Service-learning is a Feminist Issue: Transforming Communication Pedagogy

Abstract

How do we “do” emancipatory feminist teaching when we have not observed it or experienced it ourselves? The author argues here that service-learning is a useful strategy for feminist communication educators to begin challenging the power relationships of traditional pedagogy. Pioneered in the 1960s and '70s, this pairing of traditional course work with community service is now used as a learning model in schools around the nation. Because service-learning allows educators to forge relational links between ourselves, our students, our neighbors, and the communities in which we live, it deserves careful consideration from feminist educators.