Mary Gormley Knihy

The study explores the transformative potential of education in fostering multicultural understanding and social change through an upper-level Communication Studies course. It examines students' engagement with multiculturalism via participant observation, analyzing their writings, discussions, and project planning. The research highlights how spatial rhetorics shape students' discursive practices as they navigate challenges in accepting differences. Presented through students' perspectives, it serves as a resource for researchers and educators in Composition and Rhetoric, Multiculturalism, and Service-Learning.

How transformative can education be? Does talking about difference lead to accepting difference? The result of a semester long participant-observation study of an upper level Communication Studies course on multiculturalism, this study investigates and evaluates the efforts that students undertake with regard to multiculturalism, collaboration, and social change. Through analysis of students' writing and mapping, of class discussion, and of course structure, the study illustrates the ways that spatial rhetorics inform and influence the discursive practices of students working towards accepting differences and reaching consensus while in the process of planning a community service project. Students' struggles to embrace difference and multiculturalism as both theory and practice are presented in the students' own words. This book is geared toward researchers and educators in Composition and Rhetoric, Multiculturalism, and Service-Learning.