Here or There—Why Study Abroad? How National Ethos Informs How Preservice Teachers Perceive Their Study Abroad Experiences

• In Event: 34.064 - Preparing Teachers With Global Competencies for Intercultural Teaching: Internationalizing Curriculum and Pedagogy for Equitable Educational Opportunity

Abstract

Objectives
This study examined how preservice teachers (PST) from a large public U.S. university experienced a short-term study abroad program to Honduras, particularly how PSTs framed, constructed, and perceived their experiences in Honduras based on the existence of social inequities in Honduras and the United States. This study explored the construction of national identity as a homogenous explanatory factor in many of the comparisons that PSTs make. We outline a framework that discusses how social identities, such as nationality, operate through the study abroad experience. We discuss how an attempt to provide critical perspectives through the study abroad curricula does not always engender critical perspectives with regard to the recognition and/or addressing of social inequities.

Theoretical Framework
Data were interpreted and analyzed through a critical lens that foregrounds the role of coloniality (Mignolo, 2012) in a study abroad experience, and through Alcoff’s (2015) and DiAngelo’s (2011) acknowledgement of the presence of whiteness in PSTs’ interpretation of their experiences.

Modes of Inquiry and Data Sources
Using a qualitative framework of narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), data were collected from 31 PSTs over a period of 3 years who participated in a short-term study abroad program to Honduras. Data included in-depth pre- and post-trip interviews, informal on-site interviews, on-site observations and field notes, and students’ reflective journals and class assignments.

Findings
While literature on study abroad has typically taken the position that any international cross-cultural experience is inherently beneficial, our research suggests that study abroad experiences can actually reinforce bias or increase negative stereotypes and problematic attitudes of racial, national, class, and religious superiority. Despite aiming to prepare critically conscious teachers, many study abroad participants return from their experiences expressing ethnocentric attitudes that fall short of recognizing other epistemologies, ontologies, and cultures as legitimate when compared to their own U.S. culture.

Scholarly Significance
With the increase of U.S.-based university short-term study abroad programs, the outcome of traveling elsewhere away from one’s home community is worth examining for the purpose of considering the perspectives that studying abroad engenders, and for considering how processes of social identities inform experiences (e.g., the social construction of nationality). Many study abroad participants seek predetermined experiences through short-term study abroad programs (Bishop, 2013). This is problematic because of the U.S. whitestream national narrative that the majority of preservice teachers embody and hold on to, often without questioning social inequities both at home and elsewhere. We question how study abroad experiences might most effectively engender a critical perspective when the epistemology and ontology of a home community inform how preservice teachers perceive their study abroad experiences.

Authors

• Hannah Dockrill, Purdue University

• Jubin Rahatzad, Purdue University