Dr. Heidi James-Dunbar, Academic Faculty Director at Foundation for International Education
The call to decolonise higher education is hardly new, originating over two decades ago to represent indigenous and diverse knowledges on an equal standing with knowledges originating in the Global North, through more recent movements in South Africa (Rhodes Must Fall, 2015) and in the UK, the National Union of Students campaign ‘Why Is My Curriculum White’ with several UK universities including Sussex, Cambridge, and Keele participating in this (long overdue) critical examination of curricula and teaching modules. We might comment here that eminent Post-Colonial (and New Historicism) theorists have been drawing our attention to the immanence of imperial and colonial discourses sustaining privileged hegemonies of thought since at least Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth was published in 1961.
Amplified and distorted by the British media, these efforts to decolonise education are not without their critics, including Doug Stokes, Professor of International Relations at the University of Exeter, who wrote that decolonising the curriculum is ‘a big mistake,’ asserting that ‘the movement…is highly selective in its cherry picking of facts and targets.’ He ends his argument with, ‘The last thing our universities need are to have “male, pale and stale” voices side-lined’ (Stokes, 2019).
As this discussion will demonstrate, Stokes’ response is moot as the move to more inclusive curricula isn’t about the silencing or erosion of those canonical or previously dominant voices, but challenging presumptions, examining the construction of knowledge and privilege while exposing the connections between the systems of power that have maintained the structures of oppression across all disciplines. Indeed, even in the redress of this issue, ensuring curricula represent marginalised and unrepresented narratives, epistemologies and critical perspectives must be an ongoing process. As academics, ensuring that we aren’t swapping one canon for another more palatable one that in its turn becomes ossified and static (regardless of content) is integral to scholarly integrity and prevents limiting the distribution of and contributions to an evolving discourse.
One of the central aims of study abroad is to contextualise and foster intercultural knowledge and competency as a high-impact practice, challenging assumptions and preconceived cultural tropes. Ensuring this doesn’t become a neo-colonialist exercise requires more than just rethinking our curricula, but examining what we are teaching and why, carefully considering how we curate and construct knowledge is central to the student experience and academic rigour. My focus, in practice and in this article, is on English literature but my arguments can be applied across disciplines.
What is a Colonialist curriculum? Why might study abroad be guilty of this?
Anne Kimunguyi describes a colonial curriculum as:
Characterised by its unrepresentative, inaccessible, and privileged nature. Unrepresentative, because it selectively constructs teachings which exclude certain, oftentimes, crucial narratives. Inaccessible, because it consequently prevents many of its recipients from identifying with the narratives construed, whilst appealing to a historically favoured demographic. Privileged, because it ensures the continued participation, comfort and flourish of this select group of people, in both an academic and a wider societal context. Sadly, and unacceptably, this all occurs at the detriment of a diverse range of marginalised voices. (Hack, 2020)
Study abroad or global learning has, at its heart, positive aspirations to develop students as intercultural learners and future global citizens through meaningful engagement with social, academic and cultural difference. As laudable as this is, it has been posited that this approach can create a ‘neo-colonialist’ model in which intercultural learning replicates the Grand Tour paradigm of the 19th century in which exemplars of ‘Culture’ (the canon) are studied in situ to enrich and improve the student (Namaste, 2020). This is exacerbated by the extensive reach of Britain’s ‘soft power’, the cultural force of the canon, and limited representations of the UK in cultural artefacts often means students (and their parents/institutions) are baffled when their literature classes are composed of writers other than Shakespeare, Donne, Shelley and Dickens (Rose, 2018). Another neo-colonialist approach might offer the host site as a ‘classroom’ or ‘laboratory’ in which the culture and citizens are objects of study and investigation, and while seemingly benign it fosters the ‘othering’ of the host site and residents reinforcing a ‘them’ and ‘us’ relation and while not acknowledging or critiquing the structures of power at ‘home’ (Adkins, 2018).
Contributing to these issues is the often relatively short duration of study abroad courses with students who may be taking classes to fulfil requirements rather than contribute to specialisms or their major, which can lead to the demand for broad survey classes that too often rely on utilising dominant narratives. For example, a British literature course taught over seven weeks might rely (for expediency, marketability and credit recognition) on core texts from English, male and Anglo-Saxon writers (Shakespeare, Orwell, Keats, et al.) and perhaps for the sake of accessibility employ a Liberal Humanist approach focusing on commentary and interpretation. A political theory course might be organized chronologically implying a hierarchy of concepts and knowledge systems. It is easy to see why these chronological, canon-centered approaches might be preferable for institutions and faculty. However, despite the challenges presented by non-specialist scholars and the short duration of courses, it is possible to develop inclusive, critical and theoretical class models that don’t exacerbate a neo-colonialist education. By reorganising either of these example courses around key concepts, including marginalised voices and presenting asynchronous texts for comparison would disrupt the implied extrinsic teleology and dominance of Western epistemology. The aim is to neither create culture fetishes nor traduce cultural icons, but to consider the context and construction of our culture, power and economic structures.
