U.S.-Mexico Border Studies Online Collaboration: Transformative Learning across Power and Privilege
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| Title: | U.S.-Mexico Border Studies Online Collaboration: Transformative Learning across Power and Privilege |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Barraclough, Laura, McMahon, Marci R. |
| Source: | Equity & Excellence in Education. 2013 46(2):236-251. |
| Availability: | Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 16 |
| Publication Date: | 2013 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Evaluative |
| Education Level: | Higher Education |
| Descriptors: | Hispanic American Students, Race, Social Class, Immigration, Liberal Arts, Colleges, Disadvantaged, Advantaged, Transformative Learning, Equal Education, Multicultural Education, Teaching Methods, Power Structure, Educational Policy, Online Courses, Intercultural Communication, Computer Mediated Communication, Educational Objectives, Institutional Characteristics, College Students |
| Geographic Terms: | Michigan, Texas |
| DOI: | 10.1080/10665684.2013.779146 |
| ISSN: | 1066-5684 |
| Abstract: | In response to the national conversation about the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration in recent years, we created an online partnership between students in concurrent border studies courses at our two campuses: a public Hispanic-serving institution in South Texas and a private, small liberal arts college in Michigan. We explored whether and how the tensions between privileged and disadvantaged students documented in the traditional classroom would manifest online, and how we could use virtual technologies most effectively to structure transformative learning, defined as recognition and articulation of the structural and cultural systems that frame individual experience and meaning-making, across difference. As we document in this essay, tensions around racial, class, and educational inequality did occur in our partnership. Yet these tensions were crucial in creating the conditions for transformative learning because they generated "disorienting dilemmas" that challenged students' assumptions and knowledge. Our intentional integration of critical multiculturalist curriculum and pedagogical practices (especially embodied, facilitated online interactions) capitalized upon those conditions. By the end of the partnership, both groups of students experienced significant--but distinctive--trajectories of transformative learning that unsettled not only their individual understandings, but also the dynamics of power that characterize the higher education landscape. Given the polarization wrought by border and immigration discourse and educational policies that will likely produce increasingly segregated campuses in years to come, such online partnerships show promise for critical multiculturalist educators seeking to create opportunities for learning across difference and inequality. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Number of References: | 21 |
| Entry Date: | 2014 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1010705 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwGS7DqqzlnaEivLgq6abLIJAAAA4TCB3gYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHQMIHNAgEAMIHHBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDM2djRkgENMzMhbV6wIBEICBmcxJKHR15537iFwfbyfU1Ya86fqwdrQPdw11aMlrNJ9A1xtVqSa9IY9Ompawf9hr9stWBvdhPOBxpmhWlvH-Hx-GLHMF0I-VHVP2uNnbpw9NBQGUm4EEPUBugirl1BlaFv1xODc8xZjrRAyVBK4sL_2p_uL7JMeXdf8nzNk0d3yAcK-YkW-vFEqfnn2exLv7ILs3MrYO44AeIA== Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0087666489;eie01apr.13;2019Feb20.13:33;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0087666489-1">U.S.-Mexico Border Studies Online Collaboration: Transformative Learning Across Power and Privilege. </title> <p>In response to the national conversation about the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration in recent years, we created an online partnership between students in concurrent border studies courses at our two campuses: a public Hispanic-serving institution in South Texas and a private, small liberal arts college in Michigan. We explored whether and how the tensions between privileged and disadvantaged students documented in the traditional classroom would manifest online, and how we could use virtual technologies most effectively to structure transformative learning, defined as recognition and articulation of the structural and cultural systems that frame individual experience and meaning-making, across difference. As we document in this essay, tensions around racial, class, and educational inequality did occur in our partnership. Yet these tensions were crucial in creating the conditions for transformative learning because they generated "disorienting dilemmas" that challenged students' assumptions and knowledge. Our intentional integration of critical multiculturalist curriculum and pedagogical practices (especially embodied, facilitated online interactions) capitalized upon those conditions. By the end of the partnership, both groups of students experienced significant—but distinctive—trajectories of transformative learning that unsettled not only their individual understandings, but also the dynamics of power that characterize the higher education landscape. Given the polarization wrought by border and immigration discourse and educational policies that will likely produce increasingly segregated campuses in years to come, such online partnerships show promise for critical multiculturalist educators seeking to create opportunities for learning across difference and inequality.</p> <p>In April 2010, Arizona passed Senate Bill 1070, which affirms the requirement that immigrants register with the U.S. federal government and charges a person with a state misdemeanor if they do not have registration documents in their possession at all times. The Bill requires local law enforcement, during a lawful stop, detention, or arrest, to determine a person's immigration status if there is "reasonable suspicion" the person is an undocumented immigrant (Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref1">19</reflink>]). Although three of its four clauses were later overturned by the courts, the passage of the bill, considered the broadest-reaching and strictest anti-immigrant policy in recent years, generated intense debate on the so-called immigration "crisis."</p> <p>Like much of the American population, we were deeply moved by the events unfolding in Arizona. As friends and teachers at different college campuses in different regions, we saw how distinctly our students were responding to these events. Co-author Marci R. McMahon teaches at the University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA), a public state university and Hispanic Serving Institution in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Ninety percent of UTPA students are of Mexican descent and are often the first in their families to attend college. They cross borders in their everyday lives as they negotiate family expectations, language, educational responsibilities, and economic realities. But while UTPA students generally have a deeply personal and lived-experience of the border region, McMahon found that, as a result of the Anglo-centric histories they frequently encounter in local secondary and post-secondary school systems, many had not been taught a critical history of the U.S.-Mexico border. Thus, although immigration policy, the drug war, and border militarization were having tangible effects on these students' lives, the majority of UTPA students did not have the theory and historical context to locate their experiences within structures of power.</p> <p>Co-author Laura Barraclough who teaches at Kalamazoo College, a small, private liberal arts college in southwest Michigan, noted that the border was a distant and impersonal (sur)reality for most of her students. Kalamazoo College is primarily comprised of white middle-class students from Michigan and the Upper Midwest. The college has intensified its efforts to diversify the student body in recent years; of note are the college's recruitment efforts in South Texas and Los Angeles, which have generated a growing Latina/o student population. The college's curriculum, however, has not evolved to reflect the histories, communities, and experiences of these students. There are very few courses on race and ethnicity or immigration, and only one on the U.S. Southwest or U.S. Latinos, specifically Barraclough's course on the U.S.-Mexico border, which she had taught once the previous year (2009). During that experience, Barraclough realized that even though her students generally held liberal attitudes about immigration, they had virtually no factual information, and certainly no critical perspective, on border issues and policy. Barraclough struggled to fill in these voids, but found that secondary sources were often not enough to substantively deconstruct her students' assumptions and myths.