(Re)Place Pedagogies for Remaking Place and Spaces Together

by DA Global | Dec 22, 2021 | Articles

Posted: Thursday, December 23, 2021

By: Danielle Lake, Director of Design Thinking & Associate Professor, Elon University; Vanessa Drew-Branch,, Assistant Professor, Human Studies Services, Elon University; Sandy Marshall,, Assistant Professor, Geography, Elon University; Bobbi Ruffin, Director of Mayco Bigelow Community Center at North Park; Shineece Sellars, Executive Director of African-American Cultural Arts and History Center

While studying abroad is often seen as a primary pathway towards global education and cultural humility, it can be impractical, inequitable, unsustainable, and questionable as a method of intercultural learning (Hartman et al. 2020; Wick et al. 2019). Meanwhile, often overlooked  forms of boundary crossing—including intercultural service learning with migrants and refugees (De Leon 2014), engagement in intentionally multicultural group work (Reed & Garson 2017), critical service learning (Mitchell 2007), and liberatory decolonizing pedagogies (Constanza-Chock 2020), have proven effective in contributing to intercultural learning. However, even these proximat forms of face-to-face global learning have become a challenge in the era of social distancing and remote instruction. Rather than conceptualizing global citizenship education as only taking place in a particular global context necessitating international border crossing, we explore how interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and interracial collaboration, as carried out through in-person campus/community partnerships and remote translocal connections, can foster intercultural learning. In order to contribute to critical and emerging conversations around diversity, inclusion, and equity in global education, we outline our process, initial findings, and tentative recommendations from the design and facilitation of a cross-course community-based learning project with a local African American history organization and community center under conditions of social distancing over the fall of 2020.

Boundary Crossing Curriculum: Collaboration as Intercultural Learning

The What, Why, When, & Where: The 2020 Power and Place Collaborative was formalized during the summer of 2020. The collaborative includes the African-American Cultural Arts and History Center, the Mayco Bigelow North Park Community Center, and faculty and students from an interdisciplinary cross-course collaboration including an honors sophomore seminar entitled Place and Placing-Making and a senior seminar in health and human services. In support of community-identified goals to center narratives from the African American community in Burlington and surrounding areas in Alamance country, the aim was to create interdisciplinary near-peer teams of students who would work together to conduct remote oral history interviews with community members and co-produce public facing digital stories from these interviews. The collaborative interviewing and digital storytelling process, combined with walking tours of local neighborhoods, created opportunities for students to enter into relationship with, and contribute to, the local community. This place-based experiential learning was combined with trans-local learning in the form of guest speakers, both from the surrounding region and further afield, who shared insights from place-making initiatives in their own communities.

The How: Grounded in a commitment to mutually beneficial community/university relationships, collaborative members spent the summer co-creating the curriculum, including designing assignments, sharing readings, planning the oral history interviews, and scheduling the walking tours and guest speakers.

The Fall 2020 semester began with a focus on building relationships between students and with community partners through class visits from community partners and walking tours of historically black neighborhoods. Before beginning the work of interviewing community members, students first created their own autobiographical digital story examining how their personal sense of place has been impacted by the events of the global pandemic and/or the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Prior to interviewing community members, students also learned the technical tools of digital audio recording and video editing, studied the practical and ethical challenges of community-based learning, and practiced empathetic listening and peer reviewing. These practices provided students with an opportunity to experience first hand how sharing one’s story publically can be both inspirational and empowering, as well as fraught with questions about personal privacy and authenticity.

Over the course of a week, students conducted oral history interviews remotely with community members, who attended their interview sessions using a laptop and microphone set-up at the Mayco Bigelow Community Center. Students transcribed interviews and produced a draft script for their digital story, sharing their draft with community partners who provided additional context and suggestions on potential themes to emphasize. In alignment with relational, cocreative design practices, students then shared a revised script with community members for feedback and suggestions. After collecting images, video, sounds, and music, students edited together their digital stories for additional peer and community feedback. Finally, students and community storytellers presented and celebrated their co-produced stories at a public screening via Zoom.

