My research explores the dynamics of university-community partnerships, public rhetorics, professional writing, and theories of democracy. My articles and book reviews have been published in the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, Community Literacy Journal, Technical Communication Quarterly, and Rhetoric Review, 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 Project
Community Perspectives of Community-Engaged Teaching
Community Perspectives of Community-Engaged Teaching centers on the insights gleaned from over 45 interviews with community members to answer questions about:
I trace this theory of knowledge across research sites in three common types of service-learning in rhetoric and composition, drawing from interviews of community members at each site: youth mentored in writing by college students, non-profit staff who serve as clients for student projects, and community members who work with graduate students. I foreground a different component of the Community Knowledge Framework contributed by community members—relationality, distribution, and openness—with each site. In the chapter on youth writing collaborations, for example, youth reveal that community members may experience fear in working with college students due to discourses that frame community members as unknowledgeable, but relational strategies can counteract fear and create healthier collaborations. Non-profit staff share that most student-created projects are never used, not because of weak design or poor grammar, but because students often have an insufficient understanding of how knowledge circulates in community organizations. They recommend pedagogical techniques for helping students participate in distributed knowledge networks. And finally, community members who worked with graduate students discuss how particular dispositions of openness are needed for engagement, and they offer suggestions for fostering these kinds of dispositions in students. The final chapter takes the Community Knowledge Framework to the structural level, offering a robust tour of program design structures that can radically reorient community-based learning toward community voices: community advisory boards, participatory program evaluation, program framing, and community-based student grading.
Community Perspectives is the first study to present a deep analysis of community resident experiences of service-learning pedagogies. This book responds to the expanding momentum in higher education for community-based learning, including the “public turn” in rhetoric and composition, and the oft-stated concern that what’s missing in research on community-based learning is the community itself (Cruz and Giles; Kimme Hea). Randy Stoecker and Elizabeth Tryon’s widely-celebrated 2011 book explores non-profit staff insights on service-learning, but their work leaves untouched the very different experiences of community residents—the adult literacy learners, urban youth, and refugee families who work with students. Without awareness of the perspectives of community residents, instructors who use service-learning risk creating partnerships that do more harm than good, both for community members who may be negatively impacted and for students who learn ineffective ways of thinking, writing, and being in community contexts.
The insights of community members throughout the book contribute to theories of writing and service-learning as well as concrete practices that can impact the way community-based learning is taught. But perhaps most provocatively, these insights challenge common assumptions about who can create knowledge about community-based learning.
- what it’s like to be someone’s “service project” in service-learning
- what community members can teach us about how to teach in community contexts, especially how to teach writing,
- how particular approaches to making knowledge can facilitate healthier partnerships.
I trace this theory of knowledge across research sites in three common types of service-learning in rhetoric and composition, drawing from interviews of community members at each site: youth mentored in writing by college students, non-profit staff who serve as clients for student projects, and community members who work with graduate students. I foreground a different component of the Community Knowledge Framework contributed by community members—relationality, distribution, and openness—with each site. In the chapter on youth writing collaborations, for example, youth reveal that community members may experience fear in working with college students due to discourses that frame community members as unknowledgeable, but relational strategies can counteract fear and create healthier collaborations. Non-profit staff share that most student-created projects are never used, not because of weak design or poor grammar, but because students often have an insufficient understanding of how knowledge circulates in community organizations. They recommend pedagogical techniques for helping students participate in distributed knowledge networks. And finally, community members who worked with graduate students discuss how particular dispositions of openness are needed for engagement, and they offer suggestions for fostering these kinds of dispositions in students. The final chapter takes the Community Knowledge Framework to the structural level, offering a robust tour of program design structures that can radically reorient community-based learning toward community voices: community advisory boards, participatory program evaluation, program framing, and community-based student grading.
Community Perspectives is the first study to present a deep analysis of community resident experiences of service-learning pedagogies. This book responds to the expanding momentum in higher education for community-based learning, including the “public turn” in rhetoric and composition, and the oft-stated concern that what’s missing in research on community-based learning is the community itself (Cruz and Giles; Kimme Hea). Randy Stoecker and Elizabeth Tryon’s widely-celebrated 2011 book explores non-profit staff insights on service-learning, but their work leaves untouched the very different experiences of community residents—the adult literacy learners, urban youth, and refugee families who work with students. Without awareness of the perspectives of community residents, instructors who use service-learning risk creating partnerships that do more harm than good, both for community members who may be negatively impacted and for students who learn ineffective ways of thinking, writing, and being in community contexts.
The insights of community members throughout the book contribute to theories of writing and service-learning as well as concrete practices that can impact the way community-based learning is taught. But perhaps most provocatively, these insights challenge common assumptions about who can create knowledge about community-based learning.
Peer Reviewed Articles
“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 com- munity partners. Drawing upon research data from 14 former community partners of professional writing service-learning courses, the authors sug- gest 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 Phyllis Ryder’s Rhetorics for Community Action.” Rhetoric Review 31.2 (2012): 188-202. Print. (Co-author with John Warnock).
