receptivity. Disorientation engages students, draws them out, makes them

open and vulnerable -- teachable.⁴⁵"Newness" in this form temporarily

removes traditional foundations, including the safety of home and the

certainty of one's cultural truths, teaching students skills essential for

entering a postmodern world. In most cases, at least with Study-Service Term

students, reorientation comes gradually once they are back in the states, but

foundations are less closed, more chastened, than before the study-abroad

experience. As SST Director Wilbur Birky has written, drawing on a metaphor

from novelist Toni Morrison, "What is the goal of SST if not to cause our

students to 'rearrange the furniture' of their minds through continuous leaps

of imagination stimulated by guided experience?"⁴⁶

With an experiential pedagogy, precise learnings are notoriously

difficult to measure, resulting in an unfortunate, perceived dichotomy

between experiential learning and academic rigor. Nearly all forms of

experiential learning, as with praxis, include substantive, analytical readings

and analysis in preparation for or in response to particular actions or

experiences. On field trips, through lectures, and in weekly group meetings,

SST students process their experiences with their peers and faculty leaders.

They also write at least three journal entries each week, ones which focus less

on observations than critical reflections about their encounters and

45_{On disorientation, see, e.g., William A. Beardslee, "Stories in the Postmodern}
World:Orienting and Disorienting," in David Ray Griffin, ed., Sacred
Interconnections:Postmodern Spirituality, Political Economy and Art
(Albany:State University of New York Press, 1990):163-175. See also Hebrew
Scripture scholar Walter Brueggemann on personal development changes
coming about through discontinuity, displacement and disjunction rather
than in stages of equilibrium. Brueggemann, Hope within History(Atlanta:
John Knox Press, 1987):9.

46_{"Visions for SST -- Wilbur Birky -- October 1995, Internal Document for}
Discussion by International Education Committee," available from SST office.

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