The challenge then, to create an inclusive curriculum, is productive and provides an opportunity to include canonical texts in a culturally hybrid syllabus and use resources that introduce international students to multifaceted cultures, perspectives and lived experiences in the UK. While in a study abroad context, the cultural value in studying the literatures of the host country may not prioritise Global South literatures, the inclusion of narratives and resources from socio-political marginalised authors (BAME, LGBTQI, working-class and women authors) and work that challenges the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ genres unsettles the exclusive and culturally homogenous canon and legitimises the intellectual contributions from those outside the ‘establishment’. We might ask, ‘What does a text do?’ rather than ‘What does it mean?’. This approach would foreground which archetypes, narratives and hierarchies a cultural artefact reproduces or unsettles. It also questions the assumption that culture is merely descriptive or representative, rather than generative and active. Creating an inclusive curriculum requires more than inserting a few ‘diverse’ texts, but a radical consideration of how and what we teach and if our pedagogic models reinforce the status quo.
To conclude, with our world proving to be ever more interconnected and interdependent, education must work to decolonise and de-centre Western hegemonic thought systems, histories and structures. This work must also include teaching and assessment strategies that develop intellectual endeavour while accounting for the inequities in accessing educational resources and systems of support (Universities UK, 2019). We need a diverse faculty and to ensure classrooms are safe spaces for the exploration and questioning of knowledge. As academics we must commit to this ongoing, evolving and involving, essential work and create space for all cultures and knowledge systems.
References
Adkins, A. B. F. (2018). We’re so vain, we probably think this program is about us. Decolonizing Study Abroad. S.l., Forum on Education Abroad.
Andreshak (2003). Inclusive curricular content: The next frontier in widening participation. In Face to Face (pp. 10–13). London: FACE.
Kabbani, R. (1994). Imperial fictions: Europe’s myths of Orient. London: Pandora.
Muldoon, J. (2019). Academics: it’s time to get behind decolonising the curriculum. The Guardian.
Namaste, N., & Sturgill, A. (2020). Opportunities and challenges of ethical, effective global learning. In N. Namaste & A. Sturgill (Eds), Mind the gap: global learning at home and abroad (pp. 178–-186). Virginia: Stylus Publishing.
Susanne Feld , Graduate Student, International Higher Education at Lesley University
Shona Workman, Graduate Student, International Higher Education at Lesley University
As this year of 2021 begins, education finds itself at a crossroads. A new generation fills colleges and universities: Generation Z (Gen Z), born in the 2000s with different learning styles, professional goals, and support needs than the generations that came before (Chasteen Miller & Mills, 2019). As we pass the tragic one-year anniversary of a worldwide pandemic that uprooted school, work, and life, many difficult but influential learning opportunities have begun to emerge. Education abroad professionals have had to persevere through this period: pulling students home from study abroad programs as rapidly as possible, adjusting to working at home and a changed landscape at schools and companies, and quickly creating new online programming in an effort to continue to offer international experiences for students despite restrictions (Dietrich, 2020). As the end is gratefully in sight, now is the time to look forward to the future and consider how both in-person and future online and blended programs can be more pedagogically rich and educationally effective. To accomplish this, education abroad professionals must respond to the new face in higher education by earnestly practicing, and not merely paying lip service to, a quality that Generation Z models: nimbleness.
The quality of nimbleness has been practiced extensively during the pandemic; the next step is to carry this momentum forward. Nimbleness represents a quick footedness that is essential in a constantly changing, globally connected world. While we hope the world will not be struck by another pandemic, other circumstances of our evolving world will certainly affect the US and other countries. A shifting geopolitical landscape, climate change-related weather events, and political unrest will shape students’ worldviews and travel aspirations. Nimbleness is an essential skill to weather these storms.
Gen Z is nimble. While a whole generation cannot fit into simple categorization, this group of young people grew up after the 9/11 attacks, after the internet and smartphones became ubiquitous, and in an era of increased acknowledgement and fretting over the development of climate change. These events had a pervasive effect on their childhood and the world they grew up in. Much has been written about this group’s tendency to be career-oriented, entrepreneurial, practical, and comfortable with new models of learning and working (Chasteen Miller & Mills, 2019). These attributes are understandable given the uncertainty about the future expressed by the adults around them. In the US, Gen Z is predicted to be the most racially and ethnically diverse generation thus far, with almost half identifying as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC) (Fry & Parker, 2018; Rue, 2018). This is also a generation that grew up with a Black president and the legalization of gay marriage (Barley, 2016), the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements, as well as the awareness of the oppression women, BIPOC, and other marginalized communities have experienced. Nimbleness has been fostered in the Gen Z cohort through exposure to many different lived experiences and perspectives.
