Disruptive Learning Narrative Framework: Understanding Intense and Uncomfortable International Experiences

• In Event: Disruptive Learning Narrative Framework: Analyzing Race, Power and Privilege in Post-Secondary International Service Learning

Proposal

This chapter has three main goals. First, it begins by providing what the authors hope is a deep understanding of what constitutes a critical international experience which challenges the common forms of international travel for service learning, which can be often promoted as an exotic trip or mission trip to help save others in less developed and less fortunate regions of the globe. Second, it introduces the Disruptive Learning Narrative (DLN) framework and its three overlapping and interdependent elements, namely, (1) disidentification, (2) dislocation and (3) displacement. These elements are discussed alongside two gestural vignettes based in Tanzania and are analyzed by using the DLN framework as a way to think about DLN as both an epistemic and a methodological framework. Third, this chapter shares that the DLN framework was originally designed for teacher education programmes that had international practicum placements for their students.

In particular, this chapter shares two of our brief teacher educators’ vignettes. Both of these vignettes are based in Tanzania, where our teacher candidates grappled with discomfort around their identity and the new power dynamics. In retrospect, we use the DLN framework to analyse both of these narratives based on our observations of our teacher candidates in the hope of understanding and unpacking their intense, disruptive and uncomfortable experience.

However, after this chapter and the book have come to fruition over the course of six years in conversation about international experiences, each co-editor has reflected, analyzed and processed that the DLN is applicable to all critical international experiences abroad that utilize a critical lens on international experiences. Thus, the co-editors have collectively agreed that this framework is useful and applicable to a variety of post-secondary international experiences, as it influences, to varying degrees, the professional and personal identities of the students and faculty who go abroad with respect to analyzing and developing a deep understanding of how race, privilege and power operate in experiences abroad.

Author

• Manu Sharma, Thompson Rivers University