Negotiating identity in a language-focused service-learning project

As migration to and within the U.S. has increased, and with it a desire for access to English, a significant portion of service-learning has involved university students in programs for English in diasporic and/or historically marginalized communities (DuBord & Kimball, 2016; Lear & Abbott, 2008; Leeman, 2011; Leeman, Rabin, & Román-Mendoza, 2011; Rabin, 2009). Tracking this trend, service-learning in applied linguistics has become a generative area for research (Hellebrandt & Varona, 1999; Wurr & Hellebrandt, 2007; Perren & Wurr, 2015; Wurr, 2013). The resulting literature is extensive, and while there is general agreement on positive academic outcomes for service-learning, scholars in service-learning and applied linguistics whose critical agendas converge on equity have found mixed results when it comes to developing university students’ critical consciousness (Abbott & Lear, 2010; De Leon, 2014; Eyler & Giles, 1999; Flower, 2002; Green, 2003; Kozma, 2015; Larsen, 2014). Some critical researchers have approached this challenge from a conceptual standpoint, reframing “service” as “engagement” for instance, while others propose a synthesis of democratic and critical multicultural education, and/or advocate for critical intercultural inquiry. However, the ways in which service-learning may be experienced differently by diverse students have been overlooked in the literature, suggesting normative assumptions of students’ social identities (Butin, 2006; Flower, 2002; Green, 2003; DuBord & Kimball, 2016; Meens, 2014; Mitchell, Donahue, & Young-Law, 2012). Fundamental to critical service-learning, which prioritizes relationships, processes of “re-imagining” roles, and re-distributions of power, is an understanding of participants’ social positions and identities (Donahue & Mitchell, 2010, p. 50). These are the issues taken up in this dissertation research study. The study asks: 1) What repertoires of identity are co-constructed through service-learning activity? 2) What broad discourses of identity become salient to university students? 3) How are these identities negotiated? What interactional moves contribute? This dissertation represents a four-year qualitative research study that explores university students’ descriptions of their activity in a service-learning project for English conversation in a linguistically diverse community. Data contributed by university students and community members include surveys, reflective journals, interviews, and recorded conversations. Taking a narrative inquiry approach (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012), the study finds that university students of varied backgrounds grappled with symbolic valences of English and hegemonic categories of membership in the U.S. polity, applied to themselves and to others. This dissertation study extends sociocultural theories of learning and identity to service-learning in applied linguistics, foregrounding the central role of language in constructing social relations; and the study demonstrates the potential of a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) model to advance justice-oriented community partnerships for language education.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Jessie Hutchison Curti