Community Engagement in a Graduate-Level Community Literacy Course

Abstract

A case study of a graduate-level community literacy seminar that involved a tutoring project with adult digital literacy learners, this essay illustrates the value of community outreach and service-learning for graduate students in writing studies. Presenting multiple perspectives through critical reflection, student authors describe how their experiences contextualized, enhanced, and complicated their theoretical knowledge of public rhetoric and community literacy. Inspired by her students’ reflections, the faculty co-author issues a call to graduate programs in writing, rhetoric, literacy studies, and technical communication to develop a conscious commitment to graduate students’ civic engagement by supporting opportunities to learn, teach, and research with community partners.

Chapter 13. Literacy, Praxis and Participation in Environmental Deliberation

“…prevalent. Individual papers and panels focusing on community engagement are becoming more prominent at our local, national, and international conferences; engaged scholarship is not only being accepted into flagship journals, but also becoming the focus of special issues, monographs, edited collections, and books; MLA Job List postings are calling for community-engaged specializations in their announcements; and graduate programs are adding course offerings in community literacies (Fero et al, 2008), civic responsibility (Bowen et al, 2014), or service learning within feminist activist frames .…”