</p> <p>As good friends who had attended graduate school together, we informally shared observations about our students' distinct identities with each other by phone and e-mail. McMahon expressed to Barraclough her frustrations about how racial, class, and economic realities were affecting her students' learning, for example, when students had to miss class to help their parents navigate immigration policy or when students were distraught because family members had been kidnapped as a byproduct of drug war violence. Barraclough realized that these were precisely the kinds of stories her students at Kalamazoo College needed to hear, and that engaging directly with the UTPA students (rather than with texts alone) could help deepen the Kalamazoo College students' critical understanding of border issues. Meanwhile, McMahon believed that her students at UTPA could better understand the full range of perspectives embedded in the national conversation about the border by interacting with students far removed from the everyday realities of border life. We began to wonder: How could we create an online learning partnership to intentionally explore issues of positionality, power, and inequality, both at the US-Mexico border and in higher education?</p> <p>In this spirit, we created an online collaboration between our concurrent border studies classes in Fall 2010 using the learning platform, Blackboard. All of the students who enrolled in the two classes—17 students from UTPA and 16 students from Kalamazoo College, for a total of 33 students—participated in the collaboration. The partnership included three elements: (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref2">1</reflink>) a shared curriculum that included theoretical and historical course materials about the cultures and structures of power along the US-Mexico border; (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref3">2</reflink>) a series of self-reflexive projects that required students to examine their experiences with reference to course materials; and (<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref4">3</reflink>) online exchanges wherein students from each campus compared and contrasted perspectives, challenged each other, and reflected on what they were learning about themselves. Given the students' distinct contexts, we wanted to see how we could use virtual technologies to most effectively structure learning across difference. Would the tensions of intercultural learning that often occur between privileged and disadvantaged students in the traditional classroom also manifest in the digital environment? What would be the best strategies for facilitating transformative learning, through which students recognize and articulate the structural and cultural systems that frame individual experiences and meaning-making (Cunningham, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref5">6</reflink>]), in this context of difference? Would the digital environment create any unique challenges, or perhaps unique possibilities, for transformative learning?</p> <p>As we illustrate in this article, the well-documented tensions of intercultural learning did manifest in our online environment, especially regarding students' interpretations of each other's academic skills and sociopolitical perspectives. However, these tensions were crucial in creating the conditions necessary for transformative learning because they generated "disorienting dilemmas" (Cunningham, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref6">6</reflink>], p. 23) that challenged students' existing assumptions and knowledge. Our intentional integration of critical multiculturalist curriculum and pedagogical practices capitalized upon those conditions. We argue that by the end of the partnership, both groups of students experienced significant transformative learning, though in distinct ways, shaped by their unique subject positions, that unsettled not only their individual understandings about immigration and the border but also the dynamics of power that characterize the higher education landscape. The UTPA students, despite their position as "disadvantaged" subjects, were significantly empowered by the collaboration because they were consistently asked to situate their life histories within the critical theoretical and historical context provided by course materials and to explain (or sometimes defend) their perspectives to the Kalamazoo College students. The Kalamazoo College students, who entered the partnership as "privileged" subjects, also experienced transformative learning, both because the UTPA students' stories disrupted many of their taken-for-granted truths about the border and immigrants and because their lives and experiences were not at the center of analysis, which led them to experience a temporary and limited form of marginalization—and thus to learn about how power works in an embodied, experiential way.</p> <p>We found that the most effective strategies for achieving transformative learning were exchanges that were embodied (in which students could see and hear each other), that occurred in real-time, and that we actively facilitated. Live video chats were especially effective and so, too, were discussions that we each facilitated with our own students in their separate, physical classrooms, which allowed each student body to process what was occurring in the partnership, reflect in a relatively safe space, and then re-engage across difference. Embodied, but not facilitated, exchanges were moderately effective.The least effective methods were those that involved disembodied (usually text-based), asynchronous exchanges that we did not facilitate.</p> <p>In what follows, we first explain the theoretical frameworks that guided the collaboration and the methods we used to assess its effectiveness. We then narrate the dynamics of the partnership as we experienced it, presenting qualitative data to emphasize the strategies that produced the conditions for transformative learning and students' reactions to them. Next, using quantitative data, we analyze the collaboration's effects on students' learning outcomes. We conclude by offering recommendations for teachers who may wish to create similar partnerships.</p> <hd id="AN0087666489-2">LEARNING ACROSS DIFFERENCE: DEVELOPMENT TRAJECTORIES AND TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING</hd> <p>Education and psychology scholars have amply documented the tensions that emerge when students from privileged and disadvantaged groups attempt to learn from each other. Such tensions are partly the outcome of students' differential identity development trajectories. Helms's theories on racial identity development are useful here; though she focuses on black and white students, we find them to be relevant to the students with whom we worked. Helms ([<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref7">10</reflink>]) argues that black racial identity development proceeds from a stage of pre-encounter, marked by an idealization of whiteness and denigration of blackness, through phases of bitterness and anger as consciousness of racism grows, to the most advanced stages of internalization, wherein the individual embraces black identity, and to commitment, where they work within structures of whiteness to change those structures. White racial identity development begins from an initial experience of pre-contact, in which the individual is largely oblivious to race and the differential effects of racism and privilege and moves to stages marked by feelings of fear, guilt, depression, denial, or resentment until the individual ultimately decides either to withdraw into the comforts of whiteness or commit herself to a life of anti-racism.</p> <p>Students often meet each other in the college classroom at different stages in these trajectories. As students challenge each other's assumptions and interpretations, there is great potential for forward movement, even as these interactions are frequently frustrating and uncomfortable. White students are likely to deny or minimize racism, blame the victim, bring attention back to themselves, or refuse to acknowledge their own participation in structures of privilege (Accapadi Motwani, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref8">1</reflink>]; Helms, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref9">10</reflink>]; Watt, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref10">20</reflink>]). Marginalized students who are grappling with their own emotional responses to that status, especially in white-dominant institutions experience the display or enactment of such defense strategies by majority students as "microaggressions," which Pierce defined as "subtle, innocuous, preconscious, or unconscious degradations and putdowns" (as cited in Yosso, Smith, Ceja, &amp; Solorzano, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref11">21</reflink>], p. 660). Microaggressions lead to heightened levels of stress and a sense of "battle fatigue" among disadvantaged students as they decide whether, and how, to respond and defend themselves. Within such contexts, Latina/o students and other students of color nourish themselves by building a sense of community in academic and social "counterspaces" that allow them to survive and even thrive in predominantly white colleges and universities (Yosso et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref12">21</reflink>]).