Aligned with critical race theory, this relational and iterative process developed a sense of community connection, introduced students to a critical understanding of how social constructions of race, place, and identity intersect, and demonstrated the importance of centering on Black voices. Seeking to go beyond victim narratives or understandings of place based on deficiency or lack, we drew upon McKittrick’s (2011) notion of a Black sense of place that “brings into focus the ways in which racial violences […] shape, but do not wholly define, black worlds” (947). As Delgado and Stefancic (2017) point out, “powerfully written stories, and narratives may begin a process of correction in our system of belief and categories by calling attention to neglected evidence and reminding readers(viewers) of our common humanity” (51).

What Did We Learn? Mixed Methods Longitudinal Assessment

Given our commitment to understand how locally situated engagement mediated by technologies yields outcomes similar to and different from conventional forms of education abroad, the collaborative is also engaged in a mixed methods, longitudinal research study. The study seeks to understand how our approach to engaged learning 1) generates knowledge networks connecting students, instructors, and community partners across multiple locales, 2) impacts efforts towards deep listening and empathy, and 3) imbues a greater sense of humility, nimbleness, and resiliency. As a part of this study students were asked to complete the Global Engagement Survey at pre- and post-semester intervals. In order to track the longitudinal value of this approach, they will also be asked to complete the survey two years out. In addition, we have conducted observational analyses and plan to conduct semi-structured interviews with students over the next four years.

While it is too early to share substantive longitudinal results from the GES survey, initial analysis of written reflections and our own observations have led us to believe this cross-course community-based learning project increased students’ understanding of and appreciation for local place history, including the incremental and small scale efforts that people pursue toward the broader aim of social and racial justice. As one student reflected at the end of the semester, “I was really blown away by [our interviewee’s] commitment to the community and how hard she has worked to create a sense of place.” This student went on to note that this project has led her to commit to designing-with communities, saying “I learned so much through this project and I hope to bring this knowledge to future community-oriented endeavors.”

Another student wrote that they especially valued the opportunity to break “the narrative of discussing Black geographies as placeless.” This student valued how the stories did not attempt to present placed narratives within a “context of suppression and loss,” saying their oral histories engaged both “big thematic questions about race and the County” while also “celebrating the lives of our interviewees.” In this way, the collaborative storytelling process not only created opportunities for learning about and engaging with community at the local scale, but also thinking critically about broader scale issues of racial justice.

We also found that the iterative, experiential, and relational learning process of collaborating directly with community members appeared to teach students resiliency and humility and confronted them with the real world ethical challenges of participatory research and design.  One student put it aptly, saying that their “digital story is about learning and unlearning.” Another began their post-course reflection by writing, “I was rather nervous at the idea of interviewing and then telling the story of the interviewee.” However, after getting feedback from the community partners and the interviewee, and after “hours upon hours of hard work and sitting with this story,” the student reported that they “learned so much” from the process, including the strong influence that place had on their interviewee.

Challenges and Tentative Recommendations

Given that these projects unfolded in the fall of 2020, the long-term, post-course value of these practices is yet to be determined. We are committed to pursuing our longitudinal, mixed method study over the next four years in order to trace the threads that unfold. Nevertheless, we can offer some tentative lessons learned and recommendations.

Our collaboration benefitted from institutional support for community-based learning including project funding, direct support via reduced teaching loads for faculty, access to summer stipends for curriculum development, and (limited) structures for team-teaching. Even still, our participatory approach clashes with the need to have relationships and plans in place prior to student enrollment in our courses. We sought to mitigate this by involving students in the post-project evaluation and design ideation for future iterations of the partnership. Likewise, we aim to involve students from past course cohorts in these future iterations, whether as teaching assistants, interns, or undergraduate researchers. The outcomes of this long-term approach to creating scaffolded opportunities to deepen engagement with local communities will be the subject of further research.

