COMPARATIVE COLLECTIVE COMMUNITY-BASED ......COMPARATIVE COLLECTIVE COMMUNITY-BASED LEARNING 277...

COMPARATIVE COLLECTIVE COMMUNITY-BASEDLEARNING: THE "POSSIBILITIES EOR CHANGE

IN AMERICAN COMMUNITIES" PROGRAM*

This article introduces an approach to service learning based on students' col-lective engagement v^ith a range of community organizations. We explore theparticular benefits of this comparative collective community-based (CCC)learning model through a discussion of the "Possibilities for Change in Ameri-can Communities" program, which v/as begun by the authors in 2001. Theprogram exposes students to a diverse set of community contexts by integrat-ing a 32-day sleeper-bus trip around the eastern half of the U.S. into a year-long curriculum. We discuss the distinct advantages of such a program aswell as the tradeoffs associated with the comparative analysis of multiplecommunities. We conclude by exploring alternative ways to incorporate theCCC framework within more conventional community-based initiatives.

DAVID CUNNEVGHAM

Brandeis University

CHERYL KINGMA-KDEKHOFER

Brandeis University

FOR SOCIOLOGISTS, teaching in a classroomhas certain inherent limitations, as the disci-pline is firmly rooted in analyses of the in-terpersonal, institutional, and macro-levelrelations that constitute the world "outthere." To directly engage with the peopleand places that generally serve as the"material" for classroom learning, and togain a deeper understanding of the localbases for social movement activity, we de-signed "Possibilities for Change in Ameri-

*We are indebted to many groups and indi-viduals for their help in making "Possibilitiesfor Change" a reality. The program has bene-fited from the generous support of the BrandeisUniversity Office of the President, Dean of Artsand Sciences, Women's Studies Research Cen-ter, and Department of Sociology. For theirassistance before, during, and after our travels,we would like to thank Jehuda and ShulaReinharz, Jessie Ann Owens, Elaine Wong,John Hose, Peter Ljutich, Catherine Fallon,Elizabeth Hendler, Donna Desrochers, JudyHanley, Peter Conrad, Laura Regis, Anna Can-nold, Zahire Estrella, Meredith Schultz, SarahBoocock, Carolyn Goodman, Christian Daven-port, Deb Martin, Dawn Peebles, Alan Shapiro,James Perkins, Ernest Withers, Sister HelenPrejean, Douglas Brinkley, Dave Dennis, Joli-vette Anderson, Eleanor Smeal, Christine San-

can Communities," a year-long programincorporating 32 days of travel around theUnited States in a sleeper bus. Both ouroverall approach (sleeper-bus travel to avariety of sites) and substantive focus(social movements and social change) pro-vide a foundation for extending the benefitsof standard classroom-based models.

First, spending the whole of our days onthe road provides a way for students to takean active role in their education. The ex-

severo, Sarah Boonin, Liz Theoharis, NeilKiekhofer, John Tye, Tywanna Taylor, SamKnight, and Stanley Dearman. The programitself would not have been possible without thetireless work of Barb Browning, nor the pa-tience, good humor, and trust exhibited by thestudents who participated in its inaugural ver-sion during the summer of 2001, A more de-tailed account of this trip can be found on theprogram website: http//www, brandeis. edu/departments/sociology/bus. Please address allcorrespondence to David Cunningham, Depart-ment of Sociology, Brandeis University, MS071, Waltham, MA 02454-9110;e-mail: [email protected].

Editor's note: The reviewers were, inalphabetical order. Bob Edwards, Sam Marullo,and Charles Powers.

Teaching Sociology, Vol. 32, 2004 (July:276-290) 276

COMPARATIVE COLLECTIVE COMMUNITY-BASED LEARNING 277

perience of learning becomes an activeproduct of our collective energies and un-dertakings rather than the result of experi-ences and ideas abstracted from any fullsocial context. In our view, engaging di-rectly with subjects of interest is an essen-tial step in the learning process. In itself,this position is not terribly innovative; it iscommon in the current pedagogical litera-ture to view learning as more effectivewhen students actively participate in thetransmission of information (Boyer 1997;Collier and Morgan 2002; Dewey 1938;MaruUo 1998). This general insight has ledto the privileging of cooperative learningtechniques over more traditional passivelearning (lecturing) models (Goldsmid andWilson 1980; Johnson et al. 1981;McKeachie 1994). But leaving the tradi-tional classroom altogether to visit a widerange of communities, speak to their resi-dents, and work with their local organiza-tions provides an extension to this movetoward active, engaged learning. This sortof model fits roughly under the "servicelearning" umbrella in the literature(Mooney and Edwards 2001), though wedistinguish it from the range of existing out-of-class experiences by referring to it morespecifically as comparative collective com-munity-based (CCC) learning.

Second, the topic of social movements isespecially well suited to leaving the class-room (Cornelius 1998; Lofiand 1996; Ma-rullo and Edwards 2000; Reger and Dugan2001). While the primary benefit of similarcourses has come from students' immersionin the day-to-day activities of social move-ment organizations (SMOs), our CCCmodel is predicated on a comparative ap-proach, focused on providing students withdirect exposure to a wide range of groups.Seeing the activities of many of thesegroups firsthand, as well as how they con-nect with their respective local communi-ties, yields several payoffs. Most centrally,this approach allows us to understand howthese groups' grievances, orientations, andactivities are intimately tied to their localsurroundings. Examining an array of move-

ments within their local contexts allows usto connect elements of community structureto the emergence of collective action withinareas that, more often than not, look verydifferent from students' home or campusenvironments. While visiting many commu-nities within a short period of time pre-cludes meaningful embeddedness within anyparticular setting, this design does facilitatecomparative connections and reinforce thegeneral insight that action is deeply tied tosocial context.