</p> <p>The scholarship of online teaching and learning suggests that such microaggressions are easily replicated in the digital classroom, with some methods more likely to exacerbate intercultural tensions than others. Some scholars (Akintunde, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref13">2</reflink>]; Sujo de Montes, Oran, &amp; Willils, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref14">18</reflink>]) argue that text-based online exchanges, such as discussion boards and blog posts, enable students to feel more comfortable in voicing their ideas and confronting one another because they lack contextual cues, such as race, gender, and age. However, others argue that the disembodied aspect of text-based exchanges limits deeper critical interaction (Schmidt, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref15">16</reflink>]). Indeed, there is little evidence suggesting that online discussion boards actually lead students to post "what they really think" more than they would in the traditional classroom (Hamann, Pollock, &amp; Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref16">8</reflink>], p. 9). Schmidt ([<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref17">16</reflink>]) argues, "Writing online about racial identities and our racial beliefs is no more honest and socially transformative than talking about them within the walls of the traditional classroom" (p. 45). The online discussion board can therefore become "a place to deposit comments, but not interact," thereby silencing rather than enabling the kinds of dialogues needed to reexamine privilege and power (pp. 45–46). More interactive, real-time methods that allow for instructor facilitation, such as video-conferencing and webcams, have the potential to enable students to confront one another as embodied actors in discussion rather than as disembodied subjects in written text (Schmidt, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref18">16</reflink>]), but these technologies can also reinforce existing power dynamics (Cifuentes &amp; Murphy, [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref19">4</reflink>]; Cifuentes, Murphy, &amp; Davis, [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref20">5</reflink>]). For example, Hammer and Kellner ([<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref21">9</reflink>]) explain a scenario where</p> <p>students meet the "Other" as real people in video rather than only in textual descriptions. These images can personalize individuals; they make it possible to experience the views, practices, and culture of groups outside one's life. In particular, multimedia can dramatize oppression, making intolerance and bigotry vivid, showing the evil effects of racism and prejudice. (p. 13)</p> <p>Yet this approach implies a one-way transfer of knowledge through which the "other" population brings diversity to the majority students, thereby reifying their privilege.</p> <p>Thus, in the same way that simply making the population of a college campus more diverse does not, by itself, decrease individual prejudice or transform social structures of power (Palumbo-Liu, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref22">13</reflink>]), neither does bringing diverse students together online automatically achieve these goals. A pedagogical strategy rooted in critical multiculturalism is needed, which Quijada Cerecer et al. ([<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref23">15</reflink>]) note, "re-center[s] multicultural education within a transformative political agenda, challenging relations of power and privilege, and seeking social and structural change" (p. 147). For critical multiculturalist educators, curricular content and pedagogical practice must be deliberately connected to social justice principles of equity, access, and social literacy. Nagda et al. ([<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref24">12</reflink>]) argue, "Content without a transformative pedagogy may be rhetorical, intellectualizing, and divorced from reality. An active and engaging pedagogy without a critical knowledge base may result in temporary 'feel good' emotions" (p. 168). Sleeter and Delgado Bernal ([<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref25">17</reflink>]) identify four necessary components of critical multiculturalist pedagogy: (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref26">1</reflink>) critical reflexivity; (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref27">2</reflink>) critical analysis of class, corporate power, and globalization; (<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref28">3</reflink>) empowering pedagogical practices; and (<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref29">4</reflink>) analysis of language and literacy as a point of departure for democratic dialogue. If the digital classroom is to enable critical engagement with structures of power, these practices must be implemented online. When instructors thoughtfully integrate a critical multicultural framework with technology, the medium has the potential to create "opportunities to examine what is usually unexamined about language, culture, and power in school settings" (Sujo de Montes et al., [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref30">18</reflink>], p. 268) and produce transformative learning.</p> <p>According to Mezirow (as cited in Cunningham, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref31">6</reflink>]), transformative learning involves a shift in one's frame of reference, or the "structures of assumptions through which we understand our experiences" (p. 23). Such shifts are brought about by disorienting dilemmas, such as interaction with students from diverse backgrounds in the classroom, that lead an individual to question, assess, and change his or her existing assumptions. There are three developmental phases that signal aspects of transformational learning: the socialized self, the self-authored self, and the self-transformed self (Cunningham, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref32">6</reflink>]). The socialized self accepts the meanings, values, and expectations constructed by others as truth. The self-authored self, by contrast, can generate meaning informed by her or his own values and experiences. The self-transformed self, finally, is capable of understanding the structural systems that underlie meaning-making and seeing their "relationships and connections as prior to and constitutive of the individual self" (Cunningham, p. 24). Cunningham concludes that only self-authored and self-transformed individuals are capable of experiencing transformative learning because "students need to understand themselves as meaning-makers and, more importantly, understand that the system of meanings they operate out of is itself made" (p. 24). Our main goal in this partnership was to achieve transformative learning within a critical multicultural framework for all of our students.</p> <hd id="AN0087666489-3">METHODS OF ASSESSMENT</hd> <p>To operationalize transformative learning, we developed five learning objectives: (a) to assist students in bridging the course's theoretical and historical material with the personal, everyday experiences of people living and working on the border; (b) to expose students to different perspectives; (c) to increase students' general understanding of positionality, or the view that "people are defined not in terms of fixed identities, but by their location within shifting networks of relationships, which can be analyzed and changed" (Maher &amp; Thompson Tetrault, 2010, p. 164); (d) to increase students' understanding of their own positionality and the structural and cultural factors underlying its formation; and (e) to help students to see how they are personally affected by the topics we studied. Each of these objectives encouraged students to explore aspects of the structural and cultural systems underlying personal experience and meaning-making—the hallmark of transformative learning.