After stepping away from learning abroad for a six-month period last year, I returned with fresh eyes and noticed something striking; much of the discourse around learning abroad feels eerily familiar.
I began my career in outdoor education (OE) before moving into international education in the mid-2000s. Watching the learning abroad field evolve, I have often been struck by how closely some developments have mirrored those in OE, particularly the language used to highlight participant ‘benefits’. I have observed similar patterns emerge, especially in how we talk—often uncritically—about participant outcomes.
OE once leaned heavily on terms like ‘character building’ as a catch-all phrase to describe program benefits and justify delivery. It was assumed that exposure to challenge and a change of environment would, almost automatically, lead to personal growth. We can all, I suspect, relate to the use of character trait terms, such as ‘resilience’ and ‘perseverance’, or catch-alls, such as ‘personal development’ and ‘transformational’, in promoting learning abroad programs.
Early critics of this approach in OE, such as Andrew Brookes, helped expose problems with this kind of neo-Hahnian thinking (a modern interpretation of Kurt Hahn’s early philosophy focused on challenge, character and environment) that experience alone is not a teacher. Without intentional design and facilitation, this promise of personal development is more wishful than real. Brookes’ critique of ‘experience as sufficient’ pedagogy is as relevant to learning abroad today as it ever was to OE. It reminds us that transformative outcomes (and arguably all outcomes) require intention, not just a change in location.
Today, learning abroad risks falling into the same trap. ‘Transformational’ has almost become our sector’s favourite adjective; often used to signal value and impact; possibly implying a profound personal change; yet without clear grounding in evidence or pedagogy; and frequently lacking specifics as to what exactly is meant by ‘transformative’. Yes, learning abroad can be ‘transformational’, but that outcome is a possibility, not a promise and certainly cannot be applied uniformly.
A decade ago, I undertook research into the study abroad experiences of North American students in Melbourne. I found that while students frequently reported growth and change, these outcomes were not automatic and not immediately identifiable by students without assistance. ‘Transformation’ in the sense of a ‘changed world view’ required challenge, structured reflection and tailored facilitation. In other words, transformation was possible but required specific circumstances and appropriate facilitative frameworks to help navigate this change effectively.
This is where transformative pedagogy becomes critical. Transformation requires cognitive dissonance, guided reflection and integration into the learner’s existing worldview. Simply changing environments, such as occurs in a learning abroad program, may create dissonance but not necessarily the kind that leads to lasting change or transformation. As scholars such as Gibson et al and Stone et al argue, genuine transformation requires structured facilitation, deliberate reflective opportunities at each juncture and an educational framework that connects experience to meaning.
Facilitative models such as isomorphic framing, where experiences abroad are intentionally linked to familiar contexts, can help students integrate new insights and knowledge into their existing worldview. For example, a semester long learning abroad program can be framed as ‘navigating an untravelled path’. The early disorientation that comes with trying to work out where you are mirrors the initial cultural adjustment most learning abroad students experience on arrival. When directions do not quite align with the route, it reflects the predictable gaps in preparation or the fact that some students do not engage fully with pre-departure materials. The need to adjust the path as one goes speaks directly to recalibrating expectations, adapting to different teaching styles and gradually ‘finding your feet’ in a new academic environment.
This approach assists in making reflection more meaningful and relevant, however, change is not universal nor is it automatically positive. This is especially true if students are left to learn useful and interesting things on their own, as often occurs in longer campus-based learning abroad experiences. The transformative potential of these experiences is situational and their transference back into students’ lives at home is far from guaranteed. The same ‘transformation’ a student experiences abroad may, in fact, occur just as effectively on their return. Equally, a ‘transformation’ may negatively impact a student.
This raises a broader consideration: changes that emerge without intentional pedagogical support are often ambiguous and uneven. Each participant’s journey through a learning abroad program is complex and their pathway to achieving program outcomes varies widely.
While other character traits may be developed, strengthened and refined, research into personality development during study abroad, such as by Zimmermann and Neyer, suggests that participants might show greater increases in plasticity-related traits such as openness, curiosity and exploration than students who remain at home. However, there is also evidence of a potential cost to emotional stability and this is before we account for potential dispositional differences between those students who choose to study abroad and those who do not. Essentially, unstructured experiences alone cannot reliably produce meaningful or uniform personal growth and development.
If we aim to mature our discourse regarding learning abroad program outcomes, we need to identify specific desired outcomes for individual programs, intentionally design for them and then explicitly communicate them. Programs should engage with the strengths and educational opportunities of the new environment, rather than just replicate classroom learning that could happen anywhere. This was demonstrated by Vande Berg and colleagues, who showed that immersion alone does not guarantee intercultural learning and that purposeful intervention is essential. There are many pedagogical approaches we can draw from—transformative, experiential and others— but they share common elements: strong facilitation, guided reflection and purposeful program and curriculum design. These help translate experience into learning and need to focus on the explicit desired learning outcomes.
My background in OE gives me an appreciation for the power of experiential learning but also for its limitations and pitfalls. Without strong pedagogical underpinnings, claims of vague outcomes that are ill-defined and opaque ring hollow. As a sector, if we continue to chase student preferences, funding opportunities and government priority markets without asking ‘why this, and for what educational benefit?’ and design programs accordingly, we risk undermining our own legitimacy. We have an opportunity and responsibility to design programs that deliver meaningful and clearly defined outcomes for every student, not just those who meet an abstract benchmark of self-reported ‘transformation’.
While transformation is certainly an attainable outcome, it is not a holy grail and should not be our sole pursuit. The benefits of learning abroad programs are multifaceted and subtle. They can be academic, deepening understanding through contextual study, or intercultural, expanding students’ capacity to communicate and collaborate across difference. They can also be civic, professional, based on specific skills or simply personal: fostering perspective, adaptability or openness. None of these require a full-blown ‘transformation’ to be meaningful. Over-emphasising transformation as a universal goal for learning abroad programs can devalue these outcomes and obscure their real impact. It can also place unnecessary pressure on students who do not feel sufficiently ’transformed’, leaving them wondering where they failed or mis-stepped. Learning abroad programs should be designed to support diverse students to achieve meaningful learning, recognising that success looks different for each participant.
For practitioners, this means a shift in both design and discourse. When promoting programs, we should move beyond sweeping claims of ‘transformation’ and instead speak to specific opportunities and learning outcomes that the experience can offer:
- Ask what makes this specific international context educationally powerful and how it complements the degree or home university curriculum.
- Build in structured reflection that is facilitated by trained staff using an appropriate facilitative model and provides opportunities for students to link their experiences abroad to their academic and personal goals.
- Evaluate outcomes transparently recognising that not all learning is dramatic and not all change is immediately visible or worldview shaping.
If we can do this, we strengthen our credibility as educators, not just as administrators who provide exposure to challenge and a change of environment. Learning abroad can indeed be ‘transformational’, but its true power lies in its diversity of possible outcomes and the flexibility with which we can design for them. By embracing these principles, learning abroad can continue to mature in a similar vein to OE, moving beyond buzzwords and unsubstantiated broad sweeping claims to measurable, meaningful and inclusive student learning outcomes.