Empirical Examination of the Impact of Study Abroad and Internationalization at Home on Global Citizenship Outcomes

• In Event: Educational Organizations: Toward Equality and Inclusion Organizing Equality and Social Justice Through Inclusion

Abstract

The rapid acceleration of globalization and advancement of the knowledge society has brought the internationalization of higher education to the forefront of the fields of higher education and comparative and international education. Increased access to higher education worldwide has increased focus on its aims, now debated at all levels of stakeholders from scholars to global governance organizations. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a global agenda for all nations to work toward a sustainable future, has outlined a clear goal for education, identifying education for global citizenship as crucial to the realization of the SDGs. Global citizenship education is defined as “building the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that learners need to be able to contribute to a more inclusive, just and peaceful world” (UNESCO, 2015, p.15).
Higher education institutions have reflected this goal in their mission statements, promising to nurture global citizens through international programming, but many studies have found a gap between rhetoric and reality (Goren & Yemini, 2017). Impact studies measuring the effect of international programming on student global citizenship outcomes have since emerged to help bring practice closer to theory (e.g. Paige, et al., 2010; Soria & Troisi, 2014). Two major “types” of internationalization addressed in these studies are study abroad and internationalization at home. Study abroad encompasses the movement of students and faculty across borders for educational purposes (de Wit & Altbach, 2021) while internationalization at home refers to “the purposeful integration of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum for all students within the domestic learning environment” (Beelen & Jones, 2015, p.69). While the study abroad and internationalization at home literature has identified factors and elements contributing to certain global citizenship outcomes, they have rarely been considered and analyzed within the same study. Studies exploring the process of global citizenship development have suggested possible connections between learning processes in each setting but such claims have not been backed by empirical evidence (Lilley, et al., 2015; Killick, 2012).
This research therefore examines the multilayered impacts of study abroad and internationalization at home initiatives on undergraduate global citizenship outcomes by exploring the relationships between contributing factors in each setting and how these factors interact to form a process of global citizenship development. Secondary data from the Global Jinzai 5000 Project (Yokota, et al.) will be analyzed. This research aims to inform a new conceptualization of internationalization in which all students can become global citizens.

Author

• Lauren Nakasato, Waseda University