Laura Ann Hammersley

Volunteer tourism: building effective relationships of understanding

This paper looks at a key problem in some areas of volunteer tourism, a now fast-growing model of alternative tourism and alternative development. Combining volunteering with international travel, cultural exchange and learning objectives, volunteer tourism can educate volunteers and build relationships of understanding between diverse people and places. However, the ways volunteers make sense of their experience may actually reinforce cultural stereotypes that perpetuate colonialistic divisions of “us” and “them”. Some have argued that projects need a more structured educational approach if volunteers are to learn anything of personal or social value. However, little research has studied the role of volunteer-sending organizations (VSO) in facilitating volunteer understanding of the complex and relational processes of poverty, globalization and inequality. This paper explores ways to improve the educational potential of programs through pre-departure and debrief sessions. In-depth face-to-face and email interviews reveal participants’ experiences of volunteering in Vanuatu with an Australian-based VSO. Conclusions suggest that if short-term placements are to foster meaningful participatory action based on solidarity, mutual learning and relationship-building, the educative methodology adopted needs to occur throughout the volunteer process, pre-, during- and post-project while also bringing a pedagogical and developmental perspective to its practice.

Challenging ideals of reciprocity in undergraduate teaching: the unexpected benefits of unpredictable cross-cultural fieldwork

Geographers are increasingly grappling with the theoretical and practical implications of integrating an ethics of reciprocity into undergraduate learning and teaching. This paper draws on the unexpected experiences of a third-year human geography research methods fieldtrip to examine the process of balancing undergraduate student learning and assessment outcomes, with tangible outputs often-desired by Indigenous tour operator partners. Reflections from students and academic staff highlight the challenges of realizing ideals of reciprocity within the complex and ever shifting cross-cultural research context.

Geographic contributions to institutional curriculum reform in Australia: the challenge of embedding field-based learning

Abstract In the context of continuing pressures from managerialist and neoliberal drivers of university reform in Australia, Macquarie University’s recent undergraduate curriculum innovation, based on “People,” “Planet,” and “Participation,” has resulted in the embedding and integration of experiential learning in its curriculum and institutional framework. Such an approach challenges academic and administrative staff, students, and partners in industry, the community and public sector settings, to engage and collaborate across significant boundaries. This article outlines the scope and nature of the curriculum reform, then considers the way geographers have both shaped and responded to the opportunities it created. In so doing, it proposes a number of challenges and recommendations for geographers who might seek to extend their longstanding commitment to field-based learning through similar reforms. In this regard, the discipline of geography and its tendency to engage with the “field” can offer much in fostering deeply transformative learning.

‘All of us together in a blurred space’: principles for co-creating curriculum with international partners

ABSTRACT This paper shares an innovative methodology to ‘co-create’ a curriculum with eleven international community development organisations from seven countries to prepare undergraduate students for international work-integrated learning activities. The co-creation process was complex, messy, and always evolving. Here we reflect on and document the process, identifying three key methodological principles that might guide the co-creation process for others. These principles embrace the unpredictable, emotional, and personal reality of bringing together diverse ideas and perspectives, as well as opening up possibilities for more creative ways of communicating and listening to what is seen, heard, and felt.

PACE at a Glance: Case Studies of the Student Experience

This chapter is a set of case studies illustrating the student and partner experience of PACE in a wide variety of disciplinary and geographical settings.

“Classroom of Many Cultures”: Educational Design Opportunities in Intercultural Co-creation

Many international programmes include work-integrated learning (WIL) and community-based service learning (CBSL) in order to teach students to collaborate and increase their intercultural sensitivity. The support curriculum for these experiences, however, may implicitly emphasize a divide between overseas “experience” and “reflection” facilitated by staff from home. This chapter describes the Classroom of Many Cultures project, a curriculum design project that used principles of co-creation for a series of learning modules to support international WIL and CBSL. These modules use pedagogical principles and activities that originated with host country staff, incorporating intercultural respect and collaboration into pedagogical design. The project involved significant refining of the co-creation method itself over time; the chapter explores the lessons that the research team learnt during the co-creation process.

