Abstract
This article explores social educator actions by academe as cultural agency’s natural partner in ways that echo, connect and create plural discourse among the many dimensions and disciplines of society. Based on collaborations with Mexican partners, we argue this goal is achieved with multiplicative effects when students and faculty, key agents themselves and trainers of intercultural agents, learn first-hand by crossing borders to frame issues and work together to articulate collaborative research problems. In so doing a more inclusive worldview becomes integral context in needs assessments. This has been our long-standing pedagogical approach in leading students−undergraduates and graduates−and faculty from around the world on a multidisciplinary, intergenerational examination of rural and urban development in tropical Latin America. Greater academic agency through more alliances of this kind is needed to better achieve equity goals supported by greater investments targeting community engagement and applied problem-solving. We illustrate this learning framework and provide specific livestock research cases in southern Mexico that reveal potentials realized by bringing academe to the field and the field to academe, as part of a reinforcing educational process that promotes understanding and social transformation.
Highlights
This article explores social educator actions by academe as cultural agency’s natural partner in ways that echo, connect and create plural discourse among the many dimensions and disciplines of society
Based on collaborations with Mexican partners, we argue this goal is achieved with multiplicative effects when students and faculty, key agents themselves and trainers of intercultural agents, learn first-hand by crossing borders to frame issues and work together to articulate collaborative research problems
Greater academic agency through more alliances of this kind is needed to better achieve equity goals supported by greater investments targeting community engagement and applied problem-solving
Summary
Ours is a story of encounters and problems needing solution. Different worlds reach out to one another on a transformative life stage obtained by crossing borders. With library and lecture traded in the second course for mountaintops and mangrove swamps, aspiring intercultural scholars learn first-hand from real-world knowledge providers, some who are highly marginalized This year-long experience, which is training ground for participating faculty, includes a preparatory course (Note 1), followed by an intense research experience (Note 2) that includes at least two weeks in the field and a subsequent on-campus agenda of distillation, analysis, and reporting. The program objectives are to explore equity-gap challenges, acknowledging rural-urban disparities and aspects of cultural heritage, improving intercultural dialogue, and fostering greater contact and communication among the players, e.g., in-country hosts, students from afar as well as the host country, faculty and other professionals It is not possible in a mere two weeks to thoroughly examine the many facets of the many problems faced by families in many settings. Dow (Note 7)−structure one’s work in better comprehending nature, landscapes, people and their livelihood systems “by not (only) mastering particular facts, but by seeing, experiencing, and creating (your) own systems or structures.”
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