</p> <p>We used several methods to assess how well we achieved our overall goal and specific objectives. First, we kept detailed field notes. Every time we assigned an exchange, we devoted part of the following class period to discussions with our own students, asking them to note major themes they observed and to reflect on their causes, especially by making connections with the course materials. We then wrote field notes on the discussion, sent them to the other instructor by e-mail, and archived them. Second, we analyzed student work completed within the collaboration, both written and oral (that we later transcribed), which we stored and preserved on Blackboard, paying particular attention to the themes that students wrote or talked about and the discursive strategies they used. Third, we administered an anonymous, open-ended, in-class questionnaire after the first substantive online interaction, the Border Autobiography assignment. Fourth, at the end of our academic terms, we administered a survey questionnaire and several short essays to explore students' perceptions of their own learning. The survey asked students about the effectiveness of each of the methods of exchange and to evaluate how well the collaboration's learning objectives had been achieved. The essay questions asked them to describe instances that were either especially important or ineffective and to analyze how the partnership contributed to their learning about the U.S.-Mexico border.</p> <p>We tabulated the survey data by hand and read through all of the written materials multiple times. We used open-coding techniques to identify major themes within the social justice educational frameworks that drove our initial learning objectives. We then applied these themes systematically to the data set, looking for both confirming and disconfirming evidence and refining our themes as necessary to account for the variety of student experiences. All quotes included in the remainder of this article are drawn from either the students' work or their final assessment essays (with their consent), or our field notes.</p> <hd id="AN0087666489-4">DYNAMICS OF THE PARTNERSHIP</hd> <p>Since our classes met on different days, we relied heavily on text-based responses as the first means of exchange between the two campuses. Early collaborations involved the writing of one-page responses to two texts: Anzaldúa's ([<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref33">3</reflink>]) <emph>Borderlands: La Frontera</emph>, a border studies and critical multicultural text, and <emph>Maquilapolis: City of Factories</emph> (Funari &amp; de la Torre, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref34">7</reflink>]), a documentary film that examines the social and environmental costs of maquiladoras (factories) for women workers in Tijuana. With Blackboard's text-based discussion feature, students from both campuses posted and responded to messages asynchronously, then commented on at least one response by a person from the other campus. These text-based exchanges enabled students to meet each other and document their different interpretations of the material; yet they did not lead to any particularly challenging interactions that confronted students' existing assumptions about immigration, the U.S.-Mexico border, or themselves.</p> <p>More dynamic student learning occurred when students confronted one another in exchanges (both asynchronous and in real-time) that were facilitated by the instructors. When students wrote, shared, and reacted to a project that we called the Border Autobiography, approximately three weeks into the partnership, they began to connect each others' lives with the structures we were studying. For this project, students wrote a 3- to 4-page narrative examining one or more borders they had crossed or negotiated in their life. The intent was for students to critically evaluate their subject position in relationship to the course's subject matter by considering how borders (including not just physical borders but also social borders such as race, gender, and class) influence the life experiences of all of us—not just those of people who live near the actual U.S.-Mexico border.</p> <p>The topics explored by each group of students in their border autobiographies brought to the foreground the dynamics of power that differentiated the two student populations. The UTPA students overwhelmingly (about three-fourths) addressed the role of social class, racial, gendered, and legal status marginalization in permeating their lived realities, while a smaller group (about one-fourth) wrote about metaphorical borders disconnected from issues of culture and power. The students who wrote about race, class, and gender topics consistently described their struggles negotiating ethnic Mexican-U.S. border culture and dominant white American culture. Some of these students described the tensions they felt as they strove for upward mobility, particularly the need to balance schoolwork with family expectations and work responsibilities; many emphasized that college was not something they had ever been able to take for granted and was hard-won at every step. Others expressed how within their Mexican families and communities they persistently felt that their Spanish language skills were inadequate or that they were perceived as "not Mexican enough" because of their name, skin color, or cultural capital. Ultimately, the majority of UTPA students' border autobiographies illustrated their own relatively disadvantaged social positions, as well as the ways in which they were struggling—often successfully—to transcend the limitations of social class, immigration status, language, and educational inequity.</p> <p>By contrast, many of the Kalamazoo College students' border autobiographies made apparent their relative economic and racial privilege. The Kalamazoo College students addressed a broad array of topics, but followed three patterns. First, approximately one-third of students wrote explicitly about their privilege. Some described crossing from their home environments to encounter racialized poverty through international travel, attendance at nearby and more economically diverse public schools, or participation in short-term tutoring projects in low-income school districts; others lamented the limited perspectives and exclusionary attitudes of such home environments. A second set of essays from about one-quarter of the students addressed metaphorical borders, such as their difficulty balancing sports and schoolwork or negotiating the values emphasized by their families with new ideas introduced by friends or in school. These essays suggested that the students were not facing particularly challenging circumstances, or at least had not chosen to write about them. Third, however, the four Mexican American students from Kalamazoo College wrote about struggles similar to those of the UTPA students, including the difficulties of learning English after migrating to the U.S. or adjusting to an elite, majority-white school from their culturally Mexican home environment, and the upward mobility that education offered for them to transcend their families' working-class status. The Kalamazoo College border autobiographies evinced the privilege, traditionally defined, that most of the students, though not all, had experienced.</p> <p>Students posted their autobiographies online and then commented on each other's narratives in small groups comprised of students from each campus. After they responded to each other on Blackboard, we distributed an anonymous, open-ended questionnaire in class, asking students to reflect on what they had learned from each other and about themselves. We used these questionnaires to launch separate discussions, which we documented in field notes. In this instance, we shared excerpts of our field notes with the other campus and then posted the anonymous responses to the questionnaires in Blackboard, where all students could access them. As students learned how the other group had responded to their border autobiographies in the privacy of their own classrooms, they became aware of their relative differences, and important tensions and disorienting dilemmas resulted.</p> <p>When asked to reflect on what they had learned from the UTPA students' border autobiographies in the questionnaire, numerous Kalamazoo College students expressed awareness of their own privilege. Some made comments, such as, "They had a lot harder lives than me, and they still face more struggles than I do"; "They went through a lot to get to college. It wasn't as easy as it was for me"; and "Their lives seem to be much harder or [more] complex than my own." Awareness of their social position culled a range of emotions, from anger and frustration to sadness and guilt. One student wrote: "I felt saddened. ... I was in awe of some of the things they described, because it was so different from my own life." A second expressed how her partner's autobiography had made her reflect comparatively on her own experiences: "I knew that other students lived different lives than me, but I never really knew how different until I read the autobiographies. At times I felt angry and even guilty while reading them." These reactions and emotions are typical of students from privileged backgrounds as they begin to recognize their own positionality within institutional inequality (Helms, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref35">10</reflink>]).