Junior High School Students’ Perceptions of Service Learning for Admission to High School

The Twelve-Year Basic Education Program in Taiwan tries to shift the test-centered pedagogy to a more holistic-education one by including service learning in the ‘excess application sequencing score’ which determine students’ order to be recruited by high schools. The purpose of the study is to find out how students perceive service learning in this new policy. Six ninth graders from a complete high school were interviewed with six questions in the study. Though students were pushed to do their service learning, the results show they did learn something and even enjoy their service experiences, which preliminarily indicates that effort to implement this new policy is worthwhile. Related recommendations are proposed for the government, schools, teachers, and parents. Further studies are necessary to evaluate this new policy by data from more comprehensive sources.