This chapter describes a multidisciplinary faculty self-study about reciprocity in service-learning.
The study began with each co-author participating in a Decoding interview. We describe how
Decoding combined with collaborative self-study had a positive impact on our teaching practice.
Building Bridges from the Decoding Interview to Teaching Practice
Jennifer Pettit, Melanie Rathburn, Victoria Calvert, Roberta Lexier, Margot Underwood, Judy
Gleeson, and Yasmin Dean
In February 2014, fourteen students and two professors traveled to the remote jungles of
Honduras to participate in a global service-learning project. Upon consultation with
community leaders, it was determined that footbridges would be built along a flooded path
to ensure that the children in the community could safely walk to school. Believing that this
initial consultation meant working with the community rather than dictating what should
be done for them, the group got to work, collecting materials from the surrounding jungle
and beginning to construct bridges. Very quickly, however, it became apparent that the
students and professors were ill-equipped to build effective bridges; the construction was
incredibly difficult and the roads continuously flooded despite their best efforts.
Throughout the morning, members of the community began congregating around the
construction sites, watching the lack of progress and laughing at the group’s efforts.
Realizing that the locals had tremendous knowledge and experience, the group began to
consult with them to determine the best way to construct bridges that would actually meet
the needs of the community. Moreover, the locals began to assist with the construction. By
the end of the day, the group, in collaboration with local community members, had built a
number of bridges that provided the children with a dry path to reach their school.
Working with the community was substantially more effective than working for them. This

experience made the faculty members question their grasp of the concept of reciprocity,
something integral to community service-learning projects and a concept they originally
felt they understood.
The experience of this group of students and their professors, two co-authors of this
chapter, is all too common and not an isolated incident. This is not surprising given that it has
been argued that “service learning pedagogy requires and fosters learning—often
transformational, paradigm-shifting learning—on the part of everyone involved, including
faculty” (Clayton, Bringle & Hatcher 2013, 245). Indeed, given that service-learning
necessitates faculty giving up control and working reciprocally with partners, sometimes much
more than bridges need to be shifted and changed. Recognizing this, and due to our commitment
to developing our teaching practice, we, the authors of this article, set out to investigate our own
thinking with regard to reciprocity through a collaborative self-study, which included the use of a
Decoding interview (Pace & Middendorf 2004).
Our initial research examined how the Decoding interview followed by our self-study
process generated learning about reciprocity specifically (Miller-Young, Dean, Rathburn, Pettit,
Underwood, Gleeson, Lexier, Calvert, and Clayton 2015). In this chapter we report how
Decoding had an impact on four areas of our teaching practice: 1) our identity and role as
teachers, especially in an experiential learning setting; 2) the discovery of similarities and
differences we shared with colleagues from diverse disciplines; 3) new strategies for forging
meaningful and truly reciprocal relationships with partners in global service-learning field
schools; and finally, 4) our design, delivery and assessment in field schools.
Background and Methodology

Our self-study stemmed from the creation of a multidisciplinary collaborative faculty learning
community on service-learning in field schools. In particular, motivated by experiences such as
the one in Honduras described above, we had a common purpose (Schoenfeld 1999)--we were
curious to explore the similarities and differences among our field schools and we wanted to
analyze the different ways that we approached reciprocity in these service-learning courses (see
also Miller-Young et al. 2015). We also attempted to at least partially address Kreber’s (2013)
argument that the scholarship of teaching and learning has not lived up to its potential as it “has
not adequately taken up the bigger questions of social justice and equality in and through higher
education” (Kreber 2013, 3).
Our group members varied in our level of experience with service-learning and facultyled field schools, and we came from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. Our field schools were
equally diverse (see author biographies at the end of this chapter for further information).
Kitchen and Ciuffetelli Parker (2009) maintain that the self-study methodology is particularly
effective within this collaborative type of community of practice. Indeed, Louie and colleagues
(2003) argue that “when compared to participation in traditional teaching workshops, self-study
research has numerous benefits. It specifically addresses the faculty member's teaching context,
including the subject matter, student population, and other unique aspects of a class. Rather than
playing the role of passive participants, faculty members engaged in self-study research actively
control the purpose, agenda, and timing of their work as well as its outcomes. Self-study research
also enables faculty members to create a tangible product from their work in the form of teaching
knowledge that is transferable to colleagues” (Louie, Drevdahl, Purdy, and Stackman 2003, 51).
Global Service-Learning (GSL) and Reciprocity. Service-learning has been described
by many as “a high impact teaching practice, ” one in which students “learn more, gain better

