InterActions Volume 12 Issue 2

ISSUE NO:

Issue 12 Volume 12 VOL Volume 2 Issue 28JOUFS DATE: Spring2016 2016 Spring

Volume 12 Issue 2 Editor's Note Spring 2016 Editor's Note Cifor, Marika; Ilano, Lauren; Wood, Stacy

Articles The Spatiality of Schooling: A Quest for Equitable Classrooms and High Expectations for Low-Income Students of Color Liou, Daniel D.; Marsh, Tyson E.J.; Antrop-Gonzalez, Rene Rapport at the core: Relationships in service-learning program development Lillo, Sarah Traversing a Political Pipeline: An Intersectional and Social Constructionist Approach Toward Technology Education for Girls of Color Garcia, Patricia; Scott, Kimberly Rethinking the Ethics of Internationalization: Five Challenges for Higher Education Stein, Sharon

Book Reviews Review: Boundary Objects and Beyond: Working with Leigh Star, Edited by Geoffrey C. Bowker, Stefan Timmermans, Adele E. Clarke, and Ellen Balka Montoya, Robert Identity, Social Activism, and the Pursuit of Higher Education: The Journey Stories of Undocumented and Unafraid Community Activists by Susana M. MuĂąoz Peumsang, Pavitee

Title: Spring 2016 Editor's Note Journal Issue: InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 12(2) Author: Cifor, Marika Ilano, Lauren Wood, Stacy Publication Date: 2016 Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6094k4dn Article Number: Local Identifier: gseis_interactions_31977 Abstract: Spring 2016 Editor's Note Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse

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Cifor et al.: Spring 2016 Editor's Note

This issue represents the breadth of research extant across Education and Information Studies. One of reasons InterActions is so unique, is a commitment to interdisciplinary work and critique. As evidenced by the subject matter and methodologies employed by the authors in this issue, this tradition is alive and well.

Stein discusses the ethics of internationalization efforts. As financial pressures and scarcity loom large for educational institutions, these efforts can be posed as palliative measures alongside a rhetoric of diversity. Stein asks us to look beyond the rhetoric to think through the power imbalances that characterize internationalization efforts, as well as our ethical requirements as both educators and administrators.

In an in-depth qualitative case study Sarah Lillo focuses through ethnographic research methods on the social orientation and approaches to rapport building engaged in by one service-learning director at a major research university. Lillo highlights the significance of the relational components of this director’s work showing how they were critical in both the framing of the program and in its successes. This case serves to underscore the immense potential of positive rapport and accordingly, calls for more attention to the relational aspects of program facilitation.

Patricia Garcia and Kimberly Scott turn new attention to a gap in scholarship on the mutually constitutive relationship between technology, gender and other intersecting identitity categories, including race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and ability. Garcia and Scott argue taking up an intersectional view of technology is instrumental to dismantling the language of objectivity deeply embedded in technological artifacts revealing how categories are integral components of such technologies and by extension of participant in technological initiatives. They conclude with a brief discussion of CompuGirls, a culturally responsive technology program for girls of color, employing it as a case to demonstrate for readers how an intersectional, social constructionist approach to technology education provides a much-need challenge to damaging stereotypes of girls of color and provides a counter-narrative that can empower them to form new and generative relationships with technology.

Next winter InterActions will publish a special issue that is direct outgrowth of a partnership between the journal and the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies 2016 Research and Inquiry Conference. The R&I conference is an annual event showcasing student work from the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and Undergraduate Education Minor at UCLA. The theme of the conference held in May 2016 was “Embracing Diversity in GSE&IS Scholarship.” InterActions situates our forthcoming special issue, “Embracing and Critiquing Diversity: Papers from the 2016 GSE&IS

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Research and Inquiry Conference,� in conversation with scholars, activists and artists whose work engages critically with diversity, social justice, and knowledge production in the fields of education and information studies. We look forward to an exciting year!

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Peer Reviewed Title: The Spatiality of Schooling: A Quest for Equitable Classrooms and High Expectations for LowIncome Students of Color Journal Issue: InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 12(2) Author: Liou, Daniel D., Arizona State University (dliou@asu.edu) Marsh, Tyson E.J., University of New Mexico (publicpedagogy@unm.edu) Antrop-Gonzalez, Rene, Metropolitan State University (rene.antrop-gonzalez@metrostate.edu) Publication Date: 2016 Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4mn4927d Article Number: Acknowledgements: The authors wish to thank Alma Itzé Flores for her valuable feedback.

Author Bio: Daniel D. Liou is an assistant professor of Educational Leadership and Innovation in Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. His scholarship centers on the institutional dynamics of academic expectations, and how the associated conditions and practices infuence students' opportunities to learn. In addition to his expertise in education, Daniel brings the lens of ethnic studies, sociology, and critical race studies to bear on his work. Daniel is the first in his family to graduate from high school and to attend college, and seeks to work on research and to engage in teaching topics central to this experience. Daniel is the 2015 recipient of the AERA Social Justice Teaching Award in Educational Administration (LSJ SIG).

Tyson E.J. Marsh is an assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of New Mexico. His research interests include the political, social, cultural, and economic contexts of P-20 education. In particular, Dr. Marsh's research agenda examines the intersections of educational leadership and critical public pedagogy, and the role of praxis in advancing social justice both domestically and abroad.

René Antrop-González is the Dean and Professor of Urban Education at Metropolitan State University-MN. Dean Antrop-González teaches bilingual education/ESL courses, has experience teaching English as a second language (ESL) at the elementary, secondary, and college levels in

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Puerto Rico and the United States. His research interests include African American and Latin@ sociology of education, urban school reform, African American and Latin@ high achievers, and Latin@ youth in the New Latin@ Diaspora. Antrop-Gonzรกlez received his A.A. from Valencia Community College, a B.A. in Spanish from the University of Central Florida, a M.Ed. in the teaching of English as a second language at the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico and his Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis in bilingual education from the Pennsylvania State University. Prior to joining Metropolitan State University, Antrop-Gonzรกlez was a faculty member in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee and Dalton State College where he supported the preparation of second language teachers.

Keywords: Teacher Expectations, Classroom, Social Identity Contingency, Race and Ethnicity, School Reform, Spatiality, Urban Education Local Identifier: gseis_interactions_28575 Abstract: A significant missing link in the work of school reform is understanding how students relate with learning spaces and their teachers' beliefs to harness a positive self-concept of academic achievement. This article draws from the traditions of spatiality, educational studies, and the concept of social identity contingency to generate new ways to understand how students interpret and experience their teachers' expectations for learning. Based on a multiple case studies design of two urban classrooms, the researchers discovered the spatial behaviors of students and teachers are greatly influenced by the expectations they had of each other, and by extension, the spatial arrangement of learning opportunities as manifestations of their expectations in learning contexts. In effect, this study aims to shed light on the importance of co-creating classroom spaces with students of color that take into account its multiple dimensions and the salience of teachers' expectations for learning.

Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse

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Liou et al.: The Spatiality of Schooling: A Quest for Equitable Classrooms and High Expect...

Students’ views of their chances of school success can greatly influence their motivation to learn (Brophy, 2013). However, the extent to which classroom spaces mediate these perceptions is currently undertheorized in the educational literature, especially in the context of teacher-student relationships. Research has recognized spatiality as physically and socially constructed to mediate human experiences within a given set of institutional norms (Pickles, 1985). Moreover, through unspoken norms, such as the hidden curriculum or expectations that might be subtly conveyed to students, spatiality plays a central role in the educational socialization of students (Apple, 2004; McLaren, 2015). Students’ capacity to effectively navigate the tacit constructions of knowledge and achievement influences their spatial behaviors (Allen, 1999; Anyon, 1980).

This article draws from the disciplinary traditions of spatiality, educational studies, and the concept of social identity contingency to generate new ways for students to interpret and experience their teachers’ expectations for learning. The interplay between the physical and social dynamics of spatiality is of consequence to what is also known as social identity contingency (Steele, 2010), which PurdieVaughns, Steele, Davies, Ditlmann, and Crosby (2008) have defined as “possible judgments, stereotypes, opportunities, restrictions, and treatments that are tied to one’s social identity in a given setting” (p. 615). These judgments can be externally imposed through stereotypes, and internally negotiated through social interactions to comply with, resist, or transform those rendered judgments (Steele, 2010). Finally, social identity contingency recognizes the power dynamics and institutional processes that foster one’s social location within the physical and interpersonal dimensions of spatiality.

In the school context, we operationalize the concept of social identity contingency as the ways in which educators classify students’ intellectual promise based on broader social identity categories, and engage in classroom practices that communicate different expectations in both indirect and overt ways. As such, teachers allow their anticipation of student learning to foster a state of interpersonal and environmental effects and relationships. This sequence—what we refer to as teacher expectancy—in turn socializes students to perform to the teacher’s standards for academic achievement (Gregory & Korth, 2016). For example, if a student is regarded as “unteachable” due to negative stereotypes and deficit thinking, the teacher might lower expectations for that student, which can negatively impact the subsequent treatment and performance of this student (Rist, 1970). Social identity contingencies inform educational spaces, which can be regulated through one’s expectations and interactions with other members within the space. Much like the logic of the Thomas theorem (1928), a teacher’s assumptions about reality can inform and even define reality. That is, criteria that inform a school’s perceptual framework (Title 1 status, high versus low achieving, belief and disbelief about student success, etc.) can dictate acceptable behaviors

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for achievement, and result in real consequences for the students (Liou & Rotheram-Fuller, 2016). Hence, the norms, values, and beliefs associated with the hidden curriculum often communicates to students’ their perceived potential and opportunities for success as a product of their social identity—reinforcing the social order to deleterious effect (De Lissovoy, 2012).

The researchers sought to understand how the undertheorized issue of how the spatiality of schooling facilitates teacher-student interactions to bring about learning. To this end, our study was guided by the following research questions: 1. How do teachers shape the classroom space to engage students in learning?

2. How do low-income students of color define the classroom as a space to facilitate academic identity contingency?

3. How can classroom spaces be transformed to positively support students’ expectations for higher forms of learning?

How Expectations Regulate the Classroom Space Though there is no concrete definition of space, it should not be understood symbolically, especially in educational contexts where learning is situated within teacher-student relationships, and within the physical arrangement of the classroom to meet particular political objectives (McGregor, 2004).

Undertaking this work, we contended that social identity contingencies implicate space in such a way that students physically and psychologically engage in a historicized context of learning that has been defined by a political process embedded within a normalized system of beliefs and expectations. As Lefebvre and Enders (1976) observed, “Space has been shaped and molded from its natural elements, but this has been a political process. Space is political and ideological.

It is a product literally filled with ideology” (p. 31). To Lefebvre and Enders (1976), space encompasses social meanings that are contextually bounded by both the physicality of the space and the moment in which social identity contingencies influence behaviors and interactions.

A psychological dimension informs concepts of space, as socialization within the classroom shapes the student’s sense of belonging and identification with learning. The dimension was conceptualized by Steele (2010), who posited that the concept of social identity contingency is central to our understanding of the environmental factors that shape identity and the use of that identity to interact within the confined rules and expectations for a given social identity contingency.

Milner (2010) observed: Implicit social and academic power structures exist among students in schools. Some of these power structures are conceptualized by adults and

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are shared by students. Other power structures are constructed by students themselves. Understanding these power structures and how they operate and are enacted can help educators bridge the space between social facets of the school environment with academic aspects. (p. 114) Thus, space is both physically and socially constructed by the relationships between race, class, and academic achievement in the classroom. Allen (1999) illuminated these evolving relationships by pointing to spatiality as a major feature of students’ racial identities and the formations of student resistance to the persistent power dynamics in the school system. Further, Allen (1999) elaborated upon the ways in which educational opportunities have traditionally been arranged to privilege White students and their ways of knowing. The educational system endorses a structure of domination that normalizes both white superiority and the inferiority of low-income students and students of color. These implicit tendencies therefore perpetuate inequitable expectations along racial lines. It is in this apparatus of domination that students of color begin to learn about their academic identity and distinct membership in the school.

These regulatory processes can involve teachers’ expectations of students based on personal judgments (belief, stereotype, and bias) and objective measures (test scores and grades) to influence student achievement (Liou & RotheramFuller, 2016). These expectations embed themselves in pedagogical practice (Becker, 1952) and communication styles in the classroom (Woolfolk & Brooks, 1983), and might even be influenced by students’ previous grades and behavior record, earlier encounters with the student’s older siblings or those who act remarkably similar, other teachers’ accounts of interactions with the student, initial impressions of the student and family members, and teachers’ attitudes toward people who look, speak, and dress differently (Rist, 1970).

Research has indicated that, historically, students of color—regardless of social and economic status—have faced problems related to low academic expectations by teachers (Diamond, Randolph, & Spillane, 2004). Unlike teachers who hold their students to low academic expectations, those teachers who hold high expectations for all students demonstrate what we refer to as spaces of positive expectations, where teachers draw upon the students’ knowledge base for learning and enable them to become academically successful (Yosso & Solórzano, 2005). As opposed to an ideologically oppressive epistemology, all students deserve a student-centered pedagogy informed by positive academic expectations and culturally competent teachers who attend to the feelings and needs concerning societal inequities, and play an instrumental role in creating a classroom space that promotes success.

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Theoretical Framework We utilized conceptual frameworks that include whiteness studies, identity theory, and Freirian theory to help us understand the ideological and psychological underpinnings of classroom spaces, teacher expectations of students, and students’ academic identity. As discussed, the ideological dimension of the classroom often manifests in teachers’ beliefs and attitudes about students.

Because psychological factors shape classrooms as spaces for learning, student self-concept and identification are enmeshed in the physical dimension. Abundant research that has indicated the high valuation of whiteness in the school context (Allen, 1999) also suggests an inverse devaluing of low-income and the detrimental outcomes relating to who is entitled to more resources, who gets tested under the accountability system, and whose epistemology should be central to intellectual legitimacy and acceptance under the pretense of meritocracy (Harris, 1992; Leonardo, 2002).

The dynamics within the classroom space contribute to the complex process whereby a student negotiates and defines his or her academic identity and future aspirations. To understand how students experience racial identity contingency in the classroom, we drew upon Lowe’s (1999) analytic framework of heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity to grasp how external and internal identifications influence teacher academic expectations of students. Clearly, identity is not static, and individual associations with other various norms in different contexts can be fluid (Omi & Winant, 2004). Applying this concept to the definitions of one’s institutional membership and academic identity, Howard (2003) observed that “identity is constructed internally and reconstructed externally in various social and cultural settings, and can vary from one context to the next” (p. 6). Academic identity, then, is a historicized, ongoing process of conquest, resistance, negotiation, and affirmation from one social identity contingency to the next. Freire’s (1970) concept of limit situations posits that these socially constructed spaces are not neutral, but rather are bounded geographically, physically, and politically.

Extrapolating from Freire (1970), these spaces become extensions and sites of ideological meaning—for our purposes, structures that limit pedagogical possibilities (Spring, 2013). Our observations were informed by the test-based accountability system designed to serve the advancement of the neoliberal state, not to remove the shackles of race, class, and gender hegemony. When students negotiate their academic identity contingencies, educational spaces are contested, as those who begin to question the inequitable distributions of educational opportunity come to seek empowerment and liberation. As Freire (1970) observed, “In order for the oppressed to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world in which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation in which they can transform” (p. 49). In this

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study, we aimed to illuminate students’ perceptions of their realities, and highlight the constraints and contradictions embedded in a contested space waiting to be transformed.

Methods Context Our study took place in a racially and linguistically diverse city in California, referred to here as West Coast City, where race and class segregation was occurring to a lesser degree than in many large metropolitan centers. Indeed, a walk down a major thoroughfare in West Coast City could have given the impression that it is well-integrated, though the presence of a major research university brought in workers for local businesses that served its largely privileged college student population as well staff and faculty (restaurants, retail shops, etc.) from surrounding working class communities of color.

West Coast High School, a large, comprehensive high school in West Coast City, was engaged in efforts to bridge the racial opportunity gap. It was the only high school in the city and, historically, low-income and students of color had shown disproportionate rates of “D” or “F” grades on their report cards compared to their White peers at the school. These disparities in academic achievement were reflected in the high dropout rate, and the proportion of students of color suspended and expelled from school. Through partnerships with university researchers, the school recognized the profound disparities in educational opportunities available to students along racial lines.

To confront these issues, West Coast High School implemented smallschool reform to increase personalized instruction and harness equity through higher expectations. These efforts were especially appealing to parents of color, who had historically viewed the school as an entrenched racialized context in which White students were perceived as superior to their students of color. The small-school initiative separated West Coast High School into multiple, smaller thematic academies, each with a different focus, allowing students and families to choose which of the autonomous academies best met their needs. Examining small schools as contingencies of equity with the possibility to transform learning for low-income students of color, we view the small school as a space of possibility. Because of the small school reform, West Coast High School was selected for this particular study for the purpose of understanding relationships between space and teacher expectancy practices. Specifically, we wanted students who had historically been marginalized in academic contexts to elucidate how they identified with the space in relation to their present and future probability of academic success.

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Data Collection Findings for this study are informed by a larger ethnographic study that focused on teachers’ academic expectations for students of color (Yin, 2009). At Ponderosa Academy, one of the small-school divisions of West Coast High School, 222 students were attending at the time of this study. Of this total, 56% was African American, 19% was Latina/o, 14% was White, 9% was mixed race, and 2% was Asian. Of the 12 teachers, two were teachers of color. The larger study took place over one year and involved multiple sources of data, including weekly observations of English, history, math, and science classrooms, semistructured interviews with 36 11th- and 12th-graders and 12 teachers, a collection of school and community artifacts, and memo writing. We selected 11th- and 12th-graders from the small learning community due to the length of their experiences in this particular school setting, and the data selected for the study at hand is a subsample of the larger study guided by the same research questions.

With the classroom as the unit of analysis, the multiple case studies design started with a purposive sample procedure to recruit participants. Students’ level of participation included one-on-one interviews, classroom observations, informal interviews, and one focus group for the purpose member checking. Interview questions included the following: What are your expectations for yourself socially, academically, and career-wise? What steps are you taking to meet those goals for yourself? What are your family members’ expectations for your academic achievement? What do teachers do to support you to reach your goals?

What do these practices look like in your classrooms? Do you feel your goals are attainable as a result of being in this classroom? The intent of these interview questions was to understand how classroom spaces facilitated teacher-student expectations in learning contingencies that contribute to student learning.

Ponderosa Academy utilized a looping system wherein students in each grade level had the same set of teachers for all four years of their high school career. The looping system benefitted this study by allowing us to shadow students in the same set of classrooms for an entire academic year. We accounted for students’ internal diversity by having even numbers of participants represented across race, class, gender, and achievement levels. All student participants qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, and came from families in which the parents did not attend college. We interviewed teachers as a secondary source to confirm our observations of their practices and to enhance our understanding of events that had taken place in the classroom. For one year, the first author also shadowed students four to five times a week to their core content classrooms, at 45 minutes per class, and collected ethnographic data about their experiences in these classrooms.

Data Analysis

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Through inductive data analysis procedures (Auerbach & Silverstein, 2003), themes and patterns emerged as we analyzed their experiences with teachers in the classrooms. Emergent themes included (a) the spatiality of the classroom and material arrangement of learning opportunities, (b) timing and responsiveness of instruction within the material arrangement of learning, (c) teacher and student perceptions of each other in the classroom context, and (d) the spatial behaviors of teachers and students as manifestations of the expectations they had of each other. These themes were repeated in our interviews and observations. Following up on the identified themes, we probed students in the interview process about their needs and how they identified and experienced their learning contingency within the space of the classroom. Themes were further developed and supported as a result of students’ willingness to share the kinds of relationships and teaching strategies that would help them to cultivate their selfconcept for the present and future. We then connected these themes to the analytic frameworks to examine the extent to which both teacher expectations were operative within the spatiality of the classroom and were communicated to foster students’ academic identities, and how students’ and teachers’ spatial behaviors were informed by—and a response to—classroom dynamics associated with one’s social identity contingency.

In our analysis, we were particularly attuned to instances that helped us theorize the potential adaptive strategies that would nurture and cultivate students’ spatial behaviors. The process of theorizing included critical reflections between the authors about our classroom observations and interviews with students and teachers. These critical reflections led us to reach a greater understanding about students’ self-concept and subsequent interactions with the classroom space.

These layered processes of triangulation were conducted through member checking conducted at the conclusion of the study with each participant by the first author. This process of verifying information included a small focus group in which 12 self-selected students collectively helped to confirm and analyze the data to establish trustworthiness and to confirm our findings. The overall process allowed us to connect the findings to the research questions.

Positionality Engaging in qualitative research requires speaking to the positionality of the researchers for the purpose of providing context and insight into the way we approached this study. All authors identify as scholars of color, and each had attended high schools in California, Washington, and Florida, respectively. Our work was informed by our experiences with differential expectations in the classroom, as well as our commitment to improve the context of schooling and educational opportunities for low-income students of color. Our research was positioned with this particular stance.

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Findings and Discussion Shaping the Classroom Space to Engage Students in Learning Together, all three authors relayed and discussed data concurrently in relation to the identified research questions. In the end, we chose two classrooms that best described the variance in teachers’ expectations for learning. As a part of the equity reform, Ponderosa Academy decided to raise expectations of all classrooms and eliminate the use of advanced placement (AP) classes that had historically separated students by race and presumed ability. Efforts to raise expectations included the 11th-grade science class, taught by an incoming teacher, Dr. Witt, who held a doctorate in chemistry. Ponderosa Academy was excited about hiring Dr. Witt and viewed her as highly qualified to contribute to the college-going culture the school was working to create. The classroom space was structured like a lab, with nine bulky lab stations each shared by two to four students. Dr. Witt did not have a seating chart, but the groups that sat together stayed consistent throughout the semester. One prominent and repeated theme was how learning opportunities were structured and timed in relation to the classroom space.

On one particular day, the class started 20 minutes after the bell. Students were out of their seats, hanging out near the door or outside, shouting down the hallway to greet their friends. Dr. Witt did little to intervene and start the class.

