The Forum Focus - June 2019 | Volume 5 | Issue 3 by The Forum on Education Abroad

The

FORUM June 2019 | Volume 5| Issue 3

Focus

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The costs are the benefits: challenges and value in field-based education Michael Cox, Associate Professor, Environmental Studies Program, Dartmouth College

ach fall for the last three years I have left behind the people and places in my New England College town to travel with a group of college students who I don’t know very well across the high plains and low savannah of rural South Africa. I go there to lead the first of two legs of Dartmouth’s Environmental Studies foreign study program. This program is immersive and experiential, with a lot of time in the field engaging with the themes of conservation and development. Leading this program presents many challenges and requires a set of skills that I had not developed beforehand. My teaching identity developed in a classroom with a set of powerpoint slides and a desk beside me. The informality of the program requires that I let go of much of the control that I have in the classroom, and creates a sense of vulnerability. I must be more open with who I am, and deal with who my students are, as well as take on the emotional burden of caring for their well-being throughout the time I am with them. I must embrace the unpredictability which comes with developing new collaborative relationships with local partners. To be the person who can make the program work and improve over time, I have needed to develop a new sense of myself. A local partner on the program recently asked me why I do it. Given its de“...Learning comes best mands, I have asked this of myself as when it takes effort, when well, and my answer is that I do it bewe increase our mental cause the costs are also the benefits. I do it because those things that take the most friction, rather than taking out of us are often what fill us up. The the most ‘efficient’ shift from a more passive educational apapproach to completing an proach to an active, experiential curricuassigned task.” lum is costly. But learning comes best when it takes effort, when we increase our mental friction, rather than taking the most “efficient” approach to completing an assigned task. I have come to believe that providing a medium for productive struggles with complexity and contradiction through direct engagement should be a primary goal of field-based education. A model for my developing approach to the South Africa program comes from my graduate education at Indiana University’s Workshop in ∙2∙

Political Theory and Policy Analysis, co-founded by my PhD advisor, Elinor Ostrom. The word “workshop” implied a shared engagement with the craft of knowledge production. It purposefully evokes the image of a woodworking shop. I view our South Africa program as a traveling workshop, where my role is less to distribute information and more to guide and facilitate experiential learning for my students. When I sit down with a student individually to discuss the first journal entry assignment, and I see anxiety in their face as we begin this meeting, I am reminded of my traditional role as a distributor of evaluation. I believe that we need to move away from this, to challenge our students in a way that invites them to think Michael Cox, grading papers during Dartmouth College’s Environmental openly in our presence. To help Studies program in South Africa. with this I tell my students that I would rather see them articulate their uncertainties and discomforts than jump to conclusions and judgments. A highlight for me each year occurs when the students start to use the concepts from our shared intellectual framework in casual conversations to discuss the field sites that we are visiting. I can see concepts like property rights and social capital “doing work” for them as they try to engage with our social and ecological environment. Such concepts can feel abstract and detached from experience when presented in a classroom. Another highlight of the program comes at the end of our stay in Matatiele, a town just south of Lesotho. Here the students give presentations at the quarterly meeting of the Umzimvubu Catchment Partnership Program (UCPP), a network of local partners who have been our collaborators for the past three years. During this event I have seen my students deal with their uncertainties and the anxiety of presenting their results to people who just spent the previous week generously sharing their time and knowledge. I see my students having to decide, as I have had to, who they are going to be in front of a crowd of people. And I feel proud of them. Much of my belief in the transformative potential of the program for my students has come from my own experiences of growth. I have ∙3∙

