Asetova Jannur Bahitovna-Master of pedagogical science

Yerghanova Anara, Zakarina Alua-the students at the Faculty of Foreign Languages

KSU named by E.A. Buketov, Kazahstan

Transformingthe Study Abroad Experience into a Collective Priority

Тhe need for more U.S. students to go abroad is now proclaimed in academic mission statements, business associations’ manifestos, and even federal legislation. Gaining the knowledge, skills, and attitudes through an international experience is no longer just the interest of individual students. It has now become a priority of the collective. Why, then, has study abroad emerged as a national priority? There may be myriad explanations, but we can certainly all agree on one: globalization. The world is becoming “flat,” as Thomas Friedman argued. With the explosion in communications technology and the multinationalization of production, we recognize the importance of an educated workforce becoming more knowledgeable about other cultures as essential so that the United States remains economically competitive. In the aftermath of 9/11, the Iraq war, and Abu Ghraib, we regard sending students abroad as one of the most effective diplomatic tools, both to improve our damaged reputation in the short term and to help resolve intractable international conflicts in the long run. In terms of the environment, health, and poverty, we know that finding global solutions to the toughest problems facing our planet depends upon armies of individuals capable of cooperatingacross borders. But in the face of this dramatic growth and these sweeping changes across our society, are we in fact succeeding in developing a mass of global citizens? Are our students meeting the challenges of globalization and our priorities as a nation?

Let us begin with the bad news. The percentage of U.S. students studying abroad lags far behind that of most highly industrialized countries. As a percentage of all U.S. students, study abroad participationhas actually not increased significantly over the last decade. Our students also tend to study abroad for ever shorter durations, especially as compared to their Asian and European counterparts. Fewer of our students succeed at even attaining the minimumgoal of study abroad—the acquisition of intercultural competencies. Most disturbingly, while we witness substantial growth in the number of students going to centers of globalization, such as China or India, to areas of national security interest, such as theMiddle East, and to countries most adversely affected by the global economy, such as in Africa and Latin America, the vast majority of students continue to choose to spend their semesters abroad in affluent European nations. Our study abroad pedagogy indeed still follows in the tradition of the European grand tour, whereby aristocratic students traveled to European capitals to supplement their liberal arts educations and to accumulate the treasures of the “Old World.” Where we have succeeded in study abroad is extending its access and attraction beyond the upper economic tiers of our student bodies. In the course of this democratization, however, study abroad has also experienced what I would label “massification.” Too many of our students, if anecdotal information serves, express greater interest in filling their passports with stamps of different countries than in learning the languages of the nations in which they are studying.

Undergraduates show more facility at finding the best bargains for travel and shopping—not bad skills in and of themselves—than at creating networks of peers from different cultures with whom they may end up collaborating. Many still see study abroad as a semester off, a break from the grueling demands of higher education in the Age of Globalization. They may, in fact, seek in the study abroad experience an escape from the more complicated implications of globalization, including a more competitivejob market, the fading of their own national identity as exceptional, as well as effects of terrorist threats, environmental degradation, and the plight of those most suffering in the world.

Fortunately, not everything is so bleak.While the United States falls behindits European and Asian counterparts indeploying international education forpurposes of workforce development andnational economic competitiveness, itstands in front in using the study abroadexperience to instill in students a senseof civic responsibility and action. Acrossthe country, study abroad programs areemerging in developing countries thateither encourage or require volunteer orinternship work in community serviceorganizations. More and more studyabroad programs include research projectsthat pertain explicitly to environmental,health, and social problems afflicting themost vulnerable regions of the world.

Civic engagement has even entered intoour traditional “island” programming inWestern capitals where one finds Americanstudents volunteering and interning, and, asa result, having a positive impact on thoselocales. The American zeal for civic life thatTocqueville described and the call for U.S.higher education to strengthen democraticparticipation that traces back to Jeffersonnow extend beyond our regions and borders.

Our students are not merely strivingto improve the commonweal of their owncountry, but of the entire globe.Alas, while the number of these typesof opportunities grows, they still constitutethe minority. Why is that? In part, this lackof civically oriented study abroad programscan be ascribed to American identity.Our strong sense of individualism has, ofcourse, filtered down to higher education,which emphasizes satisfying the desiresof individual students over meeting theneeds of our society.