Education abroad professionals must actively develop their own nimbleness to serve this generation and improve their own practice. After a strange, lonely, difficult year of constant transitions, practitioners have hard-won tools in their kit to continue honing this skill. In pedagogical and logistical approaches to program design, inclusion of nimbleness will result in more intentional, effective, and meaningful education experiences for Gen Z participants. This might look like creative, engaging uses of technology to create high-quality pre-program or post-program pedagogical interventions (Slotkin, Durie, & Eisenberg, 2012). Creating and marketing opportunities in less-visited locations in the Global South would serve to spark Gen Z participants’ sense of curiosity and commitment to equity. New paradigms and definitions of what intercultural experiences look like are ripe for creation, such as acknowledging that a student in Seattle may encounter more disorienting dilemmas in domestic Appalachia than in international British Columbia (Twombly et al., 2012). Finally, among many more possibilities, nimbleness will manifest in managing any future crises that may arise, just as nimbleness was crucial to successfully navigating the COVID-19 pandemic.
In more abstract ways, nimbleness will also prove central to improving the field. The purpose of study abroad has shifted over the years from grand tours of Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, to students as cultural ambassadors after World War II, to concerns about increasing commercialization in the new millennium (Twombly et al., 2012). This may change again, especially after the soul searching and paradigm shifting prompted by the pandemic that exposed deep inequities and wealth disparity (Professionals in International Education, 2020) as well as the increased impression of the fragility of our planet (Frank, 2020). Our ideological approaches to international experiences may shift how we express the importance of intercultural learning and how we take care of partner communities and institutions. The pandemic has offered proof of the value of the ability to work collaboratively across nations (Leask & Green, 2020). The disruptions of the pandemic can only be used to create positive change should we re-examine our approach to crafting education abroad experiences to reflect new options and a new audience: Gen Z and the generations to follow.
Nimbleness must accompany providers into the next phase of education abroad. Older generations developed nimbleness as an asset through a disruptive pandemic while Gen Z students have grown up with nimbleness out of necessity. Matching Gen Z participants’ curiosity and flexibility will provide not only a more marketable product but a more impactful, enriching, and equitable outcome. Intentionally nimble design and thoughtful implementation in education abroad programming will allow our Gen Z students to blossom to their full potential, creating a path to a more connected world.
Chasteen Miller, A., & Mills, B. (2019). ‘If they don’t care, I don’t care’: Millennial and Generation Z students and the impact of faculty caring. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 19(4), 78-89. https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v19i4.24167
Dietrich, A. J. (2020). Charting a path forward for education abroad research. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad 32(2), 1–11. http://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v32i2.465
Slotkin, M. J., Durie, C. J., & Eisenberg, J. R. (2012). The benefits of short-term study abroad as a blended learning experience. Journal of International Education in Business, 5(2), 163–173. https://doi.org/10.1108/18363261211281762
Twombly, S. B., Salisbury, M. H., Tumanut, S. D., & Klute, P. (2012). Special issue: Study abroad in a new global century: Renewing the promise, refining the purpose. ASHE Higher Education Report 38(4), 1–152. http://doi.org/10.1002/aehe.20004
Jessica Calhoun, Assistant Dean of Admissions & Alumni Affairs at IAU College
Kira Espiritu, Assistant Provost, International Affairs at University of San Diego
Nadia Alvarez Mexia, Director, Mexico Programs & Assistant Professor of Practice at University of Arizona
Introduction
Prior to COVID-19, the idea of virtual global experiences may have seemed like an inadequate substitute for a traditional study abroad experience. The shift towards rethinking global education without student mobility has been challenging; however, innovative opportunities through virtual international coursework and internships have emerged. These programs have the capability to increase access for marginalized groups, including those from immigrant and refugee backgrounds who have been categorically excluded from traditional on-site study abroad programs that require traveling beyond United States borders. For purposes of this article, the inclusive term “immigrant” is being used to include both DACA-mented and Undocumented students. This article explores these experiences as well as provides best practices for virtual international program development. In addition, the article discusses institutional responsibility for making virtual international opportunities accessible and equitable to ensure that they meet the standards of high-impact and pedagogical practices that increase retention and provide a comprehensive education system.
Higher Education & Study Abroad Enrollment Trends
Of the approximately 19.8 million students enrolled in higher education (National Center for Enrollment Statistics, 2018), a report conducted by the President’s Alliance on Education and Immigration (Feldblum et al., 2020) affirms that a total of 454,000 students are undocumented immigrants. This total represents 2% of all students enrolled in U.S. higher education, and approximately only 216,000 of the 454,000 undocumented immigrant students are eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
The Institute of International Education’s 2020 Open Doors Report indicates that in the 2018-2019 academic year, 347,099 students participated in study abroad programs, and according to NAFSA: Association of International Educators (2019), this equates to approximately 1.8% of the college population. These data points showcase that the majority of college students still do not participate in study abroad. There is a difference, however, in those who choose not to participate (for a variety of reasons) and those who legally cannot participate. The positive benefits of study abroad participation are, unfortunately, not extended to the 454,000 undocumented immigrant students who cannot participate in study abroad programs based on their immigration status.
