MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School
Certificate for Approving the Dissertation
We hereby approve the Dissertation
of
Cheryl Denise Young
Candidate for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
______Thomas S. Poetter, Director
______Denise Taliaferro Baszile, Reader
______Joel Malin, Reader
______James Shiveley, Graduate School Representative
ABSTRACT
ENCOUNTERING THE EMERGENCE OF CURIOSITY IN A STUDENT SOJOURN EXPERIENCE
by
Cheryl Denise Young
Institutions of higher education in the United States are undertaking strategies to comprehensively internationalize across all realms of the university. Embedded into institutional strategies is an expectation that a study abroad cultural immersion experience for undergraduates will increase their intercultural and global competence. One of the competencies identified as important to cultivate through the sojourner experience is curiosity. The object of this study is curiosity as an intercultural competence. The literature on curiosity as an intercultural competence is focused on a pre-conceived notion of curiosity, and from this arises a need to examine the manifestation of the phenomenon of curiosity in a sojourn experience to recognize it and subsequently understand through future research projects how it can be cultivated through intentionally designed curriculum and pedagogy. The question that guided this study is: What is the lived experience of human interpersonal curiosity as it manifests in an intercultural learning experience that takes students into an unfamiliar culture? This study was designed to examine undergraduate, American, study abroad students’ experiences of the phenomenon of curiosity during a cross-cultural study abroad experience, and to explore the essence of curiosity. Interviews with and observations of students in the pre- and post-study abroad phase, as well as during their sojourn experience, revealed that student curiosity is strongly influenced by teachers and cultivated by school enrichment programs. Intercultural wonderment encompasses student curiosity and involves a willingness to engage with the discomfort of the unknown. The discomfort of intercultural wonderment leads to a breakthrough in which the threshold concept of culture-as-meta-context propels the students into a transformed worldview. The currere method brought a richness of depth of the exploration to engage the students in reflecting on their educational experiences, as well as social media images and text. The narrative is framed through the researcher’s currere perspective which serves as a signpost throughout the exploration while moving it through hermeneutic circles framed in regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthetical steps.
ENCOUNTERING THE EMERGENCE OF CURIOSITY IN A SOJOURN EXPERIENCE
A DISSERTATION
Presented to the Faculty of
Miami University in partial
fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Educational Leadership
by
Cheryl Denise Young
The Graduate School Miami University Oxford, Ohio
2018
Dissertation Director: Thomas Poetter
©
Cheryl Denise Young
2018
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables ...... v List of Figures ...... vi Dedication ...... vii Acknowledgements ...... viii
Chapter 1. Introduction: Down the Rabbit Hole ...... 1 A Regressive Moment Where Questions Arise ...... 2 The Context: Internationalization of Higher Education...... 4 Statement of the Problem ...... 6 Purpose and Significance of the Study ...... 7 Research Questions ...... 8 Exploring Curiosity in a Sojourner Experience through Currere ...... 8 Chapter 2. Literature Review ...... 11 Part I International Education ...... 11 Education Abroad...... 12 Stakeholders and Expectations ...... 17 Part II Intercultural Competence ...... 18 Intercultural Interventions ...... 25 What Study Abroad Looks Like in My Practice ...... 27 Part III Curiosity: Philosophical, Theoretical, and Psychological Frameworks ...... 30 Philosophical and Theoretical Foundations ...... 31 Psychological Foundations ...... 33 Curiosity and Intercultural Wonderment ...... 34 Part IV Currere: The Autobiographical Journey ...... 36 Chapter 3. Methodology and Methods ...... 39 Qualitative Research ...... 39 Interpretive Paradigm...... 40 Educational Connoisseurship and Criticism ...... 41 Positionality ...... 43 Methodology ...... 45 Ontology ...... 45 Epistemology ...... 46 Theory ...... 47 Methods ...... 48 Data Analysis and Interpretation ...... 55 Moral and Ethical Issues ...... 61 Chapter 4. Through the Looking Glass: What I Found There ...... 63 Participants ...... 63 Illuminating the Essential Themes ...... 65 Theme One: Discovered, Acknowledged, and Enriched ...... 66 Theme Two: Curiosity and Intercultural Wonderment ...... 69 Between Themes ...... 72 Theme Three: Threshold Concepts as Gateways ...... 74 What’s Next? ...... 76
