Highlighted Session: Education mobility to impact community engagement: Comparative studies on design and impact for student and local actors’ learning

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Introduction
This panel brings together four themes: 1) design of innovative mobility programs using technology; 2) literature on teacher candidate mobility experiences; 3)
student experiences in mobility programs from Brazil and United States; and 4) literature connecting mobility to global community engagement with a focus on the local community levels. This panel fits well into the CIES Annual Conference Theme of “Envisioning Education in a Digital Society” because digitalization plays such a prominent role in mobility programs pre, during, and after the mobility experience that enhances learning and engagement. The panel also fits into the theme of the SAIS SIG as it contextualizes mobility and learning.
The panel will extend the conversation around the complexities of digital mobility programs and student learning. While all four papers advance knowledge of mobility programs, each takes a different approach. Paper 1 unpacks a systematic literature review of service learning that merges university social responsibility with the global community using de-colonialism practices. Papers 2 & 3 shift the focus to learning within specific digital mobility programs with one paper using student voices from Brazil and the United States and the other paper examining the COIL virtual education program. Finally, paper 4 uses a systematic literature review to compare abroad experiences of teacher-candidates in Italy and United States.
Relevance to Conference Theme and SIG Focus
Mobility and global community engagement align with the CIES conference theme of Envisioning Education in a Digitalization Society in two ways. First, digitalization in mobility is a communication device and teaching tool. Second, the conference theme talks about change at local, national, and supranational levels that connects to local (class) and national (comparative focus of multiple countries) contexts. The relevance to the SAIS-SIG is that all of the presentations focus on different types of mobility programs that are a centerpiece for expanding knowledge on comparative and international higher education.
Conceptual Framework
Critical internationalization (Stein, 2021) explains three reasons why IHE is not value neutral. First, IHE is “customized to the local situation and that a 'one size fits all' approach to internationalization is not appropriate" (Knight, 2021, p. 65). The panelists each have variations on the theme of how internationalization is not neutral as it purposefully connects to different local contexts. Second, mobility is situated in a specific geographic area aiming to make the unfamiliar familiar, which in itself if not value neutral. Finally, mobility exists within the context of systemic inequities that impact students and local communities. (Shahjahan & Edwards, 2021; Yao et al., 2019). Even though mobility programs claim to expand horizons, it also reinforces Western hegemony when it incorporates “thin inclusion” of components of non-Western knowledge into the existing curricular (Stein, 2017, p. 33).
Literature Review
Experiential and transformative learning (Chan et al., 2021) is seen in how students, staff, and community are engaged in reflective activities that develop global awareness, intercultural understanding, and criticality. Research on motivations examine social justice and human dignity (Streitwieser et al., 2018), balancing unintended consequences (Raby & Kamyab, 2023), reframing power and intercultural dynamics (Buckner & Stein, 2019), responding to local and global challenges (De Wit et al., 2020), and uncovering hegemonic assumptions related to power and inequity that help build a re-interpretation of the norm (Hartman et al., 2020, p. 76).
Methodology
This panel examines different mobility programs and brings in voices of different student cohorts and international educators who had their agency shaped by their mobility connections from Brazil, Colombia, Italy, and United States. Three questions will be asked to each panelist: 1) What is unique about virtual mobility designs? 2) Is the student or local community agency being re-framed in the process? and 3) How does comparative research enhance your research design. Speaker 1 uses a systematic literature review to explore the social dimension in universities and how it intersects with international service learning. Speaker 2 uses Q methodology, a set of connected practices used to study subjectivity and perception in groups. Speaker 3 uses surveys, on-site observations; interviews, and photo-voice. Speaker 4 uses a systematic literature review to frame future interviews and auto-ethnographic analysis to compare experiences of teachers who studied abroad as teacher education candidates. Each panelist also uses sensemaking to see how identity and environment informed students with how they made sense of their experiences.
Discussion
Educational mobility provides an in-person international experience, and in so doing has the potential to allow students to capture self-awareness, presents new academic subject materials, empowers the ability to refine problem-solving skills, and builds intention for social action and civic engagement. The sense of belonging that occurs during and after a study abroad experience positively engages students and alumni (Raby, et al., 2022). Mobility also provides a the shaping of student agency as new experiences enable agency to help students build meaning from learning experiences (Chwialowska, 2020). Students report long-term effects of participating in education abroad that include changes in their multicultural lens for their worldview (Nguyen, et al., 2018). A common thread among the panelists is that individual agency emerges from discussions on mobility experiences and the impact it has on their changing sense of being. Finally, critical internationalization questions if actual exposure abroad creates substantive changes in students' sense of being (Asada, 2019), in empowering their ability to live in the moment (Johnson, 2018), in examination of equitable or inequitable outcomes (Raby et al., 2022), and in recognizing their privilege while visiting another country (Stein, et al., 2016). In the end, there is no guarantee that the student learning will result in positive change. Nonetheless, a comparison of unrelated groups of students in different countries shows a consistency in experiences and actions.
Conclusion
The panel will provide new ways of understanding the rapidly evolving landscape of international higher education and how new mobility options support student learning across the globe. This includes building learning opportunities to expand horizons, be change agents, emphasizing social responsibility and community engagement. Most importantly, it reaffirms the role of HEIs as critical agents for internationalization and the importance for comparative research.

Sub Unit

• Study Abroad and International Students SIG

Chair

• Rosalind Latiner Raby, Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education JCIHE

Individual Presentations

• From “virtual” to “reality”: Comparative study on student experiences on a hybrid exchange program - Grace Cleary, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Study abroad and inclusive practices for teachers and outcomes assessment - Bill Burress, Elon University

• Collaborative online international learning (COIL) and equity - Adam Freed, University of Michigan Ann Arbor

• Engaged global citizens: Global social responsibility through international service learning - Carolina Franco-Arroyave, Carolina Franco. Educación Internacional

Discussant

• Thatcher A. Spero, Musashino University