Study Abroad Programming in Writing Centers in Colombia and the USA: Lessons in Translanguaging, Decolonial Theory, and Programming

Abstract

As a product of both Universidad del Norte and Purdue University engaging in a partnership around shared academic interests, academic study exchanges, and multilingual education, this case study reports on a grant-funded student exchange that used a translanguaging approach to explore how aspects of English and Spanish have an influence on tutor education around writing centers. The first section of the paper describes in detail the exchange program and its background, including how the student research projects consciously emphasized the way this partnership could foreground practical approaches to translanguaging informed by decoloniality views. The second section acknowledges that our project emphasized pragmatic needs and institutional goals but should have better embedded guidance and lessons from decolonial theory. The third section of the paper includes the lessons that complement both decolonial theory and translanguaging pedagogy in study abroad contexts and the programming intricacies of an academic exchange conditioned by institutionality and local contexts. The last section is a brief conclusion about the exchange program, its ideological impact on both universities, and the need for future collaboration to foreground decolonial insight on planning and proposals for cross-institutional projects, especially in the context of mentoring writers at the intersection of nationality and cultivation of voice, agency and rhetoric.