LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations Spring 4-2016 Service and Learning for Whom? Toward a Critical Decolonizing Bicultural Service Learning Pedagogy Kortney Hernandez Loyola Marymount University, kortneyh@gmail.com Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.edu/etd Part of the Epistemology Commons, and the Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons Recommended Citation Hernandez, Kortney, "Service and Learning for Whom? Toward a Critical Decolonizing Bicultural Service Learning Pedagogy" (2016). LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations.edu/etd/473 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@lmu.
LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY Service and Learning for Whom? Toward a Critical Decolonizing Bicultural Service Learning Pedagogy by Kortney Hernandez A dissertation presented to the Faculty of the School of Education, Loyola Marymount University, in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Education 2016 Service and Learning for Whom? Toward a Critical Decolonizing Bicultural Service Learning Pedagogy Copyright © 2016 by Kortney Hernandez ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the beautiful lives and souls that I have been lucky to encounter throughout my life—too many to name (so I’ll do my best). Every piece of this dissertation was built from a collective understanding of my work and relationships with others. To Cohort 10 and especially my dissertation group (Arturo, Atheneus, Becky, Evelyn, and Kenzo) thank you for all of your support, critical conversations, kindness, and love that you have extended to me. Thank you for challenging me as well—I would not have wanted to go through this journey with any other group! I have to acknowledge my dear friends and many colleagues (you know who you are!) who sustained me throughout this process.
The meal breaks, mini-vacations, random trips, and phone calls were much needed at times when I did not think I could get through this dissertation. I also have to thank my dear students, families, children, and the communities that I have worked with, you all have inspired me deeply. I am always reenergized and fueled with passion after being present with you. Thank you for keeping me grounded.
To the School of Education/Doctoral faculty and leadership at LMU, thank you for your support and care. Pam Willis, thank you for believing in me, for your wisdom, and hiring me to work for the department—I may have never learned about this doctorate program had I not met you. I will always cherish your support, love, and wisdom. Sergio Pesqueira, I am so grateful to have met you and for your support and encouragement to apply to doctorate programs when others tried to talk me out of it—thank you.
McCarthy, thank you for nominating me for the iii UCEA Jackson Scholars program and to everyone at LMU who ensured that I was financially supported for the past two years to attend conferences. Above all, I wish to recognize my family for all that they have sacrificed and done to support me throughout my life. To my siblings—Matthew, Kaili, and Steven—I am grateful to each of you for all that you have done for me. I love you all dearly.
To my nephew, Elliott, thank you for always reminding me to have fun and to “stop doing homework all the time.” To my brothers/sister-in-law—Laura, Richard and Lucho—I feel so honored that you are a part of our family. This past year has been one of the toughest for each of you, and I deeply admire your strength in dealing with the loss of both of your parents. To Rosa and Luis, our guardian angels, your lives were taken from us too soon but we will always cherish and honor your spirits. To Rosa, I will always remember how full of life you were and hold dear to my heart the many Spanish lessons you gave me and how you could always see the good in me when sometimes I could not even see it in myself.
To Luis, I will always remember your smile and kind- heartedness. You are one of the few people I’ve ever met that always treated every single person you encountered with dignity and respect. My dear family, I love you all so much! This dissertation would definitely not have been possible without the lifelong loving support and sacrifices of my beautiful mother—whom I cherish and love so deeply. Thank you for your undying protection of my voice, so that it could be nurtured and not silenced.
You always encouraged me to speak up and against injustices even if I got in trouble—and you have always had my back and stood right beside me. You’ve instilled in me a giving spirit and a deep understanding of what it means to be loyal to those whom I love and it is because of this that I honor you. Thank you for reading over my dissertation at critical moments when I was figuring iv out how to convey some of my most intimate thoughts. Your insights were key, especially when you pushed me to speak from my heart.
I love you deeply and I am convinced, as your coworkers always tell me, that you are the best mother ever! To my dissertation committee, thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything that you have done to support me—especially for reading this dissertation and providing your critical insights. Porfilio, although we’ve never met in person, I had the opportunity to sit in on a presentation that you were a part of at a conference and got the chance to see how gentle and kind you are with those whom you interacted with. I am so glad that you are a part of my dissertation journey. I was inspired by your book to push myself to think deeper and more radically with regard to service learning.
And I will always appreciate your kind words and insights from the dissertation proposal defense, in which you affirmed for me that this work was important. Shabazian, you are definitely one of the kindest people I’ve ever met and I truly admire how you deeply care about and support those around you. I thank you for your undying support since I first met you/started in the Master’s program back in 2011. I’ve learned so much from you about early childhood and the importance of how we treat young children.
I also want to thank you for all of your supportive emails, mentorship, caring presence, check-ins, sharing your favorite quotes with me, and for nominating me to be a part of the David Clark Seminar. You always challenge me to be a better person. Darder, you are the most loving, kind, humble, and amazingly fierce mentor. I am so honored that I had the opportunity to be your research assistant and that you are my Dissertation Chair.