In this paper, we promote a more activeform of sociology education, one thatbreaks down the walls that often separatethe classroom from our subjects of inquiry.Such goals are certainly in the vein of ser-vice learning models, though we supple-ment a move toward community-basedlearning with a model that provides a directand constant vehicle for assessing the workof SMOs in the context of our own collec-tive experiences. The CCC learning modelis also predicated upon group engagementwith a broad range of local communities,with an emphasis on thinking comparativelyacross varied contexts. We fully realize thatthe sort of traveling program described be-low is not feasible in many (or even likelyin most) cases. Such a program requires ahigh level of commitment from both in-structors and students and is both logisti-cally complicated and costly to implement.However, our goal is not to convince othersto block out a month of time and comman-deer the Beastie Boys' tour bus for theirclasses so much as it is to present a casestudy illustrating the benefits of CCC learn-ing programs. We see this general approachas fruitful for a wide range of courses butespecially well suited to those focused onactivism, community organizing, socialmovements, and social change.

In the next section, we discuss the Possi-bilities for Change program in more detailand then tie it to the pedagogical literatureconcerned with cooperative learning andservice learning. Having made a case forCCC learning generally, we then focus onhow such a program oriented around the

278 TEACHING SOCIOLOGY

theme of social change achieved results farbeyond what would have been possible ifwe had spent an equivalent amount of timein class on campus. We conclude by dis-cussing how a range of issues—includingstudent embeddedness within communitysettings, their reciprocal relationships withresident "hosts," and overall feasibility ofthe program's structure—bear upon the im-plementation ofthe CCC model.

"THE CLASS ON WHEELS":POSSIBILITffiS FOR CHANGEIN AMEMCAN COMMUNITIES

Possibilities for Change is a yearlong pro-gram in the Department of Sociology atBrandeis University. The program, organ-ized and run by the authors and doctoralstudent Barb Browning, consists of a two-course sequence offered on campus, supple-mented by a month-long trip around theeastern half of the United States on asleeper bus during the summer. The centralgoal of the travel component is to allowstudents to actively engage with individualsand organizations attempting to change es-tablished ways of viewing the world and toexperience firsthand the neighborhoods andcommunities that serve as the context fortheir efforts.

The program begins with a course taughtduring the spring semester before our de-parture on the bus. The class itself servesthree central functions. First, and primarily,it introduces ideas related to communitystructure, collective action, and socialchange. These ideas are continually revis-ited and applied during our travels, but herewe make use of class readings and groupdiscussion to create a common base ofknowledge. Our general focus is on themakeup of different communities as well ashow the structure of each type of commu-nity can be altered through the efforts ofparticular models of activist organization.To these ends, we examine how commu-nity-level processes—including residentialsegregation, school districting, and the po-licing of public space—create and sustain

inequalities between racial, ethnic, and classgroups. We then introduce a set of histori-cal and contemporary movements that havesuccessfully worked to reduce these system-atic inequalities, focusing on the variousstrategies and tactics utilized by each groupas well as its orientation to the broadercommunity. The second goal of this springcourse is to collectively participate in arange of group-building exercises, many ofwhich ideally are organized and run by thestudents, to create a positive and supportiveenvironment to facilitate our intense timetogether on the road. We also use our timetogether to fmalize our itinerary and prepareourselves for the central component of Pos-sibilities for Change: 32 days of sleeper-bustravel around the eastern half of the UnitedStates.

The travel route for the 2001 version ofthe program (which departed on May 27and returned on June 27) was roughly aclockwise loop around the eastern half ofthe country—first heading southward downthe East coast, across the deep South toNew Orleans, then following the Missis-sippi River northward before heading eastto return to campus. The route was de-signed with two things in mind. First, wewanted to visit as wide a range of commimi-ties as possible, consistent with our overallstrategy of comparatively examining thecontexts within which change occurs. To-ward this end, we spent time in large urbanareas (New York; Philadelphia; Washing-ton, DC; Atlanta; and New Orleans),"typical" suburbs (such as Levittown, PA,and Celebration, FL), and sparsely popu-lated rural communities (including Prince-ville, NC; Newbern, AL; and Philadelphia,MS).

These communities were selected to rep-resent the diversity of the American experi-ence but also to meet our second goal: toprovide an opportunity to expose studentsto, and engage in, a range of community-based work. Our aim was not to passivelystudy communities and organizations but tointegrate ourselves as best we could in theirperspectives and activities. The range of


groups we selected was purposely broad andincluded direct service, advocacy, and com-munity organizing ventures. During themonth, we cooked and distributed mealswith Food Not Bombs in Chapel Hill, NC,spoke out for gun control legislation atCNN's "Talk Back Live" show in Atlanta,GA, stuffed envelopes to support SisterHelen Prejean's Moratorium Campaign inNew Orleans, helped to restore a housewith Habitat for Humanity in Baton Rouge,LA, lobbied our Congressional representa-tives in Washington, DC, and helped recmitparticipants in the Kensington WelfareRights Union's battle for affordable housingand health care in Philadelphia, PA. In ad-dition, we met with many other participantsin past and current activist efforts and hadseveral noted scholars speak on topics rang-ing from Black Power movements to thepolitical aspects of community-planningefforts. We also visited historically impor-tant sites—including the King Center forNon-Violent Change in Atlanta, the Ed-mund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL, and theDexter Avenue King Memorial BaptistChurch in Montgomery, AL—and partici-pated in several community events, fromthe "Youth Culture Against the PoliceState" anti-police bmtality gathering inGreensboro, NC, to a Pride Festival in Bir-mingham, AL, to a "Take Back the Streets"event in Washington, DC.