An Unintended Consequence of COVID-19: Turning to Opportunity
According to Kohli Bagwe and Haskollar (2020), more than 2 billion students and multiple international initiatives around the world have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The lack of student mobility due to COVID-19 forced universities and international education organizations to create new opportunities for international experiences that did not require travel. Programs such as virtual international internships and virtual study abroad programs became more widely available beginning in late Spring 2020. The authors believe that these virtual international experiences could be a way to increase access to international education opportunities for the 454,000 undocumented immigrant students within higher education. These programs provide students with enriching academic content in a global (albeit virtual) environment exposing them to people, cultures, and perspectives that they simply would not have had if participation in such activities required physical international travel.
Virtual international programs must encompass pedagogical methodology, comprehensive curriculum, and intercultural objectives to provide cognitive development, cultural and safe learning spaces, and inclusive experiences for diverse populations. Professors and staff members play a key role in the development and coordination of these new models for international experiences. Additionally, the development of assessment tools should include continuous feedback to improve, document, and identify the impact of these opportunities. It is equally important that these virtual programs provide opportunities through mentorship to assist students to self-reflect on their own identity in order to continue developing and identifying skills that will support their profiles as local and global citizens.
Such comprehensive approaches begin with strategic collaboration and outreach. An example of this is the University of Arizona’s (UA) partnership with IAU College (IAU) to create targeted opportunities aimed to support immigrant students’ participation in virtual study abroad programs. In this collaboration with the UA Global office and Immigrant Student Resource Center (ISRC), IAU fully sponsors immigrant students who participate in their virtual internships, consulting projects, and coursework. Prior to the launch of this initiative came careful consideration of immigrant student needs and circumstances, with the protection of student identity held at the core of outreach and back-end processes. UA’s ISRC serves as a crucial safe space to connect students to this fully funded opportunity, and this initiative can help support their organizational mission to recruit and retain immigrant students through robust student services.
An additional example of programming that increased on campuses in Fall 2020 is the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) methodology, which provides guidelines for creating, teaching, and learning international experiences that shape multicultural and blended learning environments (COIL Center, 2020). Certainly, methodologies such as COIL can assist HEIs in reaching the traditionally marginalized student communities, increasing diversity and inclusion within “study abroad” programming, equalizing the opportunities for all students to participate, and rescuing those successful in-person models to provide equal opportunities to the immigrant student population.
Call to Leadership
HEIs should not let the opportunity to provide international experiences to immigrant students fade or disappear completely. Once campuses begin to “normalize” again and international travel opportunities reopen, virtual international programming should remain a priority to continue to provide international education experiences for underrepresented populations, including immigrant students. Key takeaways to consider include:
Integration of virtual international experiences into campus-wide internationalization efforts: Given that study abroad has already been identified as a high-impact practice (Stebleton et al., 2013), well-designed virtual international experiences can also be identified as such and therefore may be included as part of an institution’s international portfolio of offerings.
Ensure a holistic institutional definition of “underrepresented students” in international education: When considering strategic outreach to increase participation in international opportunities, it is important that immigrant students’ voices are included as part of this institutional dialogue.
Identification of campus, community, and international partners: Whether or not an institution has an established resource center for immigrant students, it is important to collaborate with existing allies (e.g., resource centers both on and off campus, student support units within academic and student affairs, advising departments) who understand these students’ needs and the challenges they face.
Creation of faculty and staff training opportunities: In addition to serving as educational programming for constituents, these opportunities are a venue to identify talents and knowledge on campus that assist in creating a sustainable capacity for these institutional efforts
Establish institutional funding to support these initiatives: Colleges and universities could help to offset costs for these programs through partnership with international education organizations.
Inclusion or adaptation of global agendas such as UNESCO to serve immigrant student populations and guide their active participation in opportunities that address their needs, capacities, and potential in local and global contexts (e.g., redefine the concept of global citizen).
Institutional leaders play a key role in identifying, creating, and formalizing these inclusive efforts. Through virtual international programming, HEIs have the opportunity to create reciprocal learning pathways for all community members, including immigrant students, and increase diversity and equity within “international” programming. Will your campus maintain the momentum of these virtual and inclusive international opportunities?
Institute of International Education. (2020). Open Doors: U.S. study abroad for academic credit trends, 1989/90–2018/19. https://www.opendoorsdata.org.
National Center for Enrollment Statistics. (2018).Percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled in college, by level of institution and sex and race/ethnicity of student: 1970 through 2018.https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_302.60.asp.
