Understanding and Enhanching the Study Abroad Experience: Australian and New Zealand Students in Europe

Abstract

This dissertation is the product of a study that examined the experiences of 21 Australian and New Zealand undergraduate students who spent a semester or more on exchange in Europe. It examines what the students learned from their experience, focussing specifically on the insights that they acquired with regards to their host society. It does so guided by the idea of deep understanding, a concept developed for this study drawing primarily on literature from the discipline of anthropology. It is a concept that describes a level of understanding that students may acquire vis-à-vis their host society. It has three central elements: (1) it is a level of understanding that avoids or transcends stereotypes and sweeping generalisations, (2) it is more than the mere observation of certain practises or peculiarities, but also involves understanding the values, beliefs and assumptions that underpin these, and (3) it is based on wide and meaningful engagement with members of the host society. This thesis also focusses on the difficulties that the students involved experienced while abroad, guided by the stress-adaptation-growth model, which considers the challenges associated with being in an unfamiliar environment to be a key antecedent to intercultural growth (Kim, 2001, 2008, 2015). This focus on the difficulties associated with study abroad and their pedagogical implications allows us to better understand the process by which students learn, mislearn and do not learn through study abroad. Data was collected in three phases. The students completed an online questionnaire before their departure, which collected basic demographic information about them, as well as their reasons for going on an exchange and their choice of country; they were then interviewed during their exchange at their destination and they completed a follow-up questionnaire upon their return home. The analysis of the resulting data focused primarily on the interview transcripts and the responses to certain questions asked in the follow-up questionnaire, although the responses to certain questions asked in the pre-departure questionnaire were also analysed to provide important background. The analysis was an iterative process that involved attaching codes to each unique aspect of the dataset considered relevant to the analytic interests of the study, examining the coded data with a view to adding context where necessary and drawing conclusions, guided by the question: What can be learned from my research? The thesis constitutes an original contribution to knowledge in two main ways. Firstly, there is insufficient research that has examined the insights that study abroad students acquire vis-à-vis their host society. This matters because study abroad holds the potential to cultivate the capacity to live with difference, but do students achieve the level of insight necessary to cultivate this on their own or is some form of intervention necessary? Secondly, there are few studies to have employed conceptual frameworks that account for the processes by which learning occurs, including testing the applicability of the stress-adaptation-model in the study abroad context and examining the difficulties associated with study abroad in terms of their pedagogical implications more generally. This is despite research indicating that students often resort to generalisation and stereotypes to make sense of challenges experienced abroad (Beaven, 2012; De Nooy & Hanna, 2003). This thesis addresses these gaps, casting doubt on the applicability of the stress-adaptation-growth model to the study abroad context (Shannon, 2016). The students either did not experience sufficient difficulties due to unfamiliarity, or they were not compelled to learn new cultural elements due to the short duration of the experience. Nonetheless, they did frequently resort to generalisations and stereotypes to make sense of difficulties experienced, contrary to the idea of deep understanding. This thesis raises questions about the level of insight that study abroad students acquire with regards to their host society, as well as the extent to which they grow in related areas. This requires a level of inquiry, host national contact and reflection that my analysis shows does not occur automatically, corroborating the growing body of literature that emphasises the importance of academic intervention in the study abroad process. This dissertation concludes by presenting a possible model of academic intervention, which centres around an ethnographic research project students must undertake abroad. The aim is to actively shape the study abroad experience, requiring students to step outside the international student bubble that they regularly find themselves confined within and investigate a particular area of observed difference in detail. Show more