Sociology

Pedagogy

Prison

Criminology

Operating system

Political science

Constructive

Service-learning

Computer science

Process (computing)

Experiential learning

General partnership

Community Literacy Journal

Reviewed by: Turning Teaching Inside Out: A Pedagogy of Transformation for Community-Based Education eds. by Simone Weil Davis and Barbara Sherr Roswell Brittny M. Byrom Turning Teaching Inside Out: A Pedagogy of Transformation for Community-Based Education Simone Weil Davis and Barbara Sherr Roswell, Eds. Palgrave MacMillan, 2013. 321 pp. Covering the history, current state, and projected future of a pedagogical program is no small feat. However, in their edited anthology Turning Teaching Inside Out: A Pedagogy of Transformation for Community-Based Education, Simone Weil Davis and Barbara Sherr Roswell tackle the task of documenting the Inside-Out Program through an examination of both the theory and the practice of the Inside-Out program (2). Bringing together incarcerated students ("inside students") and university students ("outside students"), the Inside-Out program enables a semester of experiential learning through a prison exchange program. The text is divided into seven parts encompassing a total of twenty-nine chapters. Each chapter typically consists of first-hand accounts from professors and students participating in Inside-Out's disruption of traditional means of education, as well as providing practical applications and implications of Inside-Out exchanges. In their introduction, Davis and Roswell explain that the goal of this text is to consider the "broader lessons the Inside-Out program provides for community-based learning" (1). Davis, the coordinator for Inside-Out Canada, and Roswell, the founding director of the Goucher Prison Education Partnership, gathered the following chapters to argue that disrupting conventional methods of service learning results in a "constructive dialogue that inspires participants to generate new ideas … that can make communities more inclusive, just, and socially sustainable" (3). Davis and Roswell's introduction rounds off with snapshots of the ensuing sections, including introductions of contributors and how their work weaves together to interrupt preconceived notions of what counts as a classroom and who counts as a student by taking readers inside prison walls. Part I, titled "Origin Tales: Seeding and Building a Program," contains three chapters narrating the creation and development of Inside-Out. Chapters two and four are authored by Lori Pompa, Founder and Director of The Inside-Out Center, and Paul Perry, a founding member of Graterford Think Tank and originator of Inside-Out, [End Page 94] both chapters discuss the origination of Inside-Out and their positionality in the program. Chapter three, contributed by Melissa Crabbe, Inside-Out's Associate Director, discusses the expansion of the Inside-Out program. A particularly compelling facet to the Inside-Out program is the founders' consistent effort to distinguish between community-based learning and service-learning from notions of "charity": We are also not "helping" the participants who are incarcerated; it is not charity or service of any kind … it is more appropriately understood as a "community-based learning" opportunity, through which everyone is seen as having something vital to offer in the learning process. (Pompa 16) This inclusive idea—that everyone in any setting can contribute to the learning process—is crucial for readers as they move into Part II: "Expanding Teaching and Learning." The unconventional classroom set up reveals the potential for empowerment for both students and instructors. Contributing writers of chapter five through chapter ten identify as either Inside-Out facilitators, inside students, or outside students. Each of the six essays focuses on perennial issues associated with standard education and incarceration and how Inside-Out helps to address and make more explicit these tensions. Two chapters in this section focus on how education can be isolating. Outside student Amelia Larson in her essay, "Liberation from University Education" reflects her concerns on how emotionally isolating education can be: The university environment in fact reflects the kind of emotional poverty that modern society perpetuates. The mad drive to achieve and be better divides the whole individual into separate parts (intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual) and divides us from one another. (64) Following the themes of educational and social issues, the essay "American Educational System," by inside student K. D. A. Daniel-Bey, focuses on his concern that conventionally administered education can "suck the joy out of learning and thereby out of life itself" (73). Both essays demonstrate how a lack of social relevance and...

Turning Teaching Inside Out: A Pedagogy of Transformation for Community-Based Education eds. by Simone Weil Davis and Barbara Sherr Roswell