ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the powerful theoretical understandings of bicultural students that have worked with in service learning programs with an emancipatory vision for critical bicultural service learning. The language of possibility is central to counterhegemonic practices as well as research that counter oppressive theories and practices. Within this language of possibility also exists the emancipatory conditions that support continual (re)readings and reinventions of the dominant service learning practice. A new discourse has emerged within service learning that seeks to engage the lack of community voice and call upon community members as "co-educators" in the practice of service learning and community engagement. A commitment to a decolonizing service learning praxis assumes that theory and practice are linked as a central tenet. Progressive educators in positions of leadership and policy making within service learning must work to engage the field in ways that respect the process of political change and the evolution of social consciousness as a truly collective and communal process.