She quietly wrote the day’s assignment on the blackboard as the students slowly found their seats. Finally, the door was shut. However, the noise level did not diminish. Several students shouted, “Be quiet! God!” as Dr. Witt stood quietly in front of the classroom waiting for students to turn their attention to her. After a long pause, Dr. Witt said, “Here is your activity for today,” pointing to the blackboard behind her as she passed out a worksheet for students to complete. In soft tones, Dr. Witt gave instructions on the assignment, while several students raised their hands and shouted out questions about the assignment and the previous night’s homework. Dr. Witt was able to address a few questions but missed several others, as it was difficult for anyone to discern those questions from side conversations. Our observation data showed there were no clear expectations about where students should be once the bell rang. Moreover, the noise level, the use of instructional time, and the physical arrangement of the classroom did not provide an appropriate environment for students to focus on learning.

Dr. Witt did not address the noise level, offering only a blank stare at the students, hoping that they would start to pay attention. Finally, Veronica, an 11thgrade Latina student, pleaded to her classmates “Be quiet, be quiet.” Several other students chimed in, including African American student Jerrod, who attempted

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several questions about the assignment. The teacher chose not to pay attention to him, largely because she thought Jerrod was part of the problem, what students referred to as “chaos.” On multiple occasions, Jerrod would raise his hand to speak up, but Dr. Witt would proceed to write him a referral for in-school suspension.

Instead of addressing his questions, Dr. Witt asked Jerrod to be quiet in an effort to establish order so that students could get to the assignment written on the board. Feeling disrespected and misunderstood, Jerrod slowly retreated to his phone to check email and text message his friends. Jerrod declined to be interviewed for the study, but over the semester we observed his increased frustration in the chemistry class through the amount of time he made eye contact with the first author to express his disbelief with the classroom dynamic, and by redirecting his attention to his cell phone whenever he was ignored or misunderstood by the teacher. In effect, we observed a student who came to class prepared and expected to learn, but was not provided the appropriate support and environment to fulfill that expectation. As time was running out, some students decided to copy off each other while Dr. Witt went over the first few questions on the worksheet, telling her students that they could take the rest home to complete as homework. As soon as students heard about their homework, they packed their bags with 15 minutes still left on the clock. When asked about her academic expectations for her students, Dr. Witt said, “I don’t have any.” Linking these sentiments to our observations made clear that Dr. Witt’s lack of expectations for her students dictated her sense of agency and responsiveness. As Ms. Megan, one of the only Latina teachers at the school, succinctly stated: Some teachers start to make excuses and more excuses about why students can’t give us what they’re being asked for. Not all, but people start to say, “have you thought about maybe they don’t have an alarm clock?” as a justification on why students can be excused for being late to school. They use excuses like “they don’t have this and they don’t have that,” or their parents didn’t go to college.

Ms. Megan attributed her colleagues’ low expectations to their broad assumptions about students, which they used to justify their classroom practices. Due to negative stereotypes, Dr. Witt’s classroom had become a space in which student learning was devalued—an appraisal that disempowered students’ engagement in learning. In contrast, Dr. Witt’s expectations for her own children were vastly different. When the first author visited her home for the semi-structured interview, Dr. Witt was actively searching for a high-scoring elementary school for her children to attend, and had neatly arranged her living room with material resources that made it conducive to learning. When asked about her aspirations for her children, Dr. Witt explained that she had high expectations, and wanted

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them to do well in school—a stark contrast to her approach to her students and the classroom space.

Fortunately for students at Ponderosa Academy, not all classroom spaces and teachers conveyed the low expectations held by Dr. Witt. According to Ponderosa Academy’s coordinator, Ms. Jackson, “We teach our students to advocate for themselves, and our teachers are constantly role modeling that for them.” While this was not the case with Dr. Witt, Ms. Benson, a veteran English teacher, created a space for high expectations in her classroom and, in the process, served as an adept advocate for students. As a White ally to students of color, Ms. Benson was aware of how institutional barriers operated within the educational spaces of Ponderosa Academy and served to limit the educational opportunities of her students. Despite these barriers, she worked with her students from freshman year to both recognize and overcome these barriers in maintaining high expectations and fostering college-going aspirations.

Observing Ms. Benson’s 12th-grade English class, we were able to gain a more in-depth understanding of the extent to which she worked to push students to envision themselves in college classrooms. At the onset of the academic year, Ms. Benson registered a student application account with the statewide university system to provide her students with the information they would need to complete their college applications. Using the guidelines for college admissions, she structured her course and timed her lesson plans around the application process.

For her first assignment, students were charged with setting goals for themselves upon graduating high school. For the remainder of the first quarter, which coincided with the statewide university system’s admissions timeline, Ms. Benson centered her class writing and reading comprehension assignments on the personal statement required for college admission. In this process, students were able to peer-edit and mentor one another in the writing process while developing their critical writing skills.

In addition, Ms. Benson invited Ponderosa Academy’s new college counselor, an African American woman and former college admissions officer, to provide information on the application process. The college counselor’s presentation made evident that she did not expect students would be eligible to gain admission to some of the more prestigious state universities. She decided to provide students with information on admissions to second- and third-tier colleges throughout the state: All of you will still get a great education by going to a California State University and the community colleges because their faculty members are mostly graduates of the University of California system. So in essence, you’re still receiving an education that is the equivalent of going to a UC school.

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Maintaining high expectations while establishing that her classroom would be a space in which institutional barriers and deficit perspectives would not place limitations on her students, Ms. Benson immediately interjected, “Many of our students are interested in applying to the UC campuses. Could you go into detail about how students can pursue these opportunities?” Reflecting the sentiments of Ms. Jackson, Ponderosa Academy’s coordinator, Ms. Benson remained an advocate for her students while modeling to them how they might advocate for themselves.

As discussed by Steele (2010), social identity contingencies are circumstances that individuals must deal with as a result of their social identity, and their ability to navigate these circumstances determines whether they are able to get what they want and need. But Dr. Witt’s lack of academic expectations for students clearly showed that she did not view the classroom, or Ponderosa Academy’s reform initiatives, as a space of possibilities for powerful teaching and learning to occur. Instead, her classroom activities were limited to worksheets, and her students were given far too much time to complete them, eventually slowing their academic progress in comparison to White students at the school.

Not having expectations for her students, Dr. Witt conveyed a very destructive message to students about their potential as high achievers. Even though teaching science and teaching English require different strategies to challenge normative curriculum (Kumashiro, 2015), teacher-student identity contingencies in the sciences and the humanities should be based on caring relationships and explicit, mutually demanding expectations for learning. Students can easily recognize that they are not being cared for. Dr. Witt’s students were at risk of internalizing her message as their identities became contingent upon her lack of expectations, which in many ways was informed by the larger system and structure of schooling and society (Steele, 1997). Since these low expectancy practices took place in the context of equity-oriented reform aiming to close the racial opportunity gap, Dr. Witt’s approach to her classroom negatively influenced her students’ learning environment, which further devalued their classroom space to reinforce white supremacy in the larger school context (Allen, 1999; Harris, 1992; Leonardo, 2002).

While the discourse of educational reform purports to improve educational opportunities for all students, Lefebvre and Enders (1976) held that space is not neutral, but in fact possesses historical, political, and ideological elements. It is crucial that educators possess an awareness of—and take action against—the structural and institutional barriers that inform student identities and selfexpectations, and to understand how they are operationalized in everyday classroom spaces and practices, despite the best intentions of institutional leaders and actors. In the case of Ponderosa Academy, Ms. Benson embodied this

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awareness and action as she designed her classroom as a place in which deficit perspectives of students of color could be named and challenged, advocating for and working with students to counter punitive and externally imposed social identity contingencies by setting high expectations for them.

Classroom as a Space to Facilitate Future Aspirations Challenging the disparate power relationships between teachers and students, Freire (1970) directly critiqued the notion that “the teacher thinks, and the students are thought about” as a central component of the “banking” concept of education (p. 73). In line with his critique, and in reflecting on the classroom spaces at Ponderosa Academy, we found it critical to engage students in dialogue to more adequately understand how they internalized the explicit and implicit messages conveyed to them within such spaces. Jerrod, an African American student in the 12th grade, expressed his observations: All the classes I’m doing poorly in are classes that [the teacher] don’t come to me to check on how I’m doing in class . . . If a teacher does not care about me as a person, then it’s like, you don’t care and I don’t care.

Here, Jarrod echoes Freire’s (1970) sentiment that students must be engaged— simply thinking about them is not enough. Further, what teachers fail to say and do has implications for how students internalize the psychological and physical classroom space. For Jerrod, by failing to check on him and ask him how he was doing, teachers sent him the message that they did not care, to which he responded by not caring himself.

Regardless of their intentions, teachers who fail to create psychological and physical classroom spaces where students are cared for can have detrimental outcomes. Such results were apparent in the comments made by Veronica, an 11th-grade Latina student enrolled in Dr. Witt’s chemistry course. At the beginning of the school year, Veronica was introduced to us by the teaching staff as a high-performing student. As the year pressed on, however, her grades declined in chemistry. When asked why her grades had declined in that particular class, Veronica attributed her poor performance to Dr. Witt’s classroom space: I don’t think Dr. Witt has any expectations for us. She didn’t really know us and didn’t care, honestly…That’s why I’ve fell behind in Chemistry now, because she didn’t have control over the class and didn’t have strong set rules.

Given Veronica’s sentiments, it is troubling to think that, although Dr. Witt did not verbalize her lack of expectations to students, they still discerned them based on

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how they experienced her classroom space. For Veronica, Dr. Witt failed to construct a classroom space that was conducive to learning. Given that the combination of teacher caring and high expectations has been found to foster academic resiliency among students (Benard, 2004), the glaring absence of both manifested a negative social identity contingency between the teacher and students like Veronica.

Observing this failure, Veronica felt that a supportive learning space should have structure. From Veronica’s perspective—and despite her academic success in other areas—Dr. Witt’s classroom was not a space of academic optimism in which she could realize her future academic goals and aspirations.

Although Dr. Witt did not explicitly articulate her lack of expectations, they seemed very likely to be rooted in deficit perspectives she held regarding lowincome students of color—even high-performing students like Veronica. It is therefore critical to consider the potentially lasting impact that Dr. Witt’s classroom could have on these students’ psychological and physical sense of belonging in academic spaces, given the social identity contingencies they might have to repeatedly navigate. This finding contributes to the literature on teacher expectations beyond the physical environment of stereotype threat and the interpersonal dynamics of expectancy practices. Interactions between psychological and physical notions of space reveal new ways that students encounter and respond to their teachers’ expectations for learning.

Fortunately, not all classroom spaces represent yet another obstacle students must navigate to realize their future aspirations. Revisiting and discussing Ms. Benson’s classroom space with students made demonstrated that students deeply valued her high expectations and advocacy. When asked about the college tours to which Ms. Benson had taken her 12th-grade English students, Melissa, a 12th-grade African American student, expressed that Ms. Benson “showed us the college experience, the actual steps you need [in order to get there].” In many respects, Ms. Benson’s classroom represented a space of possibility where students could work toward their future academic aspirations.

Our data suggests this space of possibility was not limited to the classroom. When we asked Ms. Benson, “How were you able to create an orderly learning environment with these students when other teachers struggled to do the same?”, she illuminated, In addition to making connections with these students, I am also in constant contact with their parents. I have a Facebook account where I befriended all of their parents, so I have a direct line of communication with students’ family whenever someone’s homework is missing, or did not show up in class.

By using Facebook as a tool to connect educational spaces between the classroom and students’ home, Ms. Benson was able to expand on the idea of space, while

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creating congruency between the expectations of the parents and her classroom. In sharp contrast to Dr. Witt’s classroom, Ms. Benson’s classroom was a space in which students were expected to have aspirations beyond their high school experience, an expectancy internalized by Melissa: Ms. Benson wants us to make sure that we know everything so by the time we get to college it will all be very helpful to us. The criticism we received on our writing is very helpful because now we can take it and go to college and do what she told us to do—the right way.

In addition to providing students interested in pursuing a higher education with access to critical information, Ms. Benson’s classroom became a space for students to develop skills that would serve them beyond high school. In addition to the development of academic skills, Melissa also pointed to the significance of Ms. Benson’s connections with her parents and intimate knowledge of her home dynamics as a factor for her learning. This has allowed Melissa to connect learning to her immediate context, so the skills she learned have greater purpose beyond high school.

While one may argue that the “overemphasis” on the college-going process for low-income students is a neoliberal one, because it requires these students’ adherence to rules and/or procedures based on White, middle class ways of knowing the world, we assert that steering low-income students away from college is a racist one, especially when this thought stems from individuals who themselves possess and benefit from college degrees they have earned.

Furthermore, to strictly associate educational spaces with neoliberalism can also be misguided, given the importance of education in communities of color for liberatory purposes, and among people around the world outside of Europe and the United States. Ms. Benson has it in her mind at least, that students such as Melissa can go to college, should they choose to do so.

What would have happened if Dr. Witt had taken the time to get to know Veronica and Jerrod? Would the identity contingency created in the science classroom look different for Dr. Witt, her students, and observers like us? Despite extensive research and practice demonstrating the potential for creating such spaces for marginalized student populations, their voices, experiences, and perspectives remain absent. As a result, the historical and ideological forces of educational inequity persist within educational spaces, contributing to limiting situations in which low-income students of color continue to find their very identities at odds with the deficit-oriented practices of those charged with the task of educating them (Freire, 1970; Vass, 2014).

These obstructive situations have been well documented and challenged through research on the school-to-prison pipeline, the militarization of schooling,

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and systemic violence through disparate discipline and punishment policies that ultimately shape the options of students of color, as well as their voices and selfconcept (Saltman & Gabbard, 2010). Centering the voices and realities of lowincome students of color can provide insight into how teachers like Ms. Benson can work to transform physical and psychological classroom spaces into places where students can develop their academic identities toward the goal of realizing their future aspirations.

Reshaping Classroom Spaces to Influence Positive Academic Identity Freire (1970) described limit situations as contingencies we cannot avoid or escape; but instead of accepting the situation as a fixed reality, educators should make changes from within. Placing Freire’s (1970) conceptualization of limit situations within the context of the politically and ideologically informed classroom spaces that made up Ponderosa Academy, our data demonstrate that some teachers and students were capable of working from within the limited situation to affirm their own belief and practices of high expectations for learning.

For example, Ellen, a 12th-grade African American student, said, “My parents have really high expectations with me . . . My parents expected me to do my best.

They think I can get A’s and B’s.” In addition to directly contradicting the sentiments of Dr. Witt, Ellen’s comment highlighted that some students were able to turn to other adults who truly believed in their chances of success. However, the limits of the chemistry class also put Ellen in the difficult position of explaining her grades to her parents. In this sense, teachers like Dr. Witt ran the risk of producing limit situations that weren’t previously there, particularly when low-income students of color are held to high expectations by their families and communities. Viet, a 12th-grade Asian American student, articulated his frustrations: It’s hard—it’s hard to change people’s minds when they think they already know you . . . You start to excuse certain behavior[s] for yourself because it’s like . . . They already think I don’t turn in my homework so why start now?

When teachers hold low expectations for low-income students of color based on deficit perspectives, they are imposing punitive social identity contingencies on them while simultaneously failing to contest the very real structural and systemic limit situations already working against them. In failing to contest these structures, Freire (1970) argued: Men’s [and women’s] responses in the form of historical action . . . can be neither authentically nor critically fulfilled. In this situation, men [and

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women] are unable to transcend the limit situations to discover that beyond these situations—and in contradiction to them—lies an untested feasibility. (p. 92) At Ponderosa Academy, these untested feasibilities had significant implications for students like Viet. According to Viet, several classroom spaces at Ponderosa Academy operated in this way. He explained: Teachers often like to help those who are already doing well in school, and not even notice that people like me do exist in their classroom . . . I have goals in life too and I only wished my teachers can see that.

As Viet’s sentiments suggest, failure to overcome limit situations can leave academic aspirations untested feasibilities. However, there were also teachers like Ms. Benson, whose practice of high expectations in her classroom repositioned students’ learning and pathways to college. Countering limit situations, Freire (1970) reiterated the method of problem-posing education, furthering his argument for a dialogic education for the purpose of critical consciousness and emancipation. Freire (1970) contended, “This view of education starts with the conviction that it cannot present its own program but must search for this program dialogically” with students (p. 118). In moving forward with this project, we believe that a critical consciousness of space is central in education. As discussed throughout this study, space, and how it is ideologically, physically, and psychologically constructed, have critical implications for low-income students of color. Spatiality of schooling shapes their identity and can inform the social identity contingencies they must navigate in pursuit of their academic aspirations and endeavors.

Charged with the task of preparing the next generation of educators committed to social justice and public intellectualism—all within a high-stakes reform environment where teachers are vilified by the right and valorized by the left—it is not uncommon to see deficit perspectives being projected onto the communities and families of low-income students of color as a means of explaining away disparate educational opportunities and outcomes. While those on the right may attribute disparities in achievement to a lack of educational values within these communities, those on the left often frame the argument within a paternal discourse of guilt that offers little along the lines of actualizing meaningful change. This binary perspective urgently needs deeper understanding and sustained action against the limit situations of low expectations, and punitive and externally imposed social identity contingencies that are placed on lowincome students of color in educational spaces. Only through dialogue with students can we come to name and challenge these limit situations.

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Through this process, we maintain the importance of contesting the antidialogical public pedagogies of low expectations within educational spaces that working-class students of color encounter far too often. In acknowledging and contesting the negative ideological, physical, and psychological aspects of educational spaces, and by reinforcing high expectations and engaging in dialogue with low-income students of color, the classroom can become a place of possibility. In the words of Barry, a 12th-grade African American student in Ms. Benson’s class: Now [after experiencing some success in the classroom] I’m looking at things from a broader view. I’m not looking to dodge [school] so I can do something else. I’m looking at it to get it done in order to do something better.

Clearly, classroom spaces like Ms. Benson’s are not only places where students want to be physically present, but also places where students can envision “something better” and are consistent with what their families and communities expect them to be.

Conclusion We conclude this paper with questions and areas of practice for educators that can best be used to address these students’ needs and concerns. With the tenacious emphasis on testing and school accountability, it is increasingly important that educators—who themselves are coming under increased scrutiny— direct their fear and frustrations into self-reflexivity while remaining mindful of what is at stake. Creating counter-spaces at the universities’ teacher training and leadership preparation programs is a viable strategy for engaging educators to develop the beliefs and skillsets to enact high expectations for students. We also learned that change can be enacted in local K–12 schools through teacher and youth participatory action research projects (Bautista, Bertrand, Morrell, Scorza, & Matthews, 2013; Cammarota, 2014; Stovall, 2014), followed by professional learning communities to support teachers to critically examine their own—as well as each other’s—expectation practices in the classroom. Finally, we believe that professional development and consistently mentoring teachers to realign their expectations of students with social justice goals can potentially reposition them to see spatiality beyond its “natural” state. Our nation must critically examine the ideologies associated with society’s assumptions and predictions of the intellectual capacities of low-income students of color. Teachers must go through a personal transformation in their attitudes toward race, social class, and difference, and draw upon students’ resiliency and intellectual curiosities to redefine the spatiality of schooling as a contingency of belief, possibility, and

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innovation. Central to the processes outlined above, is the importance of acknowledging the way in which teachers, leaders, and teacher educators impose dominant cultural norms, values, and beliefs on students through the construct and veil of meritocracy. In order for educators to more clearly understand how deeply their worldview is informed by their own identities, they must learn to critically analyze the extent to which dominant cultural norms, values, and beliefs are embedded in the meritocratic discourses, structures, and spaces that they work in. As such, the findings of this study emphasize a continued need for educator preparation materials that examine unequal relations of power resulting from social constructs around race, class, gender, sexuality, ability and religion independently, and as they intersect with one another.

Public education and compulsory schooling have been contested since their inception—a situation that is not likely to change. As private and corporate interests continue to inform educational policy and practice from the top down, it has never been more important to listen, first and foremost, to the voices of those in the school context, who remain excluded from the policy discussions, and educational opportunities, yet demonstrate resiliency and remain confident that education is a place of possibilities for them. While research focusing on the resiliency of students of color has gained prominence in the literature (Masten, 2013; Motti-Stefanidi & Masten, 2013; Yosso, 2005), a critical analysis of spatiality that is conducive to promoting their academic resistance, resilience, and success could prove valuable in forwarding this scholarship.

As school leaders, teachers, and teacher educators, we must continue to place authentic relationship building at the center of our intellectual labor. Our data suggest that authentic relationship building means knowing our students, their families, and our collective communities. As a nation, we must deeply contemplate the degree to which we are willing to incite positive change through activism in the communities in which we live. Our findings further suggest that students have an epistemological understanding of the space they occupy as members of a school community. Their resilience is a testament to how they engage in the struggle to redefine that space by calling attention to the inequity they experience in the classroom. Our findings suggest that we need to continue to pursue studies concerning the ideological and material dimensions of educational spatiality that facilitate teacher-student expectations for learning. The ideological construction of space for academic achievement, then, must be an effort that takes account of all members within it, and an environment that all students can identify with and believe in.

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Peer Reviewed Title: Rapport at the core: Relationships in service-learning program development Journal Issue: InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 12(2) Author: Lillo, Sarah, UCLA (sarahlillo@gmail.com) Publication Date: 2016 Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4gf677fb Article Number: Author Bio: Sarah Lillo earned her Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her areas of expertise include service-learning, teacher education, international education, qualitative methods, and English education.

Keywords: Service-learning, program development, higher education Local Identifier: gseis_interactions_28890 Abstract: This in-depth qualitative case study of a unique service-learning director explored the factors that enabled her to cultivate a thriving multi-faceted program at a major research university.

Through repeat interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, it became apparent that the relational components of this director’s work were critical in her program framing and successes. This article explores the director’s social orientation and approaches to rapport building. In so doing, it highlights the importance of relationships and rapport-building strategies on service-learning endeavors. The study ultimately underscores the potential of positive rapport and accordingly, calls for more attention to the relational aspects of program facilitation.

Supporting material: Author Agreement Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse

eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide.

Lillo: Rapport at the core: Relationships in service-learning program development

At this stage, there is little doubt that service-learning can offer benefits for students, universities, and communities alike. Yet, even as endorsements for service-learning become increasingly widespread, there is still difficulty implementing programs, especially in research-oriented universities.

