1) The Problem: Service learning has a lot of potential for critical analysis, especially in TC classes, but it often doesn't live up to our expectations of it. This is because of a few reasons. A) completing a SL course is difficult because students have to do all of the "normal" stuff in a more contextualized way, (and teachers have it difficult for teaching, coordinating, and facilitating these SL projects as well) so its hard to cram in critical reflection too. B) Students get too caught up in meeting the expectations of their partners that they ignore the ethical consequences of their work and fail to empower the stakeholders. C) often the reflections that are implemented in SL classes are uncritical hyperpragmatic. D) students see SL in a self-centered way, either focusing on how the experience changed them personally, or how great they are for coming in and solving the ig'nant folks' problems. or E) they are uncomfortable with seeing themselves as "activist" and prefer "consultant" instead. F) good reflection that is included is often peripheral to the course, appearing at the end when it is too late to act upon.
2) The Solution: Add cultural studies to the SL approach! He shares the definition provided by Grossberg, which defines CS as "concerned with the ways texts and discourses are produced within, inserted into, and operate in the everyday lives of human beings and social formations, so as to reproduce, struggle against, and perhaps transform the existing structures of power." Scott explains that CS emphasizes critiquing structures of power and how these shape identities and relationships as well as a call to civic action, which happen to work perfectly with the aims of SL. Then, he explains in more depth how these two pedagogies work in conjunction with each other by applying them to three specific assignments: project proposals, discourse analyses, and final reports. For example, Scott takes the typical SL final report (which consisted of students informing their teacher of what they learned by assessing their process and product) and turned it into an "action plan". This new assignment has students recommend ways to ethically revise or build on their projects. Scott ends by saying that he would like to experiment with SL-cultural studies projects across multiple classes with the same group of students. (So AKA multi-semestered classes. In my opinion, he doesn't give enough space to the fact that SL classes generally need more time to be truly successful. I would also be interested in how this would play out across multiple classes with different students--in the same and different semesters. ...good practice for inter-community communication, maybe?)
3) Questions:
i) Is a SL-CS-based classroom practical for most courses in terms of time? (aren't there ethical issues with starting and stopping a project in so little time? what about schools on quarter systems? ...are there ways to get around these time constraints? can we really get DEEP reflection with so much going on in one course?)
ii) What are some SMALLER assignments that might intersect SL and CS? (considering Scott seems to give examples of rather large assignments....)
4) Connections: All of these chapters seem to have the same worry: students are too hyperpragmatic, and cultural studies promises to fix this. A lot of past readings always seemed to mention how TC courses should have more hands-on/real-world activities (like SL) in order to encourage rhetorical reflection and learning, so it is interesting that Scott points out that this is not enough. It seems like this approach promises to fix some of the problems laid out by the older article on pseudotransactionality.
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