References

Alden Rivers, B., Armellini, A., Maxwell, R., Allen, S. and Durkin, C. (2015). Social innovation education: Towards a framework for learning design. Higher Education, Skills and Work-based Learning. 5(4), 383-400.

Bennion, E. (2013). Moving assessment forward: Teaching civic engagement and beyond. In A. R. Millett McCartney, E. A. Bennion, & D. Simpson (Eds.). Teaching civic engagement: From student to active citizen (pp. 437-445). Washington, DC: American Political Science Association.

Brown, T. (2019). Change by design: How design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation (2nd ed.). Harper Business.

Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design justice: Community-led practices to build the worlds we need. Cambridge: MIT Press.

De Leon, N. (2014). Developing intercultural competence by participating in intensive intercultural service-learning. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 21(1), 17-30.

Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2017). Critical race theory: An introduction. New York: New York University Press.

Hartman, E., Reynolds, N. P., Ferrarini, C., Messmore, N., Evans, S., Al-Ebahim, B., & Brown, J. M. (2020). Coloniality-decoloniality and critical global citizenship: Identity, belonging, and education abroad. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of study abroad, 32(1), 33–59.

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McKittrick, K. (2011). On plantations, prisons, and a black sense of place. Social & Cultural Geography, 12(8), 947-963.

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Wick, D., Willis, T. Y., Rivera, J., Lueker, E., & Hernandez, M. (2019). Asset based learning abroad: First generation Latinx college students leveraging and increasing community
cultural wealth in Costa Rica. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 16(2), 63-85.

Centering Student Needs and Marketing for Global Education Beyond 2021

by DA Global | Jul 21, 2021 | Articles

Posted: Wednesday, July 21, 2021
By: Subgroup of 2020-2021 Education Abroad: Marketing, Outreach & Recruitment Task Force

As college students return to campus and study abroad resumes with increased vaccinations around the world, what will study abroad look like and how will we reach out to marginalized and diverse students to market study abroad? COVID-19 has had a significant impact on all of our lives but it has impacted our students of color even more economically, academically, and socially. Do our students even need to study abroad at a moment when meeting the basic needs of their family and community seems overwhelming?

As we consider reaching out to students about study abroad and marketing study abroad to them, let us consider the needs of our diverse students and work with them to reimagine their own global education and engagement.  In this work, we must be mindful of our own office’s capacity and institutional resources that can support students as they chart their own path.

Student Needs

“If students are not well, not only physically, but mentally, if they are not living in a safe space or don’t have access to nutrition, if they can’t pay their bills, those are the things I care about most as a faculty member this semester,” Soria said. “It’s about a change in perspective, having a philosophical shift of mind, to really be more ethically devoted to students and caring and compassionate to students.” (Inside Higher Ed)

The concept of Maslow before Bloom was quite helpful to us in our thinking.  Basic needs must be met first before students can study and think about their own path, including study abroad.  Even students who were planning to study abroad before the pandemic may have concluded that this is no longer an option for them.

We need to meet our students where they are, with empathy. Let us listen to our students tell the story of this moment and let them guide the conversation about what is possible for them in the post-COVID era amidst disproportionate economic impacts on BIPOC communities, growing tensions from racial reckoning, increases in anti-Asian violence, headlines of mass shootings, ongoing sagas of immigration struggles, and uncertain vaccine regulations.

Marketing to them during this time will look more like individual conversations about their goals and how to help them meet their own goals, as opposed to beautiful pictures of a group of students in a stunning location on social media.  Students may have been personally affected by the loss of a friend or relative due to the pandemic and hence desire to ask questions in a more private setting.

For example, in addressing the barriers faced by first-generation students it is important to speak with them about international travel, the fear of being away from family and friends, and the need for a passport.

