Close encounters of the Other kind: Ethical relationship formation and International Service Learning education

International Service Learning (ISL) is a pedagogy designed to engage students in first-hand experiences of global social issues including poverty and inequality. There are growing concerns in the critical ISL research literature that positions of power and privilege obstruct opportunities to engage in transformative learning. Critiques are often founded on an understanding of ISL as learning about Others versus learning from Others and engaging with difference. This article considers the possibilities for a practice of ISL education that centres on the formation of socially ethical engagements with Others. It is motivated by my research on the impact of ISL practices on host communities in Tanzania. Racial and socio-economic differences are two key tensions that emerged as participants and community partners struggled to understand their respective roles in this project. Todd’s work problematizes ethical educational practices and is a valuable lens through which think about the ways that ISL may be complicit with the injustice that most practitioners and students of ISL originally seek to mitigate. Todd’s analysis built on Levinasian theory of relationship with Others is a space for ISL educators to imagine new opportunities for transformative and ethical educational practices.