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Chapter 5. A Teacher Shall Lead Them ...... 77 Teacher Heroes ...... 79 Faculty Mentors and Guides ...... 81 Engagement, Encouragement, and Education ...... 83 School Enrichment ...... 85 School Enrichment Model ...... 86 Final Thoughts ...... 91 Chapter 6. Curiouser and Curiouser ...... 93 Emergence of Curiosity ...... 93 Questions...... 94 Empathy ...... 95 Creativity...... 97 Curiosity and Study Abroad ...... 105 Intercultural Wonderment ...... 107 Chapter 7. I’m Not Myself You See: Breaking Through the Threshold ...... 111 Threshold Concepts ...... 113 Liminality ...... 116 Transformative ...... 120 Irreversible ...... 121 Integrative and Bounded ...... 123 Troublesome Knowledge ...... 124 Cultural Mindset ...... 128 Conclusion ...... 130 Chapter 8. Ignorance Killed the Cat, Curiosity was Framed ...... 132 Summary of Study ...... 133 What Should Students Know? ...... 135 Findings in Action: Designing Enriching Intercultural Learning Experiences ...... 137 The Culture of Flooring ...... 137 Curriculum and Pedagogy: Culture as Meta Context ...... 143 Faculty Mentor and Guide ...... 145 Knowledge, Application, and Threshold Concepts ...... 148 Interventions ...... 150 Storytelling ...... 150 Language Learning ...... 150 Homestays ...... 151 Assessment ...... 152 What Does This Look Like in My Practice? Part II ...... 153 Conclusion ...... 157
References ...... 159 Appendices ...... 176
iv
LIST OF TABLES
Study abroad immersion levels and descriptions ...... 16 Study Abroad Interview Participants ...... 52 Observations in Situ ...... 53 Classroom observations – Informal Focus Groups ...... 54 Social Media Participants and Images ...... 55 Characteristics of Threshold Concepts ...... 118
v
LIST OF FIGURES
Deardorff Model of Intercultural Competence ...... 21 Bennett Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity ...... 22 Instagram Post @cheryldyoung 27 August 2015 ...... 58 The Integrated Continuum of Special Services ...... 86 Oscar’s Instagram post from his second trip to Spain ...... 99 Erin in a pre-study abroad post. 6 April 2017 ...... 100 Erin boarding her flight for her study abroad program. May 14, 2017 ...... 101 Erin’s landscape portrait on the Camino de Santiago, Day 2 ...... 102 Post-study abroad relaxing and reading with Erin. July 16, 2017 ...... 103 Post-study abroad nostalgia. October 6, 2017 ...... 104 Oscar and host-family sister CeCe, June 23, 2017 ...... 126 Portland, Oregon airport carpet ...... 138 Carpet in the university administration offices and building ...... 139 Hotel carpet, Philadelphia Downtown Marriott ...... 139 Hotel carpet, Xi’an China Westin Hotel ...... 140 Iranian made carpet in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK ...... 140 Concrete floor design, Hotel St. Francis Westin, San Francisco ...... 140 Concrete floor, Terminal 4, Madrid International Airport, Spain ...... 141 Ceramic tile floor, Delta terminal, Heathrow Airport, London, UK ...... 141 Faculty/cultural mentor process throughout the study abroad program ...... 147 Curriculum as a process using threshold concepts to build knowledge ...... 148 Curriculum as Process Model based on Knight with curiosity built into the model ...... 149
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DEDICATION