</p> <p>Most UTPA students, however, were not initially bothered by the racial and economic advantages that most of the Kalamazoo College students described in their autobiographies. Two UTPA students did comment on these differences in their questionnaires; one student wrote, "I recall feeling somewhat astonished at the unabashed privilege and comfort from which their borders sprung," and another student stated, "Some did not seem to be aware of their relatively high place in society." Such reactions are common among marginalized students who have already had significant encounters with privileged groups (Helms, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref36">10</reflink>]; Yosso et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref37">21</reflink>]). However, the vast majority of UTPA students expressed their surprise and relief in finding out, through the border autobiographies, how much they shared with the Kalamazoo College students. One student wrote: "I felt connections; whether small or large. ... I found this surprising because what I think isn't a big deal—could be bigger for someone else." Another explained: "It made me realize we all face obstacles in our lives and that we have the strength to overcome them."</p> <p>Tensions did arise, however, in the ways that students interpreted each other's academic skills. Some Kalamazoo College students expressed both in their questionnaires and the subsequent discussion that they were "confused" by the organization of the UTPA students' ideas and by their writing. One student wrote: "I felt some confusion when reading the UTPA students' papers because they were not at a very high level of discussion." Another wrote: "I was intrigued to read their stories, but I had trouble following everything. I spent some time being interested and some time being confused." Barraclough's field notes, written to McMahon, capture how the focus on the UTPA students' writing dominated the discussion: "Students made comments about the 'disorganization' of your students' papers and that they were 'confused' by that. The implication and feeling was that my students felt themselves to be better writers and better critical thinkers" (Barraclough's field notes, October 13, 2010). In response, Barraclough engaged her students in a discussion about structural inequalities within school systems, but felt frustrated nonetheless, particularly when, toward the end of the discussion, one student wondered aloud if the UTPA students might be intimidated by the Kalamazoo College students' supposedly superior academic abilities.</p> <p>Yet McMahon's students had their own understanding of their academic abilities. When McMahon shared Barraclough's field notes from the Kalamazoo College class discussion, the UTPA students responded by challenging the Kalamazoo students' existing assumptions about academic writing. McMahon noted in her field notes (October 14, 2010) that her students described how they "felt more relaxed when writing because they didn't need to prove themselves, whereas they felt that your students' writing was very detached, forced, and had a constant tone of proving themselves because of their age. My students were not intimidated by your students' level of education at all but felt ... that some [Kalamazoo College] students were really working hard because they might have felt intimidated by them." In this discussion, the UTPA students asserted that good writing is marked by authenticity, passion, and bravery and described the Kalamazoo College students' essays as lacking because they showed a sense of innocence and inexperience, as well as a detached tone and writing geared for a grade or positive feedback (McMahon's field notes, October 14, 2010). Indeed, one UTPA student wrote in her questionnaire: "They seemed much younger, less experienced, and eager to prove themselves." By the end of the collaboration, however, some UTPA students nonetheless remained troubled by the Kalamazoo students' criticisms, with one student noting in her final essay:</p> <p>Just because some of our UTPA students struggle with written language does not mean they are less educated or knowledgeable. And, while I realize some of our students made grammatical or spelling errors on Blackboard, it by no means shows they are less educated, in fact, they are some of the most actively contributing and intellectual students in the class.</p> <p>When students expressed their perceptions about writing, education, and power in our separate classrooms, we could facilitate discussions about patterns of language and literacy (Sleeter &amp; Delgado Bernal, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref38">17</reflink>]). For the UTPA students, in particular, the physical classroom and McMahon's facilitation created a "counterspace" (Yosso et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref39">21</reflink>]) in which they could challenge the Kalamazoo College students' judgments by drawing upon their own lived experiences and situated knowledges. Yet the students were confronting each other through us (their instructors) from the safe spaces of their own classrooms, rather than directly engaging with each other. We increasingly felt that students needed to be able to challenge each other in real-time and that, to help them do so, we needed to take a stronger and more immediate role in facilitating their online interactions.</p> <p>In response, we introduced Wimba Live Classroom into the partnership with the goal of intensifying the dialogue. We hoped that this real-time format, paired with our active facilitation, would lead students to directly engage and confront one another. We used the documentary film <emph>Señorita Extraviada: Missing Young Woman</emph> (Portillo, [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref40">14</reflink>]), which explores the femicide in Ciudad Juarez in relationship to racial, gendered, and economic dynamics along the U.S.-Mexico border. We created four live sessions of eight students; each instructor moderated two discussions. We facilitated each session with questions that asked students to discuss why the femicides are not getting the same kind of media attention as the drug war and who they thought is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of young women—the Mexican government, the American government, the owners/managers of the maquiladoras where the women work, or the young women themselves.</p> <p>As we had hoped, the live discussions enabled the students to directly and meaningfully interact. They asked each other follow up questions, clarified ideas, shared emotions, and confronted each other. They simply had the time and space to engage in extended discussions that became progressively more intense and complex, compared to the singular responses of the text-based exchanges. For example, in a session moderated by Barraclough, for the whole first hour, students offered diverse perspectives in response to our questions about power and structure and politely disagreed with each other, yet they did not necessarily challenge the basic assumptions underlying each other's claims, nor did they connect the discussion topic to their own lives. Two UTPA students had been arguing that the maquiladoras are accountable for the hundreds of deaths due to their late night shifts, the lack of safe transportation, and the provocative photos of some of the women workers taken by management. One Kalamazoo College student, in contrast, had been insisting that the maquiladoras are not responsible for providing safety to the primarily female workforce, nor liable for what may happen to them outside the factories. But finally, toward the end of the scheduled discussion, when Barraclough asked an open-ended question about what further thoughts students had that they may have not yet shared, the UTPA students talked back to the Kalamazoo College student directly, challenged the assumptions underlying his arguments, and connected the maquiladoras with their own lives:</p> <p>UTPA Student 1: I was just wondering: what if these maquiladoras were in Canada, how would you feel?</p> <p>Kzoo Student: I'm sorry, what was that, if they were in Canada?</p> <p>UTPA student 1: or closer to you?</p> <p>UTPA Student 1: Yes, this is happening so close to us, here in the Valley.</p> <p>UTPA Student 2: ... yes, it could be one of our relatives!