Call for Articles for Forthcoming Special Issue

Listening to and Learning from Partners and Host Communities:  Amplifying Marginalized Voices in Global Learning

 “Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.” - Audre Lorde

 [Download printable PDF of this CFA]

Guest Editors:

  • Samantha C. Brandauer, Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA, USA)
  • Willibroad Dze-Ngwa, Heritage Higher Institute of Peace and Development Studies (HEHIPEDS) (Yaoundé, Cameroon)
  • Súlia Folli Santamaria, CET Academic Programs (São Paulo, Brazil)
  • Eric Hartman, Haverford College (Haverford, PA, USA)
  • Teku Tanyi Teku, Dickinson College (Yaoundé, Cameroon)

Overview:

At the center of this special issue is the idea that one of the main goals for international education, and in particular education abroad, should be to work towards building just, inclusive, and sustainable communities. In other words, all education abroad can and should be viewed as community engagement work.

The challenge is that, as Buckner and Stein (2019) point out, internationalization within higher education has remained depoliticized and dehistoricized. Depoliticization has the effect of reinscribing hegemonic narratives, thus making education abroad a tool of the state (Reily & Senders, 2009) and, frequently, a colonial exercise (Ogden, 2007). It is not surprising then, to note that the US education abroad sector’s focus on outcomes has primarily been concerned with outcomes that ultimately locate inside the US. Over time outcomes have shifted from institutional outcomes to student learning outcomes (Buckner & Stein, 2019), but even with that shift the focus is predominantly on US students and institutions. The goal of this special edition is to encourage a more profound shift to assess partner and host community learning and outcomes.

Education abroad has made progress in being much more critical of and reflective about how students learn, who has access to study abroad, curricular integration, how intervention happens with students before, during, and after an education abroad experience, support for traditionally underrepresented students in education abroad, the commodification of higher/international education and decolonizing education abroad (Adkins & Messerly, 2019; Brewer, Beaudin & Woolf, 2019; Brewer & Ogden, 2019; Conteras et al., 2020; Hartman et al., 2020; Vande Berg, Connor-Linten & Paige, 2009; & Zemach-Bersin, 2012) as well as challenging and redefining the concept of global citizenship (Andreotti & de Souza, 2012; Lewin, 2009; Hartman et al., 2018; Zemach-Bersin, 2009). These critically-informed reforms underway point toward a more profound reorientation.

All education abroad stakeholders – US institutions, students, faculty, and off-campus partners—must question who are the learners and who are the creators of knowledge, “opening the door for epistemic disobedience that transgresses colonialist understandings of knowledge and relationships” (Santiago-Ortiz, J., 2018, p.52). To date, there has been very little listening and amplifying of the voices within the communities who host US students and faculty. When education abroad leaders and professionals fail to listen to and learn from partners and stakeholders abroad, education abroad becomes part of the hegemonic project of globalizing higher education that unfortunately can be, “an accessory to entrenching Euroecentric knowledge creation and western practices of knowledge dissemination” (Unkule, 2019, p. 12), to say nothing of failing to disrupt dominant Anglo-American ways of thinking and being. When local voices and perspectives are not part of dialogue, exchange, and co-creation of programming, education abroad fails to reach its “original mission of promoting intercultural learning and intercivilizational dialogue” (2019, p. 12). This is true not only from epistemic and ontological perspectives. It is also clear that listening to the interests and desires of host community members frequently forwards desires for host community economic development – as opposed to a common model where US-based organizations, institutions, and companies capture most of the expended funds (Hartman, 2015; Larsen, 2015).

To whom is education abroad offering the possibility of global citizenship? In the midst of COVID-19, it has become even more painfully clear that U.S. based higher education and education abroad institutions and professionals have a long way to go in recognizing their own power, positionality, and responsibilities to partner communities abroad (Hartman et al., 2018; Brandauer & Berends, 2020).

Goals:

This special issue aims to shift focus to ensure host community members outside of the US, many of whom are community-engaged, education abroad professionals themselves, have space to “write back” their ideas, experiences, research and/or work with education abroad programs, students, and faculty. The editors encourage articles on the varied, nuanced, sometimes critical impacts of education abroad within host communities. This special issue is also open to submissions from US-based international educators and scholars who are systematically exploring these same issues, including intersections with economic models of global education that are less extractive and more collaborative. We consider global programming to include domestic and international collaborations. Thus, we invite contributions exploring global education programs that originate outside of the US  and involve international mobility (i.e., Erasmus) as well as programs that do not  originate from a “study abroad” office (as is sometimes true of internships and community engagement opportunities), but still incorporate global learning principles and can either be domestic or involve international mobility.