This project is dedicated to my family and my friends. To my mother, Maxine, who is the source of life, put up with a lot out of me over the years, and sacrificed so much, but gave me an extraordinary amount of freedom to be curious, strength to keep moving forward, and to learn. I love you, Mom. For my amazing daughters Nicki and Rachel, and incredible grands, Natalie, Allison, Oliver (perhaps, the most curious kid ever!), and Elliot. You have been so patient with all of this – I love and appreciate each one of you. I will coordinate holidays better in the future. Maybe. For Tim, the love of my life. This guy did the heavy lifting at home over the many years of classes, writing, research, travel, and writing. I love you, Tim. I promise to clean up the books, binders, bins of papers and articles, and the rest of mess, created by this project. Someday. Maxine’s Brood is a small, but a mighty bunch. For my sisters Jamie and Suzanne and their families: Doug, Jenifer and Peter, Megan and Hannah, Dennis, Angela and Erik, Elissa and Murrell, and the next generation – Ronan, Lucca, and Miller; Graham, Tess, and Greer; and, Tommy and Evan. I’m so proud to be a part of this extraordinary family. I have been an absent sister and auntie for a few years… let’s get to know one another again! My heart, my head, and my hands are inspired by three friendships. To Mary Beth, Susan, and Ann for over 45 years of friendship. Mary Beth is a source of love and encouragement, always in my heart, and fueling inspiration. Susan’s commitment to social justice instigates courage in me to stand up strong and loud for what I believe. Ann’s sharp wit, incisive wisdom, and creative ways with words are aspirational and motivating. Traveling with them for our 60th year of life celebration gave me some needed time away from my crazy daily life to understand curiosity more deeply, and what exploration and travel mean in connecting with life and people. I love you and thank you for your support and encouragement. Hash browns, jelly fish, and otters, oh my! Gone, never forgotten, and a part of this journey…. For my Grandmothers: Mildred, Jo, and Etna. For my Grandpa. For Elinor. For Marcie. For my Father.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Miami University has been my workplace for over 30 years, but it has provided much more than a salary for food on my table, a roof over my head, and the ability to raise my daughters. Miami has invested in me professionally and academically. That continuing support has been the foundation for my accomplishments. There are many individuals to acknowledge for their contribution to this study, and for their support. Tom Poetter, advisor extraordinaire, idea generator, and currere guru. I also had an amazing committee who worked with me: Denise Taliaferro Baszile, Jim Shiveley, and Joel Malin. There are four more faculty who contributed to not only this project, but also my academic journey: Richard Quantz, Kathleen Knight-Abowitz, and Kate Rousmaniere were instrumental in whatever value is found in this dissertation. Michael Dantley encouraged me to apply to the doctoral program when I reported to him in his role as Associate Provost, and he continued to encourage me along the way. Now, as Dean of the College of Education, Health, and Society, he continues to support me in many ways, academically and professionally. Phyllis Callahan served on the search committee that brought me into my first permanent administrative position at Miami, and then became a mentor and friend as she moved from Associate Dean of the College of Arts & Science, to Dean of the College, and then Provost and Executive Vice President of Miami University. I am forever appreciative of her wise counsel, leadership inspiration, flexibility, support, and yes, critique. This could not have happened without her. Seriously, without her encouragement, this … would… not… have… happened. Along the way there have been some colleagues who became friends and for them, I am grateful. They are all an important part of my personal and professional lives and they have contributed to my journey in significant ways: Jim Pollicita, Susan Mosely Howard, Cindie Ulreich, and Penny Henry. Special recognition goes to two colleague-friends: Donna Gouvan, who has been along for the ride over many years (imagine, working with me for over 18 years!) and has always fully supported me, professionally and personally; and, Lindsay Carpenter has been a sounding board, while she provided reinforcement, encouragement, and laughter… so much laughter! There have been over 500 Miami University faculty and staff who collaborated with me to lead transformational study abroad programs, along with other e-learning, and experiential learning opportunities. This is a choice they make, and each one of them has contributed in some way to this project, but most important, they have transformed the lives of over 40,000 students during the time I have worked with them. This work is critical. We are here to transform students’ lives. What’s next?
