Becoming Community-Engaged Educators

Book excerpt: This book puts forth a call to engagement for educators at all levels of education and in all subject areas, with a focus on language education. Through using a grounded theory approach, it features semi-structured interviews, in a qualitative approach, with educators who embody community engaged education. Each chapter encompasses a case study that examines the interviewee's motivations, strategies, successes and failures. This book presents a local theory of community-engaged teachers and researchers to assist educators in developing as a community-engaged teacher or researcher. It asks and attempts to answer critical questions concerning the initial induction into community engagement, the maintenance of energy, commitment, and motivation, and the role of support networks. Through these, this book examines what is needed to sustain such an identity, and support campaigns of action or individual engagement over both the short and long term.