CS2: Free Labor

You are a Canadian Economics professor presenting an academic paper at an International Rural Business Development conference. After your presentation, you are approached by an economic strategic planner for a rural municipality in an, under-resourced part of the country; he tells you that that the strategies that you outlined in your presentation are in line with the strategies that he is trying to implement in his own community. By the end of the conference, the two of you have hatched a plan whereby you will bring your 4th year students to work in the planner’s rural municipal office as a service-learning project.

When you present the idea to your students, they are enthusiastic and the class starts to make preparations to incorporate the placement into their summer session course. A few weeks into the planning, one of the students informs you that she cannot accompany the class on the placement. She is an international student with limited funds and her parents are not willing to pay for her to travel during his studies and they have concerns for her safety while traveling with the group.

Balance & Reciprocity

• How does the theme of “Balance & Reciprocity” apply to the relationships of power and privilege within your classroom dynamic, not just within the dynamic between university and community partner?
• Do you continue with the project without the international students’ attendance?
• How might international engagement on campus be exclusive, versus inclusive?
• How much synergy actually exists between the international community project and the course?
• What are the motivations of the community partner and has the professor engaged in an honest conversation about “Balance & Reciprocity” surrounding the expectations of the partnership?

Training & Education

• In considering the role of ISL as a high impact learning activity, how do we make ISL accessible to all students? Or should we?
• How do you go about incorporating ISL into a class?
• How do you select students? Or do you?
• If a community organization can’t do the work or continue the work, should it be done by a group of students?
• Are these students truly skilled enough in this area of work that it is justified that they are replacing paid professional labor?

After five days of working on the project in the field, one of the local community partners mentions over lunch that it is “great that UBC students are doing the work for free” because the municipality could not afford to pay the “$15,000 local consultant fees”.

Sustainability

• Should the professor follow-up on this comment?
• Are our students always coming to international communities in a “helping” capacity, or might their arrival be viewed as “threatening” to some members of the community?
• Are UBC students taking business away from local community members?
• How can the professor engage in a continuing dialogue with the community partner once he returns to his home university?

Motivations

• What is the purpose of student involvement in this scenario: free labour or learning?
• Is the international experience necessary for the students in the course, or is it more important for the professor?
• Is there an additional research interest that the professor has in regards to this partnership, and how does that impact their actions and decision-making processes in relationship to the students and the community partner?

In Case Study #2, one must ask how levels of power and privilege play out in the classroom and during the international placement of this service-learning project. Critical pedagogy is one framework that can potentially address the balance and imbalance of power and privilege within an international service-learning context.

In technical paradigms of education—which critical pedagogues label “banking” models of education, in which the teacher-as-expert deposits the knowledge into the students brains—the teacher is a director and the student actors follow the directives of the teacher in an attempt to create a final product. Technical paradigms are product-driven and the teacher plots the path that will lead the students to a desired outcome. Critical pedagogy challenges more technical paradigms of teaching and learning.

Critical pedagogy, rooted in critical theory, is an education framework that approaches learning with an overt recognition of systemic societal hegemonies. Within critical pedagogy, the oppressed/oppressor dialectic is unveiled and students and teachers engage in dialogue and experiences with the intention of lifting the binary of “us/them” thinking and towards critical consciousness. Both critical consciousness and critical pedagogy are rooted in the work of the late Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and have been developed in the context of our web-based guidebook to address the ethical issues surrounding service-learning work:

By critical self-reflection, we do not mean a singular focus on the self, but a stepping back to understand one’s own assumptions, biases, and values, and a shifting of one’s gaze from self to others and conditions of injustice in the world. This process, coupled with the resultant action, is at the core of the idea of critical consciousness (Kumagai and Lypson, 2009).

To mitigate potential for harm, we focus first on building critical consciousness to ensure that students and faculty can build their own definition of ethical behaviour and navigate complex situations with greater ease and confidence. In Friere’s own words, critical consciousness is the “process in which [humans], not as recipients but as knowing subjects, achieve a deepening awareness both of the sociocultural reality that shapes their lives and of their capacity to transform that reality” (Freire, 1985, p. 93).

In Case Study #2, how can the application of critical pedagogy help the faculty member navigate the levels of power in their classroom? Present in this case study are the teacher’s good intentions to work with the community partner abroad and to create a co-educational model in which the university students were skilled and able to meet the actual needs of the international community. However, the project focuses primarily on skill and the end product of the proposed action during the placement; the project is rushed and lacks critical analysis of the social factors that have the potential to reinforce the oppressed/oppressor dialectic among students in the class and between the students and the international community partners.

Kumagai, A.K., Lypson, M. (2009). Beyond cultural competence: critical consciousness, social justice, and multicultural education. Academic Medicine, 84 (6):782-787.

Friere, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power, and liberation. Edited and translated by D. Macedo. Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.

In planning this course, the instructor acted quickly in response to community need, opportunity, and a general excitement for the potential development of their overall course design away from the classroom and towards hands-on experience. In the preparation of curricular international engagement experiences for students, how might the process of designing an international service-learning course impact the ethical outcomes of a project?

In the overall design of an international service-learning program, it is the responsibility of the faculty member to communicate both the service and the learning objectives with the international community partner and ensure that sufficient time is allotted to the preparation of a plan that will meet all objectives. Within a critical pedagogy framework, the faculty member evaluates the socio-political and economic context of the partnership and decides if the project is motivated by reciprocal learning objectives and if the project requires assistance from outside sources.

Similarly, a teacher must consider the socio-political and economic context of the class that is participating in the service-learning project. If there are students who, for a multitude of possible reasons, are unable to get on a plane and travel to the site, then the teacher must provide alternative methods of involvement in the project. We often think of international engagement and service-learning as only being possible if travel to a foreign site is involved; however, it is sometimes more ethical to find ways to serve international communities without getting on a plane. In this case study, one might ask: Was it necessary to travel to an international site, or were there ways to provide service and learn from the faculty and students’ home campus?

Aronowitz, S., & Giroux, H. A. (1985). Education under siege. Philadelphia: Bergin & Harvey.

Cuban, S. & Hayes, E. (1997). Border pedagogy: A critical framework for service learning. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 4: 72-80.

Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59(3), 297-324.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press.

Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum

Giroux, H. (1981). Ideology, culture, and the process of schooling. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.

McLaren, P. (1989). Life in schools. New York: Longman.

Shor, I. (1992). Empowering education: Critical teaching for social change. Chicago and London: Chicago UP.