Sometimes the light's all shining on me Other times I can barely see lately it occurs to me what a long strange trip it's been… ~ Grateful Dead
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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE1 It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end. ~Ursula K. LeGuin2
The journey begins with a desire to explore, and exploration leads to discovery. The desire to explore is fueled by curiosity. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) understands this – they named the Mars rover explorer “Curiosity.” Delta Airlines recognizes it also – they begin each in-flight movie with a promotion – a one-minute video marketing an aspect of the Delta experience. I am unusually adept at ignoring these on flights, but from the beginning this one caught my attention. I was drawn to the opening musical rhythms, particularly the upbeat drum and percussion beats, as well as the telegenic fly-over views of an ocean, Aztec ruins, a Buddhist temple, narrow cobblestone streets, a tuk-tuk moving through traffic, and other scenes of alluring locations. Over the music and striking scenery, a strong, persuasive female voice says: “There’s something out there, driving you, calling you, pulling you in, closer and closer. More powerful than gravity, and, once you find it, it starts all over again. Where will your curiosity take you?” (Delta Airlines, 2016). The promotion for Delta SkyMiles beautifully connects curiosity with the desire to travel and explore the world, but it also illustrates what international education professionals hear from our students – once curiosity is satisfied by a sojourn, the wanderlust becomes more commanding and the explorer is on the hunt for another cultural encounter. Curiosity is instinctive and innate for most, if not all, human beings. We are inquisitive; we experience it in ourselves and others regularly, and generally without noticing it, or even questioning it. Our keen interest can lead to completely unproductive hours of exploring the Facebook pages of people we have never or will never meet or exploring trivial questions for hours as we journey through the stacks at the local library, or in the seemingly endless paths of the internet.
1 Carroll, 2015 2 Le Guin, 1969, p. 183 1
Curiosity is a fundamental human feature and may be the key to opening new perspectives and ways of knowing. It is a phenomenon that drives us to explore to understand other phenomena in our lives. This inquisiting nature is an enormous topic to consider for examination but as the Delta video promotion suggests, a sojourner may be motivated by curiosity, and as an international educator in higher education, I wanted to explore this perspective. I have no special talents, I am just passionately curious. ~Albert Einstein3
A Regressive Moment Where Questions Arise I am an international higher education professional, and in that role, I support faculty led study abroad programs. About 10 years ago, I was conducting a site visit to a faculty led study abroad program in Florence, Italy. I embedded myself into a group of traditional-aged, American, undergraduate college students in their final weeks of their program and assisted the faculty director by encouraging the students to reflect on their cross-cultural experiences. The students had studied Italian film and Renaissance literature in the heat of the Tuscan summer, within sight of the iconic Duomo, while walking the same cobblestone streets that Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo had walked centuries earlier. The program classes were held in a building on via Camillo Cavour where Dante Alighiere allegedly wrote much of his epic poem, The Divine Comedy. This group of students were embedded in Italian culture, literature, and history as they studied the same among the Italian people they met and from whom they learned. In the final days of the program, papers had been submitted, exams were over, and I joined the students and faculty leader for their final excursion – a chartered bus day trip to Pisa and Lucca. A handsome, young Italian man was hired to accompany us to highlight the points of interest along the way. He was engaging, entertaining, and enthusiastic as he told us about the special oak trees in the area the fictional woodworker, Geppetto, used to carve his marionette, Pinocchio, in a village near Lucca. In fact, he told us, the name Pinocchio is a variant of the word pinolo, which means pine seed. He pointed out the Carrara marble in the mountains along the way and was an expert at assisting the students in taking the requisite, perfect selfies at the leaning tower of Pisa.
