The CCCC Recognizes That Combining Academic Learning with Community Engagement Most Often
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In 2003 CCCC Chair Shirley Wilson Logan asked the CCCC Committee on Service-Learning and Community Literacy to write a position statement on service-learning. The committee worked through drafts for two years and in 2005 invited twenty additional CCCC members with a special interest in service-learning to comment on the draft. The version below has been endorsed by the CCCC Service-Learning and Community Literacy Committee and we request that the Executive Committee consider it for approval.
We were conflicted about whether to include a selected bibliography at the end of the statement and would appreciate the Executive Committee’s preference on that issue. In place of (or in addition to) the selected bibliography, we could include a link to a the report that is soon to be submitted by the group that received a grant from the 2004-2005 CCCC Research Initiative to do a project titled "Community-Based and Service-Learning Writing Initiatives: A Survey of Scholarship and Agenda for Research," which includes a longer master bibliography, if that report and bibliography will be posted to the NCTE website.
CCCC Position Statement on Service-Learning and Community- Based Writing
Teachers and researchers in rhetoric, composition, and communication have created a range of courses and programs that combine academic study and community action. Such initiatives invite student writers both to step back and analyze complex social problems and to step up and address them. As participants integrate reading, writing, and civic engagement, they rekindle a creative tension common to both classical rhetoric and American higher education: joining intellectual inquiry with service to the public good.
Writing is at once an individual and a social activity; the teaching of writing should likewise encourage individual inquiry and social practices. Those social practices may take place within the classroom, yet teachers and students are increasingly recognizing the value of extending the scope of learning and interaction beyond the classroom by establishing university-community partnerships. Those partnerships go by many names: service-learning, community-based writing, public literacy, literate social action, intercultural inquiry, civic engagement, and community literacy. They can be found throughout the college curriculum, from first-year composition through graduate courses; some also reside outside formal curricular structures. And they take many forms: courses that feature pragmatic writing projects for community organizations or public audiences, courses that pair community service or fieldwork with related readings and assignments, university/school partnerships, technical communication projects for community organizations, activism and advocacy, community literacy programs, and more. The most mature partnerships supplement teaching and outreach with assessment and research; they also work toward sustainability.
Service-learning and writing are a natural fit, and community-based pedagogies mark an important affirmation of the pragmatic, social, and ethical dimensions of writing and rhetoric. Well-designed service-learning courses can leverage the particular power of writing for academic learning, personal and social reflection, collaborative inquiry, creative expression, cultural critique, and social change. 2
Emerging research suggests promising academic and personal outcomes for students engaged in community-based learning. Still, we have much to learn about what happens as student writers enter community contexts as part of their academic work. Faculty, like students, are well advised to approach community-based projects in a spirit of inquiry.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES While the scope and nature of community/university partnerships vary—from a single unit embedded in a course to a grassroots literacy program—they should share several core features. All programs should not only promote effective learning and writing but also respond to community concerns in ways that are reciprocal and sustainable.
Summarizing the deliberations of scholars and practitioners in the national service-learning community, Honnet and Poulson propose ten principles of good practice for service-learning programs. They affirm that an effective program should
1. Engage people in responsible and challenging actions for the common good. 2. Provide structured opportunities for people to reflect critically on their service experience. 3. Articulate clear service and learning goals for everyone involved 4. Allow for those [community members] with needs to define those needs 5. Clarify the responsibilities of each person and organization involved 6. Match service providers and service needs through a process that recognizes changing circumstances 7. Expect genuine, active and sustained organizational commitment 8. Include training, supervision, monitoring, support, recognition, and evaluation to meet service and learning goals 9. Ensure that the time commitment for service and learning is flexible, appropriate, and in the best interests of all involved 10. Be committed to program participation by all stakeholders and with diverse populations.
The Conference on College Composition and Communication endorses these principles of good practice. However, it affirms that faculty, writing program administrators, and researchers engaged in university/community partnerships that hinge on writing and rhetoric should recognize additional responsibilities, as outlined below.