wrestled with the reality of history at the Apartheid museum and observed its legacy throughout the program. I have found inspiration in local sustainability leaders and developed attachments to increasingly familiar faces and voices, and the stories they tell me. My belief in my ability to move beyond disseminating facts to model values such as wisdom, attention, passion and humility has grown through both success and failure over each iteration of the program. I have found value in the confluence of the personal and “My belief in my ability to intellectual experiences I have move beyond disseminating on the program. A friend of facts to model values such mine who studies the relationas wisdom, attention, ships between maternal stress passion and humility has and infant health recently begrown through both success came a mother. She commentand failure over each ed to me one day that being a iteration of the program.” mother is quite different from studying motherhood. Studying something is different from living it, but the two types of knowledge produced can be complementary. My personal experiences on the program have complemented my intellectual understanding of the importance of comparison and difference. The scientific approach I have been trained in emphasizes the importance of comparing cases in order to understand the impacts of key factors. This approach has much value as a basis for learning and generalization. But it can be complemented by emphasizing the role of difference in helping us understand an individual case, including ourselves. Being in novel cultural and biophysical contexts has helped grow my self-awareness, and my understanding of the diverse aspects of my social identity and position. I believe that through the program I can better see myself as others might, while maintaining my own, less visible, sense of self. Similarly, becoming a program leader has taught me about what it takes to be an effective leader, which is a key concept in my field. More generally this process has taught me that direct experience can inform my theoretical understanding of many concepts, or put differently, that so-called applied work can be theoretically valuable. My novel experiences on the program have also grown my appreciation for my New England home. When I return there after the program, the feeling of relief that comes with familiar social and ecological landscapes is accompanied by my excitement to explore them with new eyes. As I watch the Green Mountains of Vermont, I experience the cost of missing the students and colleagues I was with during the program. But then, the costs are the benefits. ❖ ∙4∙

religious identity & off-campus programs Kyle David Anderson, Director of Center for Global Citizenship, Centre College; Ellen Tyra, Research Intern in Center for Global Citizenship, Centre College

eligion is everywhere, and yet always something we try to avoid. In global education, this shouldn’t be the case. Religion is a crucial element in the lives of millions of U.S. and international students, often influencing in a fundamental way how they interact with diverse people and cultures. While home rule implies it is generally in bad taste to discuss religion in polite conversation, quarantining discussions of religious identity runs the risk of “causing us to miss rich opportunities for connection and shared understanding and growth.” In “Talking Religion,” Timothy Lynn Elliott and Lorien Romito point to U.S. culture for the apparent neglect of religious identity in global education: “Within the United States we are socialized to believe that religion is a taboo subject in professional and social settings. U.S. religious culture generally encourages privacy and restraint, thus many of us feel uncomfortable discussing the topic and lack the vocabulary to have an effective or appropriate conversation around faith.”

With over 75% of the U.S. population affiliating with a religion, a massive opportunity exists for educational enrichment that takes religious diversity into account. From a curricular perspective, thinking about religion and the religious identities of students, faculty, staff, and all of the individuals and communities education abroad students interact with during a program leads us to ask questions about potential goals for student learning and development that we might set for program participants regardless of their own personal beliefs: Through education abroad… • Do students cultivate humility? • Do they develop more nuanced understandings of faith traditions and communities? • Do they recognize and respect sacred space? • How are their religious identities tied to these actions? ∙5∙

Dr. Shana Sippy, faculty director of a program called Imagining Home: Global Migrations and Religious Identities, admits that she wishes most for students to cultivate personal humility in the presence of religious diversity. “There are multiple truths and multiple perspectives which are gained in study abroad experiences,” she says, and developing greater respect and reverence for them is central. Faculty director of the course The Roots of Mindfulness, Dr. Aaron Godlaski, hopes students approach foreign spaces with a degree of reverence. Even if they don’t plan on having a religious experience while abroad, the goal is that they “approach that space as if it were a possibility,” realizing that it functions precisely in that way for so many others. Moreover, recognizing, valuing, and speaking to the religious identities of students is part of the larger impulse in U.S. higher education to more fully embrace diversity. To bridge that gap from taboo to sincere engagement, we require some new language and methods (and a little bit of courage). In an attempt to address these gaps, at Centre College (#3 for undergraduate study abroad participation among baccalaureate colleges according to IIE’s 2018 Open Doors Report) we are working with colleagues in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and with CentreFaith, a student-run interfaith dialogue organization, to host events for faculty, staff, and students to engage in conversations about religious identity and study abroad. Participants’ stories and feedback gathered at those events now serve as part of the foundation for the new language and methods informing our study abroad programming.

