Dialogue, power, identity: Reflections of two intergroup dialogue facilitators leading a critical international service learning program to the Dominican Republic

• In Event: Experiences and Reflections of International Students

Proposal

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the research, findings, and collective reflections related to a study that analyzed the impact that integrating intergroup dialogue theory and practice had on student learning in the January 2020 iteration of a service learning program we co-led for U.S. undergraduate students to the Dominican Republic.
International service learning programs have risen in popularity across U.S. colleges and universities that seek to offer students the opportunity to engage with communities in other countries, learn how social issues of inequality affect people worldwide, and strengthen student learning on global issues (Bringle et al., 2011). However, many of these programs lack a critical perspective, and often avoid conversations on the power dynamics of service projects and the harm that international service learning courses can cause and reproduce (Butin, 2006; Stoecker, 2016). Simultaneously, programs that promote a critical approach to service abroad do not always address the vital role that social identity plays in these programs (e.g., race, gender, sexuality, nationality, social class, etc.), and minimize how identity dynamics impact the differentiating experiences of students abroad (Green, 2003; Rose & Bylander, 2006). How would it look, therefore, to have a critical international service learning program with this attention to identity?
When we inherited an international service learning program to Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic in 2018 entitled “Global Service in the Dominican Republic,” we attempted to create that critical space through the integration of intergroup dialogue (IGD) theory and pedagogy. IGD utilizes dialogue and critical identity-based learning to support students across markers of difference in understanding how identity impacts people’s lived experiences, how social groups are connected to systems of privilege and oppression, and how structural inequalities and power relations affect the dynamics between social groups (Gurin et al., 2013; Zuñiga et al., 2012). While IGD historically has been a U.S.-based practice, we believed we could use our background and training in this discipline and apply its practices in an international setting. Throughout the three years of our program’s existence (January 2018, 2019, and 2020) we continued to strengthen IGD’s integration, utilizing in-country dialogues, reflection papers, online assignments and our service project with a local organization that worked with Black Haitian and Dominican boys of Haitian descent to promote reflection on students’ social identities, their social position within global systems of inequality, and the role our service had in addressing and reproducing power differentials (Aldana et al., 2012). One of the co-instructors ultimately utilized the 2020 iteration of the Global Service in the DR program for his dissertation, looking closely at student learning around identity, inequality, service, and their intersections. In this process of writing the dissertation, we as co-instructors met several times to review and reflect on the dissertation’s findings and framework, student responses in interviews (the other instructor was an IRB-approved co-researcher for the study), and to compose a set of recommendations that could inform future research and practice.
The conclusions that came from our collective analysis of the dissertation and our conversations form the core of this paper and presentation. Our findings showed that students demonstrated a great deal of learning around their social identities predominantly around race, gender, social class/SES, and nationality. This learning corresponded to how deeply students understood the impact of their identities on their experiences abroad and on the relationships that they built with others while abroad. Most students were also able to articulate how inequalities operated on structural levels, and often did this through a consideration of more than one of their identities rather than through a unidimensional lens. Students of greater relative privilege, which involved white students (including most multiracial white students) and those of self-identified middle or middle-upper socioeconomic status, while able to recognize their privileges, were less likely to analyze inequalities from a structural perspective compared to students who were more systemically disadvantaged. Students of marginalized identities were more interested in advancing community efforts to challenge issues of power and privilege among program participants and with our community partners compared to their more privileged counterparts. In general, however, the most learning emerged from moments when students recognized their privilege at the expense of observing or witnessing the systemic barriers faced by others along that identity dimension. This finding demonstrated a dynamic of inequity (those with privilege benefitting from the harm faced by those without), that has been observed in service learning and intergroup dialogue historically (Stoecker, 2016; Gurin et al., 2013).
Holding these limitations in mind, we believe there is great potential in advancing intergroup dialogue within the international program and international service learning space. Intergroup dialogue can bring many of the underlying dynamics to the forefront, and bridge important conversations that build understanding among students about their differentiated experiences abroad and the impact of their involvement in these courses. We also believe that there are numerous ways to continue to better address power differentials and build more solidarity in service learning programs through dialogue. Our findings indicate the importance of providing more comprehensive caucusing, i.e., the division of groups along lines of privilege/marginalization to have intragroup discussions (i.e., a race caucus that divides white students and Students of Color). We also believe that we and future programs can hold more dialogues with community partners as a way of involving them in identity discussions and to better center our partner’s goals and needs in our projects.
With regards to the CIES conference and the Study Abroad/International Student SIG, as study abroad continues to prioritize issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as methods to decenter white supremacist, colonial and imperial modes of operating, we must also develop comprehensive pedagogical models that address these issues. While intergroup dialogue has its constraints, our investigation demonstrates its potential for building a conversation and roadmap for an ever-evolving critical framework that in its engagement with power could inform future practice, program design, and pedagogical interventions.

Authors

• Jeremy R Gombin-Sperling, Fulbright Program

• Jazmin Pichardo