</p> <p>Kzoo Student: I'm not saying it's right or good. It's just that if you want change, you can't expect the corporations to change, that's the government's responsibility.</p> <p>Even though the Kalamazoo College student did not respond to the UTPA students' personal appeals and reverted back to his previous arguments, the UTPA students were able to claim a significant counterspace (Yosso et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref41">21</reflink>]) that drew upon their own lived experiences and cultural histories to challenge dominant understandings. Thus, the combined factors of embodiment, real-time and extended exchange, and facilitation in the live video classroom enabled the UTPA students to assert their everyday realities into dominant border discourse and, in doing so, to challenge the Kalamazoo College students' assumptions in a way that the text-based interactions, including the border autobiographies, had not encouraged.</p> <p>The effectiveness of the live video chats and their contribution to both groups' transformative learning was echoed in the students' final assessment essays. One Kalamazoo College student wrote that the virtual Wimba discussions were useful because "being able to see and hear the UTPA students helped to personalize the experience, and it was a lot easier to understand their opinions when they came from their own mouths." Another agreed: "I felt that the [video] chat really made the border conflict that much more real." The live video exchanges were equally powerful for the UTPA students, though for different reasons. Due to the greater interpersonal connection that these discussions enabled, UTPA students were able to understand that the Kalamazoo College students' opinions, particularly conservative reactions, were not necessarily based on malicious intent, but rather detachment from the material and lack of first-hand experience with the border or Mexican American people. One UTPA student wrote, "Before this class I always assumed that the people did not care about what happened in the border. Now I can understand how those people are just too detached from the border and don't feel the need to know what is happening in the southwest border states."</p> <p>The live discussions produced energy and excitement among our students that had not characterized the partnership previously, so we had high hopes for the final project, a series of "group ethnographies." For this assignment, students were put into groups with others from their own campus and required to conduct at least one informal interview and take field notes about social interactions in a physical space related to a border studies topic of their choice. Each group then gave a short presentation on their findings in their own classrooms, which were video recorded and posted online; we required the students to respond to each of the presentations from the other campus using a short text response. UTPA students' ethnographies explored the hand-drawn ferry crossing at Los Ebanos, Texas; Border Patrol agents' perspectives on the border; the gentrification of downtown McAllen, Texas; and the DREAM Act movement on the UTPA campus. The Kalamazoo College students' ethnographies explored housing and neighborhood conditions in the Edison neighborhood of Kalamazoo, where most of the city's Latinos live; a bilingual elementary school; labor conditions in southwest Michigan's greenhouses; and Mexican American small business owners in Kalamazoo.</p> <p>We found that students from the two campuses experienced the group ethnography project quite differently, with the UTPA students gaining much more than the Kalamazoo College students in terms of their abilities to situate their own experiences within larger structures of power. In their final surveys, 100% of the UTPA participants reported that the group ethnographies were a "very effective" method of exchange; in comparison, 53% of Kalamazoo College students said the group ethnographies were "very effective," and 47% said they were "somewhat effective." In their open-ended final essays, only one Kalamazoo College student voluntarily chose the group ethnographies as being especially effective for his or her learning. We suspect that this discrepancy is partly due to the fact that the UTPA students' ethnographies, which were centered on the physical U.S.-Mexico border, merely extended information that Kalamazoo College students had encountered throughout the course, whereas for the first time in the partnership, UTPA students were exposed to information about how the border is lived in other parts of the country. As a result, the UTPA students could compare their experiences of Mexican immigration and culture in the South Texas border region to the experiences of ethnic Mexicans throughout the country. As one UTPA student wrote in her final assessment essay, "I was able to get a better understanding of what these borders looked like for Mexican-Americans in Kalamazoo." Another UTPA student noted how the Kalamazoo border ethnographies elucidated the larger structural factors related to their socioeconomic marginalization in the U.S. This student wrote that the Kalamazoo students' description of a relatively lower-income neighborhood with a Mexican immigrant majority as "poor" was troubling to her:</p> <p>I honestly felt a little disappointed when I saw that people who lived in "poor neighborhoods" was completely the opposite from the Valley. Here, what [they] described as a "poor neighborhood" is actually a nice neighborhood or even elite ... [it] made me think if I ever moved to another state I probably would be considered "poor."</p> <p>The campuses' different academic calendars were also significant: the Kalamazoo College's term ended three weeks before that of UTPA, so by the time the group ethnographies were posted, the Kalamazoo College students were no longer meeting in the physical classroom, and thus did not have the opportunity to process what they had learned together in a facilitated discussion. The UTPA students, on the other hand, spent time discussing the other campus's group ethnographies together in-class with their instructor's facilitation. For both of these reasons, among the UTPA students, the group ethnographies were a crucial element that cultivated awareness of the structural systems underlying meaning-making that is a hallmark of students' transformation to self-authored and, possibly, self-transformed selves.</p> <hd id="AN0087666489-5">LEARNING OUTCOMES</hd> <p>Both groups of students experienced significant but distinctive transformative learning outcomes. The most significant outcomes for the Kalamazoo College students were that they encountered and engaged new perspectives, and that they bridged theoretical, historical course materials with personal, lived experiences. In the final survey, 80% of Kalamazoo College students reported that the collaboration exposed them "a great deal" to different perspectives, compared to 59% of UTPA students. The Kalamazoo College students reported that they had developed a more humane understanding of the US-Mexico border specifically because of their interactions with the UTPA students. In their final essay, one student wrote, "Through our interactions, the border had more of a human element, because we got to see the border through their eyes." Another wrote, "The number of students who complained of being unable to visit relatives in Mexico because of increased drug cartel violence really pounded home the issue ... Before hearing those stories, my concept of the issue was vague and theoretical." Some Kalamazoo College students also said that the partnership was important because the UTPA students' stories complicated dominant media sources, which they increasingly came to see as skewed and sensationalized. One student wrote, "This was the first time I had seen an unfiltered view of immigration that wasn't skewed by the media or politicians." Others noted that the partnership challenged their own stereotypes of immigrants and Mexican American people as constructed by the media, political pundits, and often their own families and home communities. One student also explained that he or she "learned that not the entire border is evil and a lot of what we hear up here in Michigan is stereotype and myths." Another explained candidly, "I was able to ... realize that all people crossing 'illegal' into the U.S. are not necessarily criminals and are just trying to better themselves and their families."