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These conversations have also inspired a new study that the Center for Global Citizenship is conducting to evaluate the relationship between students’ religious identities and educational outcomes in courses with prominent religious components. “The Influence of Short-Term OffCampus Courses on Students’ Religious Identity” examines how students’ religious backgrounds, identities, and beliefs (or lack thereof) influenced their experiences and learning objectives on four short-term off-campus courses in January 2019 and how those same courses currently influence students’ religious identities, beliefs, and commitments. Other questions in the study assess students’ views about various faith traditions, such as to what extent a student would accept a member of another faith as a colleague, friend, or fellow citizen of their country. The data collected will shed light on how students’ religious identities interface with off-campus programming and will directly assist in the implementation of more thoughtful pre-departure, on-site, and reentry activities critical to maximizing faculty and student comfort and personal and academic gains. Channeling the spirit and language of diversity, inclusivity, and intercultural sensitivity training, global education is in a prime position to break through the religion taboo to address more fully the comprehensive experience of students and instructors off-campus and encourage them to engage more fully with the cultures and communities they join abroad. ❖ Editor’s Note: For more scholarship on religion and education abroad, see Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad’s Special Issue on Religion and Study Abroad, published Winter 2018.

Education Abroad for Everyone: How One Community College Is Making It Happen Morgan Lindberg, Japanese faculty, Portland Community College; SusanWatson, Web Development and Design faculty, Portland Community College

strong connection between faculty and curriculum is a crucial component of a successful study abroad program. We have found that students are more likely to engage in study abroad if they are going with faculty who they know and trust. When students can take courses abroad that move them toward their academic goals, the experience is more accessible and equitable for all students involved. Fundamentally, it is a course rather than a trip. But, far from just picking up a classroom in Portland and placing it into a classroom in Berlin or Tokyo or Oaxaca, a great deal of thoughtful work on the part of the faculty leader must go into translating that campus course into the study abroad modality. And in ∙7∙

order to effectively bridge that gap, faculty should be able to access institutional support for this professional development effort. At Portland Community College (PCC), an open access two-year public community college in Portland, Oregon, we strive to meet students where they are so that they can reach their educational and life goals. We support about 71,000 credit and non-credit students both online and face-toface in a variety of lower division, transfer, pre-college, and career technical disciplines and programs. Our students are both full- and part-time and 36% are Pell Grant recipients. Among for-credit students, 53% are under the age of 25 and the average age is 28 years old. We have adopted an ethos of open access and professional development for faculty to lead short-term study abroad programs and teach PCC curriculum in locations around the world. The focus of PCC’s faculty-led program model is on short programs (roughly two to six weeks long), as these are the most feasible logistically, financially, and academically for the largest number of our students. Our faculty-led programs can be structured as standalone, hybrid, or capstone. Standalone is when the entire course is taught abroad. A hybrid program is when portions of the course are taught both abroad and at PCC. A capstone is an embedded program and typically structured as the culminating project or experience that supports the learning outcomes of a term course taken at PCC. Students enrolled in the course can opt to participate in the capstone portion if the capstone model is used. This is a popular option because while the study abroad program is embedded within the course itself, the course enrollment is not tied to the enrollment in the capstone study abroad program. These programs are supported by several study abroad provider organizations that have been vetted by college administration. In addition to an education abroad office, with a full-time manager and support staff dedicated to meeting the needs of both students and faculty involved in study abroad, study abroad programs at PCC are overseen by a committee of instructional faculty. The Education Abroad Review Committee (EARC) is tasked with reviewing faculty-led education abroad proposals and recommending them to college administration, as well as building faculty-facing processes and procedures to support the mission and vision of study abroad at PCC. Key components of study abroad faculty development at PCC include: Ed Abroad 101 & De-Emphasizing Location Before an instructor can propose a study abroad program at PCC, they first must attend a three-hour workshop, held once each term and in the summer. Ed Abroad 101, presented by faculty, outlines the process and values of study abroad at PCC. Study abroad is introduced as a curriculum-centered endeavor and, as such, faculty are required to make the ∙8∙