Stebleton, M. J., Soria, K. M., & Cherney, B. T. (2013). The high impact of education abroad: College students’ engagement in international experiences and the development of intercultural competencies. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 22(1), 1–24. https://frontiersjournal.org/index.php/Frontiers/article/view/316/280
Melissa Armstrong, Director of Interdisciplinary Global Programs (IGP) at Northern Arizona University (NAU)
Benning Tieke, Senior Lecturer of Spanish and IGP Faculty Coordinator at NAU
Harvey Charles, Professor of International Education at University at Albany, SUNY
Marcela Pino Alcaraz, Assistant Director of IGP at NAU
The horrors of 2020 will go down in history for the interplay of complex factors that have laid bare the fact of structural racism and systematic oppression within all aspects of society. This historical moment has provided an opening for international educators to engage in a critical exploration of what interventions can be made to minimize the racism within our structures that deny students access to global learning opportunities. Just as consequential, however, is the need to institutionalize anti-racist education in our global learning practices as we reimagine the next 100 years. It is not surprising that international education, designed to cater to the affluent and mostly white community, has had an exclusionary history (de Wit et al., 2021). Most education abroad students are white, with only 31.3% of participants representing historically underrepresented racial or ethnic populations (Institute of International Education, 2020). Yet anti-racist education is the flip side of intercultural education (Charles & Deardorff, 2020), which suggests that with intentionality, commitment, and vision, global learning initiatives can address both the structural and practical concerns of racism. This paper will explore a program designed to broaden access to students of color in rich and intense global learning experiences while naturally linking intercultural and anti-racist education to catalyze the bold call for a more equitable future.
Interdisciplinary Global Programs (IGP) is a 4.5- to 5-year dual-degree program at NAU in which students pair a STEM or business major with a language or cultural studies major and spend a year abroad completing a semester of coursework and a semester of fieldwork. The coursework semester is conducted as full language immersion for language majors (French, German, Japanese, Spanish) and as partial language immersion for cultural studies majors (Chinese minors). The fieldwork semester requires 540 hours of professional STEM or business experience while immersed in the host country language and culture. IGP is academically demanding: students average 17-credit semesters and participate in 6-10 hours of IGP programming annually. IGP serves over 300 students per year across five cohorts and 52% are students from historically underrepresented populations.
Although not launched as a diversity initiative, IGP has always drawn significant interest among students of color. Indeed, 100% of the first cohort of four students were from historically underrepresented populations. A case study two years after the program’s launch (in 2014) explored this phenomenon and revealed four contributing factors to students’ program interest ((Charles & Armstrong, 2017, as cited in Killick, 2017, pp. 200-203). Financial accessibility was most cited as IGP has no program costs. Students next referenced their language study as energizing. According to one student, “After a long day of electrical engineering courses, I like the different way I get to think in my French course.” Personalized advising was the next important feature: students mentioned the program structure and advisor support in helping to make possible a multifaceted global experience. Finally, students were drawn to the international fieldwork experience to help them stand out in their career. “I want to go to medical school and a lab research experience in Germany as an undergraduate will definitely not hurt my chances.”
Given the understanding of what students of color are looking for in global learning experiences, the IGP framework continued to evolve structurally and practically to disrupt racism. IGP embodies an anti-racist curricular and programmatic approach based on five global competencies: multilingual capability, intercultural competence, positive leadership, global networks, and interdisciplinary thinking. The layering of access, curriculum, and programming creates a Pedagogy of Inclusion, which fosters rich encounters with diverse ideas and provides continual opportunities for students to understand, experience, and practice the competencies over the program’s term. The pedagogy is built upon three main pillars.
Accessibility: The first pillar holds that international education structures must be broadly accessible so (1) the hundreds of thousands of U.S. student ambassadors that travel abroad each year reflect the nation’s demographics and (2) the benefits of a global education experience are available to all. IGP has no program fees due to leadership commitment, students’ merit scholarships and tuition locks extend into their fifth year, and scholarship opportunities are actively organized and promoted. Students’ experience abroad is completed as an exchange program requiring no additional tuition costs. Additionally, the program atmosphere is widely open and inclusive; diversity in all forms is encouraged and recognized. Although the IGP path is open to all who meet the application requirements, the demands of an academically rigorous program are such that not all who are admitted can see the IGP path to its end. Recognizing this reality, IGP built support practices into the curriculum and programming.