</p> <p>All of these statements suggest that the Kalamazoo College students experienced transformative learning as they began to move from socialized selves, who accept the meanings and values taught them by authority figures in their lives, to self-authored selves, who can generate meaning informed by their own ideas, beliefs, and experiences. The majority accepted challenges to their prior assumptions and knowledge with humility and expressed their respect for the wisdom of the UTPA students, as exemplified by the following statements [emphasis added to all]: "The UTPA students experience this border on a daily basis and <emph>are experts</emph> on many contemporary issues involving the border"; "I learned ... that <emph>nothing trumps</emph> first-hand experience"; and "I learned the <emph>value of having direct experience to speak authoritatively</emph> about something." One way of interpreting such statements is that the Kalamazoo College students now positioned the UTPA students—rather than the media or even course materials—as the "experts"; this tendency is common in the "encounter" stage of student development, wherein students from privileged backgrounds romanticize the perspectives of those from disadvantaged backgrounds (Helms, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref42">10</reflink>]).</p> <p>As a result, some UTPA students felt that they had not learned much from the Kalamazoo College students. One UTPA student noted in his final essay, "the initial studies on the border were very efficient [sic]; the only part that I felt was not very helpful was their input on the border. I believe it was interesting but they did not have much information to offer." Another UTPA student strongly made this point: "I honestly don't feel like the UTPA/Kzoo collaboration in any way helped me to learn about the U.S.-Mexico border ... [although] the class overall did." In a final class discussion about the collaboration that McMahon facilitated with her students, the majority expressed this view, with the prevailing thought by the UTPA students that "they learned more from us than we did from them" (McMahon's field notes, December 6, 2010) Thus, the partnership did produce the one-way transfers of knowledge that frequently characterize learning environments shared by privileged and disadvantaged students, and in this way, the collaboration did reinforce existing dynamics of power in higher education.</p> <p>However, we argue that these dynamics of power and privilege were nonetheless crucial to generating the conditions of transformative learning for both groups of students. We suggest that the UTPA students experienced substantial transformative learning precisely because they engaged with students from more privileged backgrounds; the key, however, is that they did so within a critical multicultural framework. Through their interactions with the Kalamazoo College students, the UTPA students became better able to interpret the course materials from multiple perspectives and to see how their personal experiences were reflected in the theoretical and historical materials. In her final essay, one UTPA student wrote that dialogue with the Kalamazoo students helped her to "understand and better interpret the literature since we had someone from a different area telling us what they found interesting and pointing things that we could have missed since we are so familiar with the culture and ideas ... it encouraged us to look deeper into the writing." Another explained: "Interacting with the Kzoo students and reading their reactions to <emph>Borderlands</emph> reminded me of how unique this area really is. Having lived here most of my life, I have a tendency to overlook how interesting my hometown really is." As a result, in the final survey, 82% of UTPA students said the collaboration helped them "a great deal" to see how they are personally affected by the course topics, and 65% reported that their understanding of their positionality improved "a great deal" through the partnership. By the end of the course, the majority of UTPA students developed a sense of pride in being from the border region, a perspective grounded in knowledge of the historical and social conditions shaping their lives—a key dimension of moving from a socialized self to a self-authored self.</p> <p>Likewise, the Kalamazoo College students experienced an equally important outcome, and one that we did not necessarily anticipate: that of being humbled relative to students conventionally understood as "disadvantaged," through the experience of having their own (usually privileged) life histories, perspectives, and sources of knowledge not be at the center of analysis. In the final survey, only 27% of Kalamazoo College students reported that the collaboration helped them to see how they are personally affected by the course topics, a figure that was, at first, disappointing to us. However, we realized that although the Kalamazoo College students did not always see how the national conversation about the border implicated them, they, nonetheless, developed a moderately improved understanding of their own subject positions; in the final survey, 53% of Kalamazoo College students reported that their understanding of their own positionality improved "a great deal" through the partnership. We attribute this outcome to the Kalamazoo College students' experiences of comparing and contrasting their perspectives with those of the UTPA students, and of being pushed, through instructor-facilitated conversations as well as reflexive assignments, to consider the structural reasons underlying those divergent perspectives. We argue that this experience was critical for the Kalamazoo College students' learning because it helped them deconstruct their existing assumptions, not only about the border and immigrant populations but also about themselves as privileged subjects within higher education and U.S. society.</p> <hd id="AN0087666489-6">RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUDING REMARKS</hd> <p>We argue that our border studies partnership transformed not only individual students but also the positions of privilege and disadvantage that initially characterized their educational trajectories and life histories. In this respect the collaboration contributed, in some small way, to dismantling structures of inequality in higher education. The intentional pairing of a critical multiculturalist curriculum and pedagogical practices was crucial to achieving this outcome. Reflexive projects and embodied, facilitated exchanges were most effective in generating the conditions for transformative learning.</p> <p>For future collaborations of this nature, we recommend that instructors actively facilitate all student exchanges online, in real-time, embodied, and extended formats whenever possible, to replicate the kinds of productive tensions that can happen when students from unequal backgrounds meet in the physical classroom. Instructors should not assume, as we initially did, that students will do some of this work on their own. Instead, instructors need to pose the tough questions and to challenge students' assumptions, just as they do in the physical classroom, to facilitate students' critical reflexivity about power, privilege, and their own positionality. We suggest that instructors use their own separate physical classrooms strategically as counterspaces for the processing of inter-campus tensions that will inevitably arise, from which students can then re-engage across difference. Instructors should reserve substantial time for debriefing in the class periods immediately following all significant exchanges with the other campus, and incorporate multiple methods of reflection (such as free-writing, anonymous questionnaires, and group discussion) to guide student analysis of the partnership and of their own learning. As appropriate, instructors should seek training in facilitation and conflict resolution techniques, and they should ensure that outside support systems are available to both students and themselves.</p> <p>Given the polarization wrought by contemporary, often inflammatory, border discourse as well as by policies and budget cuts to higher education that will likely produce increasingly segregated campuses in years to come, we believe that partnerships like this will become crucial for critical multiculturalist educators seeking to create opportunities for student learning across difference and inequality, as well as transformations to the landscape of higher education. As one UTPA student suggested in the final essay, "This might very well become the classroom of the</p> <p>future."</p> <hd id="AN0087666489-7">Acknowledgments</hd> <p>This collaboration was supported by the Teagle Grant at Kalamazoo College and the Center for Distance Learning at UTPA. We extend our gratitude to the student participants from UTPA and Kalamazoo College who made this collaboration possible. Special thanks to Paul Sotherland, Anne Dueweke, Josie de la Tejera, and two anonymous reviewers, all of whom supported and improved our work.</p> <ref id="AN0087666489-8"> <title> REFERENCES </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref2" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Accapadi Motwani, M.2007. When White women cry: How White women's tears oppress women of color. College Student Affairs Journal, 26(2): 208–215.