3 Calaprice & Lipscombe, 2005, p. i 2
The students were engaged, and hanging on his every word, except Alice, a young woman who appeared to be disinterested and bored. I had noticed her over the week of my visit, in other settings, also. She had successfully completed the academic components of the program, engaged academically and in class discussions, seemed to be connected closely to several other students, and friendly with all of the students and faculty in the program, but she was definitely not enthralled with the Italian culture or its people. She would often wander off, sit by herself somewhere, appearing to be weary of the experience, while the other students were listening and learning, even after there was no test or paper to be anxious about. At a lovely vineyard wine and olive oil tasting, Alice slipped away and went swimming in the winemaking family’s pool, much to the faculty director’s dismay. On the way back to Florence from Lucca, I sat with Alice on the bus. Part of the purpose of this day trip was an opportunity for students to reflect on their study abroad experience together, on the bus. As we chatted along the way, I learned that she had talked her parents into allowing her to do the seven-week summer study abroad program in Italy, with her sorority sisters, and they finally fully supported her financially to do it. But, she said, “They were right, this is boring, even disgusting sometimes, and totally not worth it.” Since she was being so honest and open with her feelings, I decided to dig into this more deeply. I discovered she was disappointed by the inconsistent availability of hot water for showers, the “crappy” pizza, and not being able to understand people in the shops or restaurants, especially the coffee shop near her accommodations. She found Italians to be rude, and always trying to take advantage of American students. The day trip outside of Florence really seemed to aggravate her. My unofficial diagnosis was that Alice had not moved out of the early stages of culture shock. She had never adjusted to the Italian culture. She spent most of her time in the program in Florence (which has, in my opinion, become quite Americanized due to tourism). Lucca, where we spent half of that day, is a small rural village location where less English was spoken, the pizza was very Italian, and the soda was very warm, with no ice to be found. This probably deepened her disorientation and frustration. I went further with my questions to her, since she seemed open to them, and I was… curious. I asked if there was anything about Italy or the people that intrigued her, or that she found exciting – perhaps something that would bring her back to Europe one day. No, she said, “I just don’t care about this culture and I can’t get into it. They don’t like me, and I don’t like
3 them. I like American culture, and the English language.” She said, “I can’t wait to get home next week to hot showers, good internet connections, real Pepsi with ice, and Shark Week.” This student, and her lack of motivation to explore, have remained with me over the past 10 years. I had, and I continue to have, so many questions for students who aren’t eager to explore cultures and new places. What happened to her inquisitive nature? Did she ever have it? Is it just “other” people and cultures she doesn’t want to learn about? To explore? Is there a clue in the detail about her parents not being completely supportive of this academic adventure? These questions from the past are captured in my memory of that moment, and hover over this study, in the present, and motivate my exploration.
The Context: Internationalization of Higher Education To frame the questions at the foundation of this qualitative phenomenological study of curiosity, it is necessary to first review the context – contemporary study abroad experiences in American higher education, and the motivation behind the recent years of steady growth in student enrollments. Internationalization has been a force for transformation in higher education in the most recent 50 years. Internationalization means different things to individuals and institutions, but in international higher education it is used as an all-encompassing phrase to explain anything related to global or international that the university engages. The widely accepted definition in the profession is offered by Jane Knight (2003) who describes it as a “process of integrating an international, intercultural, or global dimension in the purpose, function, or delivery of postsecondary education” (p. 2). In higher education there are increased and concentrated efforts to comprehensively internationalize the activities of the university and the learning outcomes of the curriculum to ensure a global perspective in students and graduates. Comprehensive internationalization implies embedding global perspectives throughout all aspects of higher education. It involves multiple activities, including, but not limited to (in the academic realm): recruitment of international students to diversify campuses; delivery of education in locations outside of the institution’s home campus country; connecting students across cultural borders through technology; globally focused curriculum and pedagogy; and, “fostering of the development of skills that will allow graduates to participate in an international or global context” (Hughes-
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Warrington, 2012, p. 314). In addition to these activities, increased mobility of faculty, staff, and students is a priority – supporting learning experiences, research, service, and movement across international borders for intentional academic purposes. This has become an institutional priority at many universities. At the undergraduate level, university academic requirements increasingly emphasize global learning and research that connects degree programs and curriculum to effective preparation of undergraduates who can navigate in a complex and interconnected world (Ramirez, 2013). In the United States, higher education curricular dimensions have advanced from an emphasis focused narrowly on area studies and languages to an embedded approach integrating “international, global, intercultural, and comparative perspectives into the teaching/learning process and program content.” (Knight, 2003, p. 3). The dimensions of an internationalized curriculum have evolved into distinct divisions between internationalization at home (globally focused courses and programs offered on campus and in the United States), and cross border education (experiential learning off-campus, generally outside of the United States), with some overlap between the two aspects (Knight, 2008). At home, institutions are implementing general education requirements that have intercultural and international elements as research agendas become increasingly globally focused, while campuses increase access for transnational students and scholars integrating into the institution. Through internationalization at home, faculty and students increase their understanding of global concerns and can increase intercultural understanding without ever leaving the campus, community, or country (Brewer & Leask, 2012; Knight, 2008). In the cross-border dimension of curricular internationalization, we find people, programs, knowledge, and ideas moving beyond national boundaries through intentionally developed education abroad opportunities for undergraduates that include student exchange programs, study abroad, dual degree programs, online education, global internships and service learning, or field/research work (Brewer & Leask, 2012; Knight, 2003, 2008). Education abroad experiences for undergraduates in U.S. higher education are intended to have a transformational impact on the students, with myriad stakeholder expectations and realities.
