4.1 Reflection

Reflection is a cornerstone of ethical and effective community engagement. Recall the discussion of how and why community engagement became integrated in technical communication courses from 1.2: much of the early scholarship focused on active citizenship, working within a “lab” type space where students can put learning into practice, and ensuring students have consequential contexts where their work is evaluated and used beyond the classroom. Such practices demand technical precision for a variety of genres that mimic- -and in some cases are- the professional writing experiences students can expect to encounter after graduation.

Towards the close of the project, and throughout the project itself (in lectures, class discussions, or ancillary activities your instructor assigns), you will engage in reflection. When we discuss reflection regarding your community engaged learning experience, we specifically mean: “Intentional consideration of an experience in light of particular learning objectives” (Hatcher and Bringle, 1997). Reflection in this case is a process intended to incorporate your experience with our discussions, textbook readings in order to associate your efforts on the project with broader social infrastructures and, importantly, the course objectives. Importantly, this means you won’t simply state what happened and why. Rather, reflection requires metacognitive processes and critical thinking; reflection in this project is an invitation to step outside the immediacy of the tasks at hand and consider:

• What societal issue is my community partner working to ameliorate/resolve/support/address?
• Do I believe this is an issue that needs to be addressed in our community? If so, why? If not, why not?
• Did I reinforce or challenge an assumption or social system by the work I did? How does this experience highlight the relationship between myself and larger systems?
• What is in the interest of the common good in this situation? In what ways is the individual good (mine or that of other people) linked to and/or contrary to the common good? What tradeoffs between them are involved?
• What changes does this experience suggest are needed: within my group, within the organization, within our society more generally? How can these changes be accomplished: with individual action or collective action / working within the system or challenging the system / etc.?
• What did I learn? (the course objectives in the syllabus are a good place to find language to address this question)
• How, specifically, did I learn it?
• Why does this learning matter? Why is it important?

Consider why nonprofits like the ones you worked with exist. Usually, they exist to provide support in particular areas of need in communities. This is an ethical concern. Additionally, recall our discussion of the type of institution where you are a student. For example, students at WSU are attending a “land-grant” institution; this designation means that WSU is meant to serve its community/communities in many different ways: through research, educating engaged citizens, supporting agricultural initiatives, and serving state-determined education needs. Given your readings on ethics in technical and professional communication, you understand, too, that the work of technical and professional writing always is context specific, audience driven, and imbued (obviously or not) with ethical considerations. Think about how your work may support the primary, secondary, tertiary and extended audiences of your project. This includes, but is not limited to the organization’s: staff, clients, governing board/board of directors, volunteers, funders, interested private citizens, beneficiaries of services, future stakeholders.

Your instructor may invite you to creatively respond to these prompts. Think about communication strategies with which you are most comfortable and represent your most authentic self. For instance, perhaps texting comes easy to you, or a phone call. Reflection is not meant to be performative (we don’t want you to tell us what you think we want to hear). Instead, we want to learn how this project looked to you. Was it valuable or not, and why? Recall that value is subjective, and there are many ways in which the project could be valuable (networking, practice with genres, learning new software, building a portfolio, practicing team writing, developing soft skills, stretching your comfort zone around specific social issues…the list goes on!). So, learning what parts of the project were valuable and why requires you to lean in to your expertise as a community member experiencing the project for the first time! Sometimes, things go off the rails (see chapter 3.3! We know this, because it’s happened before!). When this happens, honest reflection is so important. This leads us to a final note on reflection: how to provide feedback on your learning experience.

Community engagement rarely produces identical experiences for individuals or teams because each learning experience is context and audience specific. The projects change, new community partners work with students, and even for long term partnerships, projects evolve and develop over time. We’ve already discussed how community engagement can be a challenging experience, and it is certainly different from more common pedagogical practices.

All this to say: your instructor will typically invite you to provide feedback on the experience. Be mindful of the alternative ways you could achieve course objectives and make plain what went well and what was challenging. Community engagement is an iterative experience (we like to use our design thinking hats as we plan for new semesters!). Both partners and professors work hard to navigate long-term relationships– that span many academic semesters– to create new and engaging learning opportunities. If you have constructive strategies or concerns for future students, be sure and connect with your instructor when you feel comfortable doing so.