understanding and application of the course material, improve writing and critical thinking skills,
and can better apply course principles to new situations.” (Wilsey, Friedrichs, Garbrich, and
Chung 2014, 79, 81). Clearly service learning can has a beneficial impact on students, but it is
not without its faults. As Stoecker and Tryon (2009) explain, “there has been growing
dissatisfaction among people both inside and outside the service learning movement since the
1990s, particularly when it comes to the issue of whether service learning truly serves
communities” (5). Faculty who lead GSL activities are typically motivated by a sincere belief in
the potential for positive reciprocal relationships with community partners (Hartman and Kiely
2014; Sharpe and Dear 2013). Yet, faculty involved in GSL need to critically reflect on the
extent to which they are actually involved in reciprocal relationships. While some models to
guide practice have been developed (such as Leffers and Mitchell 2011), more remains to be
done. Hence our desire to study and deepen our own thinking about the concept of reciprocity
and how it affected our teaching practice.
Our Self-Study Process. The Decoding the Disciplines model was initially created to
help faculty articulate, and subsequently to help students learn, discipline-specific ways of
thinking through the study of a “bottleneck” or difficult concepts. Typically Decoding uses a
cross-disciplinary format to study ways of operating in a discipline, such as history, political
science, or music (see, for instance, Díaz, Middendorf, Pace and Shopkow 2007, Bernstein 2012,
and Burkholder 2011). However, we discovered that Decoding can also assist faculty in
articulating and reflecting upon their thinking about a difficult concept which they themselves
struggle with (Miller-Young et al. 2015), which in turn can have an impact upon teaching
practice. Our data comes from three sources and two phases of self-study. First, we each
participated in a Decoding interview in which we were repeatedly asked to delve more deeply,

and to better explain our ideas and claims about reciprocity in our courses. Second, self-study
group members wrote two individual written reflections, one of which was written after reading
the transcription of each individual’s Decoding interview, and another after a group discussion.
In the second phase of our study, over a year after we conducted our Decoding interviews, we
engaged in recorded group discussions where we focused on the changes we had made to
practice as a result of our study.
The Impact of our Decoding Self-study
At the conclusion of this second phase of our self-study, we determined that the
Decoding process and self-study had a significant influence upon four main areas of our teaching
practice.
Our Identity and Role as Teachers, Particularly in an Experiential Learning
Setting. The first area that the Decoding process had an influence upon was our identity and role
as teachers. Interviews, reflections and group discussions often revealed that in order to be
successful in the setting of field schools, we needed to adopt an approach different to that
typically taken in a traditional classroom setting. This counter-normative nature of service
learning which positions faculty, students and community partners simultaneously as both
learners and teachers (Sigmon 1979) and which invites all of these partners into unfamiliar and
challenging reciprocal relationships as co-creators, can be disconcerting due to academic norms
which “reinforce the distinct identities of faculty as educators and generators of knowledge,
students as learners, and community members as recipients of academic expertise” (Clayton et al
2013, 246). Yet Boyer (1990 as cited in Leibowitz & Bozalek 2015, 11) has argued that “good
teaching means that faculty, as scholars, are also learners.”

Pettit explained in the last group discussion that “it is humbling how little you know
sometimes, and how much people share with you and are willing to share with you.” Likewise,
through Decoding Pettit learned that she was actually not as in control of the field school as she
initially supposed to be the case, as did Calvert: “I am used to being in a structured environment
where I can control the A, B, C…and I control the assessment…and then we go through
something like this and reflect upon it deeply and you realize, `You are ten percent of this.
Maybe 15.’…as a professor in a structured course, we are the drivers. In a course like this I feel
more like a conduit.” Gleeson fittingly explained that “if we are trying to model this idea that
reciprocity is important and that we are working in partnerships, then being top down with the
students is not going to work.”
Interestingly, self-study participants also realized that the Decoding process revealed
more than information about their teaching practice. Lexier, for example, in the final discussion
described how “A lot of what came out of my Decoding interview was about my own activism
and why I do what I do, and it became much more of an internal focus…The Decoding process
for me was really good both in terms of understanding what the heck we are really doing when
we go to Honduras, but also understanding my own internal dynamics and why this is what I am
doing.” Calvert also explained that Decoding “helped me crystalize. `Ah, this is what I am doing
here. This is my value. This is why I am motivated to come and work.’” In other words, our
interviews and reflections gave us a venue within which we could reflect upon topics beyond our
teaching practice. This came as a surprise to many, as did the impact, both positive and negative,
of coming from a variety of disciplines and types of field schools.
Discovery of Similarities and Differences We Shared With Colleagues from Diverse
Disciplines. Using the Decoding interview to launch a self-study composed of faculty from a

