This article discusses the successes and vulnerabilities associated with combining the pedagogical methods of Theater, Composition, and Community Literacy in the Composition classroom. It examines how the ideas of Augusto Boal's "Theatre of the Oppressed" and Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" can be combined to support…

In fields such as sociolinguistics and composition and rhetoric, communication is increasingly understood as translingual, that is, as negotiated socially across languages. Those of us engaged in community literacy can and should recognize the deeply multilingual nature of the communities in which we work, and we should understand, embrace, and…

This article reclaims Jane Addams as a community literacy pedagogue and explicates her pedagogical theory through an analysis of her social thought. Addams' goal of "socializing democracy" through education led her to both encourage immigrant students to associate across difference and to assimilate into dominant literacies--tensions…

Educators focused on community literacy and public engagement have access to a unique critical platform from which larger social issues that impact us both as a whole and on very personal levels are open to exploration. Being particularly situated to have significant impact on community, literacy work in this area may require uncommon pedagogical…

Why, if service learning has "come a long way," has it not had the impact on the university or on the community that proponents expected? This article details interviews with eight teachers at Virginia Tech who use service learning in their classrooms, with particular attention to the convergence of literacies that occurs when teachers,…

This article explores similarities in literacy learning across various life-span stages and considers what actions must be taken to improve literacy attainment and achievement, whether the delivery site is prekindergarten, elementary, secondary, adult, family, workplace, volunteer, or community literacy. The emphasis here is on what it takes to…