GUIDELINES FOR FACULTY, WRITING PROGRAMS, AND RESEARCHERS
Faculty should Consult with community partners when planning, carrying out, and assessing community-based projects. Articulate specific rhetorical, analytical, and performance goals for students, and then align curriculum, pedagogy, community work, and assessment methods with those goals. Community service alone should not merit academic credit. Make clear to students the purpose(s) for including community-based experiences in a course and the criteria by which student work will be assessed. 3
Prepare students for the practical, ethical, and intellectual challenges of outreach by structuring opportunities for them to reflect on the complexities of community service and on the dynamics of working across cultural, ethnic, and class differences. Develop flexible strategies for course design and implementation because even when courses are planned carefully, emerging community circumstances often demand last-minute course adaptations and situated problem-solving. Encourage participants to reflect on how all forms of rhetoric, writing, and literacy are shaped by particular social contexts, and by extension, how school- based literacies relate to community-based literacies. Prepare students who are doing writing projects with nonprofit agencies for the considerable rhetorical challenges of entering new organizations, practicing new genres, and using emerging technologies. Novices need special scaffolding and coaching if they are to succeed in workplace and civic writing tasks. Consult the relevant empirical and theoretical scholarship in composition, rhetoric, and service-learning in order to understand the history, ideology, and implications of one’s teaching in light of alternative approaches to community writing pedagogies.
Deans, Department Chairs, and Writing Program Administrators, in concert with other leaders at their institutions, should Recognize the substantial investment of time, energy, and expertise that it takes to establish community partnerships and to plan, teach, assess, and sustain service- learning courses. Administrators should compensate instructors accordingly with course releases, class size reductions, stipends, and/or clerical support. Affirm that developing community literacy programs and teaching service- learning courses often exemplify the scholarship of teaching and the scholarship of application. This work, when done well, should be recognized and rewarded in annual reviews and tenure/promotion processes. Work toward the sustainability of community partnerships by building an infrastructure that supports them. This should involve pre-service training, ongoing faculty development, regular consultation with community partners, and participation in regional and national networks keyed to service-learning. Assess programs regularly, attending not only to student learning but also to the consequences for local community partners and other local constituencies.
Researchers who focus on community-based writing are contributing to a growing body of scholarship. When conducting their work, researchers should Gain approval for research that involves human subjects from their own Institutional Review Boards and work in accord with the CCCC Position Statement on the Ethical Treatment of Students and Student Writing in Composition Studies. Make the research process transparent to both students and community partners, and invite them, when possible, into the research, review, and dissemination processes. 4
Share resources, expertise and findings in ways that could benefit students, community partners, the local community, and fellow researchers.
Selected Bibliography
Adler-Kassner, Linda, Robert Crooks, and Ann Watters, eds. Writing the Community: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Composition. Washington, DC: American Association of Higher Education, 1997. Astin, Alexander W., Vogelgesang, Lori J., Ikeda, Elaine K., and Yee, Jennifer A. How Service Learning Affects Students. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA, 2000.
Wingspread Special Report. Racine, WI: The Johnson Foundation, Inc., 1989. Huckin, Thomas N. “Technical Writing and Community Service.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 11 (1997): 49-59. Jacoby, Barbara, and Associates, eds. Service-Learning in Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1996. Jolliffe, David A. “Writing Across the Curriculum and Service Learning: Kairos, Genre and Collaboration.” WAC for the New Millenium. Susan McLeod, Eric Miraglia, Margot Soven, and Christopher Thaiss, Editors. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2001: 86-108. Julier, Laura. "Community Service Pedagogy." A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. Eds. Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. Morton, Keith. "The Irony of Service: Charity, Project and Social Change in Service-Learning." Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning 2 (fall 1995): 19-32. Parks, Steve and Eli Goldblatt. "Writing Beyond the Curriculum: Fostering New Collaborations in Literacy." College English 62 (2000): 584-606. Peck, Wayne Campbell, Linda Flower, and Lorraine Higgins. “Community Literacy.” College Composition and Communication 46 (1995): 199-222. Reflections: A Journal of Writing, Service-Learning and Community Literacy.