In order to explore the process of program development, this qualitative case study explores the experiences of a service-learning program director who, in her own words, “built something from nothing” at a major research university. In Dr. Hall’s (pseudonym) time as director, a thriving multi-faceted program has come to fruition that included, at the time of the study, a civic engagement minor, a disabilities minor, student-run community research projects, alternative spring break trips, academic internships, and service-learning courses across many academic departments. Campus Compact recently acknowledged the caliber of the program and the director’s role in its cultivation through a major award, suggesting that Dr. Hall’s work is exemplary. Through a series of in-depth interviews with Dr. Hall, this study explored factors that enabled her success. In these interviews, the theme of relationships repeatedly emerged. This paper explores the centrality of relationships in program development accordingly.

This paper argues that for Dr. Hall, service-learning leadership is fundamentally a social endeavor; rapport is at the core of her success. I also explore the role of relationship-building in service-learning programs more generally. This paper highlights the power of rapport in service-learning program development.

Contextualizing the Study: Review of the Literature Programs with punch, the established potential of service-learning This study focuses on leadership approaches and program development within a nuanced community engagement program. A brief review of the literature that points to service-learning’s potential emphasizes the importance of these kinds of programs. In other words, their established value helps justify further study into the pragmatics of developing them.

There is a deep research base that points to their possible benefits.

Service-learning has been connected with civic development and credited for fostering students’ tolerance, community-mindedness, and civic engagement (Cipolle, 2010; Colby, Erlich, Beaumont, & Stephens, 2003; Eyler & Giles, 1999; Goering & Henderson, 2012). The literature, which typically attributes the pedagogy’s roots to both Dewey (1938) & Kolb (1984), hails service-learning’s counter-normative teaching strategies; instead of traditional teaching approaches, service-learning pedagogy compels students to get involved directly in communities and then critically reflect on the link between course content and these genuine community contexts (Jacoby, 2003). Students are able to

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individually uncover their relations to their communities which can promote a deeper commitment to them (Eyler & Giles, 1999). Several have noted a clear correlation between university-level service-learning and students’ long-term community involvement (Astin, Sax, & Avalos, 1999; Astin, Vogelgesang, Ikeda, & Yee, 2000). Many other positive student outcomes have also been associated with the pedagogy, including: increased engagement in academics both during undergraduate studies and beyond (Astin et al., 1999; Stelljes, 2008), a heightened sense of self-esteem (Eppler, Ironsmith, Dingle, & Errickson, 2011; Whittig & Hale, 2007), a refined sense of identity gained through a values reflection process (Yeh, 2010); increased first to second year college retention (R. Bringle, Hatcher, & Muthiah, 2010), and openness to diversity and reduced negative stereotypes (Eyler & Giles, 1999). Teachers also describe better class discussions, higher levels of student engagement with material, and stronger teacher-student relationships (Hou, 2010). I should note that not all service-learning necessarily results in the outcomes listed above. There have been some warranted criticisms about the varying degrees of rigor in service-learning programs, weak research methods in service-learning studies, or the potential for service-learning projects to inadvertently reinforce issues of privilege (Butin, 2010; Eyler & Giles, 1999; Keshen, Holland, & Moely, 2010). Even still, research largely highlights a host of positive outcomes. The wide range of benefits provides a clear justification for attention to universities’ attempts to implement service-learning pedagogy.

The expansion of the field in higher education settings offers further justification for this sort of study. There are calls for more widespread implementation in higher education classrooms (Campus Compact, 2014).

According to Campus Compact’s (2012) survey, 557 Campus Compact member schools reported that they offer service-learning courses and 96% reported a center devoted to community and civic engagement. As university programs grow across the nation, there is a greater need for understanding the processes that enable program development.

Bumpy roads to implementation Just as the literature has already established a wide range of benefits for service-learning programs, it has also highlighted challenges involved in program development. The literature suggests that leaders have to navigate a range of obstacles. I highlight two key challenges below that this study directly addresses.

One of the most frequently cited challenges involved in service-learning establishment is faculty resistance to the pedagogy and unfamiliarity with its approaches. As Butin (2010) noted, there are many reasons faculty may still resist adopting service-learning pedagogies, ranging from a preference for more normative teaching strategies to anxiety over the more disruptive elements of service-learning. As he explained, “Service learning is a strategy, specifically, a

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strategy of disturbance (…) service-learning challenges and decenters our static and singular notions of teaching, learning, and research by moving against the grain of traditional practice” (2010, p. 19). Service-learning is not only a disruptive practice, as described above; it is also a practice that asks faculty to gain new skills—something that they are not all eager to do. Considering that most Western-trained educators were trained in teaching methods more consistent with what Freire (1993) described as the “banking method,” one might question if faculty have sufficient training and resources to prepare them to teach in such counter-normative ways (Blumenfeld et al., 1991). Penuel et al. (2007) argued that teachers should have sufficient background in both the content and pedagogy implicit in any progressive educational reforms. As Howard (1998) highlighted, teachers are often less versed in the “counternormative pedagogy” of servicelearning, and more hesitant accordingly. In short, faculty concerns and insecurities contribute to the stalled embrace of service-learning pedagogy. Those who wish to expand universities’ programs need to convince faculty that they are both interested in and able to implement service-learning pedagogies. This is not an easy task. This article explores the way that Dr. Hall uses relational strategies to help address this issue.

By focusing this study on program development within a research university, I intentionally explore the process of establishing faculty “buy in” within a setting that is frequently considered especially resistant to servicelearning efforts. There is a research base that has shown this. For example, Abes, Jackson, and Jones (2002), in their study of faculty perceptions of servicelearning, found that those specifically within research universities were more likely to be deterred by a rewards structure that fails to acknowledge servicelearning efforts than faculty in other types of colleges or universities. This reinforced Furco’s (2001) assertion that rewards structures in research universities serve as deterrents for faculty adoption of service-learning. While there has been evidence that some universities have begun offering incentives for servicelearning use (Campus Compact, 2012), rewards structures nonetheless seem a barrier in research universities. In light of such challenges a study that focuses on an award-winning program within a research university context seems all the more important.

Study Design This study was designed as an in-depth single-site, single-subject case study. As Merriam (2009) noted, case studies permit a high level of contextualization. While the narrowness may reduce the potential for generalizations, case studies offer an unparalleled level of rich description and concrete detail. Such descriptions and details can in turn reveal phenomena that might otherwise be missed. Thus, I assume that by exploring, in great depth, the

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experiences of a single individual, new knowledge might be revealed about the process of service-learning program development.

Much like Small (2009), I questioned the existence of a representative sample. I adopted the stance that all programs and facilitators are intrinsically unique. Programs exist within particular historical, cultural, geographic, and political contexts. The leaders, participants, and stakeholders involved in each program inevitably differ. Accordingly, it is impossible to select a case that is truly representative of university service-learning programs or service-learning directors. If “representative” is not the goal, then, what is? As I selected an ideal case study participant, I shared Small’s (2009) view that “rare situations are often precisely what the researcher wants” (p. 18). Small suggested that much can be learned from an in-depth exploration of unique cases.

Dr. Hall was identified as an ideal “rare” case study participant because her accomplishments are both formidable and quite unique. Dr. Hall is the director of a thriving center for community engagement at a large public research university, which I will refer to by the pseudonym Research University, or RU. When Dr. Hall was recruited approximately fifteen years ago to leave a tenured position at a different university to move to RU, RU possessed a strong research interest in service-learning, but provided few opportunities for students or faculty to actually engage in service-learning projects. Dr. Hall worked to, in her words, “build something from nothing” and to create a thriving, multifaceted community learning center. At the time of the interviews, the center oversaw a variety of experiential-education programs including service-learning courses, academic internships, alternative spring break trips, a civic engagement minor, a disabilities studies minor, Justice Corps, Jumpstart, and a civic engagement related research program for select college seniors. Dr. Hall was awarded a major award from Campus Compact for her accomplishments. Considering these and other achievements, Dr. Hall seemed a strong exemplar for this study. She graciously agreed to participate and underwent the formal IRB consent process.

Through a range of qualitative methods, I explored the following central questions from the director’s point of view: • How does a thriving research center director explain her successes1?

• From the director’s perspective, what enabled Research University’s multi-faceted service-learning programs to develop?

To answer these questions, I relied heavily on in-depth semi-structured interviews, as described by Merriam (2009). Over a period of approximately 10 weeks, I conducted four extended interviews with Dr. Hall, totaling approximately 7 hours. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. These

1 Successes is an intentionally open term; it includes both the establishment and maintenance of an externally recognized program

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transcripts were coded initially for a range of emerging challenges and success factors, and analyzed prior to subsequent interviews. In this first round of analysis I included both topical and descriptive codes, as described by Richards and Morse (2013). I recognized the interpretive nature of coding as described by Merriam (2009): Devising categories [for coding] is largely an intuitive process, but it is also systematic and informed by the study’s purpose, the investigator’s orientation and knowledge, and the meanings made explicit by the participants themselves (pp. 183-184).

I entered each interview with a list of anticipated talking points. At the same time, interviews were quite participant-centered and flexible, a responsiveness encouraged by Schostak (2006) and Yow (2014), amongst others. The extended interview format permitted detours down unanticipated storylines-- which, in turn, allowed new factors to emerge.

As Merriam (2009) noted, document analysis can complement other forms of qualitative research. Throughout the ten week period, I continually reviewed a wide range of documents as they were made available to me including center reports, publications written by Dr. Hall, publications written by others about Dr. Hall, the center’s website, select center publications, and a speech Dr. Hall delivered at a faculty address. These documents were primarily used to identify areas for subsequent interview discussion; however as appropriate, they were also coded for emerging themes.

Additionally, I used participant observation methods to contextualize topics raised in interviews and to identify areas for further discussion with Dr. Hall. I observed a service-learning sign up fair and a service-learning course during the interview period. I wrote ethnographic field notes on these observations and performed ongoing analysis. I strove for what Geertz (2003) referred to as thick description in my detailed field notes. I coded these documents as I did the interviews and continually reflected on emerging themes.

Merriam (2009) emphasized the importance of member checks where participants can speak to researchers’ emerging findings. In the final interview with Dr. Hall, I performed a member check and shared a preliminary list of “success factors” and “challenges” that had emerged throughout our discussions. I solicited feedback on this and discussed each idea in depth. Dr. Hall’s feedback molded my second-round analysis. I reviewed all data and conducted a more detailed round of coding related to specific success factors that Dr. Hall and I collectively identified in this final interview. It should be noted that Dr. Hall did not see “rapport” as the most influential factor during this meeting. Rather she ranked the top factors influencing her success as 1) experience; 2) relationships; 3) her creativity and adaptability (with strong roots); 4) freedom- with regards to both administration and funding. However, as I conducted this second round of

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coding, I discovered that there was considerable overlap across categories clustered around the theme of interpersonal relationships. In other words, nearly every “top success factor” that Dr. Hall and I discussed included a social component.

I then returned to my field notes and performed a third round of analysis where I coded with a focus on social dimensions. I noted cases where Dr. Hall discussed rapport or where she expressed an awareness (or lack thereof) of the various parties that she interacted with. From this, I arrived at my central assertion: service-learning leadership for Dr. Hall is fundamentally a social endeavor and rapport is central to her success. Implicit in this focal claim are four related assertions. Dr. Hall: 1) is situated within various dynamic social realms, each of which has an influence on her and the center, 2) deliberately fosters rapport and acknowledges the centrality of relationships in her endeavors, 3) is keenly aware of her various audiences, including each audience member’s desires and needs, and 4) employs a range of social skills to facilitate positive relationships.

Positionality statement. In any qualitative study, it is important to acknowledge the investigator’s attitudes/beliefs towards the subject matter, for they undoubtedly influence project design and researcher interpretations (Merriam, 2009). I entered the research project with an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards service-learning and an understanding of the tenacity required for program development as an experienced service-learning facilitator, researcher, and participant. Dr. Hall was familiar with my background with and my deep academic and personal interests in community engagement efforts. Our shared passion for service-learning undoubtedly influenced our interactions. Dr. Hall often adopted a mentor role- a position I found compatible with my study aims.

Findings Sub claim# 1: Dr. Hall is situated within various dynamic social realms, each of which has an influence on her and the center that she oversees. This study highlighted the constantly evolving nature of servicelearning ventures. In our interviews, Dr. Hall described a range of dynamic physical and intellectual spheres that all impact each other—the center, the university, the city, the service-learning partner, etc. The domains may exist and evolve independently, and yet they regularly intersect and influence each other.

For example, Dr. Hall described how shifting university imperatives impacted the center. She explained that emerging research and national economic priorities influenced university focal points and funding. She described how the center’s shifting organizational structures enabled jobs to be delegated to her increasingly experienced assistant directors or to waves of graduate student assistants. Dr. Hall described how she connected university professors with long standing field

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partners. These faculty members, in turn, liaised between students and field partners. In short, each of the various realms that Dr. Hall is situated within added a new layer to the complex and regularly shifting context of Dr. Hall’s work.

In these distinct, and yet often overlapping contexts, Dr. Hall navigated a web of interpersonal relations. On any given day she explained that she might interact with any of the following: employees at the center, university faculty, administrators, funding agency representatives, university administrative support staff, undergraduate students, field partners, leaders of service-learning programs at other institutions, strangers who want to pitch their ideas, or graduate student assistants. These interactions seem to comprise the heart of Dr. Hall’s work.

When I asked Dr. Hall how many people are involved in the center each year, she did not have a precise figure. However, she estimated that at least 3,500 undergraduate students a year are involved in some capacity. She further indicated that a recent holiday letter was distributed to several hundred faculty members; then she emphasized that this represented just a small subset of the “friends of the center.” These figures do not even begin to account for the numerous field partners, administrators, and support staff members that Dr. Hall collaborates with. In other words, thousands of people are involved in the center’s operations on some level and play a role in Dr. Hall’s work accordingly.

Sub claim# 2: Dr. Hall deliberately fosters rapport and acknowledges the centrality of relationships in her endeavors. With so many interpersonal relationships to maintain, it is not surprising that Dr. Hall emphasized the relational aspects of her work. As we discussed her role, responsibilities, and daily activities during our interviews, Dr. Hall regularly referenced meetings she had with various parties. However, more revealing than her allusions to many meetings was her explanation of these appointments. During three separate interviews, Dr. Hall expressed that “no one really knows what I’m doing.” The third time she made this statement, I prompted her to explain further. Dr. Hall described how her calendar might indicate a meeting with a field partner.

Someone could read the memo and understand this appointment in a literal sense.

However, that individual would have little grasp of what Dr. Hall “was doing” during this time. This explanation suggests that it is the nuances of her interactions that are at the core of her work. Dr. Hall’s job is not the act of meeting with administrators, family members, or graduate students; her work is the relationships themselves.

Dr. Hall’s definitions and expressed beliefs about service-learning explicitly highlighted the centrality of people and relationships in her ideology. I was exposed to Dr. Hall’s conception of service-learning through: a PowerPoint presentation she developed for students in a service-learning course, numerous related interview discussions, an article printed in the university’s paper on her accomplishments, and the State of the Center Report. All of Dr. Hall’s definitions

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of service-learning contained the following elements: a) service-learning should involve equal parts service and learning with clearly established fieldworkacademic links; b) student projects should involve 20+ hours of meaningful work in the community (per quarter) and should be connected to a credit-bearing course; c) relationships between students and field partners should be both longterm and reciprocal; d) projects should involve reflection activities; and e) all parties involved should develop an understanding of what service-learning is prior to engaging in it. Several of these central tenants, especially b and c, focus on people and positive relationships. Accordingly, through her definitions, Dr. Hall emphasized that service-learning is a highly relational endeavor.

Dr. Hall also emphasized the pragmatic functions of strong networks. For example, she described the importance of positive relations with administration: “If you don’t have institutional support from the very highest level, you aren’t going anywhere.” While Dr. Hall was quick to recognize the power of these relations with those at the top of the university power chain, she also explained the importance of relationships with university “gate keepers” --- those who hold less overtly powerful positions, but serve as key access points to students or resources nonetheless. These included: staff in the residential life office, those who work in academic advancement, the community service commission, and the staff who facilitate various listservs and regularly send out “email blasts.” Dr. Hall described her early efforts, in collaboration with her first assistants, to build rapport with these individuals: “We started building networks. We started identifying gatekeepers who had access to thousands of students and made them our friends. And then, when we’d get the word out, we’d contact our gatekeepers who would get it to the students. And that we still do today.” In this explanation, the pragmatic function of certain relationships is emphasized and the pivotal role of rapport is highlighted. Relationships then are also integral tools for daily operations.

As described in the methods section, during our final interview, Dr. Hall and I discussed the factors that she perceived to be most influential in her progress and RU’s service-learning program’s growth. In both of her top ranked factors (experience and relationships), the social aspects of her work were emphasized.

The latter is quite explicit—by articulating relationships as a key factor, Dr. Hall overtly recognized the centrality of networks and people. However, it was also interesting to see how the former factor provided a compelling link between Dr. Hall’s successes and relationships. While experience encompassed a variety of related facilitation skills, Dr. Hall used the term to describe her refined social prowess and heightened ability to cultivate the relationships. In other words, experience included the refined skills that enabled her to cultivate meaningful and positive networks.

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Dr. Hall’s explanations of experience also captured the significant length of time that she had been intentionally networking. As Dr. Hall described in our final interview, “The longer you’re in a place, the more you have relationships. So being in a place for a long time means you get to know a lot of people… and hopefully, people like you.” This idea also surfaced in a subsequent discussion where Dr. Hall reflected upon her transition from a tenured position at a different university to RU. She lamented the highly connected network that she left behind and expressed the intentional effort that it took to expand her new network at RU. She explained her outlook towards networking as the following: “There are people who get to a place and they don’t make friends. And they don’t build relationships because they have other kinds of agendas. But if you want to work in this field, what you want to do is stay, and get to know a lot of people. It’s important.” Dr. Hall then described a huge faculty event that she was in the midst of coordinating. Through Dr. Hall’s framing, I could see her ideological focus on networks. She alluded to the time and energy required to develop communities.

Sub claim# 3: Dr. Hall is keenly aware of her various audiences, including each audience member’s desires and needs. It seems that within a rapport-oriented framework, audience awareness was crucial to relationship progress. A detailed look at Dr. Hall’s relationships with three different groups-faculty, administration, and students-- illustrates the nature and breadth of Dr. Hall’s audience awareness.

Awareness of faculty. Dr. Hall seemed highly attuned to RU faculty members’ perceptions of credibility, research orientations, and personal concerns.

She also explained how she intentionally adopted a flexible stance on servicelearning to include diverse faculty perceptions. Credibility is of special importance in research universities according to Dr. Hall. She described her perception that faculty members must either view her as a peer, otherwise they will dismiss her altogether; as she explained, interactions need to be “faculty to faculty, or no one will talk to you. You could never send someone with a BA and talk to the head of math. No one would listen. (…) Faculty with faculty only.” In this statement, Dr. Hall recognized the prevailing faculty ethos at RU and her need to establish herself as a credible source according.

Dr. Hall further described one of the ways that she did this-- by wearing the simultaneous hats of practitioner, researcher, and scholar. These diverse roles, especially the latter two, granted her legitimacy in the eyes of research-oriented faculty members. In one interview, Dr. Hall explained: “At this point, (faculty) just see me as knowing about this stuff. I don’t know anyone on campus who is as specialized in this stuff as me.” She implied that such perceived authority facilitated positive faculty interactions. Dr. Hall explained how she intentionally integrated her knowledge of service-learning research into conversations with

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faculty members, frequently supplying empirical backing. She described how she used research to sway reluctant faculty members; in such interactions, “the big convincing factor was a research base on best practices.”

At the same time, Dr. Hall recognized that faculty members had more nuanced concerns than alignment with best practice alone. For example, she explicitly recognized the “classic, nationwide challenge” of faculty concerns over service-learning logistics and described her deliberate attempts to offset these hesitations. She described how she emphasized the support the center could offer and highlighted personal incentives for service-learning involvements accordingly. She explained: If they use what the center has to offer, it’s not much more (work). An extra bit of preplanning, but they would normally be doing work for midterms, discussions, etc. It’s just like other prep, but more fun. I always say, ‘It’s just like other classes, but people like it more’ That’s my hook.

‘If you have class that you’ve taught every year in a row for ten years, and you’re getting bored with it, turn it into a service-learning class. I guarantee you’ll get excited about it all over again.’

In this, Dr. Hall both acknowledged faculty perceptions and how she adjusted her framing of service-learning to match their concerns, tapping into their potential cravings.

Dr. Hall spoke at length on her early efforts at RU to spread faculty interest and buy in amongst faculty with divergent views. She expressed the centrality of an inclusive model in these early relationships. She described the theoretically divided and charged service-learning landscape that surrounded her transition to RU; debates raged, for instance, on whether service-learning was a general teaching pedagogy or a practice for social justice pursuits alone. Dr. Hall intentionally framed herself as a neutral party in such disagreements. In her words, she “did not plant her flag in either camp.” Instead, she encouraged faculty to do whichever form of service-learning they wanted to embrace. As Dr. Hall explained, “I wasn’t an ideologue. I wasn’t cramming ideas down anyone’s throat, so I was able to get many people involved.” By adopting an inclusive stance towards of service-learning, Dr. Hall recognized the range of faculty thinking within RU and deliberately drew many in.

The considerable expansion of service-learning offerings under Dr. Hall’s leadership suggests that faculty members from across diverse academic fields have bought into service-learning pedagogy. For example, when Dr. Hall arrived at RU only one service-learning course was being taught. Meanwhile, as one center report suggests, from 2009-2012 faculty offered approximately 30 different service-learning courses from disciplines ranging from German, anthropology, statistics, applied linguistics, Chicana/Chicano studies, life sciences, English, math, architecture, civic engagement, Spanish, urban planning, women’s studies,

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and civil engineering, to world arts and cultures. While the precise motives for involvement within this diverse constituency of service-learning faculty are not altogether clear, Dr. Hall’s anecdotes of recruiting and encouraging new servicelearning faculty suggests that her understanding of their perspectives may have enabled increased faculty buy in.

