Toward a Model for Preparatory Community Listening

Abstract

While current community literacy scholarship foregrounds the importance of listening carefully to communities in the process of establishing, developing, and sustaining equitable and ethical community partnerships, the field does not yet offer explicit methods for practicing community listening, especially in the early, preparatory stages of the process. We address this gap by drawing on a case study of “preparatory community listening” in San Bernardino, California. In this project, we articulate an asset-based method for practicing community listening that emphasizes attention to discursive, material, political, and economic dynamics, particularly in communities shaped by deficit narratives.