My research explores the dynamics of university-community partnerships, public rhetorics, professional writing, and teacher education. My work has been published in in College Composition and Communication, Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, Community Literacy Journal, Technical Communication Quarterly, and Reflections, along with edited collections and textbooks. Inspired by community action research methodologies, my research often takes me out of the library and into high school cafeterias, taquerias, and non-profits as I talk and write with research participants.
Book
Rewriting Partnerships: Community Perspectives on Community-Based Learning
“Rewriting Partnerships argues for a generative and just form of community-university engagement based on a more sophisticated understanding of how these partnerships construct knowledge . . . . engaging and a pleasure to read.” —Linda Flower, Carnegie Mellon University
“This book turns to the knowledge of community members in ways that are just, welcoming,
and disruptive . . .” —Steven Alvarez, St. John's University
While community members are rarely tapped for their insights on engaged teaching and research, Rewriting Partnerships calls for a radical reorientation to the knowledges of community partners. Drawing on interviews with 80+ community members, the book introduces Critical Community-Based Epistemologies, a deeply practical approach to knowledge construction that centers the perspectives of marginalized participants. Community interviewees from three common Rhetoric and Composition partnerships --youth working with college students in a writing exchange program, non-profit staff who serve as clients for student projects, and community members who work with graduate students—offer insights on teaching and research in community contexts. The book also explores approaches to partnership design that create space for community voices at the structural level: advisory boards, participatory evaluation, and community grading.
Immediately applicable to teachers, researchers, community partners, or administrators involved in community engagement, Rewriting Partnerships offers concrete strategies for creating more community-responsive partnerships at the classroom level as well as the level of program and research design. But most provocatively, the book challenges common assumptions about who can create knowledge about community-based learning.
“This book turns to the knowledge of community members in ways that are just, welcoming,
and disruptive . . .” —Steven Alvarez, St. John's University
While community members are rarely tapped for their insights on engaged teaching and research, Rewriting Partnerships calls for a radical reorientation to the knowledges of community partners. Drawing on interviews with 80+ community members, the book introduces Critical Community-Based Epistemologies, a deeply practical approach to knowledge construction that centers the perspectives of marginalized participants. Community interviewees from three common Rhetoric and Composition partnerships --youth working with college students in a writing exchange program, non-profit staff who serve as clients for student projects, and community members who work with graduate students—offer insights on teaching and research in community contexts. The book also explores approaches to partnership design that create space for community voices at the structural level: advisory boards, participatory evaluation, and community grading.
Immediately applicable to teachers, researchers, community partners, or administrators involved in community engagement, Rewriting Partnerships offers concrete strategies for creating more community-responsive partnerships at the classroom level as well as the level of program and research design. But most provocatively, the book challenges common assumptions about who can create knowledge about community-based learning.
Selected Peer Reviewed Articles
“The Courage of Community Members: Community Perspectives of Engaged Pedagogies." College Composition and Communication vol. 70, no. 1, 2018, pp. 82-110.
The emotional dynamics for community members involved in university-community partnerships remain untheorized and often unrecognized. This article explores the fear minoritized high school students expressed about working with college composition students, offering suggestions for how composition teachers can use the strategies of personalismo, affirmation, rigor, and role fluidity to create more responsive community partnerships. Grounded in insights from community partners, the study suggests that knowledge-making might change in community-based pedagogies if dominant epistemologies can shift to understand community members as producers of knowledge.
Listen to the CCC podcast about this article.
"Positionality and Possibility: Tactics and Strategies for Graduate Student Community Engagement.” Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning vol. 24, no. 1, 2017. (Co-author with UNL graduate students Katie McWain, Marcus Meade, & Adam Hubrig).
Drawing on the authors’ experiences initiating and directing a community partnership program, this article illustrates how graduate students who lead engagement programs can be caught between forces that pull them toward tactical partnerships unaffiliated with the university and strategic partnerships incorporated into departments. Conceived as distinct models by philosopher de Certeau (1984) and extended in Mathieu’s Tactics of Hope (2005), tactics and strategies theorize the impact of integrating with powerful institutions or remaining independent. Using narrative illustrations from their own graduate-founded engagement program, the authors argue that the dichotomous framework of tactics and strategies does not provide the complexity necessary to successfully maneuver within institutional and community dynamics. Instead, tactics and strategies is reconceptualized as the basis of a decision-facilitating heuristic for graduate-student led community initiatives to increase students’ agency to navigate institutional forces.
“Reciprocity and Power Dynamics: Community Members Grading Students." Reflections vol 17, no 2, 2017, pp. 5-42 (Co-author with Jessica Shumake).
This article explores the dynamic practice of inviting community members to grade college students on their work in community-engaged partnerships. The authors articulate theories of writing assessment with theories of reciprocity to argue that community-based student evaluations can be a valid and ethical form of assessment, and discuss a case study in which loca youth graded college students to offer eight best practices for implementing community-based assessment. As reciprocity is often underemphasized in practice, community evaluations provide a strategy for shifting power toward community members, potentially reinvigorating applications of reciprocity to make them more substantial and meaningful.