Awareness of university administrators. Dr. Hall expressed that university administrators had unique interests and priorities, and catered her interactions accordingly. For example, Dr. Hall recognized university initiatives and their role in administrative decisions. During our fourth interview, Dr. Hall reflected a perspective she heard at a recent conference on cultivating university administrative buy in for service-learning efforts. Another service-learning director had said, “You have to go to your president/chancellor and tell them how much they love this idea; even if they don’t know it yet.” Dr. Hall agreed: “And it’s true. If you go and you say, what are the institutional goals for the chancellor?

And we say, ‘we’re doing stuff that’s going to make you look good or help you meet these goals, so embrace this.’ We help (administration) know that (they) love this, before (they) know that (they) love this. That’s a good idea.” Implicit in this explanation is an understanding of university constraints and administrative priorities. Dr. Hall recognized that service-learning initiatives must be articulated in terms that are complementary with university imperatives.

Over time, Dr. Hall has become keenly aware of the degree of oversight that administrators, such as the Vice Provost of RU, crave. She described how in her early years at RU she sent administrators regular memos outlining her activities and accomplishments. However, over time she discovered that they were more interested in the bigger picture than her daily operations. Recently, she has focused more on communicating any major center shifts or new projects. Dr. Hall emphasized that she always ensures administration is aware of new endeavors. However, she has built sufficient rapport with administrators for them to trust her with daily operations.

Dr. Hall offered several possible reasons for administrators’ confidence in her ability to oversee daily operations. First, she explained in our final interview her own emphasis on rigor; she is only satisfied with work that could not be questioned by administrators. Second, Dr. Hall met their expectations during her early years as director: “I did an awful lot of things in the first few years and so they were happy.” Regardless of administrators’ reasons for trusting Dr. Hall’s leadership, it seemed clear from Dr. Hall’s explanations that they did have confidence in her management. She catered sufficiently to their administrative needs to keep them satisfied with her progress.

As Dr. Hall described her interactions with various administrators, it became clear that these relationships were quite positive. As Dr. Hall framed her work in terms of university imperatives and respected administrative desires and

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needs, administration continued to provide supports for service-learning programs. For example, over her time at RU, Dr. Hall’s role expanded to the point she could no longer singlehandedly manage the workload. Rather than ask Dr. Hall to scale back the program, administration offered the personnel supports required to expand her efforts. This seems a clear indicator of an affirmative rapport between parties and alignment between service-learning initiatives and university goals. Administration supports Dr. Hall’s initiatives. Dr. Hall continues to develop programs that bring the university acclaim and fit within university goals.

Awareness of undergraduate students. Through her director role, Dr. Hall spends much of her time collaborating with faculty, field partners, center employees, or graduate students rather than with undergraduate students. Yet her rapport with undergraduate students is helpful to examine, for it shows the breadth of her audience awareness. The ways that she taps into undergraduate cravings and interests demonstrates that she knows that particular group well.

Dr. Hall and her team use a range of strategies to entice students to get involved in service-learning. As I first entered the Center for Community Learning, the welcoming atmosphere struck me as both deliberate and effective.

A brightly lit lobby, accessorized with live plants, orange accents, and colorful pamphlet displays beckons students to a neat office space with a sign that encourages them to “please ring for assistance.” As students announce their arrival with a soft bell, center employees greet them with smiles and quickly address their needs. While students wait, they can sit on comfortable seats and can leaf through the informative flyers (focused on various center offerings) arranged on the coffee table before them. Such details may seem trivial, but they subconsciously welcome students and put them at ease. It could be assumed that students are more likely to engage in center programs if they feel comfortable and supported. The physical space of the office fosters such sentiments. Dr. Hall also discussed more overt attempts to attract students to the center. These advertising strategies ranged from brief presentations in classes, to online campaigns, to “old school sandwich board” announcements. Dr. Hall referenced varied student preferences and the multiplicity of advertising methods used to meet diverse leanings.

Once students get involved in the center’s programming, Dr. Hall also seems aware of the sorts of things that keep them motivated. For example, students offer input on their choice of sites for service-learning courses. The students that I observed at the freshman cluster sign up fair had approximately ten options for potential field sites. After meeting representatives for each site and learning more about prospective involvements, students ranked their top three choices. The coordinating teaching assistants use student preferences and schedules to assign field partners and to organize groups of students that can visit

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each site together. Within this field placement structure, Dr. Hall recognizes students’ preferences of choice and peer support.

Most of the above examples refer primarily to structural or program design elements that promote good relations between students and the center.

However, Dr. Hall also strives for positive rapport in her face-to-face interactions.

For example, Dr. Hall explained that she is regularly asked to speak in classes.

When she does, she puts considerable effort into making her talks engaging and encouraging. For example, in our final interview, Dr. Hall explained her attitude towards student talks: “I think you have to add inspiration. You can’t put a hand on it-- inspiration. When I give a talk, I definitely go the whole nine yards for inspiration. Inspire people to become bigger and better than they were that first day when they moved into the residence hall. Think bigger ideas. See themselves as more capable. I mean, isn’t that college in a nutshell?” As Dr. Hall described her visions for undergraduate education, her face lit up. Her contagious optimism brimmed. While I had no opportunities to observe Dr. Hall directly interact with undergraduates, I had no doubt that undergraduates would thrive off her energy and would gravitate towards her visions for their potential.

Sub claim#4: Dr. Hall employs a range of social skills to facilitate positive relationships. In this section I will explore four social skills that could be replicated by service –learning facilitators on other campuses.

Code switching. In the last section, I explored Dr. Hall’s awareness of different audiences and their respective needs. Here I explore a related skill: her ability to code-switch. I delve into Dr. Hall’s ability to modify her language to meet context expectations. In our final interview, Dr. Hall’s discussed her codeswitching efforts directly as we looked at two different documents she wrote: a script for an opening speech at a faculty gathering and a State of the Center report.

She joked that in the report, she “was trying to be as boring as possible.” She laughed about how the dry informative tone of that piece contrasted with the tone in her faculty speech, which was upbeat and interactive. She explained her deliberate language variations: There’s different ways you write-- business communication style. Then a way you write when it’s an inspirational aspect. Then there’s a third way: the grant proposals that I wrote this morning (…) That was just tapping into exactly what I thought the funder wanted to know. (…) There’s very different styles of writing.

In this snippet, Dr. Hall not only reiterates her awareness of audience expectations but her intentional language modifications to “tap into” specific needs and desires.

I watched Dr. Hall slip seamlessly between tones on many occasions.

During our interviews, which were largely informal in nature, Dr. Hall adopted a didactic tone when she explained structures, a sarcastic, casual tone as she told amusing anecdotes, and a more reserved tone as she discussed sensitive topics.

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Each of these shifts revealed Dr. Hall’s awareness of the different aspects of our relationship. For example, Dr. Hall recognized my respective roles as a student, interested listener, and researcher and shifted her language accordingly. Such patterns were not limited to our personal interactions. As she spoke with center employees, for example, she adopted a casual yet direct tone. As she encountered faculty members on our walks around campus, she immediately elevated her diction and adopted a more professional tone. The PowerPoint presentation that Dr. Hall wrote to introduce undergraduate students in a service-learning class to the center was far less formal; it was packed with catch phrases and adorned with images. In short, Dr. Hall adeptly modified her language to match different audiences. It is assumed that her code-switching prowess contributed to affirming interactions with diverse individuals and, in turn, promoted better relationships.

Humor. Within my first few minutes with Dr. Hall, it became clear that she possesses a strong sense of humor. She made jokes, used exaggerated facial expressions, and quickly sensed my affinity for sarcasm. Dr. Hall recognized this skill in herself; as she recounted a recent talk for students, she described herself: “I’m basically a stand up comedian when I get in front of a group of students. I mean I tell jokes the whole way through. I talked to a class of 200 students who laughed the whole time and the faculty member told me he had never heard them laugh—they’re always so serious.”

There is little doubt that people gravitate towards charismatic individuals, and based off her descriptions of student reactions, Dr. Hall is certainly that.

While she did not rank humor as a strong contributing factor to her success, she did still acknowledge that her personality enabled people to listen to her messages: “I’m a pretty good public speaker.” Thus her charisma seems an important attribute in building rapport with widespread audiences. Even in a classroom of 200 (likely unfamiliar) students, Dr. Hall was able to foster a degree of positive rapport.

Individual attention. One of the other ways that Dr. Hall fosters rapport with people is through personalized interactions. Dr. Hall explained that she personally contacts every faculty member involved in the center and every field partner at least once a year. While this is a time consuming task, Dr. Hall emphasized the importance of this individualized contact, especially in her relationships with faculty, administration, and field partners. This was not an isolated example of individualized communication; Dr. Hall wrote personalized invitations to her spring faculty party. Showing a similar level of personalized interest, Dr. Hall regularly forwarded me articles or documents that she thought might be of concern to me and always began our interactions with a personal inquiry. Through individualized attention, Dr. Hall made people feel appreciated and important. It can be assumed that this might lead to a greater sense of

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connection to the center and might promote their continued involvement in service-learning endeavors.

“The sniff test.” The final rapport-related skill that I will explore in detail is what Dr. Hall refers to as “the sniff test.” By the “sniff test,” Dr. Hall referred to an intuitive ability to read people and determine if their ideas were reasonable or not. The concept of a “sniff test” is important, for up until this point, I have predominately focused on Dr. Hall’s attempts to deepen and maintain relationships. Yet, the “sniff test” implies that not all relationships are necessarily positive and not all ideas proposed can carry water.

In one of our interviews, I asked Dr. Hall what advice she could offer for novice service-learning practitioners based on her experience. She ranked the “sniff test” within her top five tips. As Dr. Hall explained to me, “Not everybody you meet is honest or talented. And you have to know how to have the “sniff test” on that. Cause you could get involved with people that will not be helpful. And are either not telling the truth or overestimating their own skills.” In Dr. Hall’s advice, she clearly differentiates positive relationships from corrosive ones. While relationships can make a program, they can be equally destructive if individuals’ deception or poor practice are ignored.

Similarly, Dr. Hall demonstrated a healthy skepticism around overt or subtle resisters to service-learning. During one interview, shortly after a faculty member had raved to me about Dr. Hall and her efforts, I joked with her that the entire university loves her. Dr. Hall was quick to counter that claim: “There are certain groups of people that don’t really care for me (laughing). We all know where people are that are not big fans and why. You gotta work around that. Just gotta navigate that. Cause they’re on every campus. There are people who aren’t fans.” In this, Dr. Hall recognized that despite her solid research grounding, audience awareness, and rapport building skills, some of the individuals she interacts with may still be dissuaded by service-learning’s potential. Accordingly, she recognized that problem-solving skills must be used to circumvent sticky interpersonal dynamics or possible service-learning resisters.

Discussion There is something to be learned from each of the four sub-claims laid out above. This study has implications for program leaders and service-learning researchers alike. The first sub-claim argued that Dr. Hall’s efforts are embedded within dynamic social realms; these different social spheres each influence her work. This suggests that attention should be paid not only to the diversity of stakeholders involved in service-learning efforts, but the evolving relationships that program leaders have with each respective constituency.

There is some existing recognition in the literature that efforts involve diverse casts. For example, Jacoby and Hollander (2009) emphasized that

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programs need support from a wide range of university constituents, including university presidents, trustees, faculty, provosts, academic leaders, professional staff, and students. Bringle, Clayton, and Price (2009) also distinguished different groups of program stakeholders; their SOFAR model differentiated between the needs of students, community organizations, faculty, administrators, and community residents and suggested that relationships with these different groups take different forms. Certain relationships have received more attention than others in the literature. For example, several academics have underscored the importance of strong and reciprocal community partnerships (Dorado & Giles, 2000; Larsen, 2015; Morton, 2012; Sandmann, Kliewer, Kim, & Omerikwa, 2010; Sandmann, Moore, & Quinn, 2012). Others have focused on students’ roles and have implicitly addressed the relationships between faculty members and students (Cipolle, 2010; Cone, Kiesa, Longo, & Campus Compact, 2006; Des Marais, Yang, & Farzanehkia, 2000; Wurr & Hamilton, 2012). A few other studies, through their focus on faculty perceptions of service-learning, have implicitly suggested that relationships between service-learning centers and faculty members matter (Abes et al., 2002; Furco, 2001; Holland, 1999). The discussion of relationships within service-learning literature is not completely absent. Even still, related discussions only look at parts of the picture. There is rarely a discussion of the wide breadth of relationships that need to be maintained simultaneously, or the discrete yet overlapping realms of influence, for example.

The limited nature of this discussion is problematic because, as Dr. Hall’s experiences suggests, various social realms constantly influence leaders’ efforts.

Leaders, especially those within large institutions or service-learning centers, are expected to cultivate and attend to hundreds or thousands of relationships. If there is little discussion of the social forces that contextualize efforts or the breath of relationships involved in programs, the tremendous task that leaders have to build and maintain positive relationships within complex social settings is minimized.

Similarly, if there is little dialogue around these topics, there are few opportunities for practitioners to exchange strategies, collaboratively problem-solve challenges, or to discuss best practices. Accordingly, discussions of the highly social nature of service-learning leadership should become more prominent and investigations into the processes more frequent.

The second sub-claim in this piece is very closely related to these concerns. I argued that Dr. Hall deliberately fostered rapport and acknowledged the centrality of relationships. As a seasoned leader, Dr. Hall recognized the highly social nature of her work, even if the literature largely ignores this aspect of service-learning leadership as established above. While this study explored perceptions of influences rather than the causal nature of any given factor, it nonetheless highlighted the influence of deliberately attended to relationships. In other words, by recognizing that a successful community engagement director

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emphasized the centrality of relationship-building, this study frames positive relationships as important, if not essential assets to programs. It implies that more attention could be paid to the mechanisms that support positive relationships.

Sub claims three and four highlighted some such mechanisms that an experienced program leader and developer used. Sub claim three established Dr. Hall’s keen audience awareness. I argued that she demonstrated a heightened comprehension of the varied needs and desires of stakeholders. This sub claim stressed the importance of understanding stakeholder needs specific to the institutional characteristics (in this case, a research-focused university). Sub claim four highlighted several other specific skills she used to cultivate relationships. These included widely acknowledged rapport-building skills, such as audience-based language adaptation (Bell, 1984; Ede, 1984) and more unique personal approaches, such as the “sniff-test.”

By detailing Dr. Hall’s methods in this way, these two sub claims identify specific strategies and approaches that one established leader relied on. Another leader or program developer could consider their own application of these sorts of strategies. However, more than advocate for the transfer of specific strategies, this paper highlights the complexity of rapport building and the intentionality involved in relationship establishment and maintenance. By doing so, it calls for greater attention to these leadership demands. It suggests that there are skills or characteristics that leaders should possess. In short, through deeper scholarly exploration and further practitioner discussions, a more nuanced understanding of the role of relationships, the complexity of simultaneous relationship maintenance, and strategies that support positive rapport arises.

Limitations and Areas for Further Study While the detailed nature of this study allowed a high level of understanding of Dr. Hall’s experiences and perceptions, its qualitative and single case study design has limitations with regards to its generalizability. As Marshall and Rossman (2011) noted, “A qualitative study’s transferability or generalizability to other settings may be problematic, at least in the probabilistic sense of the term” (p. 252). I recognize that Dr. Hall’s experiences were uniquely her own and that her personal perceptions may not reflect those of all servicelearning directors. Similarly, I acknowledge that Research University has its own unique attributes; accordingly, Dr. Hall’s experiences of establishing a program may differ from those of leaders in different types of institutions. At the same time, I still suggest that there is much to be learned from Dr. Hall’s experiences and perceptions. As groups such as Campus Compact have recognized, she has successfully established a nuanced program in what many would naturally consider a challenging university context. Accordingly, her strategies for building this program seem worth examining and perhaps emulating.

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A second major limitation of this study is also closely tied to its methodological approach. In this study, the focus was on Dr. Hall’s perceptions of influential factors. It did not aim to establish the precise role of any given strategy or contextual element. While this approach empowered Dr. Hall to articulate the most influential pieces of her own lived experiences, it makes it difficult to declare the effectiveness of any given method in any quantifiable manner.

There is considerable room for related research and this study begins to identify particular gaps that could be addressed through ongoing scholarship.

Researchers could test the generalizability of this study by investigating the experiences of other established service-learning directors. Future studies could also establish the precise influence of relationships with different stakeholders, especially those that are less frequently considered. Similarly, they could systematically unpack the strategies that service-learning leaders use to cultivate relationships or balance the demands of various stakeholders.

In Sum By recognizing the centrality of positive relationships in Dr. Hall’s endeavors, this study highlights the potential of relationally oriented servicelearning facilitation. It underscores the highly social nature of service-learning efforts and demonstrates that rapport can be intentionally fostered. It implies that a variety of skills can be used to bolster communication and relationships with a diverse cast of service-learning constituents. In short, this study suggests that rapport is at the core of service-learning endeavors and calls for a greater focus in future research on the relational aspects of service-learning facilitation.

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Author biography: Sarah Lillo is a doctoral candidate in Social Sciences and Comparative Education: International Education at University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on service-learning efforts in both secondary and post-secondary institutions around the world. She has taught many age levels, ranging from elementary to undergraduate, and has facilitated service-learning experiences in schools on three continents.

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Astin, A. W., Vogelgesang, L., Ikeda, E. K., & Yee, J. A. (2000). How service learning affects students. Los Angeles, CA: Higher Education Research Institute, University of California.

Bell, A. (1984). Language style as audience design. Language in Society, 13(2), 145-204.

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Bringle, R., Hatcher, J. A., & Muthiah, R. (2010). The role of service-learning on retention of first-year students to second year. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 16(2), 38-49.

Bringle, R. G., Clayton, P., & Price, M. (2009). Partnerships in service learning and civic engagement. Partnerships: a journal of service-learning & Civic Engagement, 1, 1-19.

Butin, D. (2010). Service-learning in theory and practice: The future of engagement in higher education. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Campus Compact. (2012). 2012 Annual Member Survey.

Campus Compact. (2014). Campus Compact: Educating citizens, building communities. Retrieved from http://www.compact.org/ Cipolle, S. (2010). Service-learning and social justice: Engaging students in social change. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Colby, A., Erlich, T., Beaumont, E., & Stephens, J. (2003). Educating citizens: Preparing America's undergraduates for lives of moral and civic responsibility (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Cone, R., Kiesa, A., Longo, N. V., & Campus Compact. (2006). Raise your voice: A student guide to making positive social change: Campus Compact.

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Des Marais, J., Yang, Y., & Farzanehkia, F. (2000). Service-learning leadership development for youths. Phi Delta Kappan, 81(9), 678-680.

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York, NY: Macmillan.

Dorado, S., & Giles, D. E., Jr. (2000). Service-learning partnerships paths of engagement. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 11(1), 25-37.

Ede, L. (1984). Audience: An introducation to research. College Composition and Communication, 35(2), 140-154.

Eppler, M., Ironsmith, M., Dingle, S., & Errickson, M. (2011). Benefits of service-learning for freshmen college students and elementary school children. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 11(4), 13.

Eyler, J., & Giles, D. E., Jr. (1999). Where's the learning in service-learning? San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Inc. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group.

Furco, A. (2001). Advancing service-learning at research universities. New Directions for Higher Education, 114, 67-78.

Geertz, C. (2003). Thick description: Towards an intepretive theory in culture. In Y. S. Lincoln & N. K. Denzin (Eds.), Turning points in qualitative research; Tying knots in a handkerchief (pp. 143-168). Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.

Goering, E., & Henderson, C. (2012). Civic engagement in/action: A crosscultural comparison of youth involvement. In J. A. Hatcher & R. G. Bringle (Eds.), Understanding service-learning and community engagement: Crossing boundaries through research (pp. 73-99).

Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub. Holland, B. A. (1999). Factors and strategies that influence faculty involvement in public service. Journal of Public Service and Outreach, 4, 37-43.

Hou, S.-I. (2010). Developing a faculty inventory measuring perceived servicelearning benefits and barriers. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 16(2), 78-89.

Howard, J. (1998). Academic service learning: a counternormative pedagogy.

New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 73, 21-29.

Jacoby, B. (2003). Fundamentals of service-learning partnerships. In B. Jacoby (Ed.), Building partnerships for service-learning (1st ed., pp. 1-19). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Jacoby, B., & Hollander, E. (2009). Securing the future of civic engagement in higher education. In B. Jacoby (Ed.), Civic Engagement in Higher Education (pp. 227-248). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Keshen, J., Holland, B. A., & Moely, B. E. (2010). Research for what? Making engaged scholarship matter. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub.

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Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Larsen, M. A. E. (2015). International service learning: Engaging host communities. New York, NY: Routledge.

Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. B. (2011). Designing qualitative research (5th ed.).

Los Angeles, CA: SAGE. Merriam, S. (2009). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation.

San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Morton, K. (2012). Process, content, and community building. In D. W. Butin & S. Seider (Eds.), The engaged campus: Certificates, minors and majors as the new community engagement (1st ed., pp. 89-107). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Penuel, W. R., Fishman, B. J., Yamaguchi, R., & Gallagher, L. P. (2007). What makes professional development effective? Strategies that foster curriculum implementation. American Educational Research Journal, 44(4), 921-958. doi: 10.3102/0002831207308221 Richards, L., & Morse, J. M. (2013). Readme first for a user's guide to qualitative methods (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications.

Sandmann, L., Kliewer, B. W., Kim, J., & Omerikwa, A. (2010). Toward understanding reciprocity in community-university partnerships: An analysis of select theories of power. In J. Keshen, B. A. Holland & B. E. Moely (Eds.), Research for what? Making engaged scholarship matter (pp. 3-23). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub. Sandmann, L., Moore, T., & Quinn, J. (2012). Center and periphery in servicelearning and community engagement: A postcolonial approach. In J. A. Hatcher & R. G. Bringle (Eds.), Understanding service-learning and community engagement: Crossing boundaries through research (pp. 2546). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub. Schostak, J. F. (2006). Interviewing and representation in qualitative research.

Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.

Small, M. L. (2009). `How many cases do I need?': On science and the logic of case selection in field-based research. Ethnography, 10(1), 5-38.

Stelljes, A. (2008). Service learning and community engagement: Cognitive developmental long-term social concern. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.

Whittig, E., & Hale, A. (2007). Confidence to contribute: Service-learning in ESL. In A. J. Wurr & J. Hellebrandt (Eds.), Learning the language of global citizenship: Service-learning in applied linguistics (pp. 378-404).