variety of disciplines was not without difficulties. At the start of the study, disciplinary
differences that ranged from simple misunderstandings about terminology to significant
differences in methodologies and theoretical approaches seemed like they might be barriers to
learning. At the end of the entire Decoding process Pettit described her attendance at the first
Decoding group meeting in the following way: “I was terrified at that first meeting…I didn’t
think we had any commonality at all.” Similarly, mid-way through the process Calvert explained
that “This experience has been like a trip to a foreign culture. One of the challenges is the
process itself – it is not linear, it is spiral with feedback loops. In my previous experience, I
controlled the process and created a linear structure with a finite sequential process and
deadlines… The peek into the values and assumptions of faculty in other disciplines has been a
bit surprising.” At the start of the study, Rathburn was also concerned about her ability to
effectively contribute to the group due to disciplinary differences. In her reflection on the
process she noted: “I felt there was a huge disciplinary divide – they were talking about social
justice and I remember sitting in the car thinking ‘What is social justice and how do I even fit
into this?’...The language used by those in the ‘caring fields’ is very different than what I am
used to and that was a bit unsettling.”
As the Decoding process unfolded, however, shared experiences, values and characteristics
emerged (Miller-Young et al. 2015). In the final discussion Underwood explains that “we shifted
to a commonality that we didn’t start with.” Indeed, one of the major strengths of this group,
according to every participant, was the perspectives and values from different disciplines that
helped to inform our understanding of reciprocity. For example, despite initial misgivings,
Lexier later claimed that “While it has been difficult sometimes to understand other approaches
and where people are coming from…it has been incredibly positive to do that.” Similarly,

Gleeson stated: “I think the fact that there are people from different perspectives and different
academic disciplines has been great because we learn a lot from each other; even though we
have the same kind of issues, we have different lenses.” Dean reiterated this point in her
reflection on the group dynamics: “this cross pollination of ideas is incredibly deep and is fully
shaping my work and professional and personal identities… I am getting increasingly aware of
my own thinking and approaches.” Likewise, in the final discussion Lexier reiterated that “we
had shared values. That is what brought us together. The values we wanted to implement in our
field schools…”
One of the most important values that faculty sought to realize in their field schools was
forging respectful reciprocal relationships with partners in service-learning courses. Again, the
Decoding process revealed how best we could do this, the result of which was a deeper
understanding of reciprocity and the specific changes that needed to be made to the relationships
with our partners.
New Strategies for Forming Meaningful and Truly Reciprocal Relationships with
Partners in Global Service-Learning Field Schools. For Dean, Pettit, Gleeson, and
Underwood, for whom reciprocal approaches were part of their disciplinary training, reciprocity
was not a new concept, but the Decoding interview and ensuing activities caused them to
question their assumptions about whether or not they were fully enacting the concept in their
partnerships. Thus, even for study participants for whom reciprocity was a concept that was
integral to their disciplinary training, the Decoding method provided new insights about
reciprocity and teaching practice. Perhaps most importantly, our collaborative reflections helped
us all to more clearly see the importance of working with and not for our community partners
(Clayton et al. 2013); that as Calvert explained in the last group discussion, “we need to focus on

the partner in partnership.” We realized that we needed to more fully respect and appreciate
what our partners give our students, rather than simply focusing on what we contribute to our
partners through service-learning projects. As a result of this more comprehensive and deeper
knowledge about reciprocity, we determined a number of specific changes in our relationships
and dealings with our community partners which needed to be made.
To begin, we learned to be less leery about overworking our partners. Rathburn, for
instance, realized that she “must be more strategic and intentional with my partners and I need to
include them in all aspects of the service-learning project. Part of my thinking was to not add
any additional workload to partners, but I realize I was missing out on a huge opportunity to
collaborate meaningfully.” Similarly, Underwood learned that “only if you are really engaged
with a partner, and you are both involved in planning the course that you are moved to a high
level of showing reciprocity.”
We also recognized that we needed to spend more time prior to the field schools
brainstorming with our partners, ideally in a face-to-face setting. In addition, rather than telling
our partners what we thought would work, we allowed them to take control, which resulted in
more meaningful experiences for both them and students. For example, in the past Pettit asked
her community partners to plan specific activities. After the Decoding process she instead asked
her partners to organize what they thought best and what they wanted to do, and the result was a
much more elaborate and meaningful activity: “They set up a traditional painted lodge tipi for us
in the mountains and brought in elders and played traditional games. Those partners have since
come to the university and given workshops and lectures.”
We also realized that successful, sustainable and reciprocal field schools require a longerterm approach. As Calvert explained during the last group discussion, “that level of partnership

