Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal
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Reflections from Brazil: Our Learning From and About International Research Projects for Graduate Students
No full textThe authors reflect upon an international research experience accompanying their doctoral advisor to conduct social scientific research in a private university in Brazil. They consider how this experience informed their graduate education and offer advice for future student/faculty international research and global exchange partnerships. In order to fully maximize the learning and benefits of international field research, the authors advocate for graduate students to see themselves not only as data gatherers, but also as cultural ambassadors and global learners. By providing a graduate students’ perspective on global exchanges, they seek to enhance the design of future international research partnerships and also to deepen their own learning about the lasting impact of their experience
Teacher Candidate Reflections and Perceptions on a Service -Learing Project Working with Children with Disabilities on a Family Island in the Bahamas
No full textOver 4 years, 16 undergraduate special education teacher candidates from a university in the northeastern United States participated in a service-learning project on a family island of the Bahamas. An “out island” or “family island” refers to one of the islands in the Bahamas other than New Providence (where Nassau is the capital) or Grand Bahama. These islands are sparsely populated and remote, requiring either ferry or plane ride to access them.
The special education teacher candidates spent a week to 10 days supporting children with disabilities including intellectual disabilities, autism, emotional and behavioral disorders, and various learning disabilities. The teacher candidates developed lesson plans and implemented them both in small groups and individually. While on the island, the teacher candidates were responsible for reflecting on their experiences in the context of their preparation program. This article will discuss the findings from the journal entries of these 16 teacher candidates and will focus on the themes relating to teacher preparation that might optimally support sustainable educational change and progress for educators seeking to enhance education services for students with disabilities on a family island in the Bahamas
Transformative Global Pediatric Nursing Education: International Mentoring Partnership
Get PDFThe nursing profession is continually evolving into a profession that is based upon
increasing diversity and international educational foundations such as Mezirow’s transformative learning theory. Nursing has embraced a wider perspective of care delivery that has transitioned since the advent of the internet and global communications between university and clinical institutions. Prior to the past decade, nursing education was confined to be one that promoted the basis for development of the profession from the solitary perspective of one collegiate institution. Currently, there have been many international service learning programs that have focused upon the development of nursing students delivering volunteer delivery of healthcare throughout the world. This review however, describes a unique and highly innovative, collaborative mentoring educational nursing partnership that has existed between one university within the United States, one university within the United Kingdom, and two pediatric hospitals located within both countries. The focus of this review is upon the guided, clinical mentoring program that nursing students have received through an annual pediatric exchange program that has allowed for maturation, professional growth, and increased awareness of the differences and similarities of the healthcare systems within the United States and the United Kingdom. This clinical partnership has been in existence for ten years and has become a mutual and successful collaboration that has involved over 150 students in mentored learning
A Class Without a View: A Cross-Cultural Challenge to Assumptions about Learning
Get PDFBased on our recent experience co-teaching a class in Budapest, Hungary, we offer a counter-narrative to the positive chronicles of culturally integrated teaching, and reflect on how our experience of failure revealed some of the timely challenges and deep issues facing higher education globally: student disengagement and lack of intrinsic motivation, and a cultural divide between teacher and student values about learning. As a result of our failed class and co-teaching experience, we propose an altered understanding of “what a class is,†and address how “a deep dive into the why†of student learning might help reckon with, and build on, mutually appreciated standards of attention, motivation, and engagement
Health and Wellness Innovation Embedded in an International Study Abroad Experience
Get PDFOver the course of ten years, faculty who teach at a four-year Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) focused university created relationships with stakeholders in Havana, Cuba with the goal of connecting students and faculty to explore solutions to common health-related problems. Ultimately, this proved to be a powerful and unique experience rooted in high impact practices that provided real-world practice settings, teamwork, and cross-cultural awareness. This article describes how faculty from different disciplines and different countries implemented a course focused on innovation, low-budget prototyping and Design Thinking to improve health and wellness in a broader global and professional context.
 
The Jaguar Walk: Reflections from the Amazon Field School
Get PDFMy three trips with the Interdisciplinary Amazon Field School, a global partnership between the Calanoa Project in Colombia and Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) near Vancouver, Canada, have profoundly influenced my teaching. This reflective paper describes my experiences through narrative, journal entries, photography, and examples from both the Amazon and my classroom instruction at KPU. From these experiences, I have shifted from being a teacher to being a facilitator of learning that encourages whole?person pedagogy. Four themes are followed: (1) the importance of teacher adaptability in active learning environments, (2) confidence building for teachers to become capable leaders and mentors, (3) student-centered learning that embraces a transformative, holistic pedagogy, and (4) the movement toward Nature as teacher
Historia Reimagined: Storytelling and Identity in Cross-Cultural Educational Development
Get PDFEducational developers are boundary crossers within and between their disciplines and institutions, a liminal state that profoundly influences our sense of professional identity. This identity is further tested when the outer circles, that of nation and state, move across borders. Such an understanding is critical, not only in light of increased interest in global partnerships, but also as a reflective lens through which to critically evaluate our assumptions and beliefs. This study seeks to deepen our understanding of the challenge of cross-cultural exchange to our sense of who we are and what we do as educational developers by exploring the negotiation of identities for educational developers, primarily through the use of our stories. In this case, the experiences of educational developers who participated in residencies in Latin America and the Caribbean are offered as paths to fostering understanding and challenging identity. Each story emphasizes the complex and contested relationships between language, relationships, and culture, and taken collectively they evoke a number of significant questions about the nature of our work
Critical friendship reconsidered: The complexities of graduate student advising across cultural contexts
No full textIn this paper, I reflect on challenges of graduate student teaching and advising across a cultural/institutional divide between a comprehensive regional university in the US and an expanding research university in Ethiopia. This is a field-based report rooted in my recent experience as a Fulbright Scholar in Ethiopia in 2015-16 and contextualized by the rapid expansion of graduate education in Ethiopia. Methodologically, I take a hybrid approach, blending autoethnographic and narrative moments with analysis based on higher education policy literature. My purpose here is to tell a small story as a window into a larger story about the expansion of higher education in Ethiopia and the epistemological tensions involved in the work of critical friendship in graduate advising across cultures.