Chapter 2: Teacher Education as Partnership: Service-Learning and the Audacity of Listening

Service-learning pedagogy invites teacher education programs to weigh the consequences of local versus mass teacher education and to consider the value of listening and community partnership as vital features of teacher preparation. Concepts of language-mediated becoming and prefigurative politics reveal a revolutionary aspect of service-learning pedagogy and unique challenges for utilizing it in teacher education. Reflecting on multiple research programs in service-learning, both within and outside teacher education programs, the educators’ role in developing relational epistemologies that produce knowledge embedded in and for the benefit of local communities is considered. Such an understanding of service-learning can enable sophisticated adaptation and redeployment of traditional academic activities as part of a powerful and transformative listening project.