Experiential Learning and Capital Acquisition through a Domestic Student Exchange Program: A Canadian Study

• In Event: Education Abroad Impact on Learning

Proposal

Pan-Canadian exchange programs, in which students travel to another province to work or study in their second official language, may offer experiential learning opportunities that foster the acquisition of contextualized knowledge and skills. Although international student exchange programs continue to receive much focus, most prominently in the research areas of higher education and second-language acquisition (Kinginger, 2013; Levine & Garland, 2015; Mason & Thier, 2018; Rodriguez et al. 2018), there has been minimal theoretical and empirical focus on exchange programs that are administered within a country.

In Canada, one publicly-funded exchange program that is available to students across Canada at the secondary and post-secondary levels is Explore. Offered by the intergovernmental organization the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC), students reside in a host community outside of their home province where they participate in university language classes and community sociocultural activities over the summer with the goal of developing their second official language.

Beyond language learning, these programs may act as dynamic sites to build students’ cultural and social capital. That is, pan-Canadian exchange programs may equip students with capital relevant to the Canadian context. For instance, in learning one of Canada’s official languages, students may gain linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 1993) as a form of cultural capital. Furthermore, findings uncover that students’ identities, mobilities, and imaginations of students are also challenged and formed on exchange.

Finally, though pan-Canadian exchange programs target students as their direct participants, there may also be bridging and bonding effects (Putnam, 2000) which build social cohesion among other program participants such as staff, host families, and locals. Thus, inter-provincial exchange programs may benefit Canadian communities with a reach that extends beyond participating students through “ripple effects” (Olberding & Olberding, 2010). Indeed, the instrumentality of exchange programs (Scott-Smith, 2008) may induce both micro-level change, such as increasing student mobility (Doyle et al., 2010), and even macro-level aims of state-building (or, province-building).

The study investigates CMEC’s Explore as a case of a domestic student exchange program, with a particular focus on Canada’s students, society, and state. Over 25 semi-structured interviews were held and over 35 survey responses were collected from former Explore exchange participants. The paper will discuss findings of experiential learning, cultural and social capital acquisition, and student identities and mobilities.

Author

• Ashley Rostamian