Teaching Communication Activism

Education remains the best hope for addressing the significant social injustices that dominate society. Few educators, however, focus on social justice directly, and even when they do, typically, they make students aware of injustice but they do not teach students how to do something about it.

This book introduces a unique form of education—communication activism pedagogy (CAP)—that involves communication educators teaching students how to use their communication knowledge and skills to intervene with community partners to promote social justice. After explains CAP’s foundations (its principles and practices, and how they differ from corporate education, extend critical pedagogy, rely on ethical imperatives, and demand a corresponding social justice activism service-learning approach), the text showcases examples of how communication educators have taught students to intervene to confront social justice issues that include gender inequality and violence, ethnic and racial prejudice and discrimination, corporate environmental colonization, and health disparities and energy issues affecting those who live in poverty.

The chapters reveal both the benefits of and challenges involved in this new and important form of pedagogy that moves students from being disconnected citizens to engaged change agents promoting social justice.