will only work if you have a long-term relationship.” To foster this type of connection, Lexier
and Rathburn, for instance, now travel to Honduras even in the years in which their field school
is not offered.
We also learned about the importance of sharing with our partners the impact that the field
school has on field school students and beyond. At the end of the Decoding process Rathburn
described how “one of the complaints that comes out of many field schools, and from people we
have talked to, and from our partners in Honduras, is that volunteer groups come in, they
volunteer, and they leave. Nothing ever comes back. They don’t even know the outcomes.” We
discovered that one particularly effective way to show partners the impact of the field school was
to invite them to Calgary, Alberta to our university. When Gleeson and Underwood invited their
Dominican Republic partners to Calgary, for instance, their partners were taken aback when they
saw posters about the field school and that a university publication had been written about the
field school; Gleeson explained that “when they saw that they were thrilled…they were
surprised.” Likewise, since we started this study, Pettit and her co-instructor have made a
concerted effort to bring their community partners to the university, resulting in a number of coorganized events such as a speaker series and the implementation of an elder-in-residence. As
Rathburn pointed out “you can bring your partners back to campus so that you are affecting not
just your students, but changing an entire institution.” Such visits though, also made faculty
appreciate the onerous nature of their partners having to host faculty and students. Underwood
described this recent experience in the following way: “We are now the hosts and feeling what
they feel…there is time and effort to make all this work. Well imagine what it feels like if you
hosting eighteen people all at the same time!” In addition to making faculty reflect more fully

on their relationships with partners, our study has also had an influence on curriculum design,
delivery and assessment.
Changes to our Design, Delivery and Assessment in Field Schools. As a result of
realizing our shortcomings despite our experience and disciplinary expertise, we also realized
that we could do a better job of preparing our students for service learning. For instance, by
interrogating her understanding of reciprocity, Underwood gained a better respect for the
challenges that her students face when dealing with this potentially difficult topic: “it really
helped clarify for me that for students, of course they are going to find this a bottleneck concept!
They haven’t had the experience we have had, they haven’t been out there… it reminded me not
to brush it over as much as I was, and think ‘Why aren’t you getting this?’” Through Decoding
we were reminded that field schools are about more than developing skills and content—they are
about developing values and helping to create global citizens. Such integration of ways of
thinking and being takes time.
We also discovered that significant changes needed to be made to our curriculum design,
delivery and assessment. One of the most important takeaways from our self-study was the value
of not scripting too many things ahead of time, that serendipity has a valuable role to play in
field schools. We also learned that dissonance and discomfort is not necessarily a bad thing for
faculty and students. Another discovery was the importance of providing space and time for
non-graded reflection and allowing students to help shape their assignments and service-learning
activities. Most importantly, we realized that student and faculty learning is not always
immediate or quantifiable. As Rathburn explained during the last group discussion, “It is nice
seeing the development of students over time and the things they might not have realized at the
time…one thing they are reporting during interviews that come months after field school is that

it has changed how they participate in their community.” We also came to an agreement that
assigning grades presents a special challenge in field schools, though we did not have concrete
solutions to this issue. As Pettit explained it “sometimes it feels like we are putting a round peg
in a square hole, especially when marking service learning.”
Throughout our self-study we also began to think more about the needs of our students.
Though field schools are relatively short in duration, our self-study helped us understand that
students often need help acclimatizing back to Canada and to the university setting. Rathburn,
for example, shared in our final group discussion that during recent post-course interviews
students revealed that “they couldn’t talk to people here and people didn’t understand what they
went through.” Students reported that the field school had a much larger long-term impact than
they anticipated. Many expressed a desire to act as mentors for future field school participants
so they could share their experiences, and/or to continue their learning in advanced field schools.
Our students also sought out ways to sustain the relationships they had built with community
partners. However, many also struggled with the effects of taking part in field school. As Pettit
explained, “we have had students break down in tears when they return. They didn’t realize
what it felt like to be a minority. They also recognized they were not as culturally sensitive as
they originally thought.” As a result of reflecting more about the needs of students, many of us
have included more post field school activities and meetings with students.
In addition, the self-study made us reflect more on how teaching in a field school setting
could result in an impact on teaching practice beyond field school. During the final group
discussion Rathburn, for example, described how new insights as a result of Decoding “changed
how I approach even my classes that don’t have anything to do with service-learning…It has
changed how I am teaching students and how I am talking about issues, to think about multiple

