies for changing the life trajectories for millions of children. These strategies rely heavily on the concept of centralized Youth Development Agencies, at the local, state, and federal levels. Such structures would be empowered to package the various program components so that they would have greater impact and efficiency.… Who Is At Risk? … It should be well understood by now that approximately one in four children of the 28 million aged 10 to 17 are in dire need of assistance because they are at high risk of engaging in multiple problem behaviors—in other words, of being substance abusers, having early unprotected intercourse, being delinquents, and failing in school. Based on current population estimates, this means that 7 million young people living primarily in disadvantaged neighborhoods are in the target population for intensive care. Minority youth have higher prevalence rates and are more visible in densely populated urban areas; nevertheless, the majority of these multiproblem youth are white (and male). Another 7 million young people—25 percent—practice risky behavior, but to a lesser degree, and are therefore less subject to negative consequences. And, it is estimated that about half of the youth population, 14 million, are not currently involved in high-risk behaviors and appear to be moving through the educational system at expected levels. However, their problem-solving skills need sharpening and they need access to a higher quality of education, as do all children.

“Group Work Orientation in the Contemporary Summer Camp” addresses current literature and implications for practice. In recent years, camp social workers have published articles and presented at professional conferences. Among the areas of interest are the following: mission and purpose as applied to camps, intentional use of activities (including nondeliberative practice) as a means to an end, the mutual aid process as an inherent part of camp life, stages of group development as important knowledge for camp personnel, social workers’ leadership role in training and supervising camp staff, and social justice as a core value conveyed by social work-oriented camps. This chapter also describes the unique Group Work Camp, the creation of social group workers intended to educate social work students and new professionals as well as refreshing experienced practitioners. The camp utilizes experiential education to enhance group work skills. The chapter includes one vignette.