Rooted in reflection, branching toward justice: critical communication pedagogy in short-term global service-learning

Communication courses can prepare students to listen across difference, examine power, and engage ethically with communities. Short-term global service-learning (GSL), however, can reproduce charity logics when preparation, reflection, and partner accountability remain underdeveloped. This longitudinal qualitative study examines an accelerated GSL course in Costa Rica guided by Critical Communication Pedagogy across two undergraduate cohorts. We analyzed multimodal student reflections, focus groups, course documents, instructor observations and reflexive notes, and partner debrief notes. Eighteen-month follow-up reflections from subsets of both cohorts extended the analysis beyond immediate post-return accounts. Across the dataset, students described accountable listening and reflexive self-location; several 2024 and later accounts made more explicit connections among positionality, history, political economy, language dominance, and partner authority. Students also described communicative practices such as bilingual turn-taking, translation pauses, and feasibility checks. At 18 months, some participants continued to connect course ideas to civic, educational, and professional contexts. We propose language justice as a conceptual hinge between intercultural communication and ethical engagement and identify pedagogical and institutional structures that can support more accountable short-term GSL.