We envision this special issue as a hopeful project. With more and different voices in these conversations, our collective responsibilities to build more just, inclusive, and sustainable communities and partnerships can be re-imagined and re-charted to step forward together. It feels particularly resonant during a global pandemic that has halted student mobility, forcing reflection and perhaps transformation on education abroad, while shining a light on the inequalities and injustices that are intertwined with our undeniable global interdependence.

What We Mean by Community(ies):

Our vision of community(ies) is aspirational, future-forward and co-created. Communities are understood as both geographic locations (e.g., the community of Carlisle, PA) and coalitions of shared interests (e.g., the community of Pennsylvanians who support global education) (Hartman, Kiely, Boettcher, & Friedrichs, 2018). Within the campus-community internationalization and global learning discourses, for the purposes of this special issue, we are thinking about the following communities: (a) campus-connected students, staff, and faculty, (b) the constellation of stakeholders surrounding specific campus-community partnerships that advance global learning, and (c) individuals and organizations present in geographic locations where higher education institutions send students for global learning experiences, including locations both in the United States and abroad.

Key Questions:

These questions aim to imagine new possibilities and pathways for global learning that include partners and communities abroad.

  • How does the field of education abroad contribute to building just, inclusive, sustainable, and equitable communities?
    • How do we understand these complex concepts and co-create definitions across the many identities, cultures, communities, institutions, and countries with whom we collaborate?
    • How do we measure our progress?
  • Whose voices should we be listening to – and how? What have been the constructs, barriers, and power dynamics within education abroad that have prioritized certain voices over others? What methodologies or program structures remedy that?
  • If we intend to stimulate community and education abroad practices that develop a counter-narrative to colonial (re-)formation processes, how do we interrogate the epistemic injustice of knowledge and experiences?
  • How do we challenge US students and faculty in education abroad to break free from dichotomous thinking that aims to fix or interfere with new local communities and instead shift to an approach that is more horizontal and challenges traditional understandings of knowledge and relationships?
  • How do we shift the frame of education abroad to allow us to sit with the tensions of difference and interdependence?
  • How can attentiveness to predominant economic, risk, liability, and contracting models in education abroad open new spaces for recognizing, remunerating, and amplifying historically marginalized voices and perspectives?
  • How might the above questions shape education practice around?:
    • Training, orientations and reflections for US-based faculty and students as well as for local staff and partners abroad
    • Community engagement or experiential learning components
    • Curriculum development and integration
    • Economic models and resource allocation

Theoretical Frameworks

The guest editors are open to a variety of theoretical frameworks, methodologies, key concepts, and approaches across disciplines including by not limited to: Epistemic Justice, Decolonial/Postcolonial Critical Pedagogy, Fair Trade Leaning, Intercultural Praxis. Authors are asked to employ critical and intersectional approaches grounded in historical structures and theories that “might provide a more holistic approach to the realities communities face, while also working toward breaking hierarchies in the relationship between students, teachers, and community” (Santiago-Ortiz, J., 2018, p.47).

Submitting a proposal:

Submissions will be subjected to double blind review organized by the guest editors, with decisions subject to final approval by the Frontiers editorial staff.

The guest editors are able to provide informal feedback on abstracts or concept descriptions until June 15, 2021. Interested parties are invited to send their ideas to the Guest Editors’ attention by emailing frontiersjournal@forumea.org with the subject line: “Host Communities Abstract” before this date.

Articles should be submitted before August 1, 2021 using the journal’s online submission portal. Select “Special Issue on Host Communities” as the article type when submitting.

For consideration, papers will be expected to comply with Frontiers’ Submission Guidelines:

  • 5,000 – 10,000 words
  • conforming with APA style
  • anonymized so that neither author nor institution is identifiable in the submitted version
  • accompanied by a title page indicating the name and contact information of the author(s), a 150-word abstract and a short (75-word limit) biographical sketch of each author

Any inquiries regarding this call for proposals can be directed to the Guest Editors at frontiersjournal@forumea.org.