perspectives…I am starting to think about how this bleeds into all my other courses.” Similarly,
Gleeson explained that “because we have been on field schools, we see students differently.”
Conclusion and Looking Forward
Fitch, Steink & Hudson (2013) argue that “well-designed service learning experiences serve as
bridges between the curriculum and the world outside the classroom” (57). Hence, it is not only
actual bridges like those described in the vignette at the beginning of this study that are of
significance, but also the “bridges” or connections that need to be made between faculty,
students and host communities. Decoding combined with self-study allowed us to explore and
analyze those links. As Calvert aptly pointed out during our last group discussion, “what is key is
reciprocity not only between us and our partners and partners and students, but also us and our
students, us and other teachers.” It can be argued that the Decoding interview and self-study
process we utilized in this study served as an impetus and enriched faculty understanding of the
vexing and oft-misunderstood concept of reciprocity, which in turn had a significant impact on
four important aspects of our teaching practice. This enhanced knowledge encouraged us to alter
our global service-learning courses in pragmatic ways with the goal of encouraging meaningful
and beneficial experiences for faculty, community partners and students, resulting in everyone
becoming co-learners and co-educators. As Lexier said during the final group discussion, “this is
a journey we have all grown from.” Indeed, during this process of becoming critically aware
about reciprocity we moved beyond notions of faculty as “expert” and generators of knowledge
and instead became learners ourselves.
In addition, to validate our findings through outside perspectives, some of us are
expanding upon this work. For instance, Rathburn and Lexier are currently engaged in a
research study that involves interviewing students about their understanding of service learning,

Underwood and Gleeson are exploring host partner perspectives regarding collaboration and
partnership (Underwood, Gleeson, Konnert, Wong, and Valerio in press), and Dean is engaged in
a collaborative self-study with her students and field school’s host partner, exploring all partners’
experiences of reciprocity during the India field school (Dean, Field, Cole, Sharan, Sharan,
Dorrestijn, May, Sinclair, Pitre, and Gopalkrishan 2016). Hence, we recognize that this is a
continuous process and that much remains to be learned with every new adventure we embark
upon with our students and community partners at home and abroad.

References
Bernstein, Jeffrey. 2012. “Plowing through Bottlenecks in Political Science.” In The Scholarship
of Teaching and Learning in and Across the Disciplines, edited by Kathleen McKinney, 74-92.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Burkholder, J. Peter. 2011. “Decoding the Discipline of Music History for Our Students.”
Journal of Music History Pedagogy 1 (2): 93-111.
Clayton, Patti H., Robert G. Bringle, and Julie A. Hatcher. 2013. Research on Service Learning:
Conceptual Frameworks and Assessment, Vol. 2A: Students and Faculty (IUPUI Series on
Service Learning Research, Bringle & Hatcher, series eds.). Sterling: Stylus.
Dean, Yasmin, Terence Field, Rashmi Cole, Punita Sharan, Jyoti Sharan, Marleen Dorrestijn,
Sheri May, Celina Sinclair, Mikeltie Pitre, and Narayan Gopalkrishan. “Beyond the Tourist’s
Gaze: Towards Culturally Dynamic University-Community Partnership in International Service
Learning Field Schools.” Workshop presented at the Joint World Conference on Social Work,
Education and Social Development, Seoul, Korea, June 2016.

