Journal of Global Citizenship & Equity Education
Not a member yet
81 research outputs found
Sort by
Service Learning and Solidarity: Politics, Possibilities and Challenges of Experiential Learning
Full text linkInternational volunteering and experiential learning programs provide important opportunities for personal and academic growth for students, universities and communities, however, they also have the potential of reinforcing neocolonial frameworks of power and privilege. Furthermore, these programs occur more and more in an academic context where short-term experiences are promoted, and long-term programs abandoned in the wake of neoliberal university policies. This paper is a reflection on the politics, possibilities and challenges of starting a new experiential learning endeavor through the Service Learning Program at St. Francis Xavier (StFX) University from a critical standpoint by exploring tensions and power dynamics of such programs whilst working from a decolonizing and solidarity-based pedagogy of development.
Where are the Host Mothers? How Gendered Relations Shape the International Experiential Learning Program Experience for Women in the South
Full text linkHost communities are becoming a new subject of interest in the research surrounding International Experiential Learning (IEL), but there is a dearth of knowledge surrounding the impact of IEL programs on host families, and on women in host communities in particular. This article contributes to this body of knowledge by examining the impact of IEL programs on host mothers in a rural community in Nicaragua that receives foreign students annually. Hernandez and Rerrie argue that the burden of labour of hosting students falls on women in host communities, who are expected to perform stereotypically feminine roles in order to be seen as ‘good’ mothers and accessing the benefits that come from the student visits. This care labour is feminized, unpaid or underpaid, and seen as a natural extension of their roles in the community in a patriarchal society. IEL programs rely on the social dynamics in communities that are shaped by patriarchy and global neoliberal systems that have added ‘development’ and ‘community work’ to women’s roles in the community. Rather than empowering women, IEL programs also have a cost because of the highly gendered nature of the work involved for women in host communities.
International Service Learning: Decolonizing Possibilities?
Full text linkInternational Service Learning (ISL) programs are now ubiquitous, and the concept seems immutable: well-meaning young people from the North visiting "host" communities in the South in order to provide "service" and "to learn." The adulatory literature is replete with the purported benefits of these programs, both to those participating from the North, and to the communities in the South. By comparison, more critical follow-up of participants from the North suggest otherwise – that they serve mainly to reinforce values of charity for the "other" and do little to aid in understanding the reasons for the unequal relations of "underdevelopment." Similarly, a number of more recent studies have raised questions about the impact of these programs on communities in the South, and the extent to which they may serve to (re)instill neo-colonial economic and/or cultural relations.This paper presents and discusses findings from a multi-year study in a number of rural communities in Nicaragua which have hosted ISL programs, undertaken with the express purpose of exploring the modes and effects of the interactions between the visitors and the community residents. Through field observation, interviews and focus groups, a complex picture emerges of community engagement with, and reaction to, these Northern visitors, and the impact they effect on their Southern hosts. Of particular interest, we examine the possibilities these programs may have for interrupting traditional knowledge-power relations and understandings on both sides
Imagining, Constructing and Reifying Disability in Volunteer Abroad: Able Global Citizens Helping the Disabled Southern Other
Full text linkIn this chapter, I argue that the ways that disability is constructed and produced through encounters in volunteer abroad (VA) programs functions to (re)produce a caring and benevolent able-bodied Northern global citizen. This subject formation relies on two main processes: (1) the creation of the able/disabled binary; the volunteer/the one being helped and (2) the obscuring of the role the Global North (the place from where the volunteer comes from) plays in producing impairment. The research presented in this paper is from a larger study theorizing encounters with Southern disabled others. Here I engage in a qualitative textual analysis of Projects Abroad, a large VA organization based in North America that provides international volunteer placements to young people from Canada and the United States. I consider how the lack of analysis of Global North/Global South power relations reproduces depoliticized and ahistorical approaches which individualize and pathologize disability, and subsequently obscure any analysis of the social production of impairment and disability. I end the paper by asking how we can invite young people to engage in more inclusive ways, and in a learning that destabilizes hegemonic narratives of disability in this space
Inclusive Global Citizenship Education: Measuring Types of Global Citizens
Full text linkIn three studies, we constructed and provided initial evidence of validity for a measure of types of global citizenship. Oxley and Morris (2013) proposed eight different types of global citizens based on prior theory (e.g., moral, economic). We constructed and examined the factor structure of a measure of these different types (Study 1). With the exception of a social dimension of global citizenship, all of the proposed types appeared to be distinct factors. In Study 2, we found the same factor structure in a different sample of participants and examined associations between the dimensions and prosocial values related to global citizenship (e.g., social justice, intergroup helping). Lastly, in Study 3 we examined the associations between the seven different types of global citizenship, different types of intended activist behaviors, and various values (e.g., moral foundations, core political values). Together, the results suggest that the measure of global citizen types is a valid and reliable measure
Leadership for Social Justice through the Lens of Self- Identified, Racially and Other-Privileged Leaders
Full text linkThis study explores leadership for social justice from the perspective of school principals who identify as having greater relative privilege than the students and families they serve. Furman’s (2012) Praxis-Dimension-Capacities Framework of leadership for social justice is used to explore the perspective of four white, middle-class, female school administrators, who identify as privileged in relation to the students, families and communities they serve and who identify as social justice leaders. In-depth interviews were conducted with four administrators in the Toronto District School Board to explore how this particular group of administrators understands and enacts the five dimensions presented in this framework. Findings suggest that there are specific forms of reflection and action particular to this group such as the development of a multiple consciousnesses and a matchmaker identity. This study suggests that further exploration is required to explore how leaders with various and intersecting identities enact leadership for social justice, so that difference is centered in how we understand the possibilities and limitations of this work.