To many of the people we met along theway, our mode of travel was more interest-ing than the places we had seen. A sleeperbus is something used mostly by bands ortouring theater groups—the buses stand outdue to their large size (ours was 40 feetlong and 12 '/2 feet tall), lack of windows,and generally gaudy artwork (ours wasbrown with airbmshed tigers on the sidesand rear). Considering the space con-straints, the interior is quite comfortable.Immediately behind the driver is a frontsitting room complete with couch, cush-ioned seats, and card table, as well as asmall refrigerator, microwave, television,VCR, stereo, and very small bathroom(with sink but no shower). The center of the

bus has two sleeping compartments, eachequipped with six bunk beds stacked three-high from floor to ceiling. The compart-ments are fairly comfortable, if a bit claus-trophobic (there is about eight inches ofspace—"two fists worth," as several of thestudents thought of it—above one's head).The back of the bus contains a second smallsitting room with another couch, card tablewith cushioned seats, television, VCR, andstereo. Overall, we were able to sleep 14and live on the bus for the month, and mostwould tell you that they would do it again!

Why teach the class aboard a sleeper bus?We feel that this mode of travel offers sev-eral distinct advantages over other forms oftransportation. Not only does combining ouraccommodations with our means of trans-portation save money, it allows us to domuch of our travel at night while we sleep.As a result, we spend most of our wakinghours at our destinations rather than in tran-sit. It is also a tested form of travel for aclass like ours—throughout the 1990s,Douglas Brinkley had successfully taughthis "Majic Bus" American history coursesat Hofstra University and later the Univer-sity of New Orleans (for an account of theirfirst trip, see Brinkley 1993) in a sleeperbus much like the one described here. Fi-nally, as the program is intimately tied tosocial change in America, a bus seems toconnect with a range of populist culturalimages—from the Montgomery boycott andthe Freedom Rides during the Civil RightsMovement to Ken Kesey's magic bus,Furthur, to the ongoing cross-country jauntsofthe Green Tortoise bus company. Indeed,while the automobile best represents ourdesire for autonomy and individualism intransit, the bus symbolizes a community-based mode of travel, consistent with the"collective" focus of the program.

During the trip, our focus is primarilygroup-oriented, both in our work with com-munity organizations and with our mode ofteaching and learning. While the springcourse introduces a range of concepts andtheoretical approaches within a fairly tradi-tional lecture/discussion format, during the


trip we engage with this material in a col-lective, egalitarian manner. Students areencouraged to share reactions with thegroup during nightly discussion/reactionsessions, with instructors playing a morefacilitative role to draw out insights andconnect ideas to course material. This ap-proach fits well with the structure of ourliving space, the concentrated periods oftime spent together (though we also bene-fited from incorporating unstructured blocksof time in particular communities for inde-pendent work and exploration), and ourmethod of direct interaction with communi-ties. We revisit its implications for studentlearning below.

Additionally, each student is responsiblefor pursuing an individual project. We al-low students to choose project topics basedon their own interests—a sampling of thesewould include the development of activistinstitutions in Latino communities, howclass dynamics play out within institutionalsettings, and the role of food in contempo-rary social life. To these ends, much of ourfree time in various communities is filledwith students interviewing residents, visit-ing local institutions, and taking photos re-lated to their topics of choice. Completingthese projects is the central task of the fallsemester course, which is the third and finalcomponent of the program. The class meetsas a full group once a week, and we engagein several exercises designed to further re-flect upon our experiences and findings aswell as provide opportunities for periodicstudent presentations of work-in-progress tosolicit feedback from the group as a whole.

There are several logistic challenges tiedto this sort of venture. First, the intensivesummer portion of the program does not fitneatly into normal faculty teaching sched-ules. At Brandeis, students earn twocourses' worth of credit for the program asa whole. This credit formally comes fromthe spring and fall courses, which avoidsbureaucratic difficulties associated with con-necting the program to the university'sSiunmer School (which in our case is aseparately funded entity, requiring its own

tuition payments). We assign grades to thestudents after each semester, with participa-tion in the summer traveling componentrequired for successful completion of theprogram. The professor and graduate stu-dents each receive a salary and per diemcosts for running the summer component,though this portion of the program—unlikethe spring and fall courses—does not counttoward the faculty member's teaching load.

Second, there is the crucial task of select-ing students for the program. In 2001, weadvertised widely and quickly found that thesupply of interested students dwarfed thenumber of available slots. There was noflexibility with class size (we could sleep nomore than 14 on the bus), so we designed atwo-step selection process. Students first fillout a detailed application form, which in-cludes information about their backgroundand a brief essay about why they want totake part in the program. We use this infor-mation to narrow the pool down to 40 can-didates, each of whom then come in for aninterview. The final selection of students islargely based on these interviews, with ouraim being a diverse group whose back-grounds and strengths complement eachother during our time together. Ultimately,we found this method to be successful; thefact that students "on the bus" were of dif-fering age (from first-years to juniors), aca-demic major (about half had some priorsociology background, but we also selectedstudents majoring in computer science, eco-nomics, art, and history), regional back-ground, ethnicity, and personality type (wequickly realized that having 12 dynamiccampus leaders in such close quarters wouldbe a recipe for fi-iction, if not disaster)broadened the range of reactions and re-sponses to each experience, causing every-one in the group to more fully examine howtheir ideals and attitudes were tied to theirown histories.

