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Diverging from the traditional approach to service-learning, critical service-learning focuses on the root causes of inequality by addressing power and oppression. By incorporating critical pedagogy in the classroom, and action and reflection outside of it, critical service-learning looks to find solutions to social issues through university-community partnerships. In this article, I review relevant literature that centers social justice-based approaches to critical service-learning and argue that while these approaches are vital to student understanding of oppression, an anticolonial framework is needed to broaden notions of critical service-learning that challenge settler colonial logics. This article engages with the question "Can we decolonize critical service-learning?" and concludes by offering practices, such as solidarity to counter coloniality in higher education, that are responsible to the communities involved in the service-learning partnership.

In the wake of Hurricane Maria and in response to the negligent inefficiency of the local and federal governments, community groups and collectives, grassroots organizations, and activists of multiple causes began organizing under the principles of mutual aid and solidarity in Puerto Rico. One of these is the Colectivo Casco Urbano de Cayey (CCUC), a community organization comprised of local activists and community leaders, undergraduate students, and a professor. This essay brings together four members of the collective in a dialogue where they reflect on the central role of solidarity in the CCUC's organizing and projects and the ways solidarity operates as a praxis of self-determination in the face of neoliberal austerity measures in Puerto Rico. We also highlight the relational work that was done prior to establishing the CCUC that enabled its creation. We also discuss how we negotiate our collaborative relationship across difference through critical dialogue and reflection, the challenges that arise because of our colonial subjectivities, and the ways we circumvent colonial logics through other ways of being and relating anchored in solidarity and interdependence.

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In this article, the author addresses the need to implement a gender perspective education in Puerto Rico. The importance of dismantling oppressive and colonial systems through (re)education that promotes gender equality and social justice is highlighted. The text presents a summary of an interdisciplinary research course that took place at the University of Puerto Rico-Cayey, focused on social transformation through the combination of action and reflection. The influence of Paulo Freire's pedagogy of liberation and decolonial feminist theory in the construction of a decolonial feminist pedagogy is mentioned. Additionally, the importance of solidarity and equitable participation in building relationships based on social justice is emphasized. The article also discusses the lack of a gender perspective in public education in Puerto Rico and the conservative resistance to the implementation of gender perspective education. The importance of decolonizing the educational system and working to reduce oppression caused by the capitalist system is mentioned. The text highlights the role of public universities in critical thinking and the formation of individuals committed to socioeconomic development and community life. [Extracted from the article]

This transdisciplinary research project employed a multi-method approach to address health information inequities in Kentucky's Fayette County during the COVID-19 pandemic. We drew from the study of Sociotechnical Infrastructures, Health Inequities, and Community-Based and Intergroup Dialogue (IGD) to co-create an Alternative Sociotechnical Infrastructure to facilitate information sharing among three stakeholder groups: (1) Latinx community members, (2) civil society organizations, and (3) government officials. Our research design included a combination of methodologies that addressed the technical and, more importantly, the underlying social causes of information access disparities. Focus groups helped identify Information Communication Technology (ICT) use, preferences, barriers, and information-sharing strategies. Community dialogues highlighted information barriers, existing resources, and proposed community-based solutions. The findings informed development of a web-based platform prototype that will facilitate information sharing during a crisis among all stakeholders. The methodology used also allowed the emergence of community champions among Latinx people who need to be invited to the table for these initiatives. We found that combining participatory action research (PAR) principles with critical dialogic methods fosters an environment of trust that enhances collaboration among stakeholders and consequently makes the design of information infrastructures more equitable and sustainable. As Information Communication Technologies embody social relations, we recommend emphasizing dialogic competencies and knowledge around racism/difference while valuing differences, collaboration, equality, and inclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this testimonio, I bridge the political, academic, and personal by situating my experiences as an autoethnographer conducting research in Puerto Rico during the months following Hurricane Maria. As a Puerto Rican living in the diaspora, not being in the archipelago with my parents during the storm and its aftermath produced a sense of loss, grief, powerlessness, and survivor's guilt. I grapple with questions such as: what multiple subjectivities do I inhabit as a researcher visiting my home island? How do I negotiate those subjectivities and identities within myself and with others? In answering these questions, I offer a nuanced account of my intersecting identities and how they impact my interactions with those in the field and how they impacted my choices as an emerging researcher. I argue for a decolonial approach to autoethnography anchored in collective practices, particularly solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Making Livable Worlds: Afro-Puerto Rican Women Building Environmental Justice, by Hilda Lloréns Hilda Lloréns employs autobiography, autoethnography, and critical ethnography to confront the androcentrism of both Puerto Rican historiography and the nation building project of racial democracy during the early to mid-twentieth century. Told from the perspective of Black Puerto Rican women from the archipelago's southeastern coastal region, it presents an illuminating account of the various forms of resistance and decolonial praxis Afro-Puerto Rican women engage in. [Extracted from the article]