Thank you for always having my back and supporting me through this process. You’ve v nurtured and awakened my political spirit and voice and for that I will always be eternally grateful. Words cannot begin to describe or convey how deeply grateful I am to have met you. You are definitely one of our modern day civil rights leaders—constantly and tirelessly fighting for revolutionary change.
You embody courage, strength, and wisdom, and I admire you deeply. Thank you for all that you are and all that you have given to me from your heart, mind, body and spirit. I am so honored to have had the opportunity to work with you and for the mentorship, wisdom, kindness, love and life lessons you've taught me. There is no way this dissertation would have turned out to be what it is without your undying patience, attention, time, support and nurturing.
Simply put, I love ya and everything you stand for. This dissertation has been a long and arduous journey, a labor of love as Paulo Freire and Antonia Darder would say, and I am deeply grateful for the love and support of everyone that has touched my life throughout this process. It is my hope that I can one day return the favor. vi DEDICATION In loving memory of Rosa Hernandez and Luis Rodriguez, two beautiful and precious souls who passed away during the writing of this dissertation and who are now reunited in heaven together.
vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. vii LIST OF TABLES. xi LIST OF FIGURES. xiii CHAPTER 1: Introduction: A Critical Narrative and Reflection.
1 Statement of the Problem. 13 Service Learning Institutionalized in Higher Education. 17 The National Focus on Service and Volunteerism. 21 What is Service Learning?.
28 Conceptual Approach to Service Learning. 29 Critical Pedagogical Principles. 30 Critical Bicultural Pedagogy. 34 Critical Decolonizing Pedagogy.
36 Toward a Critical Bicultural Decolonizing Approach to Service Learning. 44 CHAPTER 2: Historical, Colonial, and Philosophical Foundations of Service Learning. 46 What is Service?. 47 Roots of Service Learning.
48 Slavery and Higher Education. 49 Afterlife of Slavery. 52 Anthropocide, Anthropology, and the Production of the “Othered”. 54 Service Learning Origins.
57 Service and Learning. 65 Canonical Forms of Service and Learning. 67 Programs and Acts. 70 Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.
71 Community Service Trust Act of 1990 and National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993. 72 Current Organizations that Inform Service Learning. 73 viii Campus Compact. 73 The Research University Community Engagement Network (TRUCEN).
74 National Society for Experiential Education (NSEE). 77 Carnegie Foundation’s Classification for Community Engagement. 78 CHAPTER 3: Intersections of Politics, Ideology, and the Economy. 80 Traditional Service Learning Discourse.
83 Conservative Service Learning Discourse. 84 Liberal Service Learning Discourse. 86 Politics of Sentimentalism. 93 Hegemony of Helping: The Service Learning Industrial Complex.
94 Colonizing Enculturation through Service Earning. 100 Show Me the Money: Where is the Line Item for the Community. 106 The Logic of Free Labor. 109 Political Economy of Voice.
114 The Mis-Education of Service Learning. 116 CHAPTER 4: Decolonizing the Service Learning Curriculum. 119 Institutionalizing Service Learning Curriculum. 121 The Hidden Curriculum: Unveiling Epistemicides.
125 Interrogating the Service Learning Curriculum. 129 Teaching to the Discourse. 129 Experiential Learning or Experimental Learning. 132 The “Radical Political Economy” Course.
137 The Politics of Food: Constructing the Other. 139 The Maintenance of the Status Quo: Curriculum Politics. 150 Neutrality: The Politics of the Political. 151 Assimilation and Americanization: The “Engaged Citizens” Discourse.
152 Freire and Service Learning. 154 Service Learning: Moving Toward a Critical Decolonizing Bicultural Pedagogy. 158 Beyond the Master/Servant Paradigm. 159 CHAPTER 5: An Emancipatory Vision for a Critical Bicultural Service Learning Pedagogy.
162 Critical Principles for Decolonizing Service Learning Praxis. 163 Resistance and Critique. 164 Disruption of Cultural Hegemony. 165 ix Counter-Hegemonic Practices.
168 Affirmation of the Bicultural Voice and Social Agency. 170 The Dialectical Continuum. 172 Decolonizing Service Learning Praxis. 175 Creating the Conditions for Cultural Democracy.
176 Service Learning As an Act of Love.182 x LIST OF TABLES Table 1: UC Service Learning Campus Offices. 18 Table 2: CSU Service Learning Campus Offices. 19 Table 3: Robert Sigmon’s Typology for Service Learning. 66 xi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.
CSU Demographic Enrollment. David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle. 64 xii ABSTRACT Service and Learning for Whom? Toward a Critical Decolonizing Bicultural Service Learning Pedagogy by Kortney Hernandez The notion of service has enjoyed historical longevity—rooted deeply within our institutions (i., churches, schools, government, military, etc.), reminiscent of indentured servitude, and rarely questioned as a colonizing practice that upholds oppression.