“Silent Partners: Developing a Critical Understanding of Community Partners in Technical Communication Service-Learning Pedagogies.” Technical Communication Quarterly. vol. 25, no. 1, 2016, pp. 48-66. (Co-author with Amy Kimme Hea)
Although many technical communication teachers and programs integrate some form of service-learning pedagogy, there is a dearth of technical communication research on the silent partners of these projects: the community partners. Drawing upon research data from 14 former community partners of professional writing service-learning courses, the authors suggest that understanding community partners’ own self-defined stakes in service-learning projects can challenge hyperpragmatist representations of community partners and aid us in the continued creation, management, and critical evaluation of service-learning pedagogies and curricula.
“Socializing Democracy: The Community Literacy Pedagogy of Jane Addams.” Community Literacy Journal. vol. 8, no. 4, Spring 2014, pp. 1-16.
This article reclaims Jane Addams as a community literacy pedagogue, explicating her pedagogical theory through an analysis of her social thought. Addams’ goal of “socializing democracy” through education led her to both encourage immigrant students to associate across difference and to assimilate into dominant literacies—tensions present in today’s community literacy contexts. The article includes suggestions for rhetorically redeploying Addams’ pedagogy in contemporary writing instruction.
“Human ‘Subjects’ Protection: A Source for Ethical Service-Learning Practice.” Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning. vol. 18, no. 2, 2012, pp. 29-39.
Human subjects research ethics were developed to ensure responsible conduct when university researchers learn by interacting with community members. As service-learning students also learn by interacting with community members,a similar set of principles may strengthen the ethical practice of service-learning. This article identifies ethical concerns ainvolved with service-learning students enter communities and draws on the Belmont Report and three research methodologies invested in responsible university interaction with underserved populations--decolonial, feminist, and participatory--to offer a set of guidelines for practicing ethical service-learning.
The emotional dynamics for community members involved in university-community partnerships remain untheorized and often unrecognized. This article explores the fear minoritized high school students expressed about working with college composition students, offering suggestions for how composition teachers can use the strategies of personalismo, affirmation, rigor, and role fluidity to create more responsive community partnerships. Grounded in insights from community partners, the study suggests that knowledge-making might change in community-based pedagogies if dominant epistemologies can shift to understand community members as producers of knowledge.
Listen to the CCC podcast about this article.
"Positionality and Possibility: Tactics and Strategies for Graduate Student Community Engagement.” Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning vol. 24, no. 1, 2017. (Co-author with UNL graduate students Katie McWain, Marcus Meade, & Adam Hubrig).
Drawing on the authors’ experiences initiating and directing a community partnership program, this article illustrates how graduate students who lead engagement programs can be caught between forces that pull them toward tactical partnerships unaffiliated with the university and strategic partnerships incorporated into departments. Conceived as distinct models by philosopher de Certeau (1984) and extended in Mathieu’s Tactics of Hope (2005), tactics and strategies theorize the impact of integrating with powerful institutions or remaining independent. Using narrative illustrations from their own graduate-founded engagement program, the authors argue that the dichotomous framework of tactics and strategies does not provide the complexity necessary to successfully maneuver within institutional and community dynamics. Instead, tactics and strategies is reconceptualized as the basis of a decision-facilitating heuristic for graduate-student led community initiatives to increase students’ agency to navigate institutional forces.
“Reciprocity and Power Dynamics: Community Members Grading Students." Reflections vol 17, no 2, 2017, pp. 5-42 (Co-author with Jessica Shumake).
This article explores the dynamic practice of inviting community members to grade college students on their work in community-engaged partnerships. The authors articulate theories of writing assessment with theories of reciprocity to argue that community-based student evaluations can be a valid and ethical form of assessment, and discuss a case study in which loca youth graded college students to offer eight best practices for implementing community-based assessment. As reciprocity is often underemphasized in practice, community evaluations provide a strategy for shifting power toward community members, potentially reinvigorating applications of reciprocity to make them more substantial and meaningful.
“Silent Partners: Developing a Critical Understanding of Community Partners in Technical Communication Service-Learning Pedagogies.” Technical Communication Quarterly. vol. 25, no. 1, 2016, pp. 48-66. (Co-author with Amy Kimme Hea)
Although many technical communication teachers and programs integrate some form of service-learning pedagogy, there is a dearth of technical communication research on the silent partners of these projects: the community partners. Drawing upon research data from 14 former community partners of professional writing service-learning courses, the authors suggest that understanding community partners’ own self-defined stakes in service-learning projects can challenge hyperpragmatist representations of community partners and aid us in the continued creation, management, and critical evaluation of service-learning pedagogies and curricula.
“Socializing Democracy: The Community Literacy Pedagogy of Jane Addams.” Community Literacy Journal. vol. 8, no. 4, Spring 2014, pp. 1-16.
This article reclaims Jane Addams as a community literacy pedagogue, explicating her pedagogical theory through an analysis of her social thought. Addams’ goal of “socializing democracy” through education led her to both encourage immigrant students to associate across difference and to assimilate into dominant literacies—tensions present in today’s community literacy contexts. The article includes suggestions for rhetorically redeploying Addams’ pedagogy in contemporary writing instruction.