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Statement of the Problem Best practices in education abroad dictate that the sojourner experiences are academically sound, culturally relevant, and immersive (Canfield, Low, & Hovestadt, 2009; Pasquarelli, Cole, & Tyson, 2018; Savicki, 2008; Savicki & Brewer, 2015); that is, as Pasquarelli (2018) notes, “if a study abroad program fulfills its student learning outcomes, the participating students motivations are steered by a desire for deep knowledge gains, transformative cultural experiences, and guided reflections on both” (p. 35). The students, through an immersive cultural experience, with appropriate intercultural interventions (e.g., experiential learning, guided reflection, language skills, intercultural mentoring [Jackson & Oguro, 2018]), will develop intercultural competence. We have an expectation in international higher education that our students will gain intercultural competence through a study abroad experience. Intercultural competence is a “key capability for working and driving effectively with people from different cultures, critical in achieving diversity and inclusion goals within organizations, essential for reducing ethnocentrism and bias among people, and central to building productive and positive relations within one’s own culture and internationally” (Hammer, 2015, p. 486). The most widely used (by higher education institutions in the U.S, public and private, large and small) learning outcomes rubrics for intercultural and global competencies were developed by the Association of American Colleges & Universities in their Global Learning and Intercultural Competence VALUE Rubrics, and the competencies identified include empathy, socio-linguistic awareness, respect, and curiosity (Rhodes & Finley, 2013). We no longer send students abroad with a naïve expectation that that they will thrive and enhance their intercultural competence by simply being in the host environment (Jackson & Oguro, 2018). International education and study abroad professionals are key to the success of learning and engaging students in the study abroad experience. Cultural immersion is exemplified by acclimation, integration into a community, interacting with local people, and understanding how others live. To immerse, students need to actively participate (Ingraham & Peterson, 2004; Paige, Fry, Stallman, Josic, Jon, 2009) and stay motivated to move out of a state of being relaxed and comfortable in the surroundings (Lutterman-Aguilar & Gingerich, 2015) Transformation will come with discomfort (Ellwood, 2011; Wynveen, Kyle, & Tarrant, 2012).
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The intercultural competencies, identified by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), and others, are all valuable, in my opinion, to develop in students, but as an international educator in an institution of higher education in the United States for over 30 years, I have noticed more recently that students seem to exhibit less curiosity than in the past. That is, in general, undergraduate students in the past 10-15 years seem to be more focused on getting through the educational experience, earning exceptional grades, and the end goal – graduating and securing a job or graduate school admission offer. They seem to be less focused, generally, on exploring new concepts and ideas, diverse perspectives, and unfamiliar cultures. Increasingly, the students I advise, teach, and meet, superficially express that an experiential mobility opportunity in an abroad location is a “bucket list” item – something to do before you die because “you only live once,” and their focus is on the location, not the cultural aspects, and (in general) not the sociocultural experience or value of intercultural competence. As I have observed this in my professional practice, I have also been a student in an educational leadership doctoral program, where I have learned from my primary and secondary school educator colleagues, as well as in my own research, about No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and the toxic culture of learning that is focused on swallowing pieces of knowledge and then spitting them back out in a high stakes testing environment, requiring little to no inquisitiveness on the part of the student (Engel, 2009). Personally, my own curiosity leads to me to question, are these connected? That is, are there connections between the perceived decline in college students’ personal, interpersonal, and intellectual curiosity, and the fact that this is the first generation of students to enter college as products of NCLB? Can a study abroad cross cultural experience cultivate curiosity in these students? These questions emerged as the problems that I wanted to confront and understand.
