‘We live in a dense, tangled global system [and it] is very difficult to give up our certainties -our positions, our beliefs, our explanations. These help define us; they lie at the heart of our personal identity. Yet I believe we will succeed in changing this world only if we can think and work together in new ways. Curiosity is what we need.’
Margaret Wheatley
What is COIL?
The Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) model for teaching and learning aims to foster intercultural competence via a common online multicultural learning environment.
The COIL theme for 2022/23
COLLABORATIVE ENGAGEMENT ACROSS BORDERS
Facilitation Team: Nuria Alonso García, Jaime Demperio & Martyna Kozlowska
This course connects learning communities of Providence College and UQAM using the COIL model as a platform for student engagement and leadership, global education, and human development. The cohort of students from the École de langues (UQAM) and the Global Studies Program (Providence College) reflect on knowledge creation, framing interculturality through storytelling, and essential questions relating to global issues. Students engage in a collaborative process of blog-format reflections, a community voices project, and facilitate intercultural dialogues on topics aligned with the United Nation Global Goals, language plurality, translanguaging and belonging.
Meeting 1: Knowledge Creation: Unlearning How, What and Where We Learn about the World.
We reflected on what we understand as knowledge and who we consider as knowers. An exploration of models of engaged learning and teaching that consider students as colleagues.
Our discussions were fueled by Nick Sousanis’ Unflattening (Harvard University Press, 2015).
Unflattening is the first comic published by Harvard University Press and the book version of Nick Sousanis’ PhD dissertation from Teachers College, Columbia University. It has commanded the attention of the comics scholarship community precisely because it is comics as scholarship. Unflattening, as we see it, is about expanding our way of thinking away from flat pages of text and emphasizing “the importance of visual thinking in teaching and learning.” Sousanis does this by drawing attention to single minded (or single sighted) views of the world, then suggests that we expand our worldview by finding different perspectives.1
1 Unpacking Unflattening: A Conversation by Peter Wilkins & Damon Herd
Related readings to guide further conversations:
Longo, Nicholas V., and Cynthia M. Gibson. “Collaborative engagement: The future of teaching and learning in higher education.” Publicly engaged scholars: Next generation engagement and the future of higher education (2016): 61-75.
Longo, Nicholas V., Abby Kiesa, and Richard Battistoni. “The future of the academy with students as colleagues.” Publicly engaged scholars: Next-generation engagement and the future of higher education(2016): 197-213.
Mignolo, Walter. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. P (2000).
Meeting 2: Positionality Statements
With some of our colleagues across the border we exchanged and discussed our positionality statements and shared stories of our evolving social identities and educational consciousness.
“Little by little / as you left their voice behind /the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds / and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own / that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world / determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life that you could save.”
Mary Oliver
Meeting 3 – Framing Interculturality through Storytelling: Re-storying Our World
We live in a world shaped by stories that permeate our lives like threads, weaving the fabric of human cultures. We live in a world where our stories are contorted and told by the dominant culture. A lot of times, these dominating narratives come back to haunt and shape our own identity through myths and stereotypes.
In this meeting, we exercised the power of a COUNTER-NARRATIVE – the power of stories to expose oppressive beliefs and show how another reality is possible.
Oppressive realities are rooted not just in oppressive economic and power relations, but in oppressive narratives. Our role as agents of change is to undermine these narratives and replace them with new stories that help build a fairer and freer world.
We therefore:
Examine dominant-culture stories.
Consider how power shapes points of view.
Examine how the story normalizes the status quo by universalizing certain experiences and invisibilizing oppression.
Overcome filters: It is not what people do not know, it is what they do know.
A story familiar to all Providence College and UQAM participants is Having an Accent (sounding ‘foreign, not belonging).
The Significance of Linguistic Profiling by John Baugh, TEDxEmory, 2019
Ask or Aks? How Linguistic Prejudice Perpetuates Inequality by Amanda Cole, Ella Jeffries & Peter L. Patrick, The Conversation, 202
Through the analysis of the story’s building elements: Conflict – Characters – Imagery (show, don’t tell) – Assumptions – Foreshadowing*, we carried out a narrative power analysis, proposed a deconstruction of the status-quo and re-construction of an alternative/COUNTER narrative.