Finally, perhaps the largest issue withimplementing this sort of traveling course isfinancial. The program's total operatingcosts—including bus rental, driver accom-modations, gas, insurance, and instructor


salaries—exceed $30,000. Over two-thirdsof this figure is for the hus itself; typicalsleeper-bus rental packages include a li-censed driver, fuel, maintenance, and insur-ance. Given the fact that the cost of the busand other program expenses approaches$2,500 per enrolled student, we feltstrongly that having students shoulder thefmancial burden would drastically reducethe range of potential participants, so wesolicited outside funding sources. At allstages, our university administration washighly supportive of the endeavor and ulti-mately supplied much of our needed fund-ing. In return, the program has broughtconsiderable publicity to the university.During the trip, we were featured in manylocal newspapers as well as The New YorkTimes and a televised CNN news segment.While only a small number of students di-rectly participate in the program, we striveto connect our efforts to the broader campuscommunity through a website that we up-date from the road daily and a series of stu-dent forums designed to create and sustainalliances with members of social justice-oriented campus organizations.

SITUATING "POSSIBILITIES FORCHANGE" IN THE COOPERATIVE-

AND SERVICE-LEARNINGTRADITIONS

In many ways, this program fits nicelywithin the agenda of conventional servicelearning programs. Such programs have along history, harking back to the days ofJohn Dewey and early Chicago School com-munity research, when teachers and schol-ars first clearly advocated for directly con-necting students to the world they seek toimderstand and act within. Dewey (1938)himself famously suggested that studentscould learn better by "doing," by focusingon thought and action together. The under-lying idea behind this effort, and the innu-merable service learning programs that havefollowed, is that students are better able tolearn if they are actively engaged in thelearning process. In its broadest conception.

then, service learning is an umbrella termfor a range of programs that somehow pro-vide students with a more active role intheir learning. How this might occur varies,and there has been a proliferation of recentefforts against simply equating servicelearning with any out-of-classroom experi-ence.

Indeed, as the number of programs withself-identified service learning componentshas exploded over the last 10 years (Collierand Morgan 2002), the "conceptual impre-cision" that surrounds what such programsactually entail has grown (Everett 1998;Hinck and Brandell 2000; Mintz and Hesser1996). In an attempt to bring some order tothe field—where activities as varied as fieldtrips, internships, co-ops, individuals volun-teering for credit, and full class participa-tion in local community organizations haveall fallen under the rubric of service learn-ing—Mooney and Edwards (2001) haveusefully developed a two-dimensional typol-ogy for what they refer to as CommunityBased Learning (CBL) options. In theirformulation, six distinct categories of CBLs(out-of-class activities, volunteering, serviceadd-ons, internships, service learning, andservice-learning advocacy) are differentiableby their incorporation of some combinationof six attributes (connection to off-campuscommunities, the rendering of service, thegranting of curricular credit, the applicationof skills, structured reflection, and socialaction). These CBL categories are nested,meaning that "moving from out-of-classactivities to service-learning advocacy in-creases the structure and complexity of thelearning experience as well as students'commitment to individuals and organiza-tions" (Mooney and Edwards 2001:184-5).In this sense, less complex categories incor-porate fewer attributes: out-of-class activi-ties only feature a connection to externalcommunities (e.g., field trips), volunteeringadds an explicit service component, serviceadd-ons also include curricular credit forthis service work, and internships addition-ally require students to apply curricularskills within their community setting. In


Mooney and Edwards's view, service learn-ing includes each of the attributes featuredwithin internships but also integrates struc-tured reflection into the experience, withcourse content and community-based workideally in dialogue. Finally, the categoryservice-learning advocacy incorporates anexplicit social change component, meaningthat students serve as social justice agents,critical of the status quo and engaged inefforts to rectify injustices.

Mooney and Edwards suggest this typol-ogy is not intended to present categories asdiscrete types of programs but rather as aheuristic device. Its primary use here is as afoundation from which to explore the struc-ture of our own program, which Mooneyand Edwards would refer to as a "hybrid,"incorporating attributes from the servicelearning and service learning advocacy cate-gories but also including features outsidethose frameworks (such as a collective en-gagement with communities and compara-tive analysis). Possibilities for Change in-corporates many of the elements detailed inthe service-learning literature, including: aservice-learning component built into abroader classroom experience (Collier andMorgan 2002; Hollis 2002; Mamllo 1998),a reading curriculum focused on socialproblems or social change, reflective writ-ing in the form of journals (Collier andMorgan 2002; Everett 1998) and analyticalpapers (Hollis 2002), and partnerships withlocal community organizations and leaders.However, while a primary focus of our pro-gram is centered on social justice efforts,and students actively work with socialmovement organizations during their trav-els, we do not view the course as a straight-forward advocacy experience. A key aspectto the program is its emphasis on compara-tive analysis, and to that end we seek towork with a wide range of organizationswithout assuming that any or all of the stu-dents are in total agreement with their tac-tics and goals. The fact that the pacing ofthe trip is such that we are never able tospend more than two days in a location alsoprecludes the sort of attachment to sustained

social justice campaigns that typically char-acterizes service-learning advocacy pro-grams. In our view, these features are es-sential to CCC goals, but also present dis-tinct challenges, which we take up in ourdiscussion below.

