Rooted Here, Rooted There: Theory, Pedagogy, and Research in Rural Study Abroad

Abstract

This dissertation comprises two currently unpublished manuscripts that collectively present conceptual, theoretical, pedagogical, and empirical perspectives on rural-focused study abroad coursework and programming. Across both chapters, social (Davies, 2000; Donehower et al., 2007; Gee, 2015, 2025; Street, 1995), spatial (Donehower and Green, 2016; Soja, 1996), and pedagogical (Gruenewald, 2003) theories and concepts facilitate examinations of and reflections on the influence of rural-focused, critical place-based study abroad coursework on students' evolving understandings of and relationships to place.

The first manuscript, Rooted Elsewhere: Toward a Critical Place-Based Study Abroad Framework, is a single-authored book chapter that has been submitted for review for The Routledge Handbook on Place-Based Approaches in Language and Culture Studies (Lomicka Anderson, L. and Klimanova, L., forthcoming). This chapter details the critical place-based study abroad framework I developed to guide course and program pedagogy and design. Informed by a critical pedagogy of place (Gruenewald, 2003), this framework outlines five guiding principles: understanding the self as spatialized, critically centering place in curriculum, valuing community partnerships, prioritizing ethical relationships to place, and incorporating multiple opportunities for intentional reflection. After defining and explaining each principle, I illustrate them using examples from the study abroad course and embedded study abroad experience at the focus of this dissertation.

The second manuscript, "An Assemblage of Relationships: Undergraduate Students' Place-Based Identity Development in a Rural-Focused Critical Place-Based Study Abroad Course," an empirical study for submission to a peer-reviewed journal in rural education, reports on an original research study conducted from the study abroad course and experience. Though educator-scholars consider study abroad a high-impact educational practice, factors like race, class, and geography stratify access to and participation in global educational experiences. Rural and first-generation college students confront challenges unique to their backgrounds that limit their access, including discourses of leaving (Corbett, 2007) that suggest rural students cannot find success in their home communities and must instead seek opportunities in suburban and urban areas. Yet research in study abroad has overlooked their experiences. This study sought to understand five undergraduate students' place-based identity development in relation to their participation in a rural-focused critical place-based course and embedded study abroad experience. Through narrative inquiry, I explore how students discursively navigated various identities in relation to place, using data from student work, individual and focus group reflections, researcher observations, field notes, researcher memos, and results from a related study using photovoice methodology. Understandings include the role of familiarity and difference in mediating students' place-based identity development, the study abroad experience's function as a Thirdspace encounter, and an awareness of permeable relationships between the rural and non-rural and the local and global.

Together, these manuscripts assert the importance of critical place-based frameworks in study abroad pedagogy and design. This dissertation illuminates the role of rural literacies in place-based identity development, underscoring the spatial production of both identity and literacy (Davies, 2000; Donehower, 2021, Donehower and Green, 2016; Donehower et al., 2007; Gee, 2015; Soja, 1996; Street, 1995). Ultimately, I position study abroad as a tool for rural sustainability with the capacity to curb outmigration (Corbett, 2007; Donehower, 2021).