course their focus, rather than the exciting and sexy facet - the “abroad” of study abroad. The faculty member’s dream location may not, in fact, be the best location for the course or have the necessary co-curricular support for students to meet the outcomes of the course. Once faculty members move on to the online application, they are asked to broadly identify three to five locations for their program. This gives our study abroad office and our providers more leeway to work with faculty to place the curriculum at the core of the study abroad experience. Curriculum Planning Instructors know their content well and teach to the outcomes of their course every day. As part of the proposal process, faculty complete the curriculum planning worksheet, that helps envision course outcomes in an experiential and out-of-classroom way. In it, faculty define which course they are proposing to take abroad and its outcomes, proposed dates, the type of study abroad program they are proposing (capstone, hybrid or standalone), whether it is a lecture, “Translating a course lecture-lab, or lab course and any non into the education -negotiable requirements or aspects abroad modality allows of the course, such as guest speakinstructors to focus on ers, equipment (e.g., access to diesel engines, a photography dark room, their curriculum and etc.). Then they must outline their dramatically rethink course in terms content, activities, how they teach.” outcomes, assessment, instructional hours, and out of class engagement hours. Translating a course into the education abroad modality allows instructors to focus on their curriculum and dramatically rethink how they teach. Instructors say that completing the curriculum planning worksheet results in a much clearer picture of how they will teach their course abroad. It has helped faculty to better balance instructional time and free time in their programs. It is also an invaluable tool in helping our provider organizations place our curriculum at the heart of our programs to meet the needs of our instructors and students. Faculty Mentorship PCC has a strong tradition of faculty mentorship and peer mentors play a significant role when faculty translate their curriculum into a different modality. Mentors who have knowledge of study abroad and expertise in curriculum travel around the college to meet with proposing faculty at any point in their proposal process. Ideally, this happens early to enable faculty to work through the curriculum planning worksheet with their mentor and discuss their course curriculum in depth. They introduce the ∙9∙

principles of experiential learning to prevent faculty from favoring classroom time for their courses at the expense of on-the-ground learning opportunities that may be a better fit of learning outcomes of the course to the location. Conclusion Many community college students do not see study abroad as something that is “for” them and many don’t feel like they belong in college at all. This was echoed by Portland Community College student Sofia Velasquez, a Muslim woman of color who, when she began at PCC, “felt out of place on a campus filled with people I couldn’t relate to.” It was her encounter with Teela Foxworth, a Communications instructor who led a study abroad program to Peru, that gave her the sense of purpose and belonging she needed to study abroad and persist in her studies: “She took me under her arms and gave me the confidence I needed to sign up for the program and study abroad. She went above and beyond to ensure that I would make it to Peru. She pushed me to apply to prestigious scholarships to study abroad and believed in me to the fullest extent.”

Students come to our institution to pursue their educational goals; offering study abroad programs based in curriculum that allow students to continue their pathways to completion positions our study abroad program as a viable educational option for students at PCC. Short-term faculty-led study abroad programs are a part of the curriculum of our institution, making them systemically supported and not something that sits outside of our core structure. Providing robust support to faculty on multiple levels as they prepare to lead programs abroad based in PCC-approved curriculum benefits everyone involved—most importantly our students—making education abroad available to everyone. ❖

