Paper 7: Maintaining or Dismantling Borders in Community-Based Projects: Reflections from a Study Abroad Program in Colombia

• In Event: Reimagining Researcher-Participant Relations in Engineering and Computing Education

Abstract

Purpose
Engineering educators integrate community-based design projects into students’ learning experiences due to the belief that they foster students’ sociotechnical design repertoires (McGowan & Bell, 2020; Reynante, 2022). However, such projects can be harmful, particularly when they encounter financial, knowledge, epistemic, and reputational borders that reinforce and exacerbate power dynamics between students, faculty, administrators, and community members (Costanza-Chock, 2020; Pineda et al., 2012). The purpose of this paper was to examine those borders and their implications for project outcomes and student learning.
Perspectives
Pineda and colleagues’ (2012) describe borders, (i.e., financial, epistemic, engineering education, knowledge, and reputational borders) that can arise between stakeholder groups during community-based projects. Such borders have the potential to reify and exacerbate inequalities by precluding some from sharing in the benefits of the project. While many presume that such borders are objects to be dismantled, others suggest maintaining such borders can support positive project outcomes (Pineda et al., 2012).
Data Sources
This paper draws on a multi-year ethnographic study of engineering students engaged in an engineering design abroad program in Cartagena, Colombia. Data sources include video- and audio-recordings of course activities, virtual meetings with community members, students’ interactions with community members in Cartagena, debrief sessions following workdays abroad, and reflective interviews with community members.
Findings
Faculty, administrators, students, and community members recognized the various borders during the project. For example, one community partner acknowledged the financial border when evaluating students in the project, alluding to the ways that students successfully mitigated the financial border:
Positively. They are humble human beings, even though they are from another country and their economy is greater than ours. But they are humble. They treat other people as if they have known them for a long time.
Still, others noted how maintaining such borders could preserve community leadership and autonomy. For example, a common assumption in community-based design projects is that community members should play a key role in resource management to preserve autonomy. However, in our project, community liaisons cautioned that maintaining some financial borders might help mitigate reputational borders. One liaison shared:
It might actually help for you to stay in charge [of finances]. If [community leader] plays a role, then she becomes responsible, especially if the project fails. It can have a really bad impact on her standing in the community, so we want to be careful there.
Things findings challenge the common assumption that borders between stakeholder groups require dismantling. Instead, drawing on community member knowledge, it became clear that maintaining some borders might support project outcomes.
Scholarly Significance
Students and faculty engaged in community-based engineering design projects frequently view the “borders” between them and community members as objects to be dismantled (Pineda et al., 2012). However, engaging with the values and perspectives of community members revealed that maintaining such borders may be necessary for ensuring that community leadership and autonomy are not disrupted. Such findings suggest educators implementing community-based learning experiences may need to reconsider assumptions about the manifestations of power dynamics between stakeholder groups.

Authors

• Trevion S. Henderson, Tufts University

• Collette P Higgins, Tufts University