Introduction to Special Issue: The Practice, Politics and Possibilities for Globally Engaged Experiential Learning in Diverse Contexts
Full text linkThis special issue features eight articles all exploring globally-engaged experiential learning opportunities available to youth and/or students in diverse contexts such as transnational learning/volunteer abroad programs and locally-based global engagement. The collection brings together academics and practitioners to consider the efficacy, assumptions and stakes of the rise of volunteer abroad programming, and the implications for student learning outcomes
Cultivating Global Citizenship Abroad: The Case of Asian MBA Students in Dubai Introduction
No full textGraduate business students come to the classroom with a minimum of three-years of professional experience to fine tune their skills in one of four content areas: IT, global Logistics/Supply chain, Management,, or Finance/Wealth management. The accelerated program combines coursework, an applied project in the area of interest, and an internship experience.The purpose of the research aims to explore the critical reflections and insights of graduate business students coming from the Asia and Pacific region, and interning in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The exploratory nature of this case study lends well to qualitative narrative analysis. A voluntary and anonymous space was created by the researcher (author) and informed by relevant literature and scholarship relating to facilitating critical reflection. Learners were offered a structured prompt at the end of their internship experience in order to privately reflect on some of the major cultural, academic and professional lessons learned while 'on the job' as an international intern in Dubai, UAE. Learners seek out a variety of people, places and spaces to make sense of the copious amounts of learning that occur over a condensed and intense international educational experience. 24 graduate students’ critical reflections reveal perspective transformations about 1) local and global identity, 2) personal/professional balance in career path and 3) the need for collaboration and shared experience abroad. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is fairly uncharted territory when it comes to understanding the nuances of 21st century experiential learning and development for students across the world. An evaluation of this type of pedagogical practice serves as an important piece of dialogue for how meaningful and transformative experiences can be fostered through other ‘learning by doing’ initiatives in the region and around the world. Exploring critical reflections from learners enrolled in a graduate business program offers insight about how their educational experiences are shaped by the context of the Middle East and what in particular encouraged meaningful learning from their individual perspectives. While there has been much debate and discussion about how experiential learning abroad can foster perspective transformations, the UAE offers an especially open, rich intercultural dynamic, which not only enhances understandings of global citizenship, but also enhances understandings about one's self
Aeta Indigenous Women Healers in the Philippines: Lessons and Implications
Full text linkThis study investigates two central research problems. These are: What are the healing practices of Aeta women? What are the implications of the healing practices of Aeta women in the academic discourse? This inquiry is important for the following reasons: (a) it focuses a reconsidered gaze and empirical lens on the healing practices of Aeta women healers as well as the lessons, insights and perspectives which may have been previously missed; (b) my research attempts not to be 'neutral' but instead be an exercise in participatory action research and as such hopefully brings a new space of decolonization by documenting Aeta women healers’ contributions in the political and academic arena; and (c) it is an original contribution to postcolonial, anti-colonial and Indigenous feminist theories particularly through its demonstration the utility of these theories in understanding the health of Indigenous peoples and global health. There are 12 Aeta women healers who participated in the Talking Circle. This study is significant in grounding both the theory and the methodology while comparatively evaluating claims calibrated against the benchmark of the actual narratives of Aeta women healers. These evaluations subsequently categorized my findings into three themes: namely, identity, agency and representation. This work is also important in illustrating the Indigenous communities’ commonalities on resistance, accommodation, evolution and devolution of social institutions and leadership through empirical example. The work also sheds light on how the members of our Circle and their communities’ experiences with outsider intrusion and imposed changes intentionally structured to dominate them as Indigenous people altered our participants and their communities. Though the reactions of the Aeta were and are unique in this adaptive process they join a growing comparative scholarly discussion on how contexts for colonization were the same or different. This dissertation therefore joins a growing comparative educational literature on the contextual variations among global experiences with colonization. This is important since Indigenous Peoples' experiences are almost always portrayed as unique or “exotic”. I can now understand through comparison that many of the processes from military to pedagogical impositions bore striking similarities across various colonial, geographical and cultural locations