Curriculum: The second pillar recognizes that curricular design facilitates student exploration of diverse ideas and their culturally held perspectives, along with the development of their intercultural understanding (King, 2020). IGP recognizes that every course presents a learning opportunity about the diverse and interconnected world (Sorenson et al., 2009) and this can happen before, during, and after experiences abroad. The IGP curricular map includes a pre-departure course that introduces cross-cultural sensitivity and prepares students for language and cultural immersion. While students are abroad, the curricular experience deepens through journaling and one-on-one contact with faculty mentors who help students explore the meanings of their experiences. The curricular design culminates in capstone courses where students apply intercultural competence theoretical frameworks to their own cross-cultural experiences, while examining how different cultures approach complex issues such as conflict resolution and social justice. In this way, students’ intercultural education also becomes an anti-racist education that helps them be better equipped to tackle inequities they encounter in their home culture or while abroad.
Programming: The third pillar acknowledges the power of programmatic outcomes in supporting a Pedagogy of Inclusion. IGP’s programming, aligned with the curriculum, guides students in practicing each of the five global competencies outlined above each year over the program’s five years. Competencies are presented with a roadmap that levels up each year, demonstrating to students when and how they will achieve the competency. Specialized events designed for students to prepare for, succeed during, and process their year abroad are all explicitly tied to learning outcomes for the global competencies. For example, students achieve their Positive Leadership competency through a progression of events and workshops: Year 1 Orientation, Year 2 Career Visioning, Year 3 Identities Abroad, Year 4 Authentic Leadership reflection (while abroad), and Year 5 Summit presentation. Each competency outcome is “roadmapped” through time and the suite of competencies is a toolkit to disrupt racism.
If nothing else, the cataclysms of 2020 have made clear that the ground has shifted under our feet. We are entering into a new world where the assumptions of the past no longer hold, and new paradigms are emerging by which our lives will be guided, including the kinds of preparation that our graduates need to meet the demands of this new era. This triadic approach of accessibility, curriculum, and programming aligned with the five global competencies creates a Pedagogy of Inclusion and ensures that students who complete IGP have the anti-racist and intercultural sensibilities to be ambassadors of positive change. Armed with these skills, graduates can more successfully navigate the landscape of globalization, having more effective interactions among diverse groups of people while dismantling racist structures that for too long have denied opportunity and throttled human potential.
References
Killick, D. (2017). Internationalization and diversity in higher education: Implications for teaching, learning and assessment. Palgrave.
de Witt, H., et al. (Forthcoming, 2021). The Internationalization of higher education: Future prospects. InD. Deardorff, H. de Witt, B. Leask, & H. Charles (Eds), Thehandbook of international higher education, (2nd ed.). Stylus.
Institute of International Education. (2020). Open Doors: Profile of U.S. study abroad students, 2000/01–2018/19. http://www.iie.org/opendoors
Sorensen, N., Nagda, B. A., Gurin, P., Maxwell, K. E. (2009). Taking a “hands on” approach to diversity in higher education: A critical-dialogic model for effective intergroup interaction. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy.9(1), 3–35.
Blase Scarnati, Director of Global Learning and Professor of Musicology – Northern Arizona University
Melissa Armstrong, Director, Interdisciplinary Global Programs – Northern Arizona University
Social justice work through international education curriculum can be deeply catalytic, generating impactful and reciprocal collaborations between local communities, communities abroad, faculty, and students to develop voice, agency, and the skills to organize and work with others to bring about change so that we can all live in empowered and self-directed communities. Too often in international education, local and global work are considered to be opposing poles of activity, as if they exist on two ends of a single strand. We argue that these ends should be pulled together, woven into a whole where the local and global, theory and practice, and pedagogical models and applications are knotted together. For us, social justice moves the hands that tie this strand of opposites into a dense intersectional practice. Through social justice-focused means and ends, local communities, communities abroad, faculty, and students are all empowered to generate change at small and large scales, both here and abroad.
This article explores a framework for pursuing this woven knot of globalized localism and presents overviews of three large-scale, local/internationalized, student/community-based initiatives. Starting from a position that generating power is the ultimate aim of organizing by and with communities for economic and social justice ends (Chambers, 2004), we proceed in flat, reciprocal, deeply collaborative ways that foreground community organizing theory and practice to work with and identify tangible projects and goals that the community itself seeks to achieve.
Eric Hartman and colleagues have persuasively argued for global community-based learning that is “applied, reflective, connected, visceral, integrative, and engaged; it is locally contextualized, historically informed, and theoretically grounded” (2018, 3-4). We agree with Harman’s arguments and framing but also seek to fundamentally ground this work within local communities here at home. Neal Sobania (2015) has edited a volume on local community-based service learning for international ends. With globalized localism (adapting de Sousa Santos, 2006; see also Charles, Zhou, & Scarnati, 2021), we bring Hartman and Sobania together to focus and situate our work both at the local and global levels so that engagement with our local community here connects with our community-based work abroad.
By using a model that weaves local and global work together concurrently, reciprocal, flat collaborations are developed and deepened over time. Through ongoing, multi-year projects, our students collaborate both in person and virtually with local diasporic, indigenous, international, and undocumented communities here and also with various communities abroad. At its heart, this reciprocal and collaborative work between our students and community members—locally and abroad, in-person and virtually—is grounded in social justice concerns focused fundamentally on issues of power, equity, health and healthcare, development, and climate justice.