Finally, the CCC framework describedhere provides students with ample opportu-nity to reflect on their experiences. Theimportance of reflection in service-learningprograms is well documented as allowingstudents to integrate curricular materials andcommunity-based experiences and to con-sider the causes and possible solutions forthe social problems they encounter duringthe program (Everett 1998; Eyler 2002;Folse 2002; Hollis 2002; Mamllo 1998;Mooney and Edwards 2001). Furthermore,the space for self-conscious reflection letsparticipants consider how the project hasaffected their own lives and their beliefs. Inthe literature, service-learning programshave incorporated reflection in three distinctways. First, instructors can require thatstudents keep a journal in which they recordtheir experiences in the field along withtheir more personal reactions to working incommunity organizations and confrontingtheir beliefs about institutions, social struc-ture, individuals, and social change. Sec-ond, class meeting time can be used forcollective reflection through group discus-sion of experiences and findings. Finally,and most generally, students, instructors,and even community members can be in-volved in a written evaluation process thatallows each party to consider what did anddid not work well within the program.

In its existing form, the CCC learningmodel provides opportunities for each formof reflection. The nature of an intensivetravel experience ensures that there is amplefree time for students to keep detailed jour-nals of their experiences and to come to-gether as a group for extended discussions.While instructors at times lead structuredlessons designed to provide historical back-ground or to introduce specific theoreticalmodels, we also block out nightly sessionsin which students engage in open discus-


sion. During these sessions, all are encour-aged to connect their experiences to read-ings and theoretical material covered duringthe spring semester but also to share morepersonal feelings and reactions to each com-munity and organization. After the trip, thefall semester class requires that studentscontinue to keep a journal (with weekly,rather than daily, entries) focusing on howthey are able to integrate class material withtheir experiences in various communities asthey complete work on their individual pro-jects, based on data gathered on the trip. Atthe end of the yearlong program, each stu-dent completes a detailed written evaluationfocused on their reactions to various goalsand experiences—both formal and per-sonal—within the program itself. In the nextsection, we use these evaluations to examinethe extent to which the CCC learning modelis effective from a pedagogical standpoint.

OUTCOMES

Our stated goals for the Possibilities forChange program are to provide studentswith an experience that allows them to moredeeply engage with the subject matter athand—providing an experiential illustrationof the ideas included within course read-ings—and to realize their own potentialagency in affecting whatever instances ofinjustice they may confront. After the firstversion of the year-long course, we distrib-uted a detailed evaluation form asking stu-dents to respond at length to a set of ques-tions related to the expressed aims of theprogram, the connection between the travelcomponent and course readings and topics,and the program's overall impact on theirperspectives and plans. From the set of re-sponses, we are confident that the collectiveout-of-class model holds considerable poten-tial as a teaching and learning experience.

The overall program was unanimouslypositively received by the students. Each ofthe 12 students pronounced the experiencean unambiguous "success," and severalexpressed that the program was, in thewords of one student, "the most important

event in my life up to date." In this generalsense, the act of traveling to interesting sitesin itself enhances the experience, a fmdingsupported by Brinkley (1993) in his accountof a similarly structured bus program. Thekey, however, is whether the experiencemoves beyond an overall broadening ofparticipants' experience to meet our particu-lar goals.

The most direct benefit of on-the-roadlearning, as we see it, is that it provides anopportunity for students to directly engagewith course topics. Without exception, stu-dents felt that firsthand experience in arange of communities in itself expandedtheir perspective while also providing a wayfor them to more fully engage with readingsand classroom discussions. The generalbenefit of the model was summarized byone student who, in response to a questionabout whether the program was a (self-defined) success, called it "amazing, thesingle best academic and perhaps socialexperience I've had [in college]." He wenton to say:

I was able to see issues like gentrification,civil rights, and class inequalities live and howthey affected people on a personal level. It wasno longer textbook theory, but real! Let me tryto put it into words: I've met Congresspeoplein Washington, DC, and homeless people inMemphis; I've helped build a house [withHabitat for Humanity] in Baton Rouge andcook a group lunch [with Food Not Bombs] inChapel Hill; I've seen my busmates at allhours of the day and night and carried on deepdiscussions about social issues and had a danceparty with them on the bus too! Success? Suc-cess!

Beyond his obvious excitement, this pas-sage is telling, making reference to thebenefits resulting from 1) the range of ex-periences on the trip itself, 2) the connec-tion of these experiences to more conven-tional classroom-type discussions of read-ings and ideas, and 3) the importance of thecollective experience as a source of collabo-ration and reflection (and memorable fun).We evaluate students' responses to each ofthese dimensions in turn.


First, the most evident focus of the stu-dent evaluations is on how the out-of-classroom experience itself provided amechanism for leaming. One student men-tioned that "in itself, reading the materialabout these issues and places did not com-pare to actually being there and experienc-ing them firsthand." Others responded simi-larly:

In my opinion, the "out-of-the-classroom"aspect of the program was essential and madethis program unique. Whenever we study the-ory in any class, it can seem incredibly ab-stract. We saw where the real deals were go-ing down; we saw people taking action. With-out the bus excursion, there would be nothingnew about this course. This trip allowed us togo out, experience in person what we hadread, and inspire us to do something aboutwhat we saw.

The out of class component was essential toimproving the leaming done in class. It was soimportant to see these groups at work, to hearthe people being affected and others, to see thescenery, to feel the place—for a full under-standing there would have been no other wayand that is undeniable. The trip forced us tobreak down stereotypes, struggle with our-selves, see good and bad in society, and itreally opened my eyes to the potential of allpeople and the unique dynamics of communi-ties and organizations.

Before this trip, I was unhappy with the mo-notony of all the college courses I had taken. Iwas frustrated with my major and with theclasses I was signed up for. This trip changedeverything. It has definitely renewed my faithin the educational system and in what I hope topursue in the future.... Now, I am 100% morelikely to attend events and lectures dealingwith activism and community organizing.