Co-creating support curriculum with PACE international community partners

PACE has been the work of many people – students, university staff, industry and community partners foremost amongst them. The challenge for the future development of PACE is, given what we have learned from our past and current activity, how do we use the learnings, insights and unintended outcomes to shape and optimize imagined futures for the program? There will be many challenges to confront in the years ahead as the program continues to ‘engage and serve the community’ and ‘improve and refine a curriculum that has personal transformation at its very core’ (Sachs, J, Preface. In: Sachs J, Clark L (eds) Learning through community engagement: vision and practice in higher education. Springer, Dordrect, 2016). How best can we meet these challenges, key amongst them being to ensure that PACE continues to deliver quality experiences and impact for its key constituencies as the number and diversity of students, partners and activities grows? Befitting the centrality of reflective practice to PACE (Harvey M, Baker M, Semple AL, Lloyd K, McLachlan K, Walkerden G, Fredericks V, Reflection for learning: a holistic approach to disrupting the text. In: Sachs J, Clark L (eds) Learning through community engagement: vision and practice in higher education. Springer, Dordrecht, 2016, Chap. 11), this chapter looks both back and forward to offer reflections on this and related questions.

Exploring the reciprocal benefits of community-university engagement through PACE

Multiple understandings of reciprocity inform and underscore diverse ways of engaging in community-university partnerships. Although the benefits to students of such engagement are relatively well-documented in the literature (Eyler J, Giles DE, Jr. Stenson CM, Gray CJ, At a glance: what we know about the effects of service-learning on college students, faculty, institutions and communities, 1993–2000, 3rd edn. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, 2001; Tryon and Stoecker, J High Educ Outreach Engage 12(3):47–59, 2008), little empirical research currently supports claims that programs and partnerships result in reciprocal learning and engagement opportunities, especially from the perspective of community partners. This chapter conducts a preliminary empirical inquiry into the diverse ways reciprocity manifests as benefits for key stakeholders in the PACE context, taking the analytical framework proposed by Dostilio et al. (Mich J Commun Serv Learn 19(1):17–32, 2012), and Hammersley’s (2016) favourable critique of it as primary points of departure. We draw on the reflections and perceptions of a range of staff, students, and partners involved in PACE activities in local, regional and international settings and identify, organise and articulate some of the diversity and complexity of the relationships that exist within the PACE program and the beneficial outcomes it has spawned for different stakeholders.

Building a Community of Ethical Practice Through PACE

Ethical practice is a core principle of PACE. Partners must conform to the University’s ethical standards and values, and PACE activities must promote the well-being of people and the planet. Students are expected to engage in an ethical manner, and their activities might include research that requires ethics approval. Approaches to telling the PACE story must also be ethically sound. This chapter identifies the practical and epistemological imperatives behind collaborative efforts to foster ethical understanding and practice across the program. These attempts have raised questions such as ‘What constitutes an ethical activity?’ and ‘How might students be prepared for ethical complexities?’ It has led to pushing pedagogical and institutional boundaries, resulting in benefits for Macquarie students, the University as a whole, staff involved in PACE, and community-based partners. This chapter also acknowledges a number of complexities that pose challenges and further questions, as well as suggesting future directions for both practice and research.

A reply to the response by Mark Griffiths to the JOST Special Issue on Volunteer Tourism

arguably geared to volunteer agency and more marketing-oriented approach as well as a maturing product. We managed to achieve and measure impact from our research. This short reply therefore responds to the critique that research on volunteer operators deletes agency of the volunteers, and adds to this debate by considering the agency of academics in relation to the need for impactful research. May we have further opportunities to debate on the role of academia in transforming society take responsibility towards a more sustainable path.