Study abroad is generally recognized as a transformational experience for university students to help prepare them to be what many in higher education are now calling "global citizens." Responding to the need to prepare citizens for the interconnected global world of the 21st century, K-12 educators recently established new standards and…

Western Europe has been constructed in the field of education abroad as a "traditional" location: in some sense or another that label is used to suggest that it has a kind of static or dormant significance. In reality, Western Europe is an enormously rich location for study abroad precisely because it is a fluid learning environment that…

The idea that study abroad (SA) is an ideal context for acquiring language is one largely supported by foreign language (FL) students and their teachers, the latter often recollecting their own successful if not life-transforming sojourns abroad. According to Rivers (1998), SA represents "an environment which most closely resembles the…

Among the responsibilities of international educators is to help students begin the process of identifying the foreign in their new environments in order to learn from it. The major obstacle for Americans studying abroad in developed economies, especially in English-speaking countries, is to become sensitive to the subtleties of foreignness. The…

The purpose of this essay is to focus on assertions that have accumulated around the work of international education professionals and practitioners: the idea of the global citizen. The propagation of this notion derives from, essentially, two sources: (1) it is a recurrent claim made by study abroad programs; and (2) it is used also as a means of…

In international education the conventional wisdom, supported by research, is that more contact with a host culture yields better results for study abroad students. Such exposure to a foreign culture is seen as the "raison d'etre" for study abroad: the mechanism provoking students to challenge their ethnocentric notions and move toward a…

Living and learning in another country, primary conditions of the study abroad experience, are commonly associated with two fundamental outcomes. The first outcome is an increase in "external" connections, manifested through an increased ability to converse in another language and an increased understanding and sensitivity to another…

The present paper aims to achieve a better understanding of the process of vocabulary acquisition by examining the development of lexical knowledge in both classroom and study abroad contexts. Taking Ife, Vives Boix, and Meara's (2000) study as a starting point, this study attempts to determine whether development in both levels of vocabulary…

This paper presents findings of a pilot qualitative study of Caribbean students undertaking overseas immersion primarily for the purpose of perfecting their knowledge of a language and understanding of a culture other than their own. The participants were a group of eleven University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill (Barbados) graduates, five…

Forty years ago, "abroad" meant little contact with home. Times have changed. Today a U.S. study abroad guidance website advises that Internet access is absolutely essential during study abroad, partly for access to local and world information, but "most importantly, it's the best way to connect to one's friends and family back…

Research shows that study abroad experience affects professional qualifications. It is evident that employers value the skills and knowledge potentially gained from study abroad and that these competencies are transferable on the job. Nearly all known research lacks a longitudinal component. Of the few studies that focus on long-term outcomes,…

Of the 205,000 U.S. students abroad during the 2004-2005 academic year, only 6,557 or slightly more than 3% of them studied in Germany. The Ohio Alliance reports that only 13% of all U.S. students who studied abroad during the 2004-2005 academic year were from the STEM fields of study. The Institute of International Education Open Doors Report,…

Helping students and others facing the task of adapting to a foreign culture is becoming ever more pressing. The current study delves into sociocultural adaptation in order to clarify that process and provide information useful for educators, trainers, coaches, and others guiding those facing a sojourn in a foreign culture. A question to be…

Six years ago, Georgetown University's Office of International Programs, together with partner institutions, designed a large-scale, multi-year study of U.S. student learning abroad. The data support three broad conclusions with significant implications for study abroad policies and practices. This analysis concentrates for the most part on one…

EIn this article, the author presents a little-known but detailed history of Black women's tradition of study abroad. Specifically, she situates Dr. Anna Julia Cooper within the landscape of historic African American students who studied in Japan, Germany, Jamaica, England, Italy, Haiti, India, West Africa, and Thailand, in addition to France. The…