The Reading Matrix: An International Online Journal Volume 18, Number 2, September 2018 Infusing Participatory Digital Service-Learning to Deepen Community- engaged Professional Excellence: Triumphs and Challenges Andrea Enikő Lypka University of South Florida ABSTRACT Limited studies have considered meshing participatory visual methods, new technologies, and experiential learning to prepare preservice teachers to respond to the needs of adult second language learners with interrupted education. Thus, this small-scale exploratory action research investigates how implementing collaborative digital visual service-learning, a credit-bearing experiential scholarship that intertwines participatory methodologies with mutually beneficial inquiry, civic responsibility, and reflection, can facilitate engagement with adult learners and residents in a community-based English as a second language class in a suburban multiethnic US neighborhood. Despite the constraints related to course alignment, privacy, and logistics, the one-semester-long, small-grant-funded community-university partnership positioned the 15 learners and five preservice teachers as social actors and magnified mutual trust, hands-on learning, and social responsibility. Pairing service-learning with community filmmaking can tap into sociocultural capital to catalyze a range of community-identified educational and advocacy responsibilities through authentic communication, rapport building, and values-based education and inquiry. Keywords: English language learners, low-educated second language and literacy acquisition, community media, videovoice, visual-based community-engaged scholarship INTRODUCTION: INVESTIGATING PEDAGOGICAL CONCERNS As an online English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) instructor at a southern US university, I was astounded by preservice teachers’ (PSTs’) self-reported insufficient opportunities to connect with English learners (ELs) and their unfamiliarity of the migration histories of Latina/os, who represent about 73% of the ELs in this state (Sugarman & Lee, 2017). Although the weak economy and restrictive immigration policies dwindled the number of Mexican immigrants nationally (Zong & Batalova, 2016), El Barrio (pseudonym), the neighborhood amid this campus setting, has experienced a renaissance of Hispanic culture. Unlike adolescent immigrants eligible for deportation protection and schooling access (Zong &