Bickford, Donna M., and Nedra Reynolds. "Activism and Service Learning: Reframing Volunteerism as Acts of Dissent." Pedagogy 2 (2002): 229-252.
Bickford and Reynolds notice that their service learning students often express enthusiasm for volunteering but a negative, resistant attitude toward activism. They wonder what the causes and implications of this trend might be. They critique the ASL literature as well as practices for not emphasizing two specific kinds of context: history and geography: "too often infused with the volunteer ethos...that ignores the structural reasons to help others" (230).
They mean to theorize activism as a complementary pedagogy/practice to ASL. In ASL "relationships are clearly based on difference" (237)--us and them, university and agency, but move toward a difference-erasing community-unity. "Activism argues for relationships based on connection" (237): grassroots organizing where various agents agitate for an issue, "a shared goal of creating social change" (237), but acknowledges that difference matters.
Change student anti-activism perception by teaching the history of consciousness-raising (eg, feminism) and organizing (Jane Addams, Dorothy Day, everyday struggles). Get students engaged critically with the politics of space and place via critical methodologies like mapping neighborhoods and even just the campus. They want to "...keep the emphasis of their work on the structural formations of communities rather on their individual members" (243). Give students choice in determining projects--even if they choose acts of dissent in support of causes we despise.
Some thoughts: At what point does place-based pedagogy become de-humanized? I wonder this about Reynolds other work too--while I'm drawn to the materiality of place, I want to revise this into a person-in-place pedagogy. Kind of like a text-in-context pedagogy. That person-in-place model (Loeb is useful here) seems to be the most material rhetoric of all. Does volunteering have an affective component ("happy talk") that activism lacks? After all, activism has an agonistic component (working class) that's at odds with middle-class decorum of higher ed.
Showing posts with label choice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label choice. Show all posts
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Heilker
Heilker, Paul. "Rhetoric Made Real: Civic Discourse and Writing Beyond the Curriculum." Writing the Community: Concepts and Models for Service Learning in Composition. Ed. Linda Adler-Kassner et al. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education, 1997. 71-77.
Go beyond the classroom to give students real rhetorical situation and also "to understand writing as social action" (71). Rhetorical understanding happens when students do real writing projects at agencies. Give them choice to avoid indoctrinating with a particular political position and transcend the warm-up model of student writing: "calisthentics before the big game" (76).
Go beyond the classroom to give students real rhetorical situation and also "to understand writing as social action" (71). Rhetorical understanding happens when students do real writing projects at agencies. Give them choice to avoid indoctrinating with a particular political position and transcend the warm-up model of student writing: "calisthentics before the big game" (76).
Bacon
Bacon, Nora. "Community Service Writing: Problems, Challenges, Questions." Writing the Community: Concepts and Models for Service Learning in Composition. Ed. Linda Adler-Kassner et al. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education, 1997. 39-55.
Bacon discusses the work of the Community Service Writing (CSW) program at Stanford and San Fran State U, finding that students were largely enthusiastic and engaged and at times deepened and changed their political beliefs about given issues. Bacon finds that students "were functioning not as students but as writers" (42), thanks to ASL providing a real rhetorical situation (no longer writing just for the teaacher). She expresses concern that writing for agencies can sometimes foster authenticity or voice--since now students are writing for the agency instead of themselves. One way to deal in part with this problematic is to provide students with choice in what agency they serve (45). Bacon is also concerned about evaluating the genres that stem from ASL partnerships but advocates inviting site supervisors to assess; she worries, though, that this potentially can compromise the teacher's authority.
Many of the assumptions and ideas here (the emphasis on students and institutions) are critiqued in much of the later ASL scholarship (Matthieu, Grabill, much of Ellen Cushman's work). Bacon doesn't deal with the problematic of burdening sites with more work and she certainly doesn't foreground preferential option.
Bacon discusses the work of the Community Service Writing (CSW) program at Stanford and San Fran State U, finding that students were largely enthusiastic and engaged and at times deepened and changed their political beliefs about given issues. Bacon finds that students "were functioning not as students but as writers" (42), thanks to ASL providing a real rhetorical situation (no longer writing just for the teaacher). She expresses concern that writing for agencies can sometimes foster authenticity or voice--since now students are writing for the agency instead of themselves. One way to deal in part with this problematic is to provide students with choice in what agency they serve (45). Bacon is also concerned about evaluating the genres that stem from ASL partnerships but advocates inviting site supervisors to assess; she worries, though, that this potentially can compromise the teacher's authority.
Many of the assumptions and ideas here (the emphasis on students and institutions) are critiqued in much of the later ASL scholarship (Matthieu, Grabill, much of Ellen Cushman's work). Bacon doesn't deal with the problematic of burdening sites with more work and she certainly doesn't foreground preferential option.
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