CFP: Service-Learning in TESOL

[Announcement from he-sl listserv]

TESOL Journal Seeks Submissions for a Special Issue

Engaged Teaching and Learning: Service-Learning, Civic Literacy, and TESOL

Deadline for Proposals 1 July 2012

Send abstracts to Guest Editor Adrian Wurr (ajwurr@uidaho.edu)

TESOL Journal seeks proposals for a special issue on Engaged Teaching and Learning: Service-Learning, Civic Literacy, and TESOL. Abstracts should be no more than 600 words and should describe previously unpublished work with implications for a variety of TESOL professionals. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to

·       What best practices exist for service-learning in TESOL? What evidence supports the use of these practices?

·       Do English language learners evince any significant changes in identity or agency as they shift served vs. server roles in society? What impacts, if any, do these shifts have on others? 

·       What can we learn from the impact of international service-learning (ISL) on students’ personal and professional development? Given the intensity of some ISL experiences, what challenges do returning students face in reentry adjustment, reverse culture shock, and career choices?

·       What course and program models exist that promote understandings of diversity by, for example, exploring cultural contact zones and concepts of the “other,” challenging  common cultural stereotypes of linguistic and cultural minorities, and/or encouraging critical reflection on ethnolinguistic and/or political identities?

Proposals that discuss the theoretical, practical, and ethical implications of service-learning with English language learners in domestic and international settings are welcome. Articles focusing on settings outside North America or highlighting student and community partner perspectives are especially encouraged. 

Proposals should be sent to Adrian Wurr at ajwurr@uidaho.edu

with the subject line “TESOL Journal STI Proposal”

and are due by 1 July 2012

Authors whose proposals are selected by the guest editor will be asked to send complete manuscripts by 15 October 2012. Selected abstracts are not a guarantee of publication in the special issue.

BACKGROUND

In 1967 Robert Sigmon and William Ramsey coined the term service learning to describe a project in East Tennessee with Oak Ridge Associated Universities that linked students and faculty with external organizations. As the term and practices associated with it spread over the next two decades, practitioners and scholars struggled to define it. Various terms used for service learning include civic engagement or learning, fieldworking, community literacy, public scholarship, global citizenship, and community-based research. Many of these terms are overlapping, but some have subtle or substantive differences. Nevertheless, consensus is emerging among scholars and practitioners on a recent definition of service-learning as a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.

Equally important, in the past two decades, service-learning has gone international, leading to another recent definition as a pedagogy that links academic study with the practical experience of volunteer community service to make the study immediate, applicable, and relevant through knowledge, analysis, and reflection. International service-learning provides unique learning opportunities that are not afforded during domestic experiences, which includes use of a foreign language and cross-cultural experiences that transcend typical tourism.