Book Review Review of Writing Partnerships: Service-Learning in Composition, by Thomas Deans Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2000 Reviewed by Kevin Ball Youngstown State University

The growing number of service-learning partnerships being formed between universities and communities represents one of the most promising and exciting movements in rhetoric and composition. Now that this first wave of community-based college writing courses has been implemented, it is imperative that teachers continue to reflect upon the assumptions and aims embedded in their own practices in order to ensure effective pedagogy. Thomas Deans’s Writing Partnerships: Service-Learning in Composition provides a valuable contribution to an emerging body of research investigating the intersections of service-learning, college writing pedagogy, and composition studies.

Scope:

In Writing Partnerships, Deans explores John Dewey’s pragmatic experimentalism and Paulo Freire’s notion of praxis in order to develop a theoretical framework to guide the development of community writing initiatives. Despite the differences between their educational philosophies, Dewey and Freire serve as theoretical anchors for many service-learning advocates.

Because of the vast range of community writing programs, and since the service-learning movement as a whole remains largely unstudied, Deans begins his analysis by dividing community writing programs into three categories: writing  for the community, writing about the community, and writing with the community. Chapters 3–5 document exemplary service-learning initiatives.

Writing for the Community:

Writing  for the community occurs as part of initiatives that bring college students into partnership with nonprofit agencies. Deans examines a Writing in Sport Management course—part of a junior-year writing across the curriculum requirement for sport management students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst—to illustrate the writing-for-the-community paradigm. One of the most distinctive qualities of this course is its work with upper-division students. Deans comments: “[W]hile some research has been done on first-year service-learning courses, precious little is available on service-learning in upper-division and writing across the curriculum courses” (55).

Writing about the Community:

Deans discusses Bruce Herzberg’s Expository Writing I and II courses at Bentley College as exemplars of service-learning courses designed to write about the community (courses which ask students to do community service and then reflect on their community-based experiences in writing). Herzberg’s work with Bentley students illustrates not only the role of critical pedagogy in service-learning, but also the way writing about the community values academic and critical literacies as well as academic and personal discourses.

Writing with the Community:

The Community Literacy Center (CLC), a partnership of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Community House in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, serves as a “bench mark” for writing with the community. Deans acknowledges a lack of student voices and perspectives in his research of the CLC. While his research of the other two service-learning sites also contains limited student voices, Deans explains that his research agenda focuses instead on the work of these sites as they inform our understanding of college writers, emerging models of community-based writing courses, and the discourse of composition studies.

In his final chapter, “Prospects for Service-Learning in Composition,” Deans notes that while some of the practices in service-learning courses mirror those of other English courses, there are several key departures. For instance, technical writing courses, which encourage “community” internships, frequently look to corporate rather than nonprofit communities for motivation and models. And while critical pedagogy and cultural studies courses may encourage reflection similar to service-learning, Deans argues that they act as a classroom-based, academic pursuit rather than as a pragmatic, writing-based intervention in the community.

Apparatus:

Appendices include course materials and student samples from a service-learning course Deans taught at Kansas State University. Also of interest is an annotated list of community writing courses and programs nationwide, as well as a list of service-learning resources and contacts. The rapid growth of service-learning inhibits attempts at comprehensiveness, but Deans’ lists indicate the movement’s scope and diversity.

Conclusion:

Deans points to a 1996 CCCC roundtable at which presenters (Deans included) lacked a vocabulary for making distinctions among service-learning approaches and learning goals as a significant moment in his study. Deans’ book establishes the beginnings of such a vocabulary, its typology laying out significant options so that teachers can make informed choices about the approaches best suited to the opportunities and constraints of their particular communities and institutional contexts.

Most service-learning courses probably draw on more than one of the three paradigms described in Writing Partnerships. What is important, Deans argues, is that the multiple literacies embedded in such combinations are implemented deliberately and thoughtfully so that they complement one another. Thus, his book serves as a framework for further research into programs that combine community writing paradigms. Despite the challenges, Deans believes that weaving strands of multiple paradigms into a single course is possible. His book begins that pedagogical weaving.

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