Boston, MA: Anker Pub. Wurr, A. J., & Hamilton, C. H. (2012). Leadership Development in ServiceLearning: An Exploratory Investigation. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 16(2), 213-239.

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Yeh, T. (2010). Service-learning and persistence of low-income, first-generation college students: An exploratory study. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 16(2), 50-65.

Yow, V. R. (2014). Recording oral history: A guide for the humanities and social sciences (3rd ed.). London: Rowman & Littlefield.

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Peer Reviewed Title: Traversing a Political Pipeline: An Intersectional and Social Constructionist Approach Toward Technology Education for Girls of Color Journal Issue: InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 12(2) Author: Garcia, Patricia, Arizona State University (patgarcia83@gmail.com) Scott, Kimberly, Arizona State University (pgarci21@asu.edu) Publication Date: 2016 Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/52f3z0wt Article Number: Acknowledgements: This work was supported by NSF Grant #1139426.

Author Bio: Patricia Garcia is a Postdoctoral Scholar in School of Social Transformation and the Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology (CGEST) at Arizona State University.

Kimberly A. Scott is an Associate Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Department at Arizona State University (ASU) and Founder/Executive Director of ASU’s Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology (CGEST).

Keywords: Intersectionality, Social Construction of Technology, STEM Education Local Identifier: gseis_interactions_29594 Abstract: First, this paper argues that applications of SCOT in feminist science and technology studies have largely focused on analyzing how gender and technology are coproduced, resulting in lack of scholarship that examines the mutually constitutive relationship between technology, gender and other intersecting categories, such as race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and ability.

eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide.

Second, this paper argues that an intersectional view of technology can dismantle the language of objectivity deeply embedded in technological artifacts by revealing how identity categories, such as gender, race, and ethnicity, are integral components of “the social shaping of technology� and by extension participation in technological initiatives (Faulkner, p. 90, 2001). Finally, through a brief discussion of CompuGirls, a culturally responsive technology program for girls of color, this paper demonstrates how an intersectional, social constructionist approach to technology education can challenge stereotypes of girls of color as passive victims of technology and provide a counternarrative that can empower girls of color to form generative relationships with technology.

Supporting material: Author Agreements Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse

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Garcia and Scott: Traversing a Political Pipeline: An Intersectional and Social Constructi...

Despite the fact that women represent the largest percentage1 of students enrolled in four-year institutions, they continue to be underrepresented in many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields (NSF 2015).

There are promising statistics in the biological sciences where women earned 58% of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2012; however, there has been little improvement in the fields of engineering, mathematics, computer science, and physics (ibid). While the statistics of gender disparity in STEM fields are disheartening, the statistics for women of color in STEM fields are alarming. For example, in 2012, only 372 Latinas were enrolled as graduate students in the field of computer science, a low number in its own right but astounding when compared to the 3,040 White women and 11,725 White men enrolled as graduate students in the same field (ibid). These statistics demonstrate that for women of color there isn’t a participation “gap” in STEM fields, there is a chasm.

In response to the low participation rates for women of color in STEM fields, researchers have advocated for greater outreach at the primary and secondary school levels, mainly in the form of in-school and after-school STEM programs designed specifically for girls. A common STEM intervention approach has been to increase the number of girls participating in technology endeavors by strengthening their computational skills. This approach has led to the development of technology programs for girls that emphasize the acquisition of various computing skills, such as learning a programming language or acquiring web development skills. A subset of these programs focuses on “underrepresented” girls, which are commonly defined as girls of color from underserved schools.

Unfortunately, many technology programs for girls of color simplify the complex problem of disparity in technological initiatives as mainly a “computing skills” problem. Race, gender, and class are used primarily as selection criteria for program participation. Despite the aim of addressing disparity in STEM fields, these programs do not engage theoretically or programmatically with race, gender, and class as interlocking systems that structure the institutional oppression faced by girls of color who are traversing the “pipeline.” Thus, many technology programs focus on “populating the pipeline” with girls of color without interrogating the nature of a “leaky pipeline” that has been unable to retain women of color in STEM fields at the undergraduate and graduate level. To borrow Charlotte Bunch’s (1987) famous critique of the “add women and stir” 2

The authors are aware that intersecting identity categories are not limited to race, gender, and class. Additional identity categories such as sexual orientation and ability have also been the focus of intersectional analysis (Taylor, Hines, & Casey, 2010; Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013). However, for the purposes of this paper, the authors will focus on the interplay between race, gender, and class.

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approach to dealing with gender disparity, many technology programs for girls of color subscribe to the similar mentality of “add girls, sprinkle a programming language, and stir.”

Furthermore, the pipeline metaphor implies an impartial method of transport that obscures the fact that the pipeline is political. Girls of color do not simply “leak” out; they are pushed out by a pipeline wrought with concrete locations of institutional oppressions. Racism, sexism, and classism occur in the institutions - universities and work places - that girls and women of color must inhabit as they pursue STEM degrees and careers. Therefore, if technology programs are to address disparity as a complex problem, they need a theory of technology that examines how race, gender, and class function as interlocking systems of oppression that socially shape technology, both as an artifact and as a social system.

Instead of encouraging girls of color to merely enter technology fields in which “the current shape of modern technology is broadly endorsed,” this paper proposes using an intersectional lens to theoretically engage with the concept of the social construction of technology (SCOT) in order to critically examine how normative notions of technology obscure difference and contribute to gender, racial, and class disparities in technology fields (Faulkner, 2001, p. 90). This paper operationalizes intersectionality as a conceptual and analytical tool for investigating the “contextual dynamics of power” that result from the interplay of race, gender, and class and their relationship with technology (Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall, 2013, p. 788)2.

First, this paper argues that applications of SCOT in feminist science and technology studies (STS) have largely focused on analyzing how gender and technology are coproduced, resulting in lack of scholarship that examines the mutually constitutive relationship between technology, gender and other intersecting identity categories, such as race and class. Second, this paper argues that an intersectional view of technology can dismantle the language of objectivity deeply embedded in technological artifacts by revealing how gender, race, and class are integral components of “the social shaping of technology” and by extension participation in technological initiatives (Faulkner, p. 90, 2001).

Finally, through a brief discussion of CompuGirls, a culturally responsive technology program for girls of color, this paper demonstrates how an intersectional, social constructionist3 approach to technology education can

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The terms “constructivism” and “constructionism” have both been used to describe the social shaping of technology. The authors have chosen to use “constructionism” based on the claim that social constructionism represents a “critically and politically engaged set of views on knowledge and science” while

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challenge stereotypes of girls of color as passive victims of technology and provide a counter-narrative that can empower girls of color to form generative relationships with technology.

Mode of Analysis This paper engages with the concepts of intersectionality and the social construction of technology within the discipline of feminist science and technology studies. Contextualizing the discursive space in which intersectionality is employed reveals the institutional formations that influence this paper’s epistemological stance. As Cho et al. (2013) discuss, the emergence of intersectionality is grounded in “intellectual and institutional methodologies” that stemmed from critical legal studies and “the practice of subjecting existing doctrines to trenchant critique, a practice predicated on the belief that uncovering the rationalizations that reinforce social power is a necessary, though not sufficient, step toward transformation” (p. 790). This paper continues the tradition of “subjecting existing doctrines to trenchant critique” by using intersectionality as a lens to critique the objective and neutral interpretations of technological artifacts that are perpetuated by technology programs that subscribe to the “add women and stir” mentality (Bunch 1987).

Cho et al. (2013) have outlined three “loosely defined sets of engagements” with the concept of intersectionality: 1) debates about intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological paradigm; 2) applications of intersectional frameworks to research and teaching projects; 3) uses of intersectional lenses as a political intervention in a wide range of phenomena or praxis (p. 785-786). This paper engages with the concept of intersectionality as both a framework for research and lens for political intervention in praxis that can be used to analyze how normative notions of technology contribute to gender, racial, and class disparities in technology fields.

As a framework for research, this paper uses intersectionality as a heuristic for understanding how intersecting identity categories affect the design and use of technological artifacts and systems. Thus, intersectionality is used as an analytical tool for disassembling the “perceived neutrality” of modern technology in order to rebuild a view of technology that recognizes how technological artifacts and technical work can be classed, raced, and gendered both “materially and symbolically,” whether through design practices or through popular notions of who creates and innovates in technology fields (Faulkner, 90, 2001). In praxis, an intersectional lens is employed to advocate for the development of technology programs that go “beyond mere comprehension of intersectional dynamics” and constructivism is a “broader set of views on the nature of knowledge and cognition” (Restivo & Croissant, 2008, p. 225; Smith, 2006).

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aim to challenge accounts that position girls of color as victimized and passive technology users (Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall, 2013, p. 786). CompuGirls is used as an example of how a technology program for girls of color can incorporate the concept of intersectionality pedagogically and programmatically.

Considering the dual purpose of this paper, it is guided by two main research questions: 1) How can an intersectional lens be used to theoretically engage with the concept of the social construction of technology in order to reveal how technology is classed, gendered, and raced? 2) How can an intersectional, social constructionist theory of technology be employed in praxis to develop technology programs for girls of color?

The Troubles of Traversing a Political Pipeline For several decades, researchers and policy-makers have studied the issue of disparity in STEM fields and have attempted to shed light on the factors that contribute to the historically low statistics of women of color who obtain STEM degrees. For example, in order to better understand the factors that sustain such a large and deep chasm, Ong, Wright, Espinosa, & Orfield (2011) performed an extensive review of approximately forty years of empirical research on the postsecondary educational experiences of women of color in STEM fields and found that the factors that influence retention, persistence, and achievement of women of color in STEM fields are complex, multiple, and varied.

While the underrepresentation of women of color in technology fields cannot be attributed to one cause, researchers have worked to identify contributing factors along the educational continuum. For instance, at the primary level, Archer et. al (2013) surveyed over 9,000 school children and interviewed 92 school children and 78 parents. Many of the girls surveyed and interviewed reported enjoying science, dispelling the myth that girls are simply not interested in science; however, their responses also revealed they viewed participation in science as a gendered activity – a “boy thing” (p. 11). One respondent reported ceasing participation in an after-school science club because it was “all boys” (p.

11). As a result of feeling excluded from science learning environments, the girls viewed scientific inquiry as a “masculine” activity and did not identify themselves as potential scientists. At the secondary level, Dasgupta and Stout (2014) argue that gender stereotypes continue to threaten girls’ interest in pursuing STEM degrees and careers. The authors identified parents’ and teachers’ expectations as influential factors in the development of girls’ academic self-concepts.

At the postsecondary level, Reyes (2011) interviewed participants in the National Science Foundation–funded Futurebound program and found that the retention rates for women of color who have transferred from community colleges to universities is extremely low due to pervasive and repeated microagressions.

The respondents reported hostile learning environments where they faced direct

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and indirect “slights” based on aspects of their identity – age, ethnicity, and gender – and preconceptions about the academic preparation of community college transfer students. According to Figueroa and Hurtado (2013), the few women of color who successfully earn undergraduate STEM degrees and enroll in graduate level STEM programs continue to face hostile learning environments as they find themselves less likely to be invited into research experiences due to negative stereotypes about their academic abilities.

Bearing in mind the hostile environments that women of color encounter in STEM fields, it is not surprising that the latest NSF statistics on women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and engineering reveal that the disparity between women of color in STEM is far greater than that of their white counterparts. For example, in 2012 only 5 Native American women were enrolled as graduate students in the field of mathematics and statistics, compared to the 3,253 White women and 6,814 White men. While this example may seem extreme and atypical, the NSF statistics show a consistent pattern of disparity across multiple STEM fields (see figure 1).

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Figure 1: Statistics for Minority Female Graduate Students

As the statistics demonstrate, the endorsement of the current pipeline narrative and the failure to interrogate the fundamental assumptions framing education and work in technology fields has resulted in continued disparity; women of color continue to enter STEM fields where they are slotted into existing roles and capacities where merely doing their job requires them to fight against exclusionary tactics (MellstroĚˆm 2009; Rommes 2007).

Demystifying Technology Considering the complex and persistent nature of the problem, outreach efforts aimed at preparing girls of color to enter technology fields cannot ignore how intersecting power relations of race, gender, and class in institutional domains affect women’s abilities and likelihood to enter and succeed in STEM fields. Instead of propagating a sense of technological optimism by promising

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girls of color success in STEM fields if they can simply master the technical knowledge, we need a critical of view of technology that examines how race, gender, class, and technology are co-constituted. This paper proposes demystifying technology by utilizing the theory of the social construction of technology (SCOT) to examine how technologies are sociotechnical systems influenced by existing societal power relations. Instead of viewing technology as neutral artifacts and technological development as an objective process, we advocate for interpreting technology as value-laden and socially shaped. Drawing from SCOT, we view technology as “a seamless web, where there is neither a social superstructure nor a technological core, but rather a situation where the technological is co-negotiated and co-stabilised with the social” (Cronberg, p. 11, 2003). Thus, we apply SCOT as a set of “sensitizing concepts” or “heuristics with which to study technological development” as a sociotechnical system (Bijker, 1995, p. 49).

Thoroughly tracing the scholarly history of how the theory of social constructionism has been applied to study science and technology is beyond the scope of this paper4. Instead, this paper provides a broad overview of SCOT and introduces key tenets as a preface to the discussion of how feminist science and technology scholars have applied the concept to study the mutually constitutive relationship between gender and technology.

An early application of social constructionism, the theory that objects and knowledge are constructed by social or cultural factors rather than natural factors, was undertaken by Latour and Woolgar (1979) in their book Laboratory Life, described by the authors as an anthropological study of “social construction of scientific knowledge” (p. 32). Based on Latour’s fieldwork in a laboratory at the Salk Institute, the authors describe how scientific knowledge is produced through social relations and the creation of texts, such as journal articles, that communicate “facts” across scientific communities. As such, Laboratory Life is an early example of how scientific knowledge became an “object of social analysis” (Restivo & Croissant, 2008, p. 214). The study of the social construction of scientific knowledge continued with work by authors such as Knorr-Cetina (1981, 1999) who studied “epistemic cultures” in high-energy physics and molecular biology, Zenzen & Restivo (1982) who studied scientific knowledge in a colloid chemistry laboratory, and Haraway (1988) who critiqued objectivity by introducing the concept of “situated knowledges” to feminist epistemology.

Following the study of the social construction of scientific knowledge, scholars working in the area of sociology of technology began to challenge linear 4

For a detailed account of social constructionism in science and technology studies see Restivo & Croissant, 2008.

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and deterministic notions of technological development that privileged scientific discovery. For instance, MacKenzie and Wajcman (1985, 1999) critiqued technological determinism, the belief that technologies develop in predetermined directions and govern social change, by examining the “social shaping of technology”; they argued for a view of technological development that accounted for the organizational, political, economic, and cultural factors that affect the design and use of technology. By focusing on the social context of technological development, MacKenzie and Wajcman (1999) revealed how the simplistic idea that “technology just changes” perpetuates a passive relationship with technology where society focuses on learning “how to adapt to technological change, not on how to shape it” (p. 5).

While some scholars used the terminology “social shaping” and others used “social construction,” they shared the common interests of studying technology as an object of social analysis and shifting the focus from the predetermined “'impacts' of technological change” to understanding the “content of technology and the particular processes involved in innovation” (Williams & Edge, 1996, p. 865). For the purposes of this paper, we engage with the definition of SCOT articulated by Pinch & Bijker (1984) and Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch (1987), and we are particularly interested in three main tenets: interpretive flexibility, relevant social groups, and closure.

Instead of viewing technology design as a closed process, the concept of interpretative flexibility maintains there is “negotiability” in how people design and interpret technological artifacts (Cronberg, 1992). As Pinch & Bijker (1984) simply state, "There is not just one possible way, or one best way, of designing an artifact" (p. 421). In addition to describing the “flexibility” involved in the design process, the concept of interpretative flexibility also contests interpretations of technology as artifacts with stable and fixed meanings. As Wajcman (2000) writes, “users can radically alter the meanings and deployment of technologies” (p. 450). The ability for different user groups to alter the interpretation of technologies highlights the role that diverse communities can play in meaningmaking and the shaping of technology “for different ends and different kinds of 'technological' and 'social' outcome[s]” (William & Edge, 1996, p. 867).

Situating technological development within particular social circumstances rejects the notion that “technology just changes” and reveals how members of social groups influence the design and use of technology. Pinch and Bijker (1987) define “relevant social groups” as “all members of a certain social group [who] share the same set of meanings, attached to a specific artifact” (p.

30). Relevant social groups are the shapers of technological development.

However, while they may attach the same meanings to artifacts, they are not stable homogenous groups. The constitution of a relevant social group generally consists of a heterogeneous mix of producers and consumers, and can change over

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time. Through their shared understanding of a technological artifact, relevant social groups have to the power to bring “closure” to an artifact. Closure is defined as the stabilization of a technological artifact through a shared agreement on the existing configuration and design (Pinch & Bijker, 1984; Klein & Kleinman, 2002). The ability to decide which meaning of a technology dominates is a powerful position – a position that many social groups are effectively prevented from holding.

These three tenets – interpretive flexibility, relevant social groups, and closure - provide a basis for a critical view of technology that centrally positions the role of social forces in technological development; however, if we are to intentionally employ a sociotechnical approach to technology education as a way of challenging dominant deficit narratives of girls of color, we need to ask questions about who is involved in the social shaping of technology. Although we view SCOT as a set of useful heuristics for researching issues of technological development, we are acutely aware of and in agreement with critiques of SCOT which argue that the theory and its related concepts do not properly address the power dynamics between social actors involved in the shaping of technology.

For instance, Klein and Kleinman (2002) have critiqued SCOT for failing to “adequately attend to power asymmetry between groups” (p. 30). Thus, while this paper agrees with the basic premise that technological development is a flexible process open to the influences of social groups, it also argues that the theory insufficiently addresses the power dynamics governing how social actors interact on an individual and institutional level. Not everyone sitting at the proverbial decision-making table is treated equally, and most importantly, some groups, such as women of color, are rarely present or invited. Thus, in order to adequately address disparity in technological initiatives, we propose using an intersectional lens to theoretically engage with the concept of the social construction of technology (SCOT). Interpreting technology design as an open process centrally positions the role of societal influences and allows us to examine the ways race, gender and class shape technological development.

The Co-Construction of Gender and Technology Feminist science and technology studies scholars have introduced gender into discussions of the social construction of technology and have argued that gender and technology are constructs which are “performed and processual in character, rather than given and unchanging” (Faulkner, p. 82, 2001). These scholars have challenged the belief that scientific and technical knowledge is objective or neutral (Harding 1991) and have examined how gender and technological artifacts are co-constructed (Lohan & Faulkner, 2004; Wajcman, 2004, 2000; Faulkner, 2001; Cockburn, 1992). According to Wajcman (2000), the “traditional concerns” of feminist scholarship on technology have largely centered

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on “women’s access to technology, the differential impact of technology on women, and the patriarchal design of technologies” (p. 453).

In addition to these common concerns, feminist STS and critical technology scholars have examined gender divisions in digital labor and technological work. For example, Roberts (2014) has shown how digital labor is gendered female and rendered invisible through an analysis of the labor pool used for video content moderation by powerful Internet media companies like YouTube. The decision-making processes of a largely female workforce who are moderating content is obscured by the technology and the industry, yet their work is critical in determining what users encounter on the other end of the screen. The invisible labor of female tech works reveals how certain tech identities such as “startup whiz kid” are romanticized and gendered male by mass media, such as the HBO show Silicon Valley which features six “adorkable” young men who pioneer a data compression algorithm worth millions, while other identities are less desirable and largely hidden from the end user.

As Wajcman (2000) further elaborates, “More women are literally present, the further downstream you go from the design process”; however, the “undervaluing of women’s ‘unskilled’ and delegated work serves to make them invisible in mainstream technology studies” (p. 452). The assertion that more women are found undertaking “unskilled” technological work “downstream” from the design process is closely tied to another feminist STS concern – the gendering of technical knowledge. As the previously cited study by Archer et. al (2013) revealed, many of the girls surveyed and interviewed about their participation in an after-school science camp reported that scientific knowledge and the act of participation in scientific inquiry is a “boy thing” (p. 11). According to Wajcman (2000), in “contemporary Western society, hegemonic masculinity...is still strongly associated with technical prowess and power”; thus, to possess technical knowledge and to produce technology is a “highly valued and mythologized activity” reserved for males (p. 454).

Although feminist STS scholars have convincingly articulated the mutually constitutive relationship between gender and technology, there has been less scholarly attention paid to the relationships between these constructs and other intersecting identity categories, such as race and class. Disparity in technology fields is not limited to a lack of gender diversity. As NSF statistics (2015) and previous research demonstrates, the number of women of color in technology-related fields is dismal. Thus, if we are to comprehensively address disparity in technological work, we must move beyond the focus on gender to examine how technology and a broader range of identity categories are “socially constructed and mutually constituted through historical, social, political and economic processes” (Noble, 2013, p. 19). We propose using the concept of intersectionality as a conceptual tool for feminist analysis of the mutually

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constitutive relationship between women’s complex, multilayered identities and technology.

An Intersectional Analysis of Technology The origin of intersectionality as a concept is often attributed to Black legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) who argued that “feminist and antiracist discourses ha[d] failed to consider intersectional identities” and inadequately examined the “race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color” (p. 1242-1243). According to Collins (2009a), the term “intersectionality” gave a name to “a heterogeneous set of practices that had gone on for some time” and had been implemented by previous scholars and activists who were critiquing the systems of inequality affecting marginalized groups. (Collins, 2009a, p. vii).

Since the emergence of intersectionality in the legal academy, feminist scholars, particularly those in the fields of ethnic and gender studies, have employed the concept to study how social power relations are mutually constructed and used to oppress women of color (Crenshaw 1989, 1991; Collins 1993, 2009a/b; hooks, 1992, 2000; Anzaldúa, 1999; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2002).

