Living outside the margins: Race, power dynamics and implications of a short-term study abroad program on in-service teacher professional development

Abstract

This study examined how graduate students, who are also teachers, make meaning of their Belize Service Learning project experience and explicitly interrogate the social, cultural, and power dynamics at work in those interactions. This course was unique in the sense that it was a co-teaching short-term service-learning project housed in the USU College of Education. Participants were assigned Belizean classes to teach while abroad. In addition, this study questioned how graduate students, who are teachers, make meaning of their Belize Service Learning project experience. Four themes developed in all or most participant cases in this study, which were the major takeaways from this study. The themes presented some overlap such as the struggles with the language diversity and the ability to perform well as teachers in Belize while grappling with the language. Overall, all the participants expressed this course was a life altering experience that will last with them for a lifetime despite short-term study abroad scholarship pointing to changes being short-lived. Furthermore, the participants' discomfort presents a type of embodied learning of the "other." The experiential experiences of "otherness" glimmer of learning for the possibilities of short-term study abroad and the service learning focus.