So, how can we tie this knot, weave these powerful community connections through social justice work? We present brief overviews of three strands of practice that bend toward one another and, in similar contexts, could be integrated and tightly woven so that their efforts are mutually supportive and reinforcing. The first is a large-scale locally based community engagement initiative to build community power and democratic capacities, the second is an internationally based program that fosters social justice skills in the energy sector through collaborations abroad that are then returned to the local region, and the third is a virtual program that works through the global community-based development efforts of a major non-profit that also expands access of impactful, hands-on learning experiences for our students.
Northern Arizona University’s First Year Seminar-Action Research Team Program saw 600 first-year students each year work in collaboration with more than 40 diverse local community collaborative partner organizations on social justice, grassroots democracy, and sustainability issues identified by these community partners. Organized into numerous themed collaborative Action Research Teams (ARTs), each ART was multigenerational and diverse, including K-12 students from the local community and their parents, various community members and organizations, local and regional political leaders, business entrepreneurs, and elders from the Diné (Navajo) nation. All came together in the ARTs to work on social justice projects that, while being rooted in the local region, were continually pointing outward to articulate with issues that were international in scope, including immigration motivated by issues of economics and community violence, food and water justice, healthcare access, and the rights of those who are undocumented. Based in community organizing theory and methods (Coles & Scarnati, 2014), the Program grew exponentially, helped anchor most community and regional social justice projects at the time, and whose efforts were showcased at the Obama White House in 2012.
Our second practice highlights local and global social justice work within the energy sector. NAU’s Leaders United for Positive Energy (LUPE) project addresses the need for inclusive leadership and reciprocal relationships between the global extraction industry and local communities where extraction occurs (Lencina, 2018). Social justice for indigenous communities is foregrounded in LUPE, with students and faculty from Argentina, Mexico, and the US joining together, all from regions with long histories of colonization and mining practices that disproportionately take place on indigenous lands (Vallejos et al., 2020). The interdisciplinary LUPE field course, supported by a grant from the 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund, is delivered virtually, followed by an in-person fieldwork experience taking place, in part, on the Navajo Nation in Arizona and New Mexico. This group of international students and professors collaborated closely with Navajo Nation community members and organizations to ground the discussion of social justice and mining in real-world examples. LUPE seeks to establish a tri-national network of students, faculty, and institutions to begin to achieve a just and sustainable future in the energy sector.
Our third practice is a virtual-based partnership with Global Brigades (globalbrigades.org), a platinum-level GuideStar-rated (www.guidestar.org) non-profit organization that brings 16 years of international community development experience and a network of 525 partner communities in multiple countries into collaboration with over 83,000 students over the years to work on tangible and impactful community-based projects that are identified by the community members themselves. Global Brigades has raised nearly $150 million and invested it in-country and, working with its community partners, enabled 1.5 million medical clinical visits, invested nearly $1 million in local community banks and in microloans, built infrastructure to enable more than 32,000 people to have access to safe drinking water, and trained more than 600 health workers.
Their in-person student collaborations with community committees and groups have been greatly expanded through virtual meetings, which now bring students into collaboration with community members to achieve real impact, gain significant disciplinary or community development and social justice-community empowerment experiences, and develop transferable intercultural competency skills, while limiting time away from school and their carbon travel footprint. The very low cost of these virtual non-profit educational student programs (literally, for the cost of a textbook) opens opportunities for students traditionally underrepresented in study abroad to actively engage in these international development experiences.
Conclusion
Through a globalized localism, we advocate for a model and practice that deeply integrates reciprocal local-global community-based collaborations among our faculty, students, and communities both at home and abroad on impactful projects identified by the communities themselves to build capacities and power and enrich the lives of all. Through local community work that can be internationalized, through local-global collaborations whose scope can continue to expand, and through virtual collaborations, we seek to weave together the local and global, theory and practice, and pedagogical models and applications. We must allow the hands of social justice to guide this fruitful knotting of passion, power, potential, skill, and capacity-building to meet unmet aspiration.
References
Chambers, E. T. (2004). Roots for radicals: Organizing for power, action, and justice. Continuum International Publishing Group.
Charles, H., Zhou, J., & Scarnati, B. (2021). Foregrounding a globalized localism for social justice through the 21st century college curriculum. Global Impact Exchange, Winter/Spring 2021, 38–40.
Coles, R., & Scarnati, B. (2014). Beyond enclosure: Pedagogy for a democratic commonwealth. Higher Education Exchange, 74–75.
Hartman, E., Kiely, R. C., Boettcher, C., & Friedrichs, J. (2018) Community-based global learning: The theory and practice of ethical engagement at home and abroad. Stylus Publishing.