For girls and women of color who are pursuing careers in technologyrelated fields, experiences with oppression do not occur in "mutually exclusive terrains"; instead, "racism and sexism readily intersect" in their lives as they traverse the pipeline and attempt to enter historically exclusionary institutions (Crenshaw, 1991, p. 1242). The oppression encountered by girls and women of color is “not a singular process or a binary political relation,” and thus, disparity in technology fields cannot be attributed to a single oppressive force (Carastathis, 2014, p. 304). The roots of disparity in technology fields are distributed throughout four interrelated domains of power: structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal (Collins, 2009b). As Tillapaugh and Nicolazzo (2014) articulate, “power and privilege are granted (or not granted) based on the intersections of one’s social identities, as well as how these systems are maintained and replicated within society” (p. 113). Yet, many approaches to addressing disparity in technology fields have focused on gender as the determining variable and have not scrutinized technology as a sociotechnical system that maintains and replicates power and privilege through the matrix of domination (Collins 2009b). This paper brings the concepts of SCOT and intersectionality in conversation to challenge neutral notions of technology by investigating how race, gender, and class socially shape technology and affect the experiences of girls and women of color in technology fields.

Despite the focus on gender, a number of scholars in the fields of feminist science and technology studies, critical media studies, and information studies have made significant contributions to the study of the mutually constitutive relationship between race, gender, class, and technology. For instance, Kvansy

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(2006) examined the intersection of race, gender, and class by studying how the lived experiences of working-class African American women shape their standpoint on information technology (IT). Kvansy argued that the focus on developing a “skilled” female workforce who build and design technology has overshadowed the needs of working-class African American women who view IT training programs as a route to escape poverty. Instead of solely focusing on women studying at universities, Kvansy (2006) advocates for redesigning IT training programs, such as those available in trade schools, to address “the persistent structural barriers of poverty, spatial isolation, illiteracy, sporadic work, and racial and ethnic discrimination” faced by working-class African American women (p. 13).

In addition to studying issues of workforce development, scholars have focused on the visual representation of gender and race on the Internet. For instance, in order to contest overly optimistic notions concerning the liberatory powers of cyberspace, Lisa Nakamura (2008, 2002) has argued that the Internet functions as a networked system of visual representation where online identities, or “cybertypes,” mirror established racial and gender stereotypes. Nakamura (2002) defines “cybertypes” as the “distinctive ways that the Internet propagates, disseminates, and commodifies images of race and racism" (p. 3). Instead of offering an escape from embodiment, the roleplaying act of “cyberplay” often results in “identity tourism” and the propagation of raced and gendered stereotypes.

More Than Screen Deep: Examining the Design and Histories of Technological Artifacts While studying the reception and interface of technological artifacts has been a fruitful academic endeavor, a critical investigation of how technological artifacts are socially constructed requires that we investigate technological artifacts as “more than screen-deep” (Chun, 2005, p. 129). Analyzing how technological artifacts are racialized, gendered, and classed materially and symbolically necessitates “really looking at digital media, not only seeing its images but seeing into it, into the histories of its platforms, both machinic and human” (Nakamura, 2014, p. 920).

Although still concerned with the representations of girls of color online, Noble (2013) has peered behind the screen and revealed how the seemingly objective algorithms used by commercial search engines such as Google perpetuate hyper-sexualized representations of Black girls. Noble (2013) uses the results from keyword searches on terms like “Black girls” to expose how commercial search engines mediate “access to information on racialized and gendered identities in biased ways” that perpetuate “symbolic, harmful, and familiar misrepresentations derived from traditional mass media and popular

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culture” (p. ii). Ultimately, Noble (2013) challenges “Black women to explore what kind of new learning or creativity can stem from both theorizing and designing socio-technical systems like commercial search engines from an intersectional perspective” (p. 10).

Nakamura (2014) goes offline to study the history of semiconductor manufacture at the Fairchild Semiconductor. Built on Navajo reservation in Shiprock, New Mexico, the Fairchild plant employed hundreds of Navajo women to assemble circuits. Assembling integrated circuits was a job that was simultaneously tedious and painstakingly detailed. Nakamura (2014) draws on internal company and marketing documents to describe the racialization of early electronic manufacture. Throughout their marketing literature, Fairchild used cultural accounts of Navajo women as “makers” who “were good at their assembly jobs because they were good blanket weavers and jewelry makers” (Nakamura, 2014, p. 931). Navajo women were portrayed as “docile, flexible, and natural electronics workers” who expressed their “creativity by creating electronic artifacts that resemble indigenous artifacts” (p. 932-933). Nakamura (2014) reveals how if we look beyond the screen into the “roots of the computing industry and the specific material production practices,” we find women of color and an industry that “positioned race and gender as commodities in electronics factories” (p. 937).

Beyond Victimization: Fostering Agentic Relationships with Technology While there has been important work that examines the co-constitution of race, gender, class and technology, much of the scholarly literature has positioned girls and women of color in a victimized relationship with technology. These studies reveal troubling patterns describing how girls and women of color are represented, and how these representations negatively affect self-perception and the way these groups are perceived by society. We are lacking positive and empowering portrayals of the relationship between girls and women of color and technology.

For instance, there has been little research on girls of colors as agentic producers of technology and culture. Jenkins (1998) has described a participatory media culture where youth participate in the production of culture as “remixers” using the Scratch programming language; however, the work fails to address how intersecting identity categories may shape how youth produce technology and use technology to produce. Ito (2009), who also writes on youth participation and new media, has deliberately chosen to develop youth “profiles” that are not based on “given categories such as gender, class, or ethnic identity” in order to avoid the claim that certain characteristics of participation and production with new media “attach categorically to individuals”; instead, Ito bases the profiles on online social and recreational practices, such as “geeking out” (Ito, 2009, p. 17).

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Although these works present promising portrayals of youth as users of new media technologies and producers of culture, they exclude discussions of the mutually constitutive relationship between intersecting categories and technology.

Thus, the dominant narratives that remain surrounding girls of color are those that position them as passive and victimized users of technology, further perpetuating “cultural images of technology” that “are strongly associated with hegemonic masculinity” and whiteness (Faulkner, p. 90, 2001).

When the discussion of girls and women of color and technology primarily mirrors back commodified, hypersexualized, and racialized visions of representation in cyberspace, we run the risk of perpetuating a sense of misrecognition and the further “imprisoning of [girls and women of color] in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being” (Taylor, 1994, p. 25). By using the term “misrecognition,” we do not mean to refute the claims that technologies, especially networked technologies, have enabled the pornification and commodification of girls and women of color on the Internet. These harmful representations certainly exist and scholars such as Nakamura (2008, 2002) and Noble (2013) have convincingly articulated the dangers of these representations.

However, the failure to recognize an alternative relationship with technological artifacts that isn’t predicated on a lack of agency can lead to a form of nonrecognition. When girls of color are confined to the roles of the consumer and the consumed, we “mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves” (Taylor, 1994, p. 25). While many alternative relationships with technology can be imagined, this paper is concerned with positioning and representing girls of color as agentic producers of technology.

An intersectional perspective allows us to see technology and identity in a “moving relational process” and places our relationships with technology in a broader social, cultural, and political ecology (Wajcman, 2000, p. 456). By interpreting identity and technology as multidimensional and fluid, we leave room for acts of intervention and the reinterpretation of race, class, and gender as sources of power. We can move beyond a focus on victimized representations of girls and women of color to what Noble (2013) describes as the “theorizing and designing” of “socio-technical systems” from an “intersectional perspective” (p.

10). It is time to provide a counter-narrative that empowers girls and women of color to become agentic users and producers of technology.

In arguing for a counter-narrative that positions girls of color in agentic relationships with technology, we are not turning a blind eye to the current problematic paradigm in which technology is designed, produced, and used.

However, by accepting an interpretation of technology and identity as intersectional and socially constructed, we open up the possibility for change. We can be attuned to the current problematic technological paradigm and offer a

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narrative of girls of color and technology that challenges the dominant deficit views.

CompuGirls: Challenging Deficit Narratives of Girls of Color in STEM CompuGirls is a culturally relevant technology program serving adolescent (grades 8-12) girls of color from under-resourced schools. The program is administered by the Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology (CGEST) at Arizona State University and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation. The CompuGirls program aims to transform girls’ perceptions of themselves as users of technology to innovators and producers of technology. The curriculum aspires to foster girls’ identities and selfperceptions to become “techno-social change agents” in their community.

Techno-social change agents are envisioned as “individuals who can challenge dominant narratives and construct more liberating identities and social relations as they create new technologies” (Ashcraft, Eger, & Scott, in press). Three objectives drive the program: 1) to use multimedia activities as a means of encouraging computational thinking5; 2) to enhance girls’ techno-social analytical skills using culturally relevant practices; and 3) to provide girls with a dynamic, fun learning environment that nurtures the development of a positive self concept.

The CompuGirls curriculum is guided by a reconceptualized theory of culturally relevant computing6 that intentionally incorporates the concept of intersectionality into the pedagogy and curriculum. Incorporating intersectionality into a technology program for girls of color accounts for students’ multiple subjectivities in STEM education (Scott & White, 2013). According to Scott et al.

(2014), technology education programs for girls of color have focused on academically preparing girls to enter STEM fields by increasing their technical acuity; however, these programs have failed to attend to “the multiple identities and layered selves of learners and how these impact their experiences with technology” (p. 9). Thus, the CompuGirls program views technology as a “vehicle by which students reflect and demonstrate understanding of their intersectional identities” (Scot et al., 2014, p. 10). Understanding that oppression can occur at 5

Computational thinking is defined as "the thought processes involved in formulating problems so their solutions can be represented as computational steps and algorithms” (Aho, 2012, p. 832) 6 Culturally relevant computing is a form of technology education that draws from culturally relevant teaching, a pedagogical strategy constructed to culturally engage diverse youth that values reflection, asset building, and connection. For more on culturally relevant teaching see Howard 2013, Ladson-Billings 2000, and Lee 2007. For more on culturally relevant computing see Scott et al 2014, and Eglash et al. 2013.

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the institutional, symbolic, and individual level, CompuGirls encourages girls to interrogate their own personal intersecting identity categories through technology, as well as analyze how their individual experience fits within the broader historical and structural contexts of STEM disciplines and professions.

The goal of using intersectionality as an analytical framework and guide for CompuGirls programming is not to perpetuate exclusionary politics. The program does not aim to dwell on difference for the purpose of exclusion; instead, the acknowledgement that women, especially women of color, are subject to power relations that stem from their intersecting identities allows for contextualized interventions to extremely situated problems, such as the disparity of participation by women of color in scientific and technological initiatives.

Intersectionality is used as a framework to develop technology programs for girls of color that encourage the growth of “agentic and emerging social actors and selves in context” by recognizing girls in “all [their] global diversity” and acknowledging the “multiplicity and simultaneity of social identities” (Wyer, et al, 2013, p. xxvi). In order to illustrate how CompuGirls implements an intersectional, social constructionist approach to technology education, we will provide illustrative examples from the curriculum.

‘How Do You See Yourself?’: Contesting Oppressive Representations of Girls and Women of Color in New Media According to Collins (2009b), the “[h]egemonic domain of power deals with ideologies, culture, and consciousness” (p. 302). Although traditional mass media, such as television, continues to propagate the dominant ideologies of society, new media7 has the ability to spread images and representations of girls and women of color to millions of Internet users with the click of a “share” button. In order to promote a positive self-concept among participants, the CompuGirls curriculum encourages girls to think critically about how technologies are used to create and disseminate classed, raced, and gendered representations of women on the Internet. In an “About Me” exercise, the girls are asked to learn Scratch, a visual programming language, to create representations about how they believe society views them and how they view themselves. The first goal of the Scratch project is to train them to identify oppressive representations of girls and women of color in traditional and new media. The girls identify stereotypical images of girls and women of color that are being spread through new media, such as blogs and YouTube videos, and participate in a group discussion. They are then prompted to answer questions, such as “Who are the stakeholders? What interest do they have in spreading this image?”

7

New media is defined as content available through networked digital devices, such as blogs, social networking sites, and podcasts.

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The second goal is to support the girls in contesting these oppressive representations by using similar technologies to produce different outcomes – a positive representation of how they see themselves. Thus, instead of only training girls to identify oppressive and victimized representations of women of color, the Scratch project encourages them to contest these representations through the use of technology and the expression of their own identities. For example, after discussing how Latinas are portrayed as “ghetto bullies,” one Latina participant used Scratch to create an animated presentation depicting herself as an antibullying advocate (see figure 2).

Figure 2: Representing Latinas as anti-bullying advocates.

Another participant chose an image of a model that was being used as an advertisement for a perfume. The group discussed how the standard of beauty represented online was “blonde and straight-haired.” In response, the Black girl who chose the image used Scratch to display pride in her natural hair (see figure 3).

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Figure 3: Scratch project displaying pride in “natural” hair.

Ultimately, the project stresses the interpretative flexibility of technology and teaches girls to explore and represent their intersectional identities. A social constructionist view of technology and an intersectional analysis of one’s own identity prepares the girls to “interrogate those ideologies and representations, to locate and uncover their origins and multiple meanings, and to examine the reasons for their existence and persistence” (Dill & Zambrana, 2009, p. 10).

Navigating Virtual Worlds: Exploring the Limitations of Representation in Online Spaces In addition to examining the representation of girls and women of color online, the CompuGirls curriculum teaches the girls to examine the relationship between identity and technology as more than “screen deep.” In the virtual worlds module, the girls create virtual representations of themselves and are encouraged

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to critique the limitations of the technology. The girls answer questions such as, “Does the technology allow you to authentically represent yourself? What would an ‘authentic’ representation of yourself look like in a virtual world?” After many of the girls struggle to create an avatar that has the right skin tone or hair texture, they have group discussions around questions such as “What were the limiting factors in creating an avatar? What does the inability to create avatars with hair types or skin colors that reflect your own physical characteristics say about the creators and designers of the virtual world?” The lesson does not end with the identification of their inability to represent themselves “authentically” in a virtual world; instead, the lesson pushes the girls to think deeper about the values embedded in the design of the technology.

Figure 4: Example of avatar created by participants. The girl who created this avatar was unable to get the “right” skin tone. She described the avatar’s skin tone as too “red and weird.”

By the end of the module, the girls are able to view the technology as a socially shaped artifact developed by designers who make decisions about how women can be represented. When using a technology that is aimed to create virtual

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representations of the self, the program encourages the girls to not passively accept the available representations. They are taught to ask critical questions about how the design of the technology fails to represent a diverse user group.

As the examples reveal, the CompuGirls curriculum does not focus solely on understanding how technology victimizes girls and women of color. While the program does prepare girls to identify how technology can have the (un)intended effect of reproducing social hierarchies, it also equips girls with the tools to change how technology is designed and used. In the context of design, the CompuGirls curriculum enables girls of color to become technologists not only by increasing their technical competence but also by training them to consider the values embedded in design practices and technical knowledge. In the context of use, the CompuGirls curriculum trains girls of color to become informed and critical consumers of technology. Through the participation in CompuGirls, girls of color leave the program with an understanding that their identities and technologies are “socially shaped and so potentially reshapeable” (Faulkner, p.

80, 2001).

Conclusion This paper uses the concept of intersectionality as a heuristic for examining the power dynamics inherent in the complex relationships that girls of color form with technology - as users and producers, as have and have-nots, and as should and should-nots. This paper not only aims to address the marginalization of girls and women of color in technology fields but also examines how the failure to critically examine technologies as value-laden socially constructed artifacts perpetuates simplified accounts of a complex problem.

Discussions of disparity in STEM fields should no longer focus on “gender or race as the exclusive variable to describe difference between students’ STEM pathways” (Scott, et al 2014, p. 13). Disparity in technological initiatives is a complex problem that requires a robust and nuanced theory of technology that examines how race, gender, and class socially shape technology as an artifact and as a social system. We advocate for a view of SCOT that uses intersectionality as a lens to problematize the “purported colour-blindness, neutrality, and objectivity” of institutions (Nash, 2008, p. 2). A “sociotechnical” notion of technology captures the sense that technology and society are mutually constitutive, and an intersectional lens expands this notion to include race, class, and other intersecting identity categories in the coproduction process.

In order to illustrate how an intersectional, social constructionist approach to technology education can be implemented, we provided illustrative examples from the CompuGirls curriculum that positions girls as agentic users and producers of technology. The CompuGirls program challenge stereotypes of girls

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of color as passive victims of technology by encouraging them to explore the mutually constitutive relationship between their intersectional identities and technology. Positioning girls of color as agentic users and producers of technology is an important step toward disrupting dominant narratives of girls of color as victims trapped behind computer screens. In building a counter-narrative, we hope to empower girls of color to become critical producers and users of technology who are able to identify the values embedded in the design of technologies and recognize how these values create technologies that are raced, classed, and gendered.

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Peer Reviewed Title: Rethinking the Ethics of Internationalization: Five Challenges for Higher Education Journal Issue: InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 12(2) Author: Stein, Sharon, University of British Columbia (s.stein@alumni.ubc.ca) Publication Date: 2016 Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2nb2b9b4 Article Number: Acknowledgements: I am grateful to the Academy of Finland for the support provided for the completion of this article through the project ‘Ethical Internationalism in Higher Education in Times of Crises’. I also thank Dallas Hunt for his helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper.

Author Bio: Sharon Stein is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia.

Keywords: higher education, internationalization, ethics, colonialism, decolonial theory Local Identifier: gseis_interactions_31205 Abstract: In this paper I consider the need to rethink existing ethical approaches to the internationalization of higher education. In particular, I consider the risk that the same developmentalist assumptions that reproduce the highly uneven global higher education landscape also shape many of our efforts to address these inequities. To do so, I situate the current moment within a longer history of colonial relations and identify five pressing ethical challenges for higher education scholars and institutions to address. Ultimately, I suggest the need to be more attentive to the harmful investments and colonial frames of reference that keep us from imagining a radically different ethics of internationalization.

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Stein: Rethinking the Ethics of Internationalization: Five Challenges for Higher Education

A growing number of voices have expressed concern that the expansion of internationalization in higher education is being driven by instrumentalist and income-seeking motives at both institutional and national levels in the Global North (Bolsmann & Miller, 2008; Brandenberg & de Wit, 2011; Stier, 2004).

These concerns are heightened given that the rise of internationalization has coincided with public funding cuts that have prompted institutions to increasingly rely on student tuition and other income sources not derived from state appropriations to balance their budgets and enact an increasingly market-like ethos (Gaffikin & Perry, 2009; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004). Some suggest that growing international enrolment is being treated as a means to subsidize local students’ education and other costs, while potentially contributing to widening inequality in international students’ home countries, as well as to the outsized emigration of highly-educated people from those nations (a phenomena known as ‘brain drain’) (Adnett, 2010; Johnstone & Lee 2014; Waters, 2006, 2012). Several scholars have therefore noted the risk that internationalization might reproduce already uneven geo-political relations and ultimately contribute to the increased polarization of global wealth distribution (Dixon, 2006; Khoo, 2011; Shahjahan, 2013; Tikly, 2004).

In many cases, concerns about the ethical dimensions of internationalization are articulated in response to a recognition and critique of local and global power imbalances, as in the studies cited above. However if, as Bolsmann and Miller (2008) suggest, internationalization is “a continuation of former imperial and political connections that have evolved into financially beneficial markets and sources of income for western universities” (p. 80), then we need to situate the current moment within a longer history of global entanglements organized by colonial, capitalist relations. If we fail to do so, the “ethics of internationalization” will continue to be haunted by the following paradox: the same Eurocentric categories and commitments that reproduce the highly uneven global higher education landscape may also shape many of our efforts to address these inequities.

In this paper I argue that in order to interrupt this circularity of critique and reframe our approaches to ethics in internationalization, it is necessary to identify, denaturalize, and interrupt our satisfaction with existing sociohistorical and geopolitical frames for conceptualizing higher education. In particular, I trace the ongoing effects of colonial relations, and consider how these relate to the developmental logics that shape many global engagements in higher education, as well as how these shape ethical possibilities. After this, I outline five ethical challenges of internationalization. I conclude by emphasizing the need for higher education scholars and practitioners to deepen our engagement with these and other challenges in ways that grapple with complexity, contradiction, and

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complicity, and consider the possibilities and limitations of any potential response. Thus, rather than offer a prescriptive alternative, I ask what it would take for us to unlearn and unravel the harmful investments and narrow frames of reference that keep us from imagining a radically different ethics of internationalization.

Decolonial Critique There is no singular definition or lineage of decolonial thought. In one sense it is based in traditions of resistance that are as old as European colonization itself, while in another sense it can be traced to several divergent and potentially incommensurable but broadly overlapping genealogies of theory and critique, including post-colonial, anti-colonial, Indigenous, and Black critical thought. Any brief synthesis of these rich traditions of study, as I provide here, must necessarily dispense with a certain degree of specificity and attention to internal tensions in order to grasp general points of shared concern (for discussions of the tensions between these bodies of work and their orienting concerns, see e.g. Bhambra, 2014; Byrd, 2011; King, 2015; Tuck & Yang, 2012).

Decolonial critique identifies racialization and colonization as constitutive of, rather than supplemental to, Western modernity, including Enlightenment philosophy and the rise of capitalism. In other words, racial and colonial violence are what make possible the currently dominant modes of social, political, and economic organization on a global scale. This violence therefore produces both individual subjectivities and institutional structures, though in highly uneven ways depending on where one is situated. Thus, nearly six centuries after its initiation, we continue to inhabit a capitalist/colonial/white supremacist/antiBlack/Orientalist/heteropatriarchal world (Grosfoguel, 2012; hooks, 1984).

Exceeding efforts to simply identify instances of Eurocentrism, decolonial critiques denaturalize and ultimately seek to dismantle the various organizing elements of this world across structures of knowing, being, and relating. This includes:  The (geo- and bio-) political economy of knowledge production, specifically, the notion that Western knowledge is objective and universally valuable, while all other knowledges/ways of knowing are of limited relevance (e.g. Hong, 2008; Santos, 2007; Smith, 2012);  The highly uneven distribution of wealth, which began with Europe’s expropriation of lands, labour, and resources through Black enslavement and colonization of the Americas (and later, of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific), and which continues to rely on (raced and gendered) labor exploitation and resource expropriation (e.g. Silva, 2009, 2015);

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The organization of social relations into capitalist nation-states, which protect private property, police borders, and manage racialized regimes of citizenship (and in the case of settler colonial states, occupy Indigenous lands) (e.g. Spade, 2015; Tuck & Yang, 2012; Walia, 2013); and, The selective recognition of difference in equity and inclusion efforts, which are only enacted when they can be instrumentalized to maintain (without substantively challenging) the legitimacy of the nation-state or capital (e.g. Ahenakew & Naepi, 2015; Bell, 1979; Coulthard, 2014).