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Incorporating Engaged Learning Pieces into Curriculum Uttiyo Raychaudhuri, Cornell University; Richard Kiely, Cornell University; Basil Safi, Cornell University; Eva Infante, Cornell University; Melina Ivanchikova, Cornell University; Davydd Greenwood, Cornell University; Kendall Brostuen, Brown University

he Institute of International Education will be celebrating its centenary this year with an enduring vision and belief about education that transcends borders, opens minds, and enables people to go beyond building connections to solving problems together. However, in the IIE 2018 Open Doors report we see that only 332,727 Americans studied abroad for academic credit at their home institutions in 2016/17 representing approximately 10 percent of U.S. students who study abroad “Along with barriers such as resource during their undergraduate caallocations, especially cost of studying reer. While there was a 2.3 percent growth in numbers over the abroad and the challenges of previous year and the profile of navigating foreign cultures, there is U.S. students going abroad conthe key and critical need for curricular tinues to diversify with 29.2 perintegration of education abroad that cent students of color (as comincorporates global learning.” pared to 17 percent a decade ago), the numbers and distribution are still dismally low and numerous barriers still remain. Along with barriers such as resource allocations, especially cost of studying abroad and the challenges of navigating foreign cultures, there is the key and critical need for curricular integration of education abroad that incorporates global learning. How do we meet this need? The endeavor is to infuse global learning as something which is integral (and not separate) to the pedagogical framework of higher education so that it is both transformative and inclusive—through critical thinking and dialogue with reflection that leads to responsibility. At Cornell, the only ivy with a land grant mission and a motto that says, ‘any person, any study,’ this understanding of global engagement has translated to mean ties with community-engaged teaching, learning, and research as a hallmark of the student experience across disciplines. We discuss how effective teaching and learning anywhere requires crossing the boundaries between the academic institution and the surrounding society (including the organization and personnel of the institution itself), creating knowledge in context (called Mode 2 by Nowotny, et al ∙11∙

in The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies), developing understandings behaviorally by acting in the environment, creating data, and interpreting it, among others. This framework highlights the benefits from the integration of service-learning theories with assessment strategies that foster communitybased global engagement. The approach integrates collaborative planning, design, and evaluation that advances mutually beneficial community partnerships, critically reflective practice, thoughtful facilitation, and creative use of resources. The model provides for an equitable and sustainable solution for culturally contingent spaces. What does this look like in practice? The Consortium of Advanced Studies Abroad (CASA) program in Sevilla is a multidimensional program designed to provide students with an immersion experience in Spanish culture and life, through the integration of linguistic, socio-cultural, historical and artistic studies, and experiential learning. Participants attend classes at the CASA-Sevilla Center and also take three courses at the University of Seville, where they study alongside local students and complete most of their academic work. A mandatory course entitled "Más allá de los estereotipos: Encuentros con la historia, sociedad, lengua y cultura de Sevilla (Beyond stereotypes: Encounters with the history, society, language and culture of Seville)" helps students establish and achieve individual learning goals, and provides personalized linguistic support, preparation for classes at the University, and participation in a community organization. The course involves intensive study of Spanish history, culture, society, and language, and aims to reinforce students' linguistic skills, facilitate their cultural adaptation, and prepare them for classes at the University of Seville. During the course, students participate in classes as well as a community organization of their choice, take part in field trips and cultural activities, attend weekly intercultural mentoring sessions, and reflect on their experiences in a personal blog. At the end of the semester, students summarize their learning goals and achievements in an individual research project. All students are housed with host families. ∙12∙