Lencina, R. (2017). Social responsibility: A new challenge in graduate university education. Annals of Geophysics, 60(1-8). https://DOI.org/10.4401/AG-7559
Quijano Vallejos, P., Veit, P., Tipula, P., & Reytar, K. (2020). Undermining rights: Indigenous lands and mining in the Amazon. World Resources Institute Report. https://doi.org/10.46830/wrirpt.19.00085
Sobania, N. W. (Ed). (2015). Putting the local in global education: Models for transformative learning through domestic off-campus programs. Stylus Publishing.
de Sousa Santos, B. (2006). Globalizations. Theory, Culture & Society,23(2-3), 393–399.
Title: Sustainability in Action: Integrating SDGs into International Education
Presenters:
Sean Reilly, AFS
Saskia Kaya, AFS
Description:
Integrating Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into international education programs enhances their global impact. This session explores how SDG-focused curricula prepare students and educators for responsible and informed global citizenship..
Discuss how SDGs can be seamlessly integrated into curriculum and program design.
Highlight the value of aligning international education goals with global sustainability objectives.
Share examples of collaborative projects or community engagement initiatives tied to SDGs.
Explore the benefits of preparing students with sustainability-focused learning outcomes.
Title: Identity & Inclusion at the Crossroads: Involving Students in the Development of Practical Support Strategies in the European Context
Leadra Reeves, CASA Granada Spring ’24 Alum & Travel Grant Awardee
Dani Kaufman-Sedano, CASA Granada Spring ’23 Alum & Travel Grant Awardee
Description:
Join a seasoned study abroad director and two program alums as they share their stories, effective strategies, easy-to-implement practices, and the measurable outcomes that result from incorporating student voices in the development of inclusive support services onsite. In this deep-dive session, we invite you to engage in the exercise of validating the lived experiences of recent graduates whose identities span a range of both visible and invisible identities that we often encounter among our student cohorts, and of translating those experiences into concrete strategies. More specifically, based on both research findings and direct personal experiences, we will:
Come to a comprehensive understanding of inclusion, drawing from the different approaches utilized in Europe and the U.S., and the lived experiences of our students at this crossroads, and use it as the foundation for building inclusive programs and practices.
Explore the importance and the impact of inclusive approaches in academic and cultural adjustment support on students’ overall wellbeing and personal growth.
Identify specific challenges that students of varying identities face while studying abroad in Europe, with a particular focus on students of low-income backgrounds, Black students, LGBTQ+ students, and students of different religious backgrounds.
Discuss intentional support services/resources that study abroad programs can provide for diverse student populations in close collaboration with their host partners – institutions, host families, faculty, community organizations – and how to approach potential obstacles that may surface.
Engage with the process of developing, implementing and evaluating the success of inclusive initiatives, and measuring the direct impact on your students and the future of your program!
Title: From Abroad to Beyond: Turning European Experiences into Career Success
Presenters:
Nicola Sullivan, AIFS
Maya Edwards, AIFS
Description:
Global education experiences in Europe equip students with unique skills for careers in public and private sectors. This session highlights how these experiences translate into employability and career preparedness.
Explore how global education in Europe impacts students’ employability and career preparedness.
Identify transferable skills developed through international education and their alignment with workforce demands.
Discuss reverse culture shock and strategies to leverage the abroad experience professionally.
Showcase alumni success stories to inspire future students.
Concurrent Session Block 3
The Role of the Global University in Navigating Conflict, Dialogue, Transformation — How campuses cultivate dialogue, resilience, and civic readiness amid geopolitical tension while keeping learning and community at the center.
Partnerships that Drive Real Collaboration & Innovation — Models that move beyond finance-only deals to co-created programs, research, and talent pathways linking MENA and global institutions.
Concurrent Session Block 2
Making the Student Success Case for International Education to Campus Leadership — How to build deeper support for global learning among campus leadership by framing international education as a key driver to improving student success.
Inclusion in MENA: Narratives, Demographics & Opportunity — Public narratives about MENA are often formed at a distance. This session examines inclusion through societal trends and the policy frameworks that enable openness and stability.
The Value of International & Experiential Study Through the Lens of Global Employers — What employers say global and experiential learning uniquely delivers, from teamwork across cultures to problem-solving on real projects.
Concurrent Session Block 1
Preparing Today’s International Students for Tomorrow’s Workforce — How institutions align global and experiential learning along with employer partnerships so international students translate global study into career readiness and impact.
Unique Mental Health & Wellbeing Considerations for Study to & from MENA — Culturally grounded approaches that support student wellbeing across languages, faith, family expectations, and cross-border transitions.
Tech for Global Education: What’s Actually Working? — Practical, people-first uses of digital tools that expand reach, improve student support, and strengthen collaboration without turning staff into technologists.