Global Education & Engagement

While a traditional study abroad experience may not be possible for students who are about to graduate and students whose life situations have changed because of COVID-19, let us reframe the conversation with those students and speak about what is possible and what the options are. The key is to broaden their perspective so that they can learn about opportunities that are available but may not be familiar to them, and to remind them that they can have a meaningful international experience even if it is not called study abroad. Taking the time to explain these opportunities to them is essential, as they may not be familiar.

Some of the opportunities that exist for students to go abroad after graduation include employment opportunities abroad, graduate school abroad, international internships, grants and scholarships, and partnerships. There are numerous opportunities to teach English abroad in a foreign country, whether through an organization such as JET in Japan and the Teaching Assistant Program in France, or through an organization like English First. Students may explore graduate school abroad, attending an American university with a campus abroad or an accredited foreign institution. There are numerous grants and scholarships such as the US Student Fulbright Program and Schwarzman Scholars that support graduate education abroad. Opportunities such as the Peace Corps also help graduating students live and work abroad.

Beyond speaking about international opportunities after graduation, what are some ways that institutions can maintain global engagement with students even while few students are studying abroad? A passport initiative on campus for US citizens who have never had a passport may help students who have never been abroad to prepare for study abroad or international travel in the future.  Requiring them to learn about study abroad as they obtain their passport may help your office with visibility.

Virtual exchanges, conversations, and internships with global partners are also an innovative way of helping students and your institution to maintain global engagement during this time of limited mobility. Roundtables with international colleagues and developing events, such as workshops or symposiums on international scholarships can help spread awareness on global opportunities that are usually reserved for International Education Week.

Office Capability & Institutional Resources

Helping students think through going abroad after graduation is not something that study abroad offices regularly do; it will take time and resources at a time when all of us are dealing with so much.  Does your office have the ability to do this additional work with students? If so, study abroad team members are uniquely positioned to speak to this, either because of their own experiences abroad or their work in international education.

In speaking with students and helping to explore their paths, it is important to refer them to resources that are available on campus.  Several offices can be key in supporting students in their planning.  The Career Center will work with students applying for positions abroad; the Fellowship office will support students as they apply for national & international scholarships and grants.  Other key offices on campus could be the International Student office, the Counseling Center, the Alumni Affairs office, faculty, student organizations, and financial aid.

Ideally, some of these conversations are best to be held on an individual basis.  However, we must be cognizant of our offices’ resources and human capital.  When possible, try recording a virtual presentation or create a page on your website dedicated to additional information such as post-graduate opportunities for students to access on their own time.  Although it may seem impersonal, especially for non-traditional students, it will be more efficient than trying to schedule individual conversations with every student or it may shorten your meeting time as you can always refer them back to the online resources.

One thing is clear, we will need to redefine global education and how we market it, and despite our best intentions, we cannot do it all ourselves.  We will need to leverage our resources now more than ever.  Reach out to your professional networks.  For example, we can collaborate with outside foundations and organizations that can support our students in their global education journeys with graduate international opportunities such as Schwarzman Scholars.  As we ask students to think about things in a new light, can your institution do the same?  Can they be flexible with certain policies to allow students to study abroad before they graduate or create new ways for students who have just graduated to earn graduate credit for a summer study abroad experience?  Can you work with your providers to offer faculty workshops or fundraising strategies for students?

As you assess your students’ needs in the post-COVID era, you may be able to identify not only the challenges faced, but also new opportunities to make global education a reality for your students. We believe the key will be to always maintain an empathic approach.

Reimagining Global Education. Our Thoughts for the Future

Schedule a primer meeting with your office. Maslow before Bloom does not only apply to your students.  We encourage you to check in with your team regularly and take a pulse of where they are in their wellness journey.  How are they coping with the myriad of social, economic, and political issues happening at the same time? Like the students we work with, our team members are navigating unprecedented challenges.  What can the team realistically take on during this time as additional projects? Are there resources across campus that would be helpful during this time that would decrease your team’s workload? First start with ‘self’ and then organize on what can be done.

