Experiential Learning in Teacher Education: Increasing Awareness of Diversity Through the Immersion Experience

Sixty-four years after the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision, schools, neighborhoods, and communities in the United States remain largely segregated by race and class. As a result, many incoming students arrive on college and university campuses with limited exposure to people from a wide array of backgrounds and identities. In this article, we examine how students enrolled in an undergraduate teacher education course, Multiculturalism and Education, learned from and reflected on an experiential learning assignment. The assignment, called “Immersion Experience,” required them to have a brief experience in a cultural context that is different from their own. Through the assignment, students reflected on their own identities, values, and upbringing; learned about their stereotypes and beliefs about discrimination; and began to appreciate experience as a way of deepening their understanding of diversity. In an era in which undergraduates spend more of their time online, self-segregated and fractured by political beliefs and social identities and experiences, assignments such as the “Immersion Experience” help to create the physical, human encounters with difference that are vital for community and democracy

Critical Experiential Education in the Honors Classroom: Animals, Society, and Education

Parker Palmer and Arthur Zajonc, scholars of higher education, have described the purpose of higher education: Our colleges and universities need to encourage, foster, and assist our students, faculty, and administrators in finding their own authentic way to an individual life where meaning and purpose are tightly interwoven with intellect and action, where compassion and care are infused with insight and knowledge. (56

Dolby, Nadine, Popular Culture and Democratic Practice, Harvard Educational Review, 73(Fall, 2003), 258-284.

Reviews the history of popular culture research and its place in practical action; discusses the need for radical democratic practices that utilize popular culture as a site for political struggle

Research in Youth Culture and Policy: Current Conditions and Future Directions

Doria, the fictional main character in Faiza Guène’s (2006/2004) acclaimed novel, Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, is an immigrant teenager growing up in the Paris projects. In the novel, Doria struggles to find her place in a society which seems to offer little hope for the future of the poor, black immigrants whose presence in France defines the postcolonial moment (Dimitriadis and McCarthy 2001). While Doria’s parents and those of her friends and classmates long for home, Doria and her generation know only France, despite the difficulties and hardships life there presents. For them, there is only forward movement into a decidedly hybrid future, one in which their identities are in perpetual translation, as they negotiate constantly changing temporal and spatial registers (Hall 2002). In the U.S. context, JoAnn D’Alisera reflects on her study of Sierra Leonean communities in the Washington, D.C. area, as she writes, “These children, for their part, often describe themselves as simultaneously Sierra Leonean, Muslim, and American. In naming themselves, they more comfortably blur boundaries that their parents struggle to maintain in their own and in their children’s lives” (p.126)

Experiential Learning in Teacher Education : Increasing Awareness of Diversity Through the Immersion Experience

Sixty-four years after the landmark Brown vs. Board of Educationdecision, schools, neighborhoods, and communities in the United States re-main largely segregated by race and class. As a result, many incoming studentsarrive on college and university campuses with limited exposure to people froma wide array of backgrounds and identities. In this article, we examine howstudents enrolled in an undergraduate teacher education course, Multicultur-alism and Education, learned from and reflected on an experiential learningassignment. The assignment, called “Immersion Experience,” required them tohave a brief experience in a cultural context that is different from their own.Through the assignment, students reflected on their own identities, values, andupbringing; learned about their stereotypes and beliefs about discrimination;and began to appreciate experience as a way of deepening their understandingof diversity. In an era in which undergraduates spend more of their time on-line, self-segregated and fractured by political beliefs and social identities andexperiences, assignments such as the “Immersion Experience” help to createthe physical, human encounters with difference that are vital for communityand democracy

“I don’t think the university knows me.”: Institutional culture and lower-income, first-generation college students.

Recognizing the complex and diverse factors impacting first-generation and lower-income college student outcomes, this study seeks to explore the under-examined role of institutional culture on the experiences of these students. Using data gathered from interviews with 6 lower-income, first-generation college students participating in a TRIO Student Support Program at a large, public 4-year institution, we examine how institutional culture shapes student sense of self at the university. Results indicate that institutional culture manifests in two main ways: 1) through administrative and faculty perceptions and interactions, and 2) through peer perceptions of and interactions with social class. The results of this exploration highlight the complexity of the lower-income, first-generation college student experience and point to an opportunity to shift the discussion of these populations away from the use of a deficit language that focuses on the shortcomings of the student, and moves toward an acknowledgment of the role of the institution in the barriers that students face

Common origins, common futures : reflections on identity and difference in education

The history of human evolution is fascinating and complex indeed. Modern science as revealed by the disciplines of archaeology, palaeontology, and genetics presents strong evidence about the common origins of humankind. Dispersal from the birthplace over millennia has produced a mosaic of identities that are cultural artefacts or social constructs and determined more by psychology, sociology and ideology than by biology. The environmentally induced differences that largely shape identity have often been the source of conflict and wars. The questions asked are: are conflicts and wars natural and immutable human dispositions? And, how can the negative aspects of identity and difference be managed in such a manner that the proclivity towards conflicts and self-annihilation is minimised or undermined through the education process? The articles in this volume grapple with the issues of commonality, difference and identity from different perspectives and situational circumstances using the education domain as an instance of reflection and action. Through the learning process, a healthy understanding of identity that is not parochial or chauvinistic, and tolerance of difference can be achieved. Healthy learning environments can play an important role in promoting a better, sophisticated understanding of human nature and that difference in whatever form it is manifested is a matter of social convenience – not fundamental