Decolonial critiques identify European colonization and slavery in the 15th century as the genesis of modernity’s epistemological and ontological violence.

These events enabled the emergence of the European/Euro-descended Subject (represented as rational, universal, and therefore rightful in asserting his will on the world1), and the racialized and Indigenous Other (represented as irrational, particular, and therefore rightfully subjugated to the Subject’s will) (Silva, 2007; Wynter, 2003). Within this colonial relation, there are at least two conceptualizations of the Other – threatening or not – although both presume intellectual inferiority and moral deficiency. In the first conceptualization, the Other’s difference is represented as a dangerous pollutant, which then justifies their strict regulation and containment, through invasion/occupation, incarceration, and restricted movement. In contrast, the non-threatening Other may be deemed either pitiable but harmless (often treated as an object of charity), or conditionally equal in the case of those succeeding according to the Subject’s standards (often celebrated as exceptions). However, if their difference becomes too disruptive or if they obtain too much power or resources, they are quickly relegated back into the category of the dangerous Other. Today these representations continue to shape social, political, and economic life, from immigration legislation to IMF and World Bank loan conditions, and the everexpanding apparatuses of (domestic and global) securitization.

In sum, this division of the world is highly contested but enduring, and has been reconfigured many times, often shifting in response to resistance to it as well as to the changing demands of capital (Biccum, 2010). A particularly significant shift came after World War II and at the beginning of formal decolonization in Asia and Africa, with the promise of development that asserted a clean rupture from the immediate colonial past (Kapoor, 2014). Development was/is a largely Western-led project that promises economic growth and technological ‘modernization’ of the non-West (Ziai, 2016). Within this framing, racialized and Indigenous peoples are represented as being located in the past, and requiring 1 The male pronoun is used intentionally here, as the normative Subject is a (cisgender) male.

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Euro-descended peoples’ leadership to move forward in linear time toward the realization of a perfected, universal humanity. This echoes the original colonial Subject/Other relation, but with a promised path to equality through progress, which is premised on the Other conforming to the Subject’s (supposedly universal) norms.2 Yet development consistently undermines its own promises: because it disavows any accounting of responsibility for the cumulative effects of colonialism, and instead designates certain collectives as being by nature underdeveloped, the promise of equality is betrayed at the outset. These disavowals and designations are then used to justify the West’s continued political and economic advantage and intervention (Silva, 2015).

Identifying Colonial Logics in Higher Education Colonial logics in higher education can be traced to the 16th century when Europe first exported its higher education to its colonies, building new institutions for Euro-descended settler elites and in some cases Indigenous students, as well as recruiting Indigenous students to study in the metropole (de Wit, 2002; Dolby & Rahman, 2008; Mignolo, 2003). The production of knowledge in the modern era of higher education was also largely shaped by the colonial context and the imperial imperative to catalogue, classify, and contain the world (Smith, 2012).

This included the creation of categories of human difference, particularly through the onto-epistemological production of the European Subject (framed as the proper subject of knowledge) and the non-European Other (framed as the object of knowledge) (Silva, 2007; Wynter, 2003). As European empires expanded from the Americas to Asia, Africa and the Pacific, so too did the creation of knowledge about these places and peoples, the export of education, and the movement of students to metropoles (Angulo, 2012; Bascara, 2014; Coloma, 2009).

Following World War II, as many once-colonized nations gained their formal independence, a new and intensified era of international education engagement was initiated by the West with these and also various Latin American countries. Organized around the logic of development, Western institutions provided “technical assistance” or led structural reforms at universities in the nonWest (de Wit, 2002; Gonzalez, 1982), and recruited non-Western students to study in the West (Goodwin & Nacht, 1991; O’Mara, 2012). Not surprisingly, it was those that were designated as ‘non-threatening Others’ who were selected to be international students. According to Kramer (2009), these students were chosen “from among what was believed to be another society’s future ‘directing’ or ‘leading’ class of political, cultural, and intellectual elites,” which was framed as 2 But see Biccum (2010) for an account of the precedents of post-War development, which began with a “shift from the British mercantilist colonial regime to free trade imperialism (c. 18341846)” (p. 27). This included European powers’ earliest promises of freedom, progress, and civility to their colonies.

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“politically neutral recognition of worth and leadership capacity on the basis of universally agreed-upon criteria” (p. 779). The intention was that the students would adopt the values and knowledge of the West, bring these back to help ‘develop’ their home nations, and also serve as brokers of important diplomatic and economic ties: although in practice things did not always operate as host nations planned.

Today, the logic of development in higher education is somewhat subtler than in the past, yet it continues to strongly influence the conceptualization and implementation of internationalization programs and policies.3 For instance, Marginson (2006) suggests, “the development of higher education capacity in the emerging nations, especially research capacity, can modify global asymmetries and uni-directional transformations” (p. 35). He proposes the need to advance “emerging nations’” global position and build their capacity in ways that “maximise ‘brain return’, make effective use of foreign-trained nationals and act as a magnet for diasporic investment” (p. 35). Despite the stated intention of achieving greater equity, framing Western universities as the basis for higher education development presumes that Western institutions represent a universal standard to which all other nations should aspire (Deem, Mok & Lucas, 2008; Matus & Talburt, 2015; Suspitsyna, 2015). This leaves unquestioned the feasibility and desirability of this standard, its suitability for particular contexts, and its potential harms. However, as Blanco Ramírez (2014) argues, universities in the “Global South face the choice of either accepting Global North quality ideas and standards or becoming isolated” (pp. 126-127).

International students themselves are also often treated as objects of development. Madge et al. (2015) identify the common framing of international students “as a metaphor of absence (lacking the knowledge, failing in the classroom, emblematic of the problem of immigration, depicted as marginal victims) against which the ‘development’ and intellectual advances of western education and knowledge can be pictured” (p. 684) Notably, developmental logic does not always operate in ways that explicitly critique international students. In one example, Hail (2015) found that local US students often initiated their engagement with Chinese international students in ways that were critical of China and evoked defensive responses. He argues: “if Western educators want to encourage Chinese students to appreciate pluralism and think about how democracy works, then showing students examples of the expression of civil rights in democratic countries may be more effective than directly criticizing China’s human rights situation” (p. 11). While it is indeed crucial to address the problems with antagonistic attacks toward students and their home nations’ governance systems, this framing of the proposed alternative also 3 Development-like, deficit-based logics significantly shape higher education policies and programs about and for racialized and Indigenous students within the West as well.

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does not question the exceptionalism of liberal democracy and the West’s own numerous historical and ongoing abrogations of civil and human rights.

Finally, investment in developmental logics at Western institutions is not limited to domestic students and faculty. For instance, in her study of Chinese international students, Fong (2011) found that the students “were both consumers and promoters of the discourses that portrayed developed world citizenship as the paradise toward which everyone should be striving” (p. 219). While this in no way diminishes the imperative to reformulate deficit-based pedagogical frameworks and interrupt racism directed toward international students, it does point to the global reach of developmental logic and to the complexities that must be considered in any effort to denaturalize it (Suspitsyna, 2015).

Ethics and Politics Ethical commitments are informed by particular conceptualizations of relationality (and/or the denial of relationality). While ethical questions have increasingly come to the fore in public discussions about internationalization (e.g.

ACDE, 2014; CBIE, 2014), there is also a risk that concern for the ethical dimension may eclipse or elide an equally important consideration: the political dimension. But in fact, these are intimately intertwined. That is, ethical frameworks are not articulated or enacted in political vacuums; rather, ethics are formulated, situated, and negotiated within and between particular socio-historical contexts, collectivities, subjectivities, and power relations. Thus, politics are not supplemental to ethics, but instead centrally inform the context, content, and framing of any particular ethical approach or engagement.

In light of this tight relation between ethics and politics, it is significant that most Western ethical frameworks disavow the foundational colonial event that created (and continuously recreates) the dominant modern categories of Subject and Other. Rather than seeing these as co-constitutive positions that are always already in relation, and taking this as the starting point, ethical questions tend to be framed around the notion of freely chosen engagements between autonomous individuals and communities. While such engagements may be important, they are often depoliticized or ahistorical. For instance, recognition of ethical responsibility to respond to a flow of refugees may be framed as a largely technical question: How do we, as ethical actors, ensure that these individuals who are fleeing violence have adequate food and shelter? This is a vitally important question. Yet, by itself it fails to interrogate our own (historical and ongoing) role in the (re)production of the violence refugees are fleeing. Without tracing the entangled (bio- and geo-)political relations out of which the particular event to which ‘we’ are ‘ethically’ responding emerged, we might fail to see a bigger picture. In particular, this would include asking questions around how we

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are implicated in, benefit from, and to some extent, are constituted by, the very violence that we seek to ameliorate.

Thus, while the ethical imperative to meet the immediate needs of the refugee is preferable to demonizing them and denying them services and mobility (i.e. framing them as a threatening Other), by treating them as a non-threatening Other without an account of the colonial relation, we are at best engaged in damage control, and we will not necessarily identify and understand, let alone denaturalize or interrupt, the actual roots of the problem. By erasing the systemic complicities that exceed individual histories or intentions, our efforts to act ethically may even result in the creation of symbolic value – affirming our sense that we are ‘good’, benevolent (and more developed) Subjects.

Thus, even earnest efforts to reconceptualize global relationality may, as Jazeel (2011) suggests, “bear the burden of European thought and history - the (self-denying) centre - that will continue to measure, recognize and arbitrate on difference through the very categorizations it has conjured into existence” (p. 86).

This “burden of European thought,” and its colonial categories of the Other’s difference and the Subject’s universality, also shape efforts to conceptualize ethics within Western higher education, even when the stated intention is to disrupt these patterns (Roy, 2006). For instance, Stone-Mediatore (2011) notes that “global ethics,” as it has been elaborated in Western universities, is “premised on the recognition that ethical problems and responsibilities cross national, cultural, and geographic boundaries” (p. 44), yet it still tends to presume the universality of ethics defined by Western thought. The simultaneous recognition of capacious ethical demands and reproduction of Eurocentrism and colonial disavowal in conceptualizing a response to those demands signals a failure to adequately address invisiblized frames of ontological and epistemological dominance, and invisibilizes the numerous ethical-political possibilities that fall outside these frames. However, in order to imagine an ethics not premised on the violence of the colonial cut between Subject and Other, that political relation must also be denaturalized and our satisfaction with it disrupted. The task of doing so while avoiding circularity in critique is considerable.

Given the significant challenges involved in any effort to rethink and reimagine the ethics of internationalization, how might we nonetheless heed Gaztambide-Fernández’s (2012) call for educators to facilitate different kinds of knowing, being, and relating than those instituted by colonialism, in a way that “both opposes ongoing colonization and that seeks to heal the social, cultural, and spiritual ravages of colonial history” (p. 42)? I argue that in order to do so, higher education scholars would need to address the colonial origins of the ethical frameworks and conceptual categories that we frequently use to both diagnose and respond to the highly uneven global higher education landscape. Below, I identify the complexities of five ethical challenges that accompany efforts to

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“internationalize” higher education, after which I elaborate on each and offer a series of open questions in an effort to avoid reinscribing the very problems diagnosed.

Five Ethical Challenges of Internationalization 1) The “national container”: Commitments to internationalization often challenge the boundaries of the nation-state, yet the modern university was largely developed to serve national political and economic needs.

2) Equity and access on a global scale: Ensuring access to higher education as a public good is frequently understood as an ethical imperative at the national level, but this rationale is strained in the context of global higher education.

3) Higher education as global export: Particularly as the notion of public goods becomes strained, it is matched with the rise of the idea that higher education is a legitimate export product for purchase on a nowglobal market.

4) Epistemic dominance: The ongoing colonial politics of knowledge production and circulation continue to shape the form and content of curricula, affecting both domestic and international students, as well as faculty.

5) Market-driven and liberal humanist rationales: Despite their important differences, instrumentalist and humanitarian rationales for international engagement in higher education can both reproduce colonial relations.

“The National Container” of Higher Education There is a significant challenge in imagining ethics on a global scale given that ethical questions in higher education have previously been largely framed at the national level. Yet, according to Rizvi and Lingard (2010), “globalisation has weakened the authority of the state in promoting stronger redistributive policies and programmes” (p. 159). At the same time, there is a need to take into account the harms that have historically been perpetuated by and in the name of the nation-state. Shahjahan and Kezar (2013) argue that higher education scholarship has been limited by a tendency to reproduce methodological nationalism, which takes for granted the nation-state as a bounded entity and as the assumed scale of social relations and responsibility. Their argument that “the nation-state was always relativized by the global much as it now is (e.g., through imperialism,

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colonialism, global trade circuit, and earlier forms of technology)” (p. 21) complements decolonial critiques of the nation-state as a form of social organization that justifies violence to maintain internal order and border the earth in the name of the safety, security, and cohesion of a national ethical/political subject.

What Shahjahan and Kezar suggest is that when higher education researchers take the nation-state for granted, we feel “reduced responsibility for human suffering tied to national boundaries” (p. 27). Yet there is more than one way to recognize responsibility for harm, or global interconnections, and not all of them disrupt colonial entitlements. This is particularly so when one positions oneself as outside of (and benevolently intervening to ease) that suffering, versus recognizing one’s complicity and indeed constitutive place in (re)producing it.

Emphasizing “the global” can also be mobilized for institutional and national selfinterest, particularly as the past several decades have seen a decline in public funding for higher education. Commitments to internationalization are often accompanied by paradoxically nationalistic rationales, which assert that these efforts will ensure a country and its citizens’ success in the global economy, and serve national security interests (Tannock, 2007). Any critique of methodological nationalism must therefore include analyses of the shifting but enduring role of the nation-state in the organization and justification of higher education, and attend to the complicated history of the concept of the global (Jazeel, 2011). As Hartmann (2010) suggests, “we should be careful in our analysis of internationalisation not to substitute too hastily methodological globalism for methodological nationalism as a new normative orientation” (p. 170).

In light of these ethical challenges, the following questions arise: What happens to the national justification for public higher education when the nationstate container is put under question? Is public funding and access to higher education contingent on a narrative that coheres around nationalistic exceptionalisms and entitlements? How are understandings of ethical responsibility beyond the local informed (or not) by shifting funding structures?

To what extent is growing acknowledgement of more expansive (global) ethical responsibility premised on inclusion of the Other into existing (local) ethical frameworks, without questioning the universality of those frameworks? What happens when perceived commitments and responsibilities to the nation conflict with commitments and responsibilities to other (local and/or) global communities?

Equity and Access on a Global Scale According to Marginson (2007), higher education produces the following public goods: knowledge, literacy, and social opportunity toward a more equitable system. Indeed, when education was primarily a national affair, particularly in the

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post-World War II years, expanding access was framed as a part of a commitment to ensure equal opportunity to pursue social mobility (Goldrick-Rab & Kendall, 2014; Tannock, 2009). Arguments that position higher education as a public good rest on the notion that its benefits exceed those that accrue to individuals, and also exceed benefits measureable through strict market measures (Folbre, 2010; Letizia, 2015). However, with increasing privatization, Slaughter and Rhoades note (2004), “new configurations and boundaries [of higher education] change our conception of what ‘public’ means” (p. 306).

Internationalization complicates this yet further. According to Letizia (2015), “Public education institutions must see their larger role in providing global public goods” (p. 12), while Enslin and Hedge (2008) specifically argue for extending global access to higher education: “If widening access to higher education is a necessary response within the nation state, it is an equally compelling goal internationally” (p. 116). Yet, putting aside to what extent equal access was ever universally assured at the national level (Bell, 1979; Johnstone, 1992), according to Brown and Tannock (2009), “there are no political or moral (social justice) frameworks at the global level that provide an alternative way of re-imagining equality in educational opportunity as a global project” (p. 386).

Without such frameworks for conceptualizing access as a global public good, as Marginson (2007) argues, it is often simply assumed, “The nation is public, the global is a market” (p. 314).

Even when global public goods are imagined, there is a risk that their presumptive “goodness” might obscure their potential colonizing effects, particularly if their meaning is largely determined by Western frameworks. When it comes to imagining global public goods, it is therefore necessary to consider the origins and effects of these imaginings, asking questions such as: “who decides? in whose name? for whose benefit? how come?” (Andreotti, 2011, p. 199).

Further, if, as decolonial critiques suggest, the social mobility of a few within a capitalist system was and is necessarily subsidized by the exploitation of many others (both locally and abroad), then the motivations and desired outcomes of expanding access to Western higher education on a global scale become muddled.

If we seek to not simply have more people competing for the few spots at the top of a highly unequal, global system that requires harm for its reproduction, then we may need to rethink how access, equity, and justice are currently conceptualized and enacted.

With this in mind, how do different theoretical and political assumptions shape understandings of what constitutes the global public good, in general and specifically with regard to higher education access? How might we be exporting Western categories and conceptualizations of the world and of ‘the good life’ in well-intended efforts toward a global public good? What are the limitations of, and potential alternatives to, a public good that is defined as the (impossible)

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promise of universalizing the Western middle-class? Why is it so difficult for many of us to imagine, let alone enact, these alternatives?

HE as Global Export In 2012 over 4.5 million students studied higher education abroad, with the majority traveling from East and South Asia (in particular, China, India and South Korea) to study in the West (in particular the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, and Australia) (OECD, 2014). Yet it is only relatively recently that European and white-majority settler countries started to welcome international students in such high numbers. After World War II, these numbers were comparatively lower. At that time, international student enrolment was not viewed as a means of income generation, but as a form of international aid, organized by the developmentalist presumption that the West held superior knowledge that international students should absorb (Bu, 2003; Kramer, 2009). By the 1980s things had started to shift from “aid to trade” (Cudmore, 2005; O’Mara, 2012).

What was once conceptualized as a benevolent gift of knowledge was being reframed as a potentially lucrative export, leading to the growth of what Thiago and Andreotti (forthcoming) describe as a global “educational credentials export market (ECEM).” Today international student tuition fees are unregulated in many countries, and tend to be considerably higher than domestic students’ tuition fees (Bolsmann & Miller, 2008). From the perspective of “receiving” countries, selling education credentials generates significant income (helping to make up for declining public funding), creates local jobs, brings in new tax revenues, and prepares highly educated potential immigrants (Chellaraj, Maskus, & Mattoo, 2008; Owens, Srivastava, & Feerasta, 2011).

As a result there is growing concern that international students (as nonthreatening Others) are being recruited primarily for the economic value they bring to host institutions and countries (through their tuition fees and other spending), and the symbolic value they bring to local students (through the social capital-enhancing consumption of their difference). Enslin and Hedge (2008) argue that “there is a serious ethical tension between, on the one hand, universities’ declared commitment to social justice and, on the other hand, regarding those students as paying customers to whom we can sell our education as a traded high premium commodity” (p. 108). As receiving countries compete to attract more students in the ECEM, some have also started to express concern about brain drain in their home countries (Adnett, 2010; Johnstone and Lee, 2014). At the same time, as their numbers continue to grow, international students have also experienced resentment and backlash (Coloma, 2013; Rhee & Sagaria, 2004). These students are reframed as threatening Others when they start to be perceived as competing for limited spots in universities or on the job market –

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spots to which local (particularly, white) students believe they are entitled (Stein & Andreotti, 2015).

Several questions therefore arise around the growth of the ECEM: In what ways does a move toward treating students as customers affect their teaching and learning? How should we address the possibility that the ECEM may exacerbate inequalities within international students’ home nations (Rhee & Sagaria 2004; Waters, 2006, 2012)? Who are the primary beneficiaries of the ECEM, who are the ‘losers’ of the ECEM, and what are the possibilities for the market’s reform or reversal? What makes the West the site of such continued interest for international students coming from the non-West? How can we avoid reaffirming the West as the global epistemic centre by equating ‘social justice’ with expanded access to its universities? How might concerns about brain drain potentially contradict calls for expanding/equalizing global access to Western higher education? How can we interrupt the presumed entitlements of local students?

Epistemic Dominance Decolonial theories problematize the politics of knowledge that naturalize the West’s projection of epistemic supremacy and categorization of its “Others” as objects of knowledge, and the use of this knowledge to rationalize colonial and racial subjugation. As Wainwright (2008) points out, “colonial knowledges have outlasted formal colonialism and live on in the present, constitute the present as such, and have ongoing political effects” (p. 14). Though the content of this knowledge may shift over time, the frameworks of mastery, coherence, control and the (always incomplete) efforts to order the world persist, and continue to deny the existence of alternatives outside of these ordering categories (Santos, 2007). For example, the kinds of knowledge that are most commonly thought to be a “global public good” (because they are presumed universally relevant and objective) tend to be Western (Stiglitz, 1999). Epistemic dominance also affects international students from the Global South, who may be treated as “‘empty vessels’ to be filled up with Euro-American knowledge” (Ninnes & Hellsteń as cited by Haigh, 2008, p. 432), as well as domestic students in the Global North, who are being educated in a narrow range of knowledge traditions, and may not have the supremacy or universalism of these traditions challenged in substantive ways (Stone-Mediatore, 2011).

Contesting this persistent epistemic Eurocentrism, Nandy (2000) argues, “The main responsibility of a university is to pluralize the future by pluralizing knowledge in the present” (p. 122). Incorporating more non-Western knowledges into Western universities is both necessary and risky, as it may lead to them being misheard and misrepresented (Kuokkanen, 2008), absorbed/assimilated into existing fields (Alcoff, 2007), or commodified for profit (Nandy, 2000).

Ultimately, any effort to achieve epistemic justice would also require dedicating

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more resources for the research and teaching of marginalized knowledges, including hiring practices, the revision of existing award and promotion procedures, and a wholesale reconsideration of the Eurocentric perspectives that dominate curricula in nearly every department. This would include interrupting not only the content but also the frames of Western knowledge production that treat knowledge as a means of mastery and control, and treat difference either as a threat and/or an instrumentalized object of consumption for producing value.