Empathizing with students. Show compassion for life circumstances and missed opportunities by engaging with them in meaningful conversation and working through the range of emotions. Acknowledge the difficult truth that students may not have the quintessential study abroad experience that can be a hallmark of the undergraduate experience. FOMO is real, so how might that inform future opportunities to pursue? Be mindful of the difference between espoused or publicly stated support, versus the support that is actually enacted in day to day interactions. Be courageous in naming the impacts of today on our mental health and normalize the asking for help.

Market with empathy. Hold a focus group with students you wish to target and build some strategy around what their specific needs are.  For example, developing a passport initiative, like Georgia State University, to offer free passports to underprivileged students that are interested in studying abroad later or going abroad after graduation. Events like this promote your office and programs while addressing a roadblock for students.  Consider ways of involving parents and families in clarifying what global education can do for students’ future job and career prospects. What is the cost, time, and energy required to embark on these alternative paths?  Parents will benefit from seeing this experience as an investment.

Use your programming as a pathway for global education. Lead with budgeting and finance workshops that can help with study abroad and general goal planning. Or tag along in workshops from your financial aid office to identify ways for self-fundraising you can recommend to students concerned about meeting the costs of study abroad.  Coach students through exploring other opportunities to gain hard skills, work experience, language skills, and post grad opportunities. Especially nowadays, encourage students to join language study initiatives where virtual programs can accommodate high quality practice with native language speakers all over the world.

Finding time to reflect and enact the lessons learned.  Hold debrief sessions with students to keep reframing our work. Hold round tables with past participants and prospective students to co-author a new vision of global programs. Take time to review their experiences with their program’s and office staff. If possible, create a brief report that can be used as documentation to advocate to your institution’s leadership.

Additional thoughts for the future. We leave you with other questions to consider in this conversation. What are the needs of students’ most impacted by COVID and how might you prioritize them? What is your office’s capacity to account for the imbalances of resources on campus? How can you create more purposeful and intentional marketing towards students who otherwise would not have the opportunity to engage globally due to COVID? How can you expand your professional network to include people that can better support your marketing strategies? We don’t have all the answers but offer these insights to help you create change in the places and spaces that matter to you the most.

Resources

Anderson, Greta. “Alcohol Affects College Women’s Academics More Than Men.” Inside Higher Ed. June 2, 2020.
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/06/02/alcohol-affects-college-womens-academics-more-men

Kimble‐Hill, A. C., Rivera‐Figueroa, A., Chan, B. C., Lawal, W. A., Gonzalez, S., Adams, M. R., Heard, G. L., Gazley, J. L., & Fiore‐Walker, B. (2020). Insights gained into marginalized students access challenges during the COVID‐19 academic response. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 3391– 3395. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00774

McCorristin, Roric. “Diversifying Study Abroad Participation: What historically black colleges and universities can teach predominately white institutions.” NAFSA. November 1, 2019. https://www.nafsa.org/ie-magazine/2019/11/1/diversifying-study-abroad-participation

Tai, D., Shah, A., Doubeni, C. A., Sia, I. G., & Wieland, M. L. (2021). The Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 on Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the United States. Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 72(4), 703–706. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa815

GSU Free Passport Initiative:  https://mystudyabroad.gsu.edu/freepassport/

Ways to Advance Equity, Inclusion & Racial Justice in Global Education

by DA Global | Jun 7, 2021 | Articles

Posted: Thursday, January 7, 2021
By: Andrew Gordon – CEO & Founder, Diversity Abroad

If advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and racial justice is one of your goals for 2021 here are four ways you can progress toward this goal.

