Completed and/or Published

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Masters, K. A. (2013). Revisiting the approach and curriculum design of English/LLD 100A. Supported by the U.S. Department of Education’s Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISI) Project. San José State University. <http://www.sjsu.edu/aanapisi/docs/MastersReport.pdf>

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I successfully obtained a grant from the Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI) Project at SJSU, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, which allowed me to conduct research on the course English/LLD 100A with the goals of (1) increasing departmental and administrative understanding of the course and (2) adjusting the curriculum to align more realistically with the classroom context. ENGL/LLD 100A was a writing course offered to students who did not pass the Writing Skills Test (WST), a high-stakes exam that students had to pass in order to take upper-division coursework.  My research provided an in-depth holistic analysis of the 100A context in order to increase understanding of 100A, its students and instructors, align the curriculum more realistically with the classroom environment and other campus writing courses and programs, and promote student and instructor satisfaction, motivation and engagement. I conducted in-class observations of 100A classes, student surveys, and interviews with focal students and instructors. Before finishing my research, my grant proposal had caught the eye of administrators who began to implement changes that ameliorated restraints of the course. I presented the written report to the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts in a meeting attended by the college’s Writing Requirements Committee. Later, my research became instrumental in discontinuing the WST altogether, which delayed students' graduation paths (and burdened students with an extra semester of tuition), and replaced it with a more mindful self-assessment that helps students proactively choose to take ENGL/LLD 100A, alleviating the burden of waiting months for a test score, not being able to take 100A earlier in their academic career, and not being able to move on to upper-division coursework.

 

In Progress

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Masters, K. A. (in progress). Volunteer study and research abroad: Engagement for a more equitable paradigm. 

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Building from my research on Global English discourses (Masters, 2020, 2021, 2022), my agenda continues and extends the themes of ethical Global-South/Global-North partnerships that I have developed in Nicaragua over the last thirteen years, and takes a critical gaze to U.S.-volunteer programs abroad. Recently, volunteering abroad has been problematized as a self-serving activity that can benefit volunteers more than those they serve (Biehn, 2014; Jakubiak, 2012). One popular form of volunteering is teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL), which is connected to conflicting ideologies of socioeconomic mobility on the one hand and linguistic imperialism and neoliberalism on the other. While well-intentioned, volunteers often have little or no experience teaching and are unfamiliar with the sociopolitical and economic climates in which they will teach (Pantea, 2012; Romero, 2012). This lack of preparation and experience can lead to stress and disappointment as their imagined experience clashes with realities of extreme hardship. 

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Guided by Foucault’s (1975) theory of power/knowledge into how societies internalize expert discourses, “regimes of truth” that regulate how people understand the world and validate social attitudes and practices (in the case of Global English, the discourse that English opens doors and the so-called "native" English speaker is the expert of how it should be taught and learned), I will critically examine the discursive choices of English-teaching volunteers before, during, and after their journeys abroad. Discourse is “…a situated communicative event or a class thereof called activity in which people accomplish social (inter)action through linguistic and other symbolic means, in particular historical and cultural relations” (Shi-xu, 2015, p. 290, italic emphasis in the original). My research questions follow:

 

1. How does participation in the university volunteer program prior to leaving for the volunteering experience shape students’ discourses of English, the Global South, and volunteering?

2. How do students’ discourses change, if at all, once they begin the volunteer experience, and what factors do students point to (e.g., duration of stay, ability to speak the host country’s language, new cultural or historical knowledge) to explain these changes? 

3. Upon return from the volunteer experience, how do volunteers make sense of the change (or lack of change) in their views prior to and after volunteering, and has their experience shaped how they see potential future volunteering experiences, abroad or domestic? 

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I intend to include S.T.E.M.-focused study and research abroad, as volunteers who work on a variety of projects, from medical work to water access and engineering projects, also work with assumptions about the places and people that they will engage with. Many assumptions stem from communication breakdowns from lack of awareness of linguistic and cultural differences, which cause unintended consequences to occur when realizing a project. For example, one problem is the lack of long-term investment in projects, leading to billions of dollars wasted on decaying projects (see https://www.theguardian.com/society/katineblog/2009/mar/26/water-projects-wasted-money ). Bringing a linguistic ethnographic lens to S.T.E.M. volunteer work abroad has the potential to make expensive and potentially world-changing projects be more sustainable and successful. 

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 The goal of this research is to contribute knowledge on how Global-North programs associated with volunteer abroad can better design volunteer English programs that support students in learning critical and ethical skills for teaching and research. Insight into participation in volunteer experiences raises ethical issues about how power relations are enacted and sustained among programs, volunteers, and local communities in which they serve. A broader goal of this research is to develop a volunteer abroad program for university campuses that invites more diverse students to participate. This would include providing scholarships for low-income and minority students that would cover some or all of their travel and housing costs for participation. Many students do not have equal access to study and research abroad, occluded experiences reserved for middle-class students, hurting the diversity of what could be achieved by international exchanges. Making space for all students to take advantage of volunteering abroad would enrich the diversity of fieldwork in the area, leading to new viewpoints, conclusions and implications. 

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Finally, a portion of this volunteer project focuses on volunteering at home in the communities that surround the U.S. universities at which student volunteers study. The above project is has many layers, and I intend to first do similar, smaller-scale research on student volunteering in their university communities, how best to support and mentor student volunteers to motivate long-term and life-long commitments to community engagement, and how to include them on research initiatives for the community. 

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