Moreover, if we areto believe a common lament, the increasedcost of higher education has turnedstudents into customers who are treatingtheir college education as a product thatthey have purchased. The culture at U.S.universities is thus not well suited towardthe expansion of knowledge and skills inservice of the public good. Study abroadoffices are largely self-supporting, whichequally compromises our efforts to createprograms conducive to the developmentof global citizens. Study abroad officesfeel tremendous pressure from centraladministrations to meet numerical goals.This forces them both to intensify theirown marketing efforts and to rely on anemerging study abroad industry repletewith providers endeavoring to exceed theirown bottom lines and turn a profit usingamateur Madison Avenue techniques.So even when the curricula of our studyabroad programs contain greater exposureto global issues, increased opportunitiesfor civic engagement, and more skilldevelopment aimed toward solving globalproblems, we find ourselves pushing theseloftier goals onto students against theirprimary expectations for travel, adventure,and general pleasure-seeking.

Finally, we should rethink our traditional student learning paradigms in our study abroad programming. Over the last decade, study abroad has made great strides inintegrating itself into the undergraduate curriculum. It has, in fact, adopted many of the student-centered learning models that predominate our campuses. Study abroad is setting goals, establishing student-centered learning activities in support of them, and matching all of these with assessment tools. Study abroad has adopted the actual learning categories of home curricula, including knowledge, skills, and attitudes, by simply modifying them with the word “global.” Unfortunately, the grafting of the learning models used at our own universities does not always work very well in some of the study abroad programming we most wish to expand. A wonderful development in internationaleducation has been the spawning ofdeep partnerships between U.S. collegesand universities and poorer higher educationinstitutions and NGOs around theworld. These new types of partnershipsshould be applauded, but they cannotalways be expected to replicate our ownstudent learning models. They mayhave neither the infrastructure nor theresources. Their principle business, as isin the case of the NGOs, may not be thedevelopment of students. To expect theseinstitutions to mirror our own paradigmsmay be unreasonable at best and imperialisticat worst. That is, we should bemindful that the development of the U.S.student in these contexts may come acrossto our partners as yet once again aboutthe development of the colonial subject,the american student, at the expense ofthose students and citizens in the countrieswith which we are partnering. If our aimis to develop global citizens, we mustunderstand that the experience of studyingat a university in a developing country maynot be only about the formal acquisitionof knowledge delivered in the classroombut also the holistic experience of studyingat that institution, including adapting toits academic culture and the institution’slimited resources. With regards to NGOs,the U.S. student may have to be decenteredand integrated into organizations tryingto fulfill their main goal, the developmentof the community. In this experience, too,we can still expect deep learning to occur.

Indeed, what justifies the conveyance ofcollege and university credit may have tobe reconsidered in light of these new typesof partnerships. If we fail to show flexibilityhere, we will fail to attract our students tothese destinations and programs.More students than ever are studyingabroad. In fewer than fifteen years, participationhas risen over 300 percent, fromunder 75,000 students in 1994 to nearlya quarter million last year. As a result,more of our young people are graduatingwith greater knowledge about the worldand able to move within it with greatermaturity. Yet as much as we can laudthese accomplishments, we should notbecome self-satisfied. Our times demandsetting the study abroad bar even higher.Study abroad can now be one of the maineducational vehicles to reach what ourcountry and world need most: massesof individuals capable of understanding,analyzing and actually helping to amelioratethe challengingproblems confrontinghumanity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Hill, B., and M. Green. 2008. A guide to internationalization for chief academic officers. Washington,DC: American Council on Education.

2. Kuh, G., J. Kinzie, J. H. Schuh, and E. J. Whitt. 2005. Student success in college: Creating conditions thatmatter. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

3. Lewin, R., ed. 2009. The handbook of practice and research in study abroad: Higher education and thequest for global citizenship. New York: Routledge.

4. Barton, P. E. (2001) Facing the hard facts in education reform. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service. [http://www.ets.org/research/pic/facingfacts.pdf]

5. Benton Foundation Communications Policy Program. (2002). Great expectations: Leveraging America’s investment in educational technology. Washington, DC:Benton Foundation. [http://www.benton.org/publibrary/e-rate/greatexpectations.pdf]