Timeline to Publication:

Articles Due: August 1, 2021
Decisions Sent: April 29, 2022
Revisions Due: June 6, 2022
Publication Date: September 15, 2022

References

Adkins, R. & Messerly, B. (2019) Toward Decolonizing Education Abroad: Moving Beyond the Self/Other Dichotomy. Opportunities for Continuity and Disruption Along the Education Continuum. In Brewer, E. & Ogden, T. (Eds.). Education Abroad and the Undergraduate Experience: Critical Approaches to Integration with Student Learning and Development (pp. 73-19). Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Buckner, E. & Stein, S. (2020). What Counts as Internationalization? Deconstructing the Internationalization Imperative. Journal of Studies in International Education, 24(2),151–166. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315319829878

Brandauer, S. & Berends, L. (2020, August 13). Future-Forward Community Building in Education Abroad during COVID-19: Recognizing our Power and Positionality and Amplifying and Listening to Marginalized Voices. International Higher Education Consulting Blog. Retrieved from: https://ihec-djc.blogspot.com/2020/08/future-forward-community-building-in.html

Brewer, E., Beaudin, G. & Woolf, M. (2019) Curriculum Integration:Opportunities for Continuity and Disruption Along the Education Continuum. In Brewer, E. & Ogden, T. (Eds.). Education Abroad and the Undergraduate Experience: Critical Approaches to Integration with Student Learning and Development (pp. 58-71). Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Brewer, E. & Ogden, T. (2019). Education Abroad and the Undergraduate Experience: Critical Approaches to Integration with Student Learning and Development. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Contreras, E., López-McGee, L., Wick, D., & Willis, T. Y. (2020). Introduction: Special Issue on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Education Abroad. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad.

Hartman, E. (2015). Fair trade learning: A framework for ethical global partnerships. In M. A. Larsen (Ed.), International Service Learning: Engaging Host Communities (215 – 234). New York: Routledge.

Hartman, E., Kiely, R., Boettcher, C., & Friedrichs, J. (2018). Community-based global learning: The theory and practice of ethical engagement at home and abroad. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

Hartman, E., Pillard Reynolds, N., Ferrarini, C., Messmore, N., Evans, S., Al-Ebrahim, B., & Brown, J. M. (2020). Coloniality-Decoloniality and Critical Global Citizenship: Identity, Belonging, and Education Abroad. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 32(1), 33-59. https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v32i1.433

Larsen, M. (Ed.). (2017). International Service Learning (Routledge Research in International and Comparative Education) (1st ed., Vol. 1). Abingdon-on-Thames, England: Routledge.

Lewin, R. (Ed.). (2009). The handbook of practice and research in study abroad: Higher education and the quest for global citizenship. New York; NY: Routledge

Lorde, A. (2007). Sister outsider: essays and speeches . Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.

Ogden, A. (2007). The View from the Veranda: Understanding Today’s Colonial Student. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 15(1), 35-56. https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v15i1.215

Reilly, D., & Senders, S. (2009). Becoming the Change We Want to See: Critical Study Abroad for a Tumultuous World. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 18(1), 241- 267. https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v18i1.265

Santiago-Ortiz, J. (2018). From Critical to Decolonizing Service-Learning: Limits and Possibilities to Social Justice-based Approaches to Community Service Learning. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 25(1).

Unkule, K. (2019). Internationalising the university: A spiritual approach. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland.

Vande Berg, M., Connor-Linton, J., & Paige, R. M. (2009). The Georgetown Consortium Project: Interventions for Student Learning Abroad. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 18(1), 1-75. https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v18i1.251

Zemach-Bersin, T. (2012). Entitled to the World: The Rhetoric of U.S. Global Citizenship Education and Study Abroad. Andreotti, V., & de Souza, L. (Eds.). Postcolonial perspectives on global citizenship education (pp. 87-104). New York, NY: Routledge.

Zemach-Bersin, T. (2009). Selling the world: Study abroad marketing and the privatization of global citizenship. In R. Lewin (Ed.). The handbook of practice and research in study abroad: Higher education and the quest for global citizenship (pp. 303-320). New York, NY: Routledge.