In enacting the pluralisation of knowledge Nandy (2000) describes, a number of ethical questions therefore arise. For instance: What is the relation between the politics of knowledge and (geo)political economic questions? How can internationalization efforts in the Global North avoid erasing local epistemic heterogeneity in the rush to seek epistemic difference abroad (Roshanravan, 2012)? What precautions are necessary so that the incorporation of more nonWestern knowledges into Western universities does not result in their tokenism, decontextualization, or exploitation? Beyond simply adding more diverse knowledge to existing curricula, what institutional reforms might make it possible for students to imagine different horizons and aspire to alternative futures? Are there limitations to the kinds of transformation that are possible within these institutions?

Market-driven and Humanist Rationales Much of the literature on the internationalization of higher education identifies two major discourses that shape practice and policy: market-driven and liberal humanist (e.g. Bolsman & Miller, 2008; Khoo, 2011; Stier, 2004). As discussed above, market-driven motives are most often identified in the context of international student recruitment. Humanist approaches, in contrast, tend to emphasize the development of cultural competency, social responsibility, and cosmopolitanism, and are increasingly included in policies, curricula, and practical initiatives related to international partnerships, study abroad, and international service learning and volunteering programs.

Many humanist efforts are specifically humanitarian in nature, in which individual students seek to ‘give back’ in recognition of their relative advantage in existing systems. In the context of internationalization, this framing may be preferable to market-driven approaches, yet its construction of relationality maintains the student in a position of benevolence and enlightenment vis-à-vis those they are understood to be ‘helping’ (Jefferess, 2008). In this ethical formation, students from the Global North are generally situated as those with superior knowledge, values, and experiences that they generously grant to the ‘less fortunate.’ Within this paternalistic dynamic, the student is rarely prompted to question the underlying systems or causes of inequality or to consider how they benefit from and perpetuate these systems. Rather, the Other becomes a vehicle

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for affirming their exceptionalism and moral ‘goodness’ – potentially as a means to justify their own privilege. Gaztambide-Fernández and Howard (2013) point out that this investment in “Being good and having moral standing is a social outcome that is premised on the unequally distributed ability to do certain things, to enact certain roles, and to mobilize particular discourses” (p. 2). This framing then forecloses the opportunity for students to examine their own complicity, and may be understood as an example of what Tuck and Yang (2012), drawing on Malwhinney, describe as “moves to innocence,” through which an individual seeks to assuage their guilt, deny responsibility, preserve a positive self-image, and maintain their existing investments in harmful desired futures.

Thus, despite their important differences, both market-driven and humanist approaches to internationalization are often premised on developmental notions of humanity, and are shaped by a “convenient amnesia” of colonial histories and current structures of harm (Thobani as cited by Stone-Mediatore, 2011, p. 49). Questions that therefore arise include: Why does encountering difference in the context of internationalization often reproduce rather than disrupt assumptions about the supremacy of Western knowledge and society? How might humanitarian efforts abroad function as a means to avoid addressing local injustices? How do developmental logics limit the possibility of engaging in relationships premised on solidarity and self-implication rather than instrumentalization for affirmation of a benevolent self? What might prompt students to see their own material comforts as part of the cause of inequity? What might interrupt our satisfactions with existing formulations of self/subject and other/object, and is it possible to imagine an approach to ethics that begins and ends with neither?

Conclusion: Im/possible Ethical Demands There is a danger that our critical approaches to the ethics of internationalization may be circularly repeating the very violence that we seek to disrupt. In order to make visible the ways that colonial categories and capitalist imperatives are reproduced, scholars of higher education need to historicize the deep entanglements of our institutions and our subjectivities with empire, trace the origins of our dearest concepts, face our own investments in the false promises of universal humanity and linear progress, and consider how all of these frame and thereby limit available ethical and educational possibilities. As Unterhalter and Carpentier (2010) note, “Global higher education seems uniquely well placed to serve the interests of redressing inequality, enhancing participatory debate and deliberation. But to do this requires higher education institutions recognizing problems of their past and present in order to contribute to ideas of justice for our future” (p. 29). Decolonial analysis, as I have offered in this paper, is just one means of doing this work.

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However, analysis itself is insufficient. Having identified the depth of the problems we face, it is common to promptly begin the search for concepts and plans of action that can renew our hope and that we believe will lead to something better. This desire for guaranteed alternatives may be in part related to the fact that conversations about internationalization tend to be, as Waters (2012) suggests, “dominated and driven by educational practitioners – education institutions, statelevel policy makers and public bodies, as well as private, commercial enterprises – with a vested interest in the ultimate success of internationalising initiatives” (p.

127). The imperative toward immediate improvement and assured success is also a deeply embedded dimension of Western thought, which constantly seeks to reduce complexity and eliminate uncertainty in order to smoothly engineer the future. And there is good reason for seeking solutions; harmful practices and policies do not stop producing harm when we name them. Every critique therefore begs the follow-up questions: “So what? Now what?” (Andreotti, 2011, p. 227).

These questions are important, and answering them is one essential element of our responsibility as researchers and educators to contribute to the reduction of ongoing harm. There is a strong need to produce practical, accessible, and impactful resources for use in higher education classrooms, policy reforms, training for administrators, and social justice programming for students and staff.

At the same time, these solutions often create their own unforeseen problems.

Furthermore, desires for coherence, consensus, and guaranteed futures have all contributed to the reproduction of significant harms as certain experiences, individuals, and even entire communities are sacrificed or silenced in order to achieve these goals. Although we cannot live and act in a space of uncertainty and ambivalence at all times, the immediate search for practical action and answers can also foreclose difficult but necessary conversations and questions that have no easy resolution. We also need to learn to sit in this space of uncertainty and discomfort to consider questions with either no answer, or too many answers to count; to lay out on the table the contradictory elements of all possible answers to our ‘so what, now what’ questions; and to ask self-implicated questions about our own deep investments in a harmful system.

To conclude by offering a normative prescription for how to engage this difficult work of unlearning and reimagining ethics in the context of internationalization would enact the same closures of possibility, totalizing accounts of reality and justice, and presumptions of my own innocence that decolonial critiques suggest are part of the problem. Instead, I offer a few final questions to orient further conversations in these areas: What would we have to give up in order to imagine and enact radically different ethical possibilities, and why is this so difficult to do? In what ways do the structures of our existing higher education institutions prohibit or potentially provide spaces for these alternatives?

How can we balance the need to: enact immediate change to reduce harm,

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examine with greater depth the full complexity of the issues we face and our own complicity in them, and look toward long-term transformations that are still emergent and as yet undefined? If both critique and immediately practical solutions are important but insufficient, then what other work remains to be done?

How do non-Euro approaches to ethics signal the limits of Eurocentric frameworks, and how can we engage these without simply instrumentalizing them? Earnest consideration of questions like these should be part of any effort to imagine the ethics of internationalization otherwise.

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Title: Review: Boundary Objects and Beyond: Working with Leigh Star, Edited by Geoffrey C. Bowker, Stefan Timmermans, Adele E. Clarke, and Ellen Balka Journal Issue: InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 12(2) Author: Montoya, Robert, UCLA (robmontoya@gmail.com) Publication Date: 2016 Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/54g253s5 Article Number: Author Bio: Robert D Montoya is a doctoral candidate in Information Studies at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. His research broadly examines how communities organize, classify, and share information, and how the knowledge organizing (KO) infrastructures that support these exchanges are influenced by underlying values about knowledge. His dissertation research examines efforts within the scientific biodiversity community to aggregate dispersed taxonomic databases to facilitate information standardization and “universal” access. Other fields of scholarly interest include the philosophy of information and documentation, information ethics, STS studies, biodiversity studies, history of print culture, library/administration, and digital scholarship.

Keywords: Science, Technology, and Society (STS), infrastructure, boundary objects, ecologies of knowledge; Local Identifier: gseis_interactions_30989 Abstract: Review: Boundary Objects and Beyond: Working with Leigh Star, Edited by Geoffrey C. Bowker, Stefan Timmermans, Adele E. Clarke, and Ellen Balka Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse

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Montoya: Review: Boundary Objects and Beyond: Working with Leigh Star, Edited by Geoffrey ...

Bowker, Geoffrey C., Stefan Timmermans, Adele E. Clarke, and Ellen Balka, eds.

Boundary Objects and Beyond: Working with Leigh Star. Infrastructures.

Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2015. 548 pp. ISBN 978-0-262-02974-2 Boundary Objects and Beyond: Working with Leigh Star, co-edited by Geoffrey C. Bowker, Stefan Timmermans, Adele E. Clarke, and Ellen Balka, is a celebration of Susan Leigh Star’s wide-reaching and deeply significant contribution to science studies and associated fields. Star’s approach to scholarship was personal, poetic (how many other scholars reference poetry as part of their work?), interdisciplinary, and perhaps above all, focused on unearthing the invisible, the marginal, and the problematic as a central and essential practice of science, technology, and society (STS) studies. As Helen Verran states, “Susan Leigh Star had an extraordinary capacity as an analyst to let herself be inhabited by the world, and in turn to insinuate her being into many of the world’s nooks and crannies” (Bowker, Timmermans, Clarke, & Balka, 2015, p. 500). Using a selection of Star’s most celebrated work, this publication charts how she “became one of the most influential science studies intellectuals of the last decades” (p. 1), and offers a space for a critical and personal examination of its radiant effects to the study of society and science.

Boundary Objects and Beyond is part of the MIT Press’s Infrastructure Series, and is co-edited by a group of scholars that knew Star incredibly well both personally and professionally: Bowker is Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine; Timmermans is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles; Clarke is Professor of Sociology & Adjunct Professor of History of Health Sciences, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco; and Balka is Professor for the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. The contributors of the book, primarily scholars at academic institutions, represent a broad range of scholars whose intellectual development and social circles were much enriched by Star’s provocative contributions to science studies. The essays represent the breadth and reach of Star’s work into numerous domains of study and will give the reader a good sense of how her scholarship is being used in contemporary concerns.

Star’s significance was beyond the production of exemplary scholarship; she served as a pivot point for a community of thinkers, changed the way people approached the study of science, and infused a radical and empathetic attention to the study of the unseen and unheard. A fragmentary glimpse at phrases used to describe Star and her scholarship coalesce to form a strikingly pluralistic approach to STS scholarship always focused on the borderlands of experience: “fostered particularly ‘caring modes of attention’ to … marginalized experiences” (p. 47); “gives us a tool for being more fully human in our social science

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research” (p. 253); “she encourages us to study the silences, the things we think are missing, the invisible, the people and the topics in the corner” (p. 303); and, Star provides the “ability to open for investigation areas that had not previously been thought noteworthy…[with an] aim is to heighten awareness of boundaries of silence, a means of transgressing them” ( p. 436). When Star called for the “study [of] boring things” and the “unexciting,” (p. 474) she was, in fact, exposing to the overlooked spaces of infrastructure where she believed power (p.

264) and systemic agency ultimately resided, revealing the contours of bodies (p.

417) and material realities of infrastructure that were otherwise erased from social science inquiry. “For Star, studying these [boring] forms of social life meant restoring the work and the political/ethical/social struggles that went into the creation of the formal” (p. 7). Studying the ordinary became a space of possibility and productivity precisely because of Star’s theoretical and methodological approaches to liberating these spaces.

Star was influenced by a number of academic domains: “feminism, race theories, ecological thinking, symbolic interactionism, actor-network theory, ethno-methodology, linguistics, activity, theory, metaphysics, theology, cognitive science, phenomenological psychology, distributed artificial intelligence, and anyone who produced exciting intellectual insights” (p. 3). But this list certainly does not define the entirety of Star’s scholarly influences (a list of selected publications at the end of the book can help you locate more writings of interest); to represent everything would far exceed the ability of any one publication. Do trust that this book is worth reading, particularly if you are unfamiliar with the evolution of Star’s contribution to STS and related fields (or even for those that are familiar with her work, for it presents a solid narrative of Star’s scholarly evolution throughout her career). There is much to glean here for Information Studies scholars as well, for aside from Star’s contributions to classification and categorization (that are perhaps best known in this domain), there are methodological and theoretical approaches of value to our interdisciplinary field-and Star knew and lived interdisciplinarity like few others--related, especially, to the critical examination of the intersections between infrastructure technology, society, information, and the body/self.

Boundary Objects and Beyond is divided into four sections, each extrapolating upon a general theme represented in Star’s oeuvre: Ecologies of Knowledge; Boundary Objects; Marginalities and Suffering; and Infrastructure.

Each section has key articles written by Star (sometimes multiple) that illuminate these themes (including one working paper first published here). There are far too many concepts in this book to give them just attention in this space, so I will briefly cover some selective through-lines of each section. This approach will necessarily omit the mention of many worthwhile contributions, though perhaps it

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Montoya: Review: Boundary Objects and Beyond: Working with Leigh Star, Edited by Geoffrey ...

will pique the interest of some readers, prompting them to examine Star’s body of work more closely.

Part One, “Ecologies of Knowledge,” expands upon Star’s approach to the study of technology and systems that “saw phenomena as continuous,” simultaneously taking into account the “human and material worlds” ( p. 3) that constitute their complexity. The essays in this section exemplify how Star’s ecological approach unearthed new avenues of scholarly attention for STS. Maria Puig de la Bellacasa illustrates how Star’s focus on “marginalized experiences” infused with a “radical feminist thinking” ( p. 47) reshaped the STS landscape to include justice-oriented notions of infrastructure. Adele E. Clarke’s essay (p. 85) emphasizes the extent to which Star’s notion of ‘invisible work’ has helped her articulate “anticipation” (p. 85) as a recognizable and problematic affective form of labor and work. Part Two, “Boundary Objects,” expands on perhaps Star’s most celebrated and cited concept, “not only in science and technology studies but in computer and information science, library sciences, sociology, and beyond” (p.

172). Essays expand the notion of “boundary object” to Star herself as the embodiment of a boundary-crossing entity. Les Gasser provocatively describes the extent to which the self-as-social scientists becomes an integral, almost inextricable, part of the phenomena we witness: [Leigh] could not act without joining her personal experiences and sentiments to the context of her ideas” (p.

240). All objects cross boundaries in some capacity, and these spaces of overlap were made productive and exciting by Star.

“Marginalities and Suffering,” part four of the text, interrogates “the multiple simultaneous selves and commitments” that exist within infrastructures, and what implications that might have for our scholarly approaches. What emerges is an increased emphasis on the “intensity” ( p. 292) and complexity of being human within a mesh of affordances. In reference to Leigh’s ‘onion paper,’ “Power, Technology, and Phenomenology of Conventions On Being Allergic to Onions,” the editors note: “Here she offers a feminist, interactionist, and antiracist alternative frameworks for considering multiplicity--multiple simultaneous selves and commitments” (p. 263). Contributors emphasize the “links between lived experiences, technologies, and silences” (p. 303) in order to locate emergent and hidden forms within the elements social organizations (p. 317). Infrastructures become systems of memory, as in the archives (p. 323), as well as obfuscate the labor and “ordinary work” that takes place within it; our job as social sciences is to make that history and work “visible again” (p. 349) through our own analysis.

And, finally, part four of the text, “Infrastructures,” speaks to the embedded nature of infrastructures and how they fundamentally shape and re-shape our community and individual practices (p. 380). Infrastructures also reflect and appropriate “shadow” representations and indicators of the body (Chapter 21), as can be seen in Ellen Balka and Susan Leigh Star’s, “Mapping the Body across

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Diverse Information Systems: Shadow Bodies and How they Make us Human.”

Scholarship should make these standards, classifications, and systemic appropriations “more visible”( p. 468) by critical analysis. From an ecological point of view, bodies, objects, and infrastructure are a co-constituted system and it is the social scientist’s position (perhaps duty) to “understand exclusions and silences” within infrastructures in order to reach a distributional justice (p. 460).

Overall, Boundary Objects and Beyond is an exemplary celebration of Star’s contribution to science studies scholarship, well organized and well articulated. A highly recommended read. May this text continue to inspire a critical critique of the invisible within infrastructure toward liberating those subsumed by the weight of myriad systems and their distributed schemas.

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Title: Identity, Social Activism, and the Pursuit of Higher Education: The Journey Stories of Undocumented and Unafraid Community Activists by Susana M. Muñoz Journal Issue: InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 12(2) Author: Peumsang, Pavitee, UCLA (pavsang85@ucla.edu) Publication Date: 2016 Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/5gf0m7h7 Article Number: Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Lauren Ilano and Manpreet Dhillon Brar for the opportunity to engage in critical scholarship. I would also like to thank Martha Ortega, Raeanna Gleason, and Armando Tellez for their invaluable guidance and support during this process.

Keywords: College Access, Social Identity, Undocumented Students Local Identifier: gseis_interactions_31076 Abstract: This book explores how undocumented students make meaning of the intersection between their immigration status and their social identities as community activists under historical and current contexts of xenophobia. Susana M. Muñoz draws 39 interviews from 13 self-identified Latina/o undocumented and unafraid students across the United States. Students’ journey stories reveal how undocumented student identities and experiences are complex, fluid, and unique to the individual. The author applies queer and resistance theories to help readers understand how undocumented students engage in the “coming out” process as a strategic political action for recognition and visibility. Findings provide recommendations for K-12 and higher education practice, policy, and future research for the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion of undocumented students.

Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse

eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide.

Peumsang: Identity, Social Activism, and the Pursuit of Higher Education: The Journey Stor...

Understanding how undocumented students make meaning of the intersection between their immigration status and their social identities as community activists in the face of xenophobia is imperative for higher education practitioners, institutions, and policymakers invested in equitable college access, diversity, and success. Identity, Social Activism, and the Pursuit of Higher Education provides the journey stories of 13 undocumented students that are navigating different types of educational institutions (e.g. community college, public and private universities, and one nonaccredited institution of higher learning for undocumented students) across the United States. Susana M. Muñoz offers a scholarly yet accessible text that resonates with a range of audiences, including community organizers, undergraduate and graduate students, higher education practitioners and policymakers. Muñoz provides critical higher education research while simultaneously transgressing a traditional scholarly writing style as she interweaves personal reflections of her own journey story about arriving to the U.S., and her experiences as a researcher and educator who works closely with the undocumented immigrant community.

The first chapter of the book offers an overview of policy contexts, concepts of resistance, and theoretical explanations that help explicate the sociohistorical, sociopolitical, and socioeconomic context of undocumented students in the U.S. Engaging identity development, resistance, and theoretical perspectives, Muñoz highlights the need for conceptual and theoretical frameworks to describe the experiences of undocumented students. She closes the chapter by providing the book’s organizational layout that reveals her intentional approach to the research and her decision to write with vulnerability.

The second chapter introduces thirteen Latina/o undocumented students from the study. It details the participants’ stories of arrival to the U.S., their formal schooling experiences in the U.S., and how these experiences influenced their access to college. Given that participants arrived in different regions of the U.S. and attended different types of institutions across the nation, stories from the lived experiences of undocumented students reveal how policies are unique to each state and institution. For example, Arizona’s proposition 300 does not allow undocumented students to receive state financial aid or qualify for in-state tuition benefits. On the other hand, New Mexico allows students who graduate from a New Mexico high school to enroll in college despite their immigration status. This helps her transition to the next chapter, which explains how undocumented students’ college access process is complex and unique.

The narratives of undocumented students are revitalized in chapter three where their expressions of gratitude, accompanied by frustration, become evident as they embark on their college journeys. Muñoz describes the critical role high school teachers and counselors played in the college access process for participants in this study. She explains how undocumented students receive

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invaluable guidance and support from some institutional agents, yet face extreme frustration from being excluded from federal and state financial aid. This creates an added layer of barriers for undocumented students given the limited availability of funding that does not adequately cover the cost of college attendance and living expenses. Ultimately, some participants express how higher education institutions seek to actively recruit undocumented students, yet they do not provide adequate financial and institutional resources and support. Financial circumstances affect undocumented undergraduate and graduate students differently because graduate students typically rely on fellowships or loans, which undocumented students are excluded from.

In chapter four, Muñoz shares how the process by which undocumented students in this study decide to disclose their legal status is complex, fluid, and unique to the individual. Currently, there is no theoretical framework that specifically describes this process for undocumented students. Therefore, the best fitting framework to illustrate the legal status “coming out” process is borrowed from lesbian, gay, and bisexual identity scholarship, and helps demonstrate the fluidity of undocumented immigrant identities. Utilizing this framework helps readers understand how the coming out process is a strategic political act as a form of resistance to fight for recognition and visibility (Muñoz, 2015).

Chapter five provides theoretical explanations from five different social movements that help better explain the involvement of undocumented students in community activism. Muñoz disrupts traditional discourse by problematizing the perfect DREAMer paradigm in order to expose intersecting inhumane injustices across race, class, gender, immigration status, and sexual orientation.

Undocumented students from the study acknowledge how identifying as “undocumented and unafraid” is a privilege and can be utilized as an educational and political tool to challenge unjust policies and practices.

In chapter six, Muñoz introduces the concepts of legal violence and legal consciousness, and how they influence participants’ understanding of their undocumented identity. Legal violence is described as structural violence that perpetuates systemic inequities that lead to an oppressed groups’ understanding of their position in society. From that, undocumented students make meaning of their identities through a legal consciousness that empowers them to interrogate systemic injustices. However, findings reveal that there is no one concrete definition of what it means to be undocumented and unafraid due to undocumented immigrants’ intersecting identities.

Chapter seven supplies an analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of the temporary immigration policy, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

This reveals how undocumented students transition from struggling to make sense of being excluded from all basic rights, to having some opportunity to access work permits, driver’s licenses in some states, and temporary relief from

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Peumsang: Identity, Social Activism, and the Pursuit of Higher Education: The Journey Stor...

deportation. In closing, chapter eight provides recommendations for K-20 policies and practices that will advance from the benefits of DACA, and state and institutional policies to provide a federal pathway to U.S. citizenship.

Muñoz raises an important critique of the ways in which Latina/o community activists like Dolores Huerta do not necessary prioritize or centralize the needs of undocumented immigrant communities, thus perpetuating the systemic status quo. Believing that undocumented immigrant rights can wait only reproduces the idea that undocumented immigrants are “others” and second class human beings. This book emphasizes the need for solidarity across race, class, and gender as a means of mobilizing towards a just and humane society.

Moreover, participants’ various references to social security numbers calls for a deeper examination of how undocumented students perceive the political and social constructs of the nine-digit number. Overall, this book reveals how future research should explore whether undocumented Asian and Pacific Islander students and/or undocumented students who are ineligible for DACA make sense of their identity differently than participants from this study.

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