*(adapted from Re:Imagining Change by Patrick Reinsborough & Doyle Canning)
A counter-narrative goes beyond the notion that those in relative positions of power can just tell the stories of those in the margins. Instead, these stories must come from the margins, from the perspectives and voices of those who have been historically marginalized.
Resources
The Psychological Damages of Linguistic Racism and International Students in Australia by Sender Dovchin, 2020
Meeting 4: Essential Questions – Purposeful Learning for a Just World
In preparation for the upcoming Intercultural Dialogues: Conversations for Change that students from Providence College and UQAM will organize and moderate throughout the month of November, we devoted this meeting to the discussion of the merits of systems thinking over conventional thinking when it comes to finding sustainable solutions to local and global problems.
We reflected on the words from Donella H. Meadows – one of the most influential environmental thinkers of the twentieth century:
“Remember, always, that everything you know, and everything everyone knows, is only a model. Get your model out there where it can be viewed. Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own.”
The following, seemingly basic, questions became a springboard for a profound discussion …
… and a consensus that we do not live ALONE but in a world of extraordinary INTERDEPENDENCE; one in which our choices and actions have repercussions for people and communities locally, nationally, or internationally.
We also addressed the perils of a SUSTAINED, NORMALIZED, AND NATURALIZED SINGLE story of MODERNITY.
“[…] Hierarchies between cultures and peoples are intimately tied to a single story of progress, development and human evolution”
Declaration of Decolonization by Manish Jain challenges the HEADS UP patterns of representation and engagement (formulated by Machado de Oliveira, 2021): Hegemonic practices • Ethnocentric projections • Ahistorical thinking • Depoliticized orientations • Self-serving motivations • Uncomplicated solutions • Paternalistic investments
Resources:
Machado de Oliveira, Vanessa. Hospicing Modernity. Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism. (2021). [Selected segments]
Stroh, David Peter. Systems Thinking for Social Change. (2015) [Chapters 2, 5 & 6]
Click here for the Intercultural Dialogues: Conversations for Change themes and dates.
These conversations will be ignited by essential questions addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Meeting 5: CONVERSATION FOR CHANGE
This meeting was the first in a series of intercultural dialogues called Conversations for Change.
Discussion themes are selected by each team and are driven by essential questions addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These Conversations are open to anyone invited by the organizing team. The first team of students from Providence College were: Ida Press, Lean Bayles and Sister Huong Pham.
The topic of this Conversation was POVERTY – End poverty in all its forms everywhere
We were first invited to consider the definition of the word poverty and then reflect on what other meanings the word carries for us.
Poverty (n.)-
- the state of being extremely poor.
- the state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount
The responses were strikingly varied: the word poverty evoked reflections on living conditions, emotional struggles, deprivation of human rights, dignity and more.
The team presented us with eye-opening statistics on the distribution of wealth in the world, in the US, and in Canada.
We reflected on systemic mechanisms of countries like the US and Canada that promote growth of wealth to the wealthy but lack effective practices and mechanisms to secure financial stability and growth for the poorest.
In the final small group activity, we were invited to consider images that illustrate different aspects of poverty: wealth divide, child labor, and homelessness. These reflections were guided by the following questions:
https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/occupy-toronto-gm157725086-18309477?phrase=poverty%20in%20canada
1. What thoughts and/or feelings do you have after viewing the picture?
2. Is poverty a personal choice or a reflection of society?
3. There is a common stereotype that people living in poverty can be considered “lazy”. Do you agree or disagree and why?
The reflections led to powerful reactions and further examples of inequality in both poor and rich countries. Honest discussions revealed:
- punitive attitudes that prevail in our consciousness when thinking of the poor,
- how social systems are constructed on the premise that the poor are to blame for their condition.
An overarching resolution stemming from this Conversation for Change was to strive for an understanding of the individual needs and circumstances that lead to poverty, no matter the form or degree. The way forward requires compassion, empathy, and connectedness.
Please join us for our next Conversations for Change on November 16 and November 30 at 6:30 via Zoom here.
Before you marry a person, you should first make them use a computer with slow Internet to see who they really are.