If Not Now: Study Abroad Through a Post-Pandemic Lens

• In Event: Post-Pandemic Teaching Preparation With a Global Focus: Reimagining Educational Inequalities to Embrace Equity and Justice

Abstract

Objectives: While the pandemic made overt how connected we are globally, it also exacerbated growing nationalism and polarization to the point where one’s belonging to/distancing from particular groups becomes a defining part of one’s identity. An ill-designed study abroad might further these elements of pluralist multiculturalism and potentially widen the chasm that exists among peoples. Similarly, a meaningful study abroad experience has the unique potential to bring about a transformation that enhances the quality of human relationships. In this study, we explored how participating in a study abroad program can result in transformative learning where students become aware of how they buy into common stereotypes and are open to changing their views toward a global environment (Tarrant, 2010).
Theoretical Framework: This study uses Kiely’s (2005) notions of transformative learning and Nussbaum’s (2004) perspectives on global citizenship as a theoretical framework. The purpose of education is to “identify as a human being connected to all other human beings,” (in Coryell et al., 2016, p. 438). This necessitates a critical examination of one’s axiomatic assumptions. Kiely noted that such criticality is brought about by experiencing a disorienting dilemma, which is a dissonance between a prior frame of reference and present context. We used data from a study abroad to explore how transformative learning has taken place with the goal to identify which aspects are fundamental to prepare future study abroad participants in ways that disrupt common misconceptions and counteract stereotypes they potentially hold.
Method: Our data analysis framework was narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). Data was collected from eight undergraduate and graduate students in teacher education. We conducted individual 60-minute, structured interviews and collected participants’ reflective travel journals as well as diverse assignments, which we coded and analyzed for themes regarding possible transformative learning. Further, we kept researcher’s journals and reflections after member check interviews.
Results: Our findings show which aspects are needed to re-imagine transformative post-pandemic pedagogies. These begin with uncomfortable conversations and honest reflections on personal experiences with diverse people. They reiterate the dangers of the current culture of safety-ism that avoids “divisive” topics. For example, only if students had successfully become aware of and shared which unconscious biases they held toward other cultures and traditions in general, could transformation take place.
Scholarly significance: This study shows that meeting people from different cultures and with different traditions around a common interest, in this case teaching, provides a starting point for the critical examination needed to understand ourselves and our place globally. It demonstrates the importance of engaging with people whose worldviews are different from or directly opposed to ours because these lived experiences potentially enable us to question fixed beliefs. The pandemic has made long-existing social injustices undeniable and thereby presents us with possibilities that were less tangible before. This opportunity intensifies the urgency to prepare educators that actively disrupt the present polarization, divisiveness, and inequalities.

Authors

• Sonja Varbelow, Angelo State University

• Donna Gee, Angelo State University