Session Information
WERA SES 04 C, Integrating Marginalised Education Spaces into Mainstream Global Discourses
Paper Session
Contribution
This case study explores the challenges fifteen U. S. students experienced as they worked together on a global undergraduate program designed to develop intercultural awareness (Miller & Fernandez, 2007). The project was twofold: (a) to support a local non-governmental organization (NGO) in its efforts to provide literacy tutoring and affordable housing for children and their families whose below subsistence income levels are obtained from their work at the city dump where they also live as squatters on adjacent land; and (b) to provide the university students with rich opportunities to experience and gain better understandings of the challenges faced by children living in poverty as well as their potential for achievement (Edmonds, 1979; Swadener & Lubeck, 1995) and to understand Mexicans outside the stereotypes that permeate the U.S. media.
Six months prior to the project, the university students met with their two faculty leaders multiple times and shared reports of their self-selected inquiries about Mexico and Mexican culture. From mid-July to mid-August 2013, the undergraduates (a) provided literacy tutoring through a dual language literacy summer program in collaboration with Mexican teachers, (b) worked side-by-side with a local crew to build a house for one of the families, and (c) participated in local cultural events. The Mexicans with whom the students interacted on a daily basis included teachers, the six-year-olds they tutored, the construction crew, others who worked with the project, and the family of the American NGO director.
This study is embedded within a critical theory framework (Darder, Baltodano & Torres, 2009) wherein literacy is seen as a power broker that can be used to leverage the imbalance of status and power within society (Delpit,1988; Freire, 2000) and the potential to effect beliefs about academic achievement for some children who are viewed within a deficit paradigm (Darling-Hammond, 2004; Lewis, James, Hancock & Hill-Jackson, 2008; Valencia, 2012). This work also resonates with Dewey’s educational philosophy wherein when developing understandings and addressing real world needs the “solution comes only by getting away form the meaning of terms that is already fixed upon and coming to see the conditions from another point of view” (Dewey, in Dworkin, 1959, p. 91). It was the premise of this project that by immersing students in another culture with “real” jobs to carry out they would develop understandings not otherwise obtainable in their traditional college classrooms.
Students today will become the leaders of tomorrow; engagement in intense programs that afford them the opportunities to develop their social and personal responsibilities toward their communities and others should not be ignored on university campuses. However, in the United States fewer than
13 percent of college students achieve basic competence in a language other than English; less than 34 percent . . . earn credit for an international studies class, [and] . . . less than 10 percent . . . participate in study abroad programs. (Adelman, 2004, p. 243)
The Association of American Colleges and Universities (2007) defines these responsibilities as including (a) “civic knowledge and engagement—local and global,” (b) “intercultural knowledge and competence,” (c) “ethical reasoning and action,” and, (d) “foundations and skills for lifelong learning. . . . through active involvement with diverse communities and real-world challenges (p. 8).
This study provides insights to programs that can meet the challenges of engaging learners so as to create transitions, as defined by the 2015 ECER theme, that emerge from taking students beyond their university classrooms so as develop deep understandings and find solutions for injustices, both within and outside our immediate communities.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Adelman, C. (2004) Global Preparedness’ of Pre-9/11 College Graduates: What the U.S. Longitudinal Studies Say, p. 243. Association of American Colleges and Universities. (2007). College learning for the new global century: A report from the National Leadership Council for Liberal Education & America’s promise. Author. (1999). Author. (2011). Darder, A., Baltodano, M. P., & Torres, R. D. (Eds.) (2009). The Critical Pedagogy Reader, 2nd Ed. NY, NY: Routledge. Darling-Hammond, L. (2004). The color line in American education: Race, resources, and student achievement. Du Bois Review, 1:2, 213–246. Delpit, L. D. The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people's children. Harvard Educational Review; Aug 1988 (58), 280-298. Dworkin, M. S. (1959). Dewey on education. NY, NY: Teachers College Press. Edmonds, R. (1979). Effective schools for the urban poor. Educational Leadership, 37 (1), 15-24. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed, 30th anniversary ed.. NY, NY: Continuum International Publishing Company. Juel, C. (1994). At-risk university students tutoring at-risk elementary school children: What factors make it effective? In E. H. Hiebert & B. M. Taylor (Eds.), Getting reading right from the start (pp. 39-61). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Juel, C. (1991). Cross-age tutoring between student athletes and at-risk children. The Reading Teacher, 45(3), 178–186. Lewis, C. W., James, M., Hancock, S., & Hill-Jackson, V. (2008). Framing African American students’ success and failure in urban settings: A Typology for change. Urban Education,43(2), 127-153. Miller, A. T., & Fernandez, E. (2007. New learning and teaching from where you’ve been: the global intercultural experience for undergraduates. In M. Kaplan & A. T., Miler (Eds.), Scholarship of multicultural teaching and learning. SF, CA: Josey-Bass. Saldaña, J. (2012). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. London: Sage. Stake, R. E. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Swadener, B. B., & Lubeck, S. (Eds.). (1995). Children and families “at promise”: Deconstructing the discourse of risk. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Valencia, R. R. (Ed.). (2012). The evolution of deficit thinking: Educational thought and practice. Routledge
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