Training civic bridge builders: Outcomes of community leadership development programs

As rural communities experience rapid economic, demographic, and political change, program interventions that focus on the development of community leadership capacity could be valuable. Community leadership development programs have been deployed in rural U.S. communities for the past 30 years by university extension units, chambers of commerce, and other nonprofit foundations. Prior research on program outcomes has largely focused on trainees’ self-reported change in individual leadership knowledge, skills, and attitudes. However, postindustrial leadership theories suggest that leadership in the community relies not on individuals but on social relationships that develop across groups akin to social bridging. The purpose of this study is to extend and strengthen prior evaluative research on community leadership development programs by examining program effects on opportunities to develop bridging social capital using more rigorous methods. Data from a quasi-experimental study of rural community leaders (n = 768) in six states are used to isolate unique program effects on individual changes in both cognitive and behavioral community leadership outcomes. Regression modeling shows that participation in community leadership development programs is associated with increased leadership development in knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors that are a catalyst for social bridging. The community capitals framework is used to show that program participants are significantly more likely to broaden their span of involvement across community capital asset areas over time compared to non-participants. Data on specific program structure elements show that skills training may be important for cognitive outcomes while community development learning and group projects are important for changes in organizational behavior. Suggestions for community leadership program practitioners are presented.

Education at last! Taiwanese grandmothers "go to school"

Language socialization is a life-long process in which individuals are continuously socialized into new roles, statuses, and practices. This process becomes more complex in multilingual contexts. However, we know little of the language socialization of older adults and we know even less of minority-speaking elders' experiences of linguistic marginalization in contemporary communicative milieus. In this ethnographic and discourse-analytic study, I examine the language socialization of non-Mandarin-speaking elderly Taiwanese women in senior adult education programs in a rural township in Taiwan. Through examining autobiographical narratives, master narratives about elders, and classroom discourses, this study explores the historical construction of their sociolinguistic marginalization and their negotiation and resistance of such marginalization. The majority of the elderly women were denied education when they were young. Some received Japanese education during the Japanese colonization period. While the uneducated and illiterate elders have a strong aspiration for learning, they are dismissed as "unable to learn" by their teachers, peer students, and community leaders. By contrast, the Japanese literate exhibit a strong learning identity associated with colonial modernity. These two groups, however, have to contend with the social stereotype associated with their non-Mandarin speaking status. Under a Mandarin-only ideology that links Mandarin with modernity, discourses that have actively mobilized the category of “illiterate” to reference the older population are part and parcel of Taiwan’s modern identity. By demonstrating how these women are treated, in official discourses and in classroom interactions, as children for their lack of Mandarin abilities, I argue that the literacy education that set out to “compensate” these women for their earlier lack of educational opportunity has paradoxically reinforced their marginalization. Further, in recent years, they have become even more marginalized as the government has prioritized the education of recent young female marriage immigrants from Southeast Asia, who are considered in charge of educating the “future sons and daughters of Taiwan.” This research demonstrates how language socialization is a contested and life-long process and calls attention to the effects of language ideologies on literacy and language education. The findings have policy implications for improving literacy and language education both within Taiwan and elsewhere in the world.