As we kick off a new year for many it’s a time of reflection as well as personal and professional goal setting. Over the past seven months there has been a palpable energy at practically every level of our society to make meaningful progress with respect to diversity, equity, inclusion and racial justice. For those interested in how we turn this energy, this passion, into systemic change in the field of global education and cultural exchange now is a perfect time to consider what each of us can do to advance this work at our institutions and organizations. Whether you work in education abroad, with international students or more broadly in global learning, if advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and racial justice is one of your goals for 2021 here are four ways you can progress toward this goal:

Establish a Baseline

How do you know where you’re headed if you don’t know where you are? Many professionals are committed to ensuring all students – domestic and international – have equitable access to the benefits of global education. How, though, does this commitment translate into progress? Until we assess the current state of diversity, equity and inclusion in our organization’s operation and establish a baseline of strengths and areas for development, it will be nearly impossible to make sustainable progress toward these goals. Assessing DEI practices and policies is a foundational step to developing a systemic approach to expanding equitable access to the benefits of global education and fostering a climate of inclusion and belonging within our organizations. Using assessment tools such as Diversity Abroad’s Global Equity & Inclusion Scorecard allows professionals to map, measure and improve their office’s DEI practices and policies, and make progress toward their goals. Let 2021 be the year that you and your colleagues establish a baseline for diversity, equity and inclusion practices in your office.

Examine Your Bias

2020 was a watershed year in which organizations and individuals on a larger scale began to accept the reality of implicit bias and appreciate the impact it has on our daily decision making. In 2021, it’s critical that we move from acknowledging the existence of implicit bias to taking action to combat it in our personal and professional lives. You can gain greater insight into your biases in a few different ways – from taking personal assessments like the one offered by Project Implicit to increasing your awareness by reading and reflecting upon literature on racial equity. Additionally, consider situations where your biases may impact your work, for example in how you advise students about where and/or in what modality they participate in education abroad programs, during the hiring process for roles in our office or how you engage with international students from different parts of the world. We all have biases. The better we can identify what they are, the better positioned we’ll be to combat them.

Develop Diversity & Inclusion Competencies

The success of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts isn’t gauged by the passion of those carrying out this work. Being passionate about DEI and/or possessing a minoritized identity are important factors in this work, but not sufficient to accelerate effective diversity, equity, inclusion and racial justice strategies. Acquiring the requisite competencies is essential to develop, implement and advance sustainable DEI practices and policies in our sector. Learning and development programs such as the International Education Diversity & Inclusion Certificate ,  DEI related training programs at your place of work or within your local community, short online courses, or targeted readings offer opportunities to acquire and hone diversity and inclusion competencies. So whether it’s improving your marketing and advising skills or learning how to create a more inclusive office environment, acquiring and continuing to develop diversity and inclusive competencies will equip you with the skills, knowledge and confidence to champion and advance DEI within your organization.

Embrace Discomfort & Humility

“Get comfortable with being uncomfortable” – Luuvie Ajayi. The principles behind this quote are applicable to achieving success in advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and racial justice in and through our work in global education. Every year, I encourage attendees at the Diversity Abroad Conference to strive to learn more about topics in DEI that they might feel less comfortable with. It can feel uncomfortable or at times even embarrassing to admit not being as well versed in DEI language and terminology as your colleagues. Or, while you may be well versed with certain aspects of diversity, equity and inclusion, for example gender, sexuality or first-generation student status, you may be less comfortable engaging in topics related to race, class, religion or ability status. Discomfort is rarely a desirous feeling, however to develop into an effective DEI champion it requires embracing the inevitable discomfort that comes with realizing our own blindspots. This is essential to progress. Practicing humility is also critical in DEI work. As we continue to develop diversity and inclusion competencies and a measure of expertise, we can never forget that we must be perpetual students. Sustainable advancement only happens when we continue to learn, embrace discomfort and improve our DEI practice.

As we enter a new year we have an opportunity to capitalize upon the groundswell of energy that started last year to advance diversity, equity, inclusion and racial justice in and through our work. For success to happen, we must establish a baseline of our organization’s strengths and areas for development. Individually, it is essential that we both examine our own biases and work to acquire diversity & inclusion competencies. Finally, the more we embrace the discomfort that comes with identifying our DEI blindspots the better positioned we are to grow and to be effective in championing this critical work. Let’s all work in 2021 to ensure our field, from the programs we run to the climate of our offices, is more equitable and just.