Sustaining service learning: pentadic analysis for programmatic critique

Abstract

"Sustaining Service Learning: Pentadic Analysis for Programmatic Critique," argues that service learning's sustainability in higher education relies on thorough and regular program assessment and that a new form of rhetorical criticism is necessary for conducting such an evaluation. The approach taken here fuses modernist rhetorical method (Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad) with postmodern methodology (Porter, et al.'s institutional critique) to analyze examples of 21st-century service learning at Johnson County Community College (JCCC) and Augsburg College. Furthermore, because of the relative absence of attention to programs' material conditions in the scholarship, this study focuses particularly on the dramatistic term scene. Scene is critical to a study of service- and experiential-learning programs because it reveals the influence of environment-- including space, location or placement, scenic rhetoric, time, and timing-- on all of the other factors that compose programs. The analysis reveals several avenues for localized change, as well as offering models for other program practitioners who wish to analyze locally the bureaucratic, physical, and community structuring of service learning. Programmatic critique identifies factors that contribute to the success or failure of a program to fulfill its goals, argue for support, coordinate its activities, and utilize its resources effectively. For instance, because of its relative newness, its emphasis on grassroots structure within a hierarchized institution, and the dichotomous natures of the suburb where it is located and the city where it does its community work, JCCC's program struggles with institutionalization and community integration. Its development seems to rely now on better visibility and financial support, as well as the development of a shared space for community partnerships. Augsburg College provides a model for combining religious mission and tradition with a uniquely immigrant urban location. Examining Augsburg's program reconfirms the importance of location. Finally, the study reveals the importance to the life and development of an effective, institutionalized program of developing through public relations efforts of all kinds a thoughtful and consistent programmatic public face. A programmatic public face should reveal the shared goals and positive outcomes of the program in both public and academic sectors.