“Human ‘Subjects’ Protection: A Source for Ethical Service-Learning Practice.” Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning. vol. 18, no. 2, 2012, pp. 29-39.
Human subjects research ethics were developed to ensure responsible conduct when university researchers learn by interacting with community members. As service-learning students also learn by interacting with community members,a similar set of principles may strengthen the ethical practice of service-learning. This article identifies ethical concerns ainvolved with service-learning students enter communities and draws on the Belmont Report and three research methodologies invested in responsible university interaction with underserved populations--decolonial, feminist, and participatory--to offer a set of guidelines for practicing ethical service-learning.
Book Chapters
“It was Sort of Hard to Understand Them at Times: Community Perspectives on ELL Students in Service-Learning
Partnerships.” Learning the Language of Global Citizenship: Strengthening Service-Learning in TESOL. Ed. James Perren
and Adrian Wurr. Common Ground Publishers, 2015, pp. 169-193.
Scholars are increasingly exploring service-learning as an approach to TESOL pedagogy, but little scholarship exists on the experiences of the community members who work with ELL students. This chapter draws on interviews with a high school English teacher and three of her students who were "served" by a mentoring program with a college composition class of international students. Interviewees revealed the complex ways that their service-learning experiences were impacted by the college students' processes of language and culture acquisition. In particular, the community members offered insights into how traditional service-learning power dynamics between server and served can be disrupted in TESOL collaborations when community partners are more proficient in English than the service-learning students, shifting notions of who the "expert" is in the relationship. The chapter concludes with recommendations for service-learning practitioners and researchers on how to create stronger TESOL service-learning collaborations with community partners, including suggestions for partnership framing, curriculum design, localized formative program assessment, and future research.
“An Architecture of Participation: Working with Web 2.0 Technologies and High School Student Researchers to Improve a Service-Learning Partnership.” Higher Education, Emerging Technologies, and Community Partnerships: Concepts, Models, and Applications. Ed. Melody A. Bowdon and Russell Carpenter. IGI Global, 2011, pp. 1-14.
This case study, collaboratively authored by a university researcher and five high school students, presents a model for assessing community partnerships that employs Web 2.0 technologies to facilitate participatory programs and evaluations. A research team of high school students undertook an evaluation of a service-learning partnership titled Wildcat Writers that sponsors online writing exchanges between high school and college English courses. The evaluation project used a participatory action research (PAR) approach, which involves (1) including community members as equal co-researchers, (2) respecting experiential knowledge, and (3) working toward mutually-conceived positive change. This case study demonstrates how Web 2.0 tools provide an architecture of participation that supports a PAR approach to assessing and improving community partnerships.
Partnerships.” Learning the Language of Global Citizenship: Strengthening Service-Learning in TESOL. Ed. James Perren
and Adrian Wurr. Common Ground Publishers, 2015, pp. 169-193.
Scholars are increasingly exploring service-learning as an approach to TESOL pedagogy, but little scholarship exists on the experiences of the community members who work with ELL students. This chapter draws on interviews with a high school English teacher and three of her students who were "served" by a mentoring program with a college composition class of international students. Interviewees revealed the complex ways that their service-learning experiences were impacted by the college students' processes of language and culture acquisition. In particular, the community members offered insights into how traditional service-learning power dynamics between server and served can be disrupted in TESOL collaborations when community partners are more proficient in English than the service-learning students, shifting notions of who the "expert" is in the relationship. The chapter concludes with recommendations for service-learning practitioners and researchers on how to create stronger TESOL service-learning collaborations with community partners, including suggestions for partnership framing, curriculum design, localized formative program assessment, and future research.
“An Architecture of Participation: Working with Web 2.0 Technologies and High School Student Researchers to Improve a Service-Learning Partnership.” Higher Education, Emerging Technologies, and Community Partnerships: Concepts, Models, and Applications. Ed. Melody A. Bowdon and Russell Carpenter. IGI Global, 2011, pp. 1-14.
This case study, collaboratively authored by a university researcher and five high school students, presents a model for assessing community partnerships that employs Web 2.0 technologies to facilitate participatory programs and evaluations. A research team of high school students undertook an evaluation of a service-learning partnership titled Wildcat Writers that sponsors online writing exchanges between high school and college English courses. The evaluation project used a participatory action research (PAR) approach, which involves (1) including community members as equal co-researchers, (2) respecting experiential knowledge, and (3) working toward mutually-conceived positive change. This case study demonstrates how Web 2.0 tools provide an architecture of participation that supports a PAR approach to assessing and improving community partnerships.
Reviews
"Review of Paul Feigenbaum's Collaborative Imagination: Earning Activism Through Literacy Education." Community Literacy Journal, 2017, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 104-109.
“Review Phyllis Ryder’s Rhetorics for Community Action.” Rhetoric Review 31.2 (2012): 188-202. Print. (Co-author with John Warnock).
“Review Phyllis Ryder’s Rhetorics for Community Action.” Rhetoric Review 31.2 (2012): 188-202. Print. (Co-author with John Warnock).