CASA Seville integrates learning opportunities through a single instrument—the common framework for intercultural learning. It addresses the challenges of cultural immersion in the 21st century such as the technological bubble, avoidance of discomfort and frustration, superficial contact with local society, and students not equipped with tools and practice in social and cultural research. It provides a solution of restructured teaching to involve ‘active pedagogy.’ Models of instructional delivery based on ‘active pedagogy’ have produced transformative experiences where students now learn how to be researchers and how to become active participants in their own program and their own education. This is a transition from a line organization model to a team-based organizational model where staff, tutors and faculty become intercultural mentors. Community in the holistic sense in which students, faculty, academic institutions, communities, local organizations, etc. are all parts is the guiding thread through the whole CASASevilla program. By integrating all the contexts, the students become the protagonists of their own learning and all of the staff into their mentors. The theoretical underpinning is modelled under the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, and Dewey’s Pragmatism. Through this experience, these students are expected to deepen their knowledge of the local society and culture, to put into practice the research tools learned during the first weeks of the program, to develop their own socialization strategies, and to reflect on what they learn and research. In the students’ words: “By the end of my time in Sevilla...I had learned the language of agriculture, but I had also learned the language of activism, collaboration, sisterhood, and self-care." “The radio station is a community of free expression. It is a place where I could think about the systemic problems in Seville and in our society. Through conversations with my mentor, I learned about the importance of community platforms... I realized that public organizations are very important to transform democracy in the world and to give voice to people.”

This approach has generated new ways to make study abroad more integrated with international perspectives in the curriculum, communicated the benefits of international education, and ultimately provided a diverse student population enhanced opportunities. The conceptual model argues the case to create a more inclusive, asset-based, and equitable communitybased global learning. ❖ ∙13∙

President’s Corner Melissa Torres, President & CEO,The Forum on Education Abroad

s I read through the four articles in this issue of The Forum Focus, I was struck by some common themes that emerged despite a diverse range of topics and authors. Each article had something to contribute to the conversation we all seem to be having about diversity and inclusion, identity, and development in education abroad. The self-reflection evident in each author’s perspective encouraged me to think about the process of growth and the discomfort that sometimes precedes it. As adults and education abroad professionals, whether administrators, staff, or faculty, it sometimes feels as though we are expected to know it all: to be interculturally competent in every situation, to feel at ease and in charge no matter what unexpected crisis may arise, and to guide our students and colleagues on their own personal path of growth and development. How refreshing to read Michael Cox’s comment that, “My belief in my ability to move beyond disseminating facts to model values such as wisdom, attention, passion and humility has grown through both success and failure over each iteration of the program.” Uttiyo Raychaudhuri et al. identified some challenges to this process, including employing the strategy of “avoidance of discomfort and frustration” when it comes to embracing authentic, immersive experiences that stretch our personal boundaries of comfort. Hopefully, we have all had these unsettling yet necessary experiences and are better educators and human beings because of them. In order for that learning to happen, however, we must first allow ourselves to admit that we are all on a continuum of learning and development and we all still have much to learn. Similarly, Anderson and Tyra encourage us to rethink how we teach and learn. They ask us to consider the parts of students’—and our own— identities that are allowed into our classrooms, programs, and conversations. Do we invite and explore religion as an integral component in our own and our host cultures and as a part of one’s identity that may affect the educational outcomes and experiences one has while abroad? Can we extend that exploration beyond religion to include other identities not commonly considered as relevant or permissible? Are the identities of ∙14∙

parenthood, socio-economic status, immigrant, and political affiliation included “Thankfully, the willingness and welcomed as prisms through which to share our stories, our our students, peers, and selves view and seek to understand the world hard-won scars, and our around us? With close to millions of stupersonal and professional dents enrolled in community colleges, journeys, is a foundational these and other identities become even strength that members in more important considerations, and possible resources, to consider. our field have long enjoyed.” Portland Community College stands out as one example of the power of mentors to facilitate learning by everyone involved in an education abroad program. For faculty and administrators to expose our own vulnerability in order to design and build an environment in which students are validated and equipped to cope with the possibility of discomfort described above, we need to be able to rely upon the wisdom and counsel of peers and trusted partners to assist us in translating our own transformative experiences. Thankfully, the willingness to share our stories, our hard-won scars, and our personal and professional journeys, is a foundational strength that members in our field have long enjoyed. ❖

Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of The Forum on Education Abroad. The Forum encourages responses to the perspectives in this issue. Reflections, topic suggestions and other correspondence are welcomed, and all contributions will be considered for future publication. Please send correspondence to: info@forumea.org

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