Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric Jan 2020 Open Access

The Long-Term Effects of Service-Learning on Composition Students

Chris Iverson

Abstract

Over the last roughly twenty years, or between 2000 and 2019, scholarship on community writing has built upon a focus on service-learning composition courses to include the roles of writing and rhetoric in community engagement more generally, including necessary inquiry into the ethics of community engagement altogether. In this time, the longer-term effects of service-learning writing courses, specifically on college students, have gone unexamined. This study looks at three former students who took service-learning composition courses at the University of Connecticut to determine what, if any, long-term effects the experience had on them. The three former service-learners differ in how they recall their experiences, but they overlap in key places, such as their awareness of rhetoric as social, their commitment to effecting community change, and their belief that the service-learning experience affected them in subtle ways that nonetheless influenced their approaches to community action. This three-participant study, part of a larger project based on retrospective interviews with students formerly enrolled in service-learning courses, shows that such courses may not create dramatic change in students’ rhetorical awareness or approach to community action, but the subtle changes they can promise informed the subjects in my study in unexpected ways over time.

Journal
Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric
Published
2020-01-01
DOI
10.59236/rjv19i2pp11-37
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Topics
rhetorical criticism writing pedagogy service learning
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