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref3" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> Akintunde, O.2006. Diversity.com: Teaching an online course on white racism and multiculturalism. Multicultural Perspectives, 8(2): 35–45.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib3" idref="ref4" type="bt">3</bibl> <bibtext> Anzaldúa, G.2007. 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McMahon is an assistant professor at the University of Texas, Pan American, where she teaches Chicana/o literature and cultural studies, gender studies, and theater and performance in the Departments of English and Mexican American Studies.</p> </aug> <nolink nlid="nl1" bibid="bib19" firstref="ref1"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl2" bibid="bib10" firstref="ref7"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl3" bibid="bib20" firstref="ref10"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl4" bibid="bib21" firstref="ref11"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl5" bibid="bib18" firstref="ref14"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl6" bibid="bib16" firstref="ref15"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl7" bibid="bib13" firstref="ref22"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl8" bibid="bib15" firstref="ref23"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl9" bibid="bib12" firstref="ref24"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl10" bibid="bib17" firstref="ref25"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl11" bibid="bib14" firstref="ref40"></nolink> |
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| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: U.S.-Mexico Border Studies Online Collaboration: Transformative Learning across Power and Privilege – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Barraclough%2C+Laura%22">Barraclough, Laura</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22McMahon%2C+Marci+R%2E%22">McMahon, Marci R.</searchLink> – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Equity+%26+Excellence+in+Education%22"><i>Equity & Excellence in Education</i></searchLink>. 2013 46(2):236-251. – Name: Avail Label: Availability Group: Avail Data: Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 16 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 2013 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Evaluative – Name: Audience Label: Education Level Group: Audnce Data: <searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Higher+Education%22">Higher Education</searchLink> – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Hispanic+American+Students%22">Hispanic American Students</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Race%22">Race</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Social+Class%22">Social Class</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Immigration%22">Immigration</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Liberal+Arts%22">Liberal Arts</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Colleges%22">Colleges</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Disadvantaged%22">Disadvantaged</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Advantaged%22">Advantaged</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Transformative+Learning%22">Transformative Learning</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Equal+Education%22">Equal Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Multicultural+Education%22">Multicultural Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Teaching+Methods%22">Teaching Methods</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Power+Structure%22">Power Structure</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Educational+Policy%22">Educational Policy</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Online+Courses%22">Online Courses</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Intercultural+Communication%22">Intercultural Communication</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Computer+Mediated+Communication%22">Computer Mediated Communication</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Educational+Objectives%22">Educational Objectives</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Institutional+Characteristics%22">Institutional Characteristics</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22College+Students%22">College Students</searchLink> – Name: Subject Label: Geographic Terms Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Michigan%22">Michigan</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Texas%22">Texas</searchLink> – Name: DOI Label: DOI Group: ID Data: 10.1080/10665684.2013.779146 – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 1066-5684 – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: In response to the national conversation about the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration in recent years, we created an online partnership between students in concurrent border studies courses at our two campuses: a public Hispanic-serving institution in South Texas and a private, small liberal arts college in Michigan. We explored whether and how the tensions between privileged and disadvantaged students documented in the traditional classroom would manifest online, and how we could use virtual technologies most effectively to structure transformative learning, defined as recognition and articulation of the structural and cultural systems that frame individual experience and meaning-making, across difference. As we document in this essay, tensions around racial, class, and educational inequality did occur in our partnership. Yet these tensions were crucial in creating the conditions for transformative learning because they generated "disorienting dilemmas" that challenged students' assumptions and knowledge. Our intentional integration of critical multiculturalist curriculum and pedagogical practices (especially embodied, facilitated online interactions) capitalized upon those conditions. By the end of the partnership, both groups of students experienced significant--but distinctive--trajectories of transformative learning that unsettled not only their individual understandings, but also the dynamics of power that characterize the higher education landscape. Given the polarization wrought by border and immigration discourse and educational policies that will likely produce increasingly segregated campuses in years to come, such online partnerships show promise for critical multiculturalist educators seeking to create opportunities for learning across difference and inequality. – Name: AbstractInfo Label: Abstractor Group: Ab Data: As Provided – Name: Ref Label: Number of References Group: RefInfo Data: 21 – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 2014 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ1010705 |
| PLink | https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=eric&AN=EJ1010705 |
| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Identifiers: – Type: doi Value: 10.1080/10665684.2013.779146 Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 16 StartPage: 236 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Hispanic American Students Type: general – SubjectFull: Race Type: general – SubjectFull: Social Class Type: general – SubjectFull: Immigration Type: general – SubjectFull: Liberal Arts Type: general – SubjectFull: Colleges Type: general – SubjectFull: Disadvantaged Type: general – SubjectFull: Advantaged Type: general – SubjectFull: Transformative Learning Type: general – SubjectFull: Equal Education Type: general – SubjectFull: Multicultural Education Type: general – SubjectFull: Teaching Methods Type: general – SubjectFull: Power Structure Type: general – SubjectFull: Educational Policy Type: general – SubjectFull: Online Courses Type: general – SubjectFull: Intercultural Communication Type: general – SubjectFull: Computer Mediated Communication Type: general – SubjectFull: Educational Objectives Type: general – SubjectFull: Institutional Characteristics Type: general – SubjectFull: College Students Type: general – SubjectFull: Michigan Type: general – SubjectFull: Texas Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: U.S.-Mexico Border Studies Online Collaboration: Transformative Learning across Power and Privilege Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Barraclough, Laura – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: McMahon, Marci R. IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 01 Type: published Y: 2013 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 1066-5684 Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 46 – Type: issue Value: 2 Titles: – TitleFull: Equity & Excellence in Education Type: main |
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