Second, beyond owing the richness of theleaming experience to our direct exposureto local people and communities, the abilityto travel to various sites provided a comple-ment to more general ideas presented inreadings, lectures, and class discussion. Therelationship between these components wassymbiotic: the in-class material covered

before the trip was essential as it provided aframework to interpret experiences on theroad. In tum, the traveling portion of theprogram allowed students to more fullycomprehend what they sometimes viewed asabstracted knowledge. More than one stu-dent reflected that the central theoreticalconnection in the class (the fact that politicalaction is shaped by the structure of localcommunity settings) was difficult to graspuntil we could actually visit a range of com-munities, observe the stmcture of the localenvironments, and then meet and work withsocial movement organizations. Afterward,during group discussions, we could focuson how particular aspects of the communityrelated to issues, framings, and mobilizationstrategies favored by the SMOs we had seenup close. A quarter of the students referredto material from class readings using thesame phrase: it was "brought to life" by ourtravels. More specifically, another com-mented:

Not only did we leam about social movementsand organizations in their historical context,we also got to experience them in their currentstate. By doing so we were able to better un-derstand what is needed for social movementsto occur. As far as seeing what intense racialsegregation, poverty, homelessness, suburbia,and rural communities look like and feel like,we leamed that too. The class and the tripgave me the analytical tools to understandwhat has worked and what has not worked insocial organizing and how it is then possible toapply it to the women's movement [the topicofthe student's individual project].

Third, consistent with the emphasis onrefiection in the service leaming literature,most participants clearly concurred with onestudent's assertion that "interactions withpeers and lessons leamed from those on thetrip were most valuable to the developmentof my own ideas." Living together on thebus had a huge impact on how leaming oc-curred. In a practical sense, the lack ofseparation between class and other activitiesmeant that we had abundant opportunity forgroup discussion and reflection. The nature


of this interaction was also significantlyaffected by the intensity of our experiences,as both students and instructors becamehighly familiar with everyone's day-to-dayliving habits. The fact that we mutuallyneeded to work out a system to clean thebus, pack our bags away in the small spaceallotted under the bus, and have everyoneready on time for each day's tasks meantthat we continually made our own attemptsat cooperative collective action. Each daywas also a new experience for all, studentsand instructors alike, and the fact that ourdiscussions were based upon our impres-sions and ideas about something that we hadexperienced together (rather than, say, abook that the instructors knew intimatelybut the students were confronting anew)contributed to an egalitarian atmospherewithin which students felt empowered tocontribute. The role of the instructors be-came less didactic and more facilitative, thegoal being to provide tools for makingbroader connections and interpretations.The students frequently commented on howthis environment affected them in a positiveway:

Having the instructors constantly accessible[on the bus] made the whole project cometogether. I was able to meet with them indi-vidually and in the group setting to discuss myproject and all of the other new things wewere experiencing. I became closer to thempersonally but also gained more confidence inexpressing my intellectual ideas and develop-ing my thoughts through conversations withthem. I think they had an important role in mylearning in that we had probing discussionsboth on and off the bus and were given newperspectives from them. The itistnictors wereable to synthesize the amazing things we wereconstantly exposed to on the trip and helpedwhen issues got to be overwhelming.

In a sense, the instructors were like the"gateway" to all the other types of learningthat occurred on the trip (i.e., observation,interaction, textbooks, learning from eachother, etc.).

In sum, the unique combination of collec-

tively sharing both classroom and field ex-perience had a demonstrable far-reachingimpact on students' sense of intellectualagency and general perspective on the coreissues of the program. Several studentscommented that their experience on the bushas shaped both their subsequent work oncampus and their long-term career plans:

I think the best evidence that the experiencewas successful was that now back on campus Ihave been able to apply the experiences andknowledge I gained from the bus to virtuallyall of my courses and have gained many newinsights since that time. In addition, I havebeen able to really imagine effective ways todeal with social justice issues here and spreadthese insights to others.

I think my experience on the bus is somethingthat I can take with me in anything that I de-cide to do. Being on the bus is really whatsolidified my decision to go into a life of pub-lic service.

The program has definitely infiuenced what Iwant to do in my life. Actually it has pushedme back in my original direction of working innon-profit and public management and pol-icy.... The bus really made me focus on wheremy skills and experiences are needed in thecommunity. Because of it, I have a clearerview on what it is I want to do with my life.

DISCUSSION

We have described a variation on existingservice-learning programs, which we referto as comparative collective community-based learning. The CCC learning modelallows students to engage directly with off-campus communities, with emphasis onclass members' collective participation incommunity activities. Additionally, to fa-cilitate the understanding of sometimes ab-stract connections between community or-ganization/structure and particular outcomes(in this case, the issues, organization,strategies, and tactics of SMOs), we makeuse of a comparative approach predicatedon visiting a number of organizations in awide range of communities. The intense


group travel component described here,while certainly not essential for CCC learn-ing programs, provides a basis for addedindividual and group-level reflection oppor-tunities while exposing students to a widevariety of organizing styles enacted within arange of community contexts. In the previ-ous section, we showed that this modelyields significant benefits in student learn-ing. Here, we discuss two key issues inmore depth: how our decision to privilegelocal contexts for SMO activity ties to a setof costs and benefits associated with ourcomparative approach and how the CCCmodel can productively be implementedwithin more conventional university andcollege programs.