Díaz, Arlene, Joan Middendorf, David Pace, and Leah Shopkow. 2008. “’The History Learning
Project’ A Department ‘Decodes’ Its Students.” Journal of American History 94 (4): 1211-1224.
Fitch, Peggy, Pamela Steinke, and Tara D. Hudson. 2013. “Research and Theoretical
Perspectives on Cognitive Outcomes of Service Learning.” In Research on Service Learning:
Conceptual Frameworks and Assessment, edited by P. H. Clayton, R.C. Bringle, & J.A. Hatcher,
57-84. Sterling: Stylus.
Hartman, Eric, and Richard Kiely. 2014. “Pushing Boundaries: Introduction to the Global
Service-Learning Special Section.” Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning 21 (1):
55-63.
Kitchen, Julian, and Darlene Ciuffetelli Parker. 2009. “Self-study Communities of Practice:
Developing Community, Critically Inquiring as Community.” In Self-study Research
Methodologies for Teacher Educators, edited by C.A. Lassonde, S. Galman & C. K., 107-28.
Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Kreber, Caroline. 2013. Authenticity in and Through Teaching in Higher Education: The
Transformative Potential of the Scholarship of Teaching. New York: Routledge.
Leffers, Jeanne, and Emma Mitchell. 2011. “Conceptual Model for Partnership and
Sustainability in Global Health.” Public Health Nurse 28 (1): 91-102. doi: 10.1111/j.15251446.2010.00892.x.
Leibowitz, Brenda, and Vivienne Bozalek. 2015. “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
from as Social Justice Perspective.” Teaching in Higher Education. doi:
10.1080/13562517.2015.1115971.

Louie, Belinda Y., Denise J. Drevdahl, Jill M. Purdy, and Richard W. Stackman. 2003.
“Advancing the Scholarship of Teaching through Collaborative Self-Study.” Journal of Higher
Education 74 (2): 150-171.
Miller-Young, Janice, Yasmin Dean, Melanie Rathburn, Jennifer Pettit, Margot Underwood,
Judy Gleeson, Roberta Lexier, Victoria Calvert, and Patti Clayton. 2015. “Decoding Ourselves:
An Inquiry into Faculty Learning About Reciprocity in Service-Learning.” Michigan Journal of
Community Service Learning 22(1): 32-47.
Pace, David, and Joan Middendorf. eds. 2004. Decoding the Disciplines: Helping Students
Learn Disciplinary Ways of Thinking. New Directions in Teaching and Learning, 98. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Schoenfeld, Alan H. 1999. “The core, the canon and the development of research skills.” In
Issues in Education Research, edited by C. Lagemann & L. S., 166-202. San Francisco: JosseyBass.
Sharpe, Erin K., and Samantha Dear. 2013. “Points of Discomfort: Reflection on Power and
Partnerships in International Service-Learning.” Michigan Journal of Community Service
Learning 19 (2): 49-57.
Sigmon, Robert L. 1979. “Service Learning: Three Principles.” Synergist, National Centre for
Service-Learning, ACTION 8 (1): 9-11.
Stoecker, Randy, and Elizabeth Tryon. 2009. “Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and
Service Learning.” In The Unheard Voices: Community Organization and Service Learning,
edited by Randy Stoecker and Elizabeth Tryon, 1-18. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Underwood, Margot, Judy Gleeson, Candace Konnert, Katherine Wong, and Bautista
Valerio. (in press). "Global host partner perspectives: Utilizing a conceptual model to strengthen

collaboration with host partners for international nursing student placements." Public Health
Nursing.
Wilsey, Stephanie A., Jessica Friedrichs, Chrys Gabrich, and Ting-Ting Chung. 2014. “A
privileged pedagogy for privileged students? A Preliminary Mixed-Methods Analysis
Comparing First-Generation and Non-First-Generation College Students on Post-Evaluations of
Service-Learning Courses.” PRISM: A Journal of Regional Engagement 3 (4): 79-97.

Acknowledgement
All authors contributed equally to this research project but the lead author was primarily
responsible for writing this manuscript.

JENNIFER PETTIT is Chair of the Department of Humanities at Mount Royal University and a
Professor of History and Indigenous Studies. Her field school involved travel to a variety of
Indigenous nations in Alberta.

MELANIE RATHBURN is an Associate Professor at Mount Royal University who is crossappointed into the Department of General Education and the Department of Biology. Her field
school took place in Honduras.

VICTORIA CALVERT is a Professor of Business at Mount Royal University where she has
practised CSL in her courses for twenty years. Her field school took place in the Cook Islands.

ROBERTA LEXIER is an Assistant Professor in the Department of General Education at Mount
Royal University. Roberta’s field school was located in Honduras.

MARGOT UNDERWOOD is an Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at
Mount Royal University. Her field school was located in the Dominican Republic.

JUDY GLEESON is an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Mount
Royal University. Her field school took place in the Dominican Republic.

YASMIN DEAN is an Associate Professor of Social Work in the Faculty of Health, Community
and Education at Mount Royal University. Her field school was located in India.