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To deconstruct colonizing ideologies and expand our understanding of global meaning making (Tierney, 2018) in this chapter, we describe a qualitative study that explored how a cohort of teacher candidates (TCs) from a large Southwestern university in the United States made sense of a community mapping project as part of their international service-learning program in rural South Africa. The TCs observed, collected, and reflected on various literacy activities and artifacts. Findings suggest that the TCs grappled with colonizing perspectives and practices specifically related to language, literacy, and cultural hegemony. They identified and struggled with the power and privilege they noticed bolstering Western literacies and the English language in the local community to the extent that it overshadowed local languages and local cultural norms. They questioned the historically situated use of certain spellings in local texts and how such spellings are connected to Apartheid policies still influencing this rural community. By engaging in the community mapping project, the TCs also recognized that literacy is socially informed and is more than just reading and writing but employs a range of semiotic tools such as images, movement, and music. The transformative process of participating in the community mapping project helped TCs develop a deeper understanding of the relationships between community and school literacies and grapple with the broader impact of Western epistemologies in the Global South.

This chapter explains how the idea of this book occurred, and introduces readers to Tierney's multidimensional framework for global meaning making. It describes the organization and structure of the book and the contents of each chapter and calls on readers to transform international language and literacy research through global meaning making.

This chapter provides some final thoughts on global meaning making as exemplified by the authors in the book who interrogated literacy research, policies, and pedagogical pursuits applying the tenets of global meaning making with the ultimate goal of transforming how we engage in global language and literacy endeavors. We consider their work associated with the three dimensions of interrupting existing practices and policies, decolonizing spaces for learning and indigenizing curriculum and pedagogy. In addition, we raise questions that require further investigation related to global meaning making that is emancipatory and promotes the cultural capital of the locals.

In this qualitative study, we explore 31 preservice teachers’ generative trajectories including how they built on instructional practices learned in the service-learning project, the university methods course, and the field-based experience. We addressed the question: In what ways does participating in a semester-long field-based university course combined with a service-learning program shape preservice teachers’ views about effective literacy practices for emergent bilinguals? We identified four themes in our analysis: importance of choice in literacy pedagogy; learning from and with our students; freedom to apply course methods and ideas; and growing confidence and align them with Ball’s (2009) generative change model and the four processes of change – metacognitive awareness, ideological becoming, internalization, and efficacy.

We found the preservice teachers’ ability to develop an awareness of diversity grew from their work with students both in their field-block experience and writing club. These opportunities provided them with a layering of learning – from course readings, collaborating with teachers, to problem solving and creating lessons that specifically met their students’ needs. By moving in and out of different contexts, preservice teachers developed generative knowledge about ways to support writing for emergent bilinguals. Likewise, they became keenly aware of their own experiences and beliefs. Implications include the importance of providing a variety of opportunities for preservice teachers to work directly with students. This should be accompanied by written and verbal discussions to examine and critique their experiences and ideologies in relation to students’ language and literacy needs.