Pros and Cons of a Comparative LocalApproach to Community-Based LearningMuch attention is given today to supra-localand transnational ties that allow diffuseclusters of activists to organize around in-creasingly globalized issues (Eterovic andSmith 2001; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Kha-gram, Riker, and Sikkink 2002; Tarrow1998). However, the fact remains—despitethe explosion of new communications tech-nologies that break down spatially deter-mined relations and heighten awareness ofthe national and hiternational bases for localinequalities—that most activist issues andidentities emerge from, and are sustainedby, participants' orientation to a local com-munity. To the extent that local communitystructures provide a context for the emer-gence of certain forms of activist activity(i.e., a set of opportunities and constraintswithin which individuals interact and de-velop grievances as well as a "tool-kit" ofunderstandings and tactics that shape subse-quent action), it is essential to gain an un-derstanding of routine local life to compre-hend contentious political activity initiatedby pockets of residents. The emphasis onthe local, we assert, holds even for issuesthat seem tied to national or global bodiesmaking policy with seemingly negligibleresulting local effect. For example, whileanalysts generally focus on how a multitude

of heterogeneous groups were able to com-municate and come together at recent anti-WTO protesters in Seattle and Quebec City,a key aspect of this phenomenon was thatthe masses of protestors were not composedof isolated individuals tied by Internet com-munication. Instead, they were overwhelm-ingly made up of collections of close-knitlocal groups and organizations, which onlylooked heterogeneous when viewed togetherat the events themselves (Finnegan 2000;Smith 2001). As geographer Byron Millerputs it:

[M]obilization occurs in a constellation ofplace-specific contexts. Although movementobjectives and core messages may exhibitsome national [or international] consistency,the reception of those messages is shaped bythe constituent characteristics of place. Asformer Speaker of the U.S. House of Repre-sentatives Tip O'Neill succinctly observed,"all politics is local." Even national politicsmust be anchored in particular places(2000:67).

The traveling component of the Possibili-ties for Change program allows for us todirectly engage with these local dynamics,although an important tension arises withinour framework: the benefits of exposingstudents to a wide range of communities toenable comparative evaluation and analysisversus the costs associated with emphasiz-ing local processes and interactions withoutembedding ourselves in particular commu-nities for extended periods of time. Thetransitory, comparative nature of the tripdoes effectively address the fact that manystudents have had extended exposure only toa small number of communities. Within thatlimited experience, generalizable occur-rences within those communities tend to beperceived as given, a "natural" happeningor, alternately, a product of the efforts of afew idiosyncratic individuals or circum-stances. Spending short bursts of concen-trated time in a wide range of communi-ties—heterogeneous in size, ethnic and classmakeup, climate, and region—makes theidentification of key general characteristics


and processes considerably more evidentand allows us to continually place a particu-lar occurrence within a constellation of al-tematives that we have mutually directlyexperienced during the trip. By the last twoweeks of the trip, our aim is to have ourgroup discussions include comparative in-sights that successfully link specific individ-ual and organizational-level dynamics togeneral characteristics of the communitieswithin which social movement organizationsoperate.

However, given the recognized benefitsof conventional service-learning programs,many of which hinge upon students' em-beddedness in a single organization overtime, there are significant costs associatedwith partnering with a range of groups forshort periods. Not maintaining a relation-ship with a particular SMO means that stu-dents are not able to develop a full sense ofthe context within which particular tasks,strategies, and tactics play out. This limitstheir abilities to acquire the detailed knowl-edge and understandings that emerge boththrough extended exposure to group activi-ties and from meaningful relationships withlocal activists. In the worst case, the experi-ence becomes "voyeuristic," lending itselfto a superficial understanding of socialproblems and an inadequate exposure toorganizations' day-to-day connections tocommunity members and institutions.

Through the organization of the CCCprogram, we seek to minimize these poten-tial costs in two ways. First, the logistics ofthe program itself are designed to maximizeour exposure to communities during ourbrief stays. Before the trip, we activelywork to develop partnerships that allow forour students to be meaningfully, if onlybriefiy, integrated into the activities of theSMO. In each case, our active participationin their work is supplemented by discussionsessions with movement organizers whointroduce their positions on relevant issues,their orientation to the local community andlarger publics, and the strategies and tacticsthrough which they seek to advance theirgoals. Our work with each community or-

ganization also does not constitute the wholeof our exposure to each community. Aseach student is also actively pursuing workon an individual project, much of our timeis taken up with students speaking with (andoften formally interviewing) communityresidents. From many students' perspec-tives, perhaps the most rewarding aspect ofthe trip is the fact that they quickly developa willingness to initiate conversations withcommunity residents, an amazing number ofwhom are willing to share their thoughtsand perspectives in considerable detail.Such direct contact with a range of commu-nity members provides a way to supplementour experience working with SMOs as wellas to illustrate lessons about connectionsbetween the overall structure of communi-ties and the workings of particular socialjustice organizations.

Second, instructors facilitate an under-standing of how our limited experience canbe placed within a broader context duringreflective group discussion sessions, andstudents are always encouraged to use theirexperience with a range of groups to de-velop insights into the workings of eachparticular SMO. Before the trip, readingsand classroom discussions are focused onpolitical organizations' orientation to localcommunities, and students closely studyparticular communities that they will visiton the trip. Of course, the fact that wevalue exposure to a wide range of socialchange approaches—from advocacy to di-rect service to community organizing—means that the extent and content of theconnections between SMOs and their sur-rounding communities vary considerably.We thus treat such relationships as variablesto be explored, and students become versedin "organizing" versus "mobilizing" tradi-tions (Payne 1995) as well as how groupswith service- or advocacy-based ends differfrom organizing groups in their relations tocommunity constituencies. In short, thisstrategy allows us to problematize the limi-tations of our experience. While studentsgain from their direct experience withincommunities, the fact that their connections


necessarily remain fairly superficial (givenour time constraints and emphasis on arange of experiences) provides a frameworkfor discussing how and why establishingdeeper ties connects to the strategies andgoals of our host organizations.

