The Reform of Service, the Service of Reform

Faced with a fragmented and undersupported program, we made deliberate use of the available means of persuasionthe languages of needs, skills, and service-to establish our own professional expertise and disciplinary authority. Situated leadership's use of these oppositions to effect change constitutes the tactics and strategies of resistance discussed by Fox, terms that could also apply to the notion of negotiation emphasized by Hansen. Yet even if this change is merely tactical, it still has produced, at least potentially, a space in which even underprepared students can do substantive intellectual work, one in which they can develop a critical literacy.