Chapter 7: Citizenship: Community Engagement and Community Change

In this study, our research team wanted to understand what it means to be a good citizen and explore the complicated concept of community. Through a campus-community partnership focused on citizenship and literacy, our team sought to learn more about what was working well in the partnership project in order to better serve adult students who attend, to be responsive to the teachers/tutors and community members who work to serve and support the adult students, and to better understand the views of the town’s residents as they observe the citizenship program from a distance. Data from focus groups reveal the inter-and intra-personal value of engaging in conversations about what it means to be a citizen and to unpack the complicated notion of community.

A community is made up of many different stories, sometimes speaking to each other, sometimes speaking past each other, sometimes invisible to each other, and sometimes ignored by each other. (Deyhle, 2009, p. xvii)