From "knowing" to "not knowing": Critical global citizenship education for engineering partnerships

Nora Pillard Reynolds

doi:10.24908/ijesjp.v8i1.12726

Abstract

This article was part of a larger study that explored community participants’ perspectives in [Municipality, Country] about the long-term global service learning (GSL) partnership with [Name of university] University’s College of Engineering (Author, year). This article explores the question: From the community participants’ perspectives, what are their educational goals for the university engineering students in this partnership? While I intentionally centered this article on the community participants’ perspectives, I also explored areas of alignment and areas of difference between the different stakeholder groups’ perspectives about learning and knowledge. Although global citizenship surfaced in interviews with both community and university participants, the community participant perspectives push farther than the university administrators/ faculty and call for critical global citizenship education (Andreotti, 2006).

Highlights

What do a rural farmer in Nicaragua, a school child in Cambodia, a village chief in Panama, and an indigenous medicine man in the Philippines all have in common? They have all improved the way that Villanova engineers understand and see the world
My findings indicate that the community participants hope for a transition in students related to ideas about learning, knowledge, and their role in engagements with the Other
In describing critical global citizenship education in this study, the community participants call for humility; this educational goal seems to work directly in opposition to the common narrative of SL/ global service-learning (GSL) in which U.S university students “help” or “teach” the Other in a developing/ Third World country

Summary

Introduction

What do a rural farmer in Nicaragua, a school child in Cambodia, a village chief in Panama, and an indigenous medicine man in the Philippines all have in common? They have all improved the way that Villanova engineers understand and see the world. Reynolds From “Knowing” to “Not Knowing”: Critical Global Citizenship Education for Engineering Partnerships. This statement highlights ideas about what counts as knowledge, who teaches and who learns, and how students learn. This article was part of a larger study that explored community participants’ perspectives in Waslala, Nicaragua about the long-term global service learning (GSL1) partnership with Villanova University’s College of Engineering (Reynolds, 2016). This article explores the question: From the community participants’ perspectives, what are their educational goals for the university engineering students in this partnership? While I intentionally centered this article on the community participants’ perspectives, I explored areas of alignment and areas of difference between the perspectives of the different stakeholder groups in this partnership (including university participants such as faculty/ staff and students) learning and knowledge This article explores the question: From the community participants’ perspectives, what are their educational goals for the university engineering students in this partnership? While I intentionally centered this article on the community participants’ perspectives, I explored areas of alignment and areas of difference between the perspectives of the different stakeholder groups in this partnership (including university participants such as faculty/ staff and students) learning and knowledge

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion