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Exploring Intercultural Communication Strategies in an Alaska-Kenya Collaboration

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Exploring Intercultural Communication Strategies in an Alaska-Kenya Collaboration Meaning Across Difference: Exploring Intercultural Communication Strategies in an Alaska-Kenya Collaboration Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By David Bwire (Wandera) B.Ed. Hons, M.A., M. Litt. Graduate Program in Education Teaching and Learning The Ohio State University 2016 Dissertation Committee: Professor Valerie Kinloch (Adviser) Professor Marcia Farr (Co-adviser) Professor Patricia Enciso Professor Beverly Moss Copyright by David Bwire (Wandera) 2016 Abstract Our contemporary world is increasingly characterized by transnational lives and cross-border connections that span various facets of human life. In light of these developments, schooling needs to be cognizant of shifts in sociocultural, political, economic, and other aspects of life. Schools are expected to prepare students for success and life in the future. Such preparation cannot be oblivious of how forces of globalization, such as increased intercultural contact, continue to contour our daily life. One area where diversity is becoming the norm is the classroom. How might a classroom serve as a space that prepares students for life in a changing and diverse world? What are some resources that could enhance classroom-based teaching and learning? The aim of this study was threefold. Firstly, it sought to respond to calls (see Agar, 1994; Bauman, 1998; Blommaert, 2010; Blommaert & Rampton, 2011; Canagarajah, 2013; Fairclough, 2006; Morrell, 2008; Scollon & Scollon, 2004; Sharifian & Jamarani, 2013) for investigating literacy in contexts characterized by diversity and mobility by spotlighting stories about selves and places that are often marginalized. Secondly, it sought to explore how students’ out-of-classroom experiences serve as rich resources in class-based intercultural literacy activities across geospatial difference. Thirdly, this study ii attempted to investigate how implicit and explicit sociocultural practices intersect with meaning sharing, seen through language use by students who took part in the Alaska-Kenya, asynchronous, classroom-based, online, intercultural collaboration. This collaboration which was based on a writing exchange between middle school students in two seemingly different contexts (Nairobi, Kenya; and Aleknagik, Alaska), exemplifies classroom interactions where meaning sharing traverses geospatial and cultural boundaries. Students addressed issues that mattered deeply to them by using digital tools, and tapping into their experiences and cultural epistemologies. They took up various roles; ambassadors of self and place, narrators, inquirers, observers, critics, cultural practitioners, and as authentic audience members for each other. Through the concept of supralocalization, this study accounts for how they engaged in pragmatic, audience-oriented strategies. Notably, the selves and places represented by the students in their online exchange are variously marginalized. On the one hand, the Aleknagik students are Yup’ik and like other Alaskan Natives, their traditional practices are silenced and abnormalized in an Alaskan context characterized by intruding western practices (Ayunerak et al., 2014; Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Oleksa, 2006). On the other hand, the Kenyan students inhabit the cosmopolitan, multiethnic, multicultural city of Nairobi yet, their ways of speaking and out-of-class experiences are peripheralized in classroom spaces. Moreover, Kenyan experiences are peripheralized on a global scale as emanating from a third- iii world country (McLaren, 1998; Thiong’o, 1986/1991). Further, Alaska-Kenya intercultural interactions were complicated by locally-specific meanings that were not always taken up by a beyond-local interlocutor (that is, frame clashes (Agar, 1994)), and by presuppositions that students brought to those interactions (Gumperz, 1986). This present study, which relies on Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural learning theories and utilizes ethnography of communication (Hymes, 1972), explored these disconnects in communication through a geosemiotic discourse analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) of archival data and post project reflection data. The study spotlighted the role of education in a pluralistic world by considering complexities of communicating across cultural and geospatial difference, and by making visible communicative strategies. It also exemplified an immersive, student-centered, inclusive-classroom model (Goswami, 1986) that offers opportunities for meaning sharing across difference. It is ironic that in a highly connected world, projects that emphasize connections between people in Kenya and