CS5: Between the Lines

While planning the ISL component of your course–in which the students worked in an under-resourced and predominantly rural, land-locked country –you make sure to include a comprehensive post-engagement reflective process once back in the classroom. You set up a reflection assignment in which the students stay connected with a “counterpart” from the partner community organization. To complete the reflection, each student must follow-up with their counterpart to obtain further data about the project, conduct interviews, and continue reflective dialogue. This way, the students will not just disappear from the community’s life and as a teacher you can be assured that there will be a culturally competent, critical component to the final reflection.

The reflective assignment is worth 30% of the overall grade for the course. The students are unable to complete the assignment because there is a power outage in the partner community during the final week of your course on campus. Two students are able to continue to interact with their counterparts because their counterparts have computers at home and are, in general, much wealthier than the other counterparts.

Sustainability

• What role did the community partner have in initiating or creating the post-engagement reflective process? How does this fit into their priorities versus your priorities as an educator with a need to evaluate?

Balance & Reciprocity

• What is the cost and time for the counterpart?
• What makes this connection guarantee a culturally competent critical component for reflection?

One of your male students suggests that he and his counterpart communicate using Gmail “Chat”. He helps her to set up her account and gives her an online tutorial in how to chat while he is still in the community. Back in Canada he starts to chat with her and saves their discussions as part of his reflective “data”. After one week, she stops logging in. The student comes to you to ask what to do next, and you contact the project manager in the partnership community to follow-up for the student. The project manager is very angry and accuses the student of using “inappropriate language” and offending his female counterpart in one of their chats.

Cultural Competence

• Do you follow up and read the dialogue?
• What is your responsibility with respect to each of the people involved? Who is your priority?

In this case study, the professor places heavy weighting on the critical, reflective assignments associated with the course-related international experience. A high grade weighting sends a clear message to the student that reflection has priority in the learning process of a service-learning program; therefore, the course in this case study meets a necessary requirement of ethical service-learning programs: to incorporate reflection into the assignment and assessment frameworks. If international experiences hold the potential to “reinforce frozen attitudes and negative stereotype, [then] the key, all agree, is using oral and reflective exercises to connect cognitive inquiry with the experience of service in order to a propel a lasting transformation” (Strain, 2005, p. 62).

In this case study, the importance placed on student reflection appears to trump consideration for the time and resource strain on the community partner. Moreover, how might the incorporation of technology in this case study illuminate disparities between stakeholders and jeopardize the university / community-partner relationship?

As many professors in the EIESL dialogue series mentioned, technology has the potential to create ethical quagmires within all of the identified EIESL “themes” and the particular example in this case study relates directly to issues of cultural competence.

As ISL leaders, faculty mentor reflective professional and academic practice; therefore, faculty must become reflective practitioners in their own work as educator, community partner, member of the academy, and member of the international development community.
Clarify for students what is being assessed and explicit design of a reflection assignment is the result of the teachers’ own reflective process that identifies the critical learning goals in the course and how learning impacts service.

Strain, C.R. (2005). Pedagogy and practice: Service-learning and students’ moral development. New Directions for Teaching & Learning (103) Fall. pp. 61—72.

A clear and transparent alignment is needed between reflection activities, expectations, the assessment and the value of reflection (the proportion of marks allocated to reflection) (McNamara & Field, 2007). It is important to be overt about what is being assessed e.g. reflection in action, reflection on action, content vs. process, personal disclosure vs. summarising learning and insights.

In-class reflection was found to be particularly important to developing academic learning from service experiences.

Scaffolding to support the development of critical reflection skills needs to:

• start prior to the experience (reflection before action), continue through (reflection in action) and after (reflection on action) the experience.
• be specific and practical and build over time.
• provide exemplars so students understand what is being asked of them after the experience to:
• assist in the processing of emotional responses to the experience and learning.
• encourage reflection on action and develop lifelong learning skills.
• move the students from autobiographic (some suggest narcissistic) reflection to consider social and discipline-related implications of their experience and learning.

How does a faculty member best structure reflective process to ensure ethical outcomes?

One suggestion is to design reflection activities in collaboration with the community partner. As you design the course assessment model, communicate the learning goals to the community partner and engage in dialogue with them as a co-educator; this ensures that the assignments do not unnecessarily tax their time or resources. On this note, it might take a process of self-reflection as an educator to open up the course design to outside influences, considering the usually private process of course design.

Making the most amount of effort possible to communicate with the community partner (via telephone, email, or a visit to the site before taking students) in the course development phase will best establish a course design that is ethically accountable to the community partner. However, interpersonal communication between students and community partners might be best left for in-the-field because of the power of body language; email messages and chat can easily get misinterpreted, especially when cultural disparities are present.

Remember the critical importance of reflection in the service-learning cycle, so value its importance with time allocated to classroom reflection post-experience. Returning back from the experience the students have the chance to clarify and question amongst colleagues and in an environment of mentorship from the professor:

The ‘classroom’ part of the program [is] essential to understanding the local environment and the cultural challenges it presented. Students tend to rely on reflection to sort out their own place, their own identity, and their sense of what this experience mean[s] to them in the long term. Ultimately, this [leads] to an internalization of the learning, sometimes immediately. However, in some cases, it was years before the individuals realized the full richness of what was learned” (Merrill and Pusch, 2007, p.30)

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 (pp.21-40) Information Age Publishing: Charlott, NC.