CS3: Intervention

You are running an undergraduate Public Health course with an International Service Learning component working with an HIV/AIDS organization abroad. In planning the project, you had the students sign liability waivers and declarations that they were “fit to travel” and had been vaccinated for their travels. Now, in country, you are approached by a student who shares her fears that one of her classmates—who is sharing a room with her in a host family’s home—has a serious eating disorder. The student’s behavior is affecting her roommate’s experience, and she asks you why you didn’t “screen the student applicants for disruptive mental problems”.

You meet with the student in question who confirms that s/he is bulimic and the stress of traveling has exacerbated his/her self-destructive patterns. The following day, the community partner approaches you to express concerns over the same students’ erratic behavior and complaints from the host family.

Training & Education

• When/how is it decided that a participant shouldn’t continue with a program?
• What is your role in working through the situation with the student?
• Is it the role of the faculty member to learn the students’ health history before taking them on international placements?

Cultural Competence

• How much information should be shared with the community partner?
• How is the result of the issue explored with the partner?
• Can we expect the community partner to be compassionate to the health concerns of our students? Is this a health concern that translates?
• How do you balance Canadian values around access / fairness with the needs of the community partner?

In this case study, the students’ lived reality in the international placement goes beyond academic or cultural struggle and into an internalized, personal struggle. This case study wrestles with the idea that there might be an ethical responsibility to shift from the role of formal educator to a more personal interaction with the student when their health is affecting their experience, and the experience of others.

Situated Learning Theory (SLT)—originally forwarded by Lave & Wengner (1990) — develops the notion that learning occurs through active engagement within contextual experience. In other words, classrooms designed specifically for learning may be antithetical to the ideas contained in SLT because the core concept in SLT is learning as an unintentional process. A student’s experience merges with their conceptual and intellectual adaptation to the situational context. Therefore, the student can potentially learn from the people, place, and objects in the international environment in addition to learning from the faculty member who is formally assigned to the course. For some faculty, the situated nature of international engagement and service-learning may rattle their personal understanding of the situated role of educator:

A disciplinary tradition of teaching and learning may put the emphasis on the faculty as expert, but experiences working with community partners quickly reveal the wealth of expertise offered by community leaders who may lack traditional academic credentials. For some faculty, this may challenge their confidence and create uncertainty about community needs, assets, and priorities. Faculty may have the disciplinary base of knowledge, but may need to develop new strategies for responding to the shifting needs of community work and usually need to learn to share power and control over the research enterprise” (Gelmon, S.B., 2007, p. 248)

As students adapt to situate their learning within the newness of an international context, so must faculty adapt to their shifting role as educator. Situated Learning Theory, when applied to international service-learning, places significant importance on an increased capacity of the community partner as co-educator; similarly, in ethical explorations of internationally engaged scholarship, the importance of situating community-partners as co-educators is paramount.

Situated learning theory and situated teaching theory are pedagogical models of engagement. In this case, engagement can be defined as an intention to participate in the community and situate the learning process within a lived context; there might be a responsibility on the part of a faculty member to interrupt the context when the way a student responds to their engaged experience becomes problematic for the community partner, host family, and student team.

When sojourners feel they have no power and control in intercultural situations, especially over their own circumstances, the intensity of the experience increases. This factor consistently emerges as a major problem. The behaviors that allow one to control a situation in the home culture—language, relationships, professional and other roles—all are likely to be missing or changes in the new society (Merrill and Pusch).

Gelmon, S.B. & Billing, S.H., Service-learning: From passion to objectivity: International and cross-disciplinary perspectives on service-learning research. 2007. Information Age Publishing: Charlott, NC.

Merrill, M. and Pusch , M. D. (2007) Apples, oranges, and jumys: Models for research on students doing intercultural service-learning. In Gelmon, S.B. & Billing, S.H. (Eds), Service-learning: From passion to objectivitiy: International and cross-disciplinary perspectives on service-learning research. 2007. Information Age Publishing: Charlott, NC. pp.21-40.

Questions to consider at this stage in your project development:

How does your interaction with the students and facilitation of conflict situations in the placemen have potential for ethical impact?

At what point do we send a student home? At what point does the community partner’s best interest trump the student’s best interest?