Alaska are rare. Findings from this study have implications for pedagogy, resourcing classrooms, and for extending understandings of transcultural literacy practices in our contemporary globalizing world. iv Dedication Dedicated to educators and stakeholders working towards global understanding. v Acknowledgments There are many contributors whose priceless support has given crucial impetus to the generative and highly enlightening process that has culminated in this milestone achievement. Whereas the people who helped me in small and big ways are too numerous to mention and given the page-limitations of this acknowledgment, I wish to single out a few people for special mention. Firstly, my principle dissertation adviser, Dr. Valerie Kinloch, and my co- adviser, Dr. Marcia Farr, provided endless and most welcome advice, suggestions, and encouragement. Thank you for helping me to extend my understanding and for providing a necessary infrastructure of support and guidance. I always felt welcome to consult with you and I will always value your effort, care, and patience as you accompanied me in this study. Above all, I thank you for being my mentors and friends. I have worked with my invaluable committee members, Dr. Beverly Moss and Dr. Patricia Enciso, in various capacities and in different fora and have always felt fortunate to be under their guidance. Thank you for asking me questions, for encouraging me, for applauding me, and for generally helping me to establish a clear compass for my work. vi Secondly, I wish to recognize the role of other scholar-supporters in this process. I attribute much of my success to conversations with them, to their timely and welcome contributions, and to their logistical intervention. Thank you Dr. Judith Green and Dr. Harvey Graff for generously giving me your time, guiding my thinking towards valuable insights as I formulated my study, and for being instrumental in shaping conditions for my success. Thank you Dr. David Bloome for making possible my field trip to Alaska through a generous grant from the Center for Video Ethnography and Discourse Analysis (CVEDA) and to the Ohio State University Office of International Affairs (OSU-OIA) for the generous dissertation grant that made possible my field trip to Kenya. Thirdly, I thank my Bread Loaf Teacher Network family for their indispensable role spanning from direct conversations to being role models and offering companionable support. These include:, Emily Bartels, Andrea Lunsford, Margery Sabin, Damian Baca, John Elder, Django Paris, Michael Armstrong, Jonathan Freedman, Sara Blair, Courtney Cazden, Jackie Royster, Lou Bernieri, Rich Gorham, Tom Mackenna, and Ummi Modeste Rogerson. I wish to single out Dixie Goswami for very special mention as a long-time mentor, a friend, and an inspiration. Thank you for your continuing support in helping me to develop my teacher-advocate capacity from when I used to teach in Nairobi, and for your continuing motivation and guidance through the Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN). vii Fourthly, I am thankful to my former students from Nairobi and the former students from Alaska for their priceless and voluntary contributions in assembling a significant part of the evidence needed to make this study possible. They were more than just participants and our continuing relationships are indicative of some enduring connections in education. To this end, I profusely thank Brendan McGrath for his logistical assistance, unending support, and friendship. I also wish to recognize Carolyn Cruikshank and the Cruikshank family, who have become my family in the USA, for their support and encouragement. Finally and most importantly, I wish to express my gratitude to my father and mother, Jason and Joyce Wandera, and to my brothers, Tom, Amos, and Vincent for always believing in me. To all these people and everyone else too numerous to mention, Asante sana! viii Vita August 2013……………….Master of Letters (M Litt) Middlebury College (Bread Loaf School of English) Middlebury, VT August 2008………………. Master of Arts (M.A. in English) Middlebury College (Bread Loaf School of English) Middlebury, VT May 1999………………….. Bachelor of Education Honors (B. Ed) English and Literature, Moi University (School of Education) Eldoret, Kenya Publications Articles Wandera, D. (2016). Teaching Poetry through Collaborative Art: An Analysis of Multimodal Ensembles for transformative Learning. In Journal of Transformative Education. Wandera, D. (2015). Mabeshte Revisited. Beyond the Narrative Barrier: Reclaiming Teaching stories. In Bread Loaf Teacher Network Journal, 5(1), http://sites.middlebury.edu/bltnmag/2015/10/29/2367/ Wandera, D. (2013). What to Do When Teens say “Amka Ukatike”: An Exploration of Agency in Teen Oral Literacy Performed through Kenyan Hip Hop. African Journal of Teacher Education. Vol. 3/1, P. 1 – 14.
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