Also important is the impact that the stu-dents have on the community that they workwithin. Service-learning projects, especiallythose with an advocacy component, ideallyhave tangible effects tied to their social jus-tice efforts. With only a day or two to workwith each SMO, it is harder to envisiondeveloping meaningful interaction withcommunity members or successfully helpingthe group achieve specific goals. However,the fact that we participate in SMO activi-ties as a group means that we can oftenmake a significant collective impact on acampaign or action in a short period oftime. In certain cases, the product of ourcollective work with an organization is quitesubstantial, as when we cook and serve anentire "community meal" for a Food NotBombs chapter or canvas an entireneighborhood to recruit participants for anupcoming anti-poverty demonstration organ-ized by the Kensington Welfare Rights Un-ion.

Yet even in these instances it is difficultto see our contribution as fully reciprocatingthe time, effort, and resources expended forus by our partners and hosts. It is importantto acknowledge and work to rectify suchinequities, though they do not, in our view,invalidate the broader benefits of this sort ofprogram. We have already discussed howwe seek to minimize these costs in the shortterm, and we feel that the primary commu-nity-based good associated with the programlies in the long-run benefits of our efforts.In several instances, our brief work withSMOs has provided a basis for the creationof an enduring relationship between studentsand the groups in question, with our one-time hosts benefiting from subsequent cam-pus-based campaigns to provide help totheir organizations. But perhaps the mostimportant function of the trip is evenlonger-term, through its infiuence on stu-

dents' future career trajectories. As severalstudents indicated in course evaluations, thisintensive exposure to social change educa-tion and training is central to their decisionto pursue future work with social justiceorganizations. Groups that partner withsuch programs are, in effect, making aninvestment in their own futures by impart-ing both knowledge and skills upon studentswho will potentially be able to "give back"through their own efforts after graduation.While such abstract benefits should not beused to explain away the fact that host or-ganizations do expend significant resourcesto aid our efforts, their investment in theeducation of today's students bodes well forthe long-term development of effective ac-tivists.

Implementing the CCC Learning ModelIn our experience, much of the benefit ofthe CCC leaming model results from theintensity of the collective experience. Whiletravel by sleeper bus allows us to efficientlyvisit nearly two dozen communities over thecourse of a month, it also serves as the set-ting for our own collective project. The factthat we literally live together within such asmall space requires that we quickly leam toorganize, negotiate, and cooperate toachieve our mutual goals. It also provides aspace for intensive opportunities to collec-tively reflect upon our experiences, shareour impressions, and integrate abstract theo-ries with "real world" experience. How-ever, the general advantages of the learningmodel presented here (adopting a compara-tive perspective to collectively engage withoff-campus communities) can be achievedwithin a more conventional academic frame-work.

The central features of the Possibilitiesfor Change program can each be adaptedfor inclusion within a local CCC leamingprogram. While we choose to carry out ourprogram in three parts over a full academicyear, these components can be integrated tofit within a single semester. Course read-ings and discussions can take place along-side work with community organizations to


ensure that community-based activities areembedded within a larger curriculum(Everett 1998; Hollis 2002; MaruUo 1998).We have found that the collective experi-ence of working as a group in the commu-nity is invaluable, providing a base of com-mon experience for later reflective discus-sions while creating a context for groupcohesion, solidarity, and, tiltimately, invest-ment in the program itself. Such group ef-forts are logistically straightforward whenworking within a single local community,and the direct benefit to local organizationsincreases with less ephemeral student in-volvement.

We have also asserted that such collectiveexperiences are more easily cormected togeneral ideas about social action whenplaced within a comparative framework.While the traveling portion of the programfacilitated our exposure to a range of SMOswithin a variety of community contexts,similar goals can be met by working with anumber of groups within a single commu-nity. In this case, the program can be or-ganized to exploit the heterogeneity of aparticular community setting by compara-tively examining groups working on distinctissues and/or within distinct neighborhoodsettings. This strategy also lends itself toanalyzing connections and divisions acrosssets of groups, which can link to more gen-eral ideas about social capital and coalition-building, topics not easily examined whenspending only small amotmts of time in avariety of communities. In short, while weencourage the incorporation of innovativeforms of travel to broaden the social con-texts that our students are exposed to withina curricular context, the Possibilities forChange framework described here is onlyone of many possible models for CCClearning. More generally, we advocate for aparticular variation on conventional service-learning programs, one that uses a compara-tive, collective approach to maximize stu-dent engagement with, and understandingof, many topics at the core of the sociologydiscipline.

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MaruUo, Sam. 1998. "Bringing Home Diversity:A Service-Learning Approach to TeachingRace and Ethnic Relations." Teaching Sociol-ogy 26:259-75.

MaruUo, Sam and Bob Edwards. 2000. "FromCharity to Justice: The Potential of University-Community Collaboration for Social Change."American Behavioral Scientist 43:895-912.

McKeachie, WUbert J. 1994. Teaching Tips:Strategies, Research, and Theory for Collegeand University Teachers. Lexington, MA: DCHeath and Company.

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Payne, Charles. 1995. I've Got the Light ofFreedom: The Organizing Tradition and theMississippi Freedom Struggle. Berkeley, CA:University of California Press.

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David Ciumingham is an assistant professor in theDepartment of Sociology at Brandeis University. Histeaching and research interests include the organizationof state responses to social movement activity as wellas how political contention is shaped by community-level contexts.

Cheryl Kingma-Kiekhofer is a Ph.D. candidate inthe Department of Sociology at Brandeis Universityand an adjunct faculty member at Cardinal StritchUniversity. She is currently engaged in research onsocial movement organizations' use of imagery as amobilizing strategy as well as the development of youthsubcultures in suburbia.

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