Purpose and Significance of the Study Curiosity as an intercultural competence is focused on a pre-conceived notion of the phenomenon. The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper, richer understanding of curiosity as it emerges in a student sojourn experience. The significance of this study lies in the need to examine the manifestation of the phenomenon of curiosity in an academic sojourner experience to develop and cultivate it as an intercultural competence and inform future action research projects that will focus on an innovative, effective curriculum development and interventions for
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study abroad experiences in higher education, as well as experiential pedagogy for development of global awareness.
Research Questions Broadly, the questions that formed the context for the inquiry were: How do American university students make sense of the education abroad experience and the higher education focus on intercultural competence as an outcome of the sojourn experience? And, does the student sojourner value curiosity as a competence? Specifically, what is the process students go through when making sense of the study abroad experience, competencies (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) gained, and how it connects to their sense of their personal identity? Is curiosity a part of this process? How do American student sojourners express curiosity in texts (written and verbal reflections, photographs, social media, and blogs)? And, does the education abroad experience cultivate higher levels of curiosity in students? These questions surround and inform the primary research question. If we expect students to develop intercultural competence, and we have identified curiosity as a competence, then there is a need to examine it, recognize it, and understand how it can be cultivated. The central question guiding this project is: What is the lived experience of interpersonal curiosity as it manifests in an intercultural learning experience that takes the students into an unfamiliar culture?
Exploring Curiosity in a Sojourner Experience through Currere There is an expectation that a study abroad experience for U.S. college level undergraduates will increase their cultural competence, as noted above. One of the competencies identified as important to cultivate in the sojourner experience is curiosity. The object of this study is curiosity as an intercultural competence. The literature on curiosity as an intercultural competence is focused on a pre-conceived notion of curiosity (as delineated in the literature review in Chapter 2), and from there arises a perceived need to examine the manifestation of the phenomenon of curiosity to recognize it and subsequently understand through future research projects how it can be cultivated through intentionally designed curriculum and pedagogy in intercultural experiences.
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The goal, in this project, was not to reify curiosity. There is evidence that is being done, in fact, to the point of commodification, through innovative technologies such as Google Analytics, in which human curiosity is objectified and turned into capital (Gibson, 2010) with personalized online advertising and marketing efforts. My intention was to focus on the consciousness and essence of the phenomenon of curiosity through an interpretation of personal narratives which use language (defined in the broadest sense) to reveal the historical, personal, cultural, and public perspectives (Pinar, 2012) that underlie the phenomenon. This is a qualitative, descriptive, hermeneutic phenomenological study of curiosity as it emerges or is cultivated in the sojourn experience, using one-on-one interviews and group interviews with students. The interview discussions are focused on understanding the sojourn experience through the students’ perspective. Explored further in Chapters 2 and 3, the interviews were scaffolded in the theoretical framework of currere. As an autobiographical examination of self, conceptualized by William Pinar, through currere we become aware that we are “undergoing experience in all its multi- dimensionality and international elusiveness” (Magrini, 2014, p. 145). Using currere, I reflect on my professional international practice as it developed through my life. Positionality is critical in this project. I bring over 30 years of experience in this practice of study abroad to the research. I cannot separate what I know as an international educator within this study; therefore, I chose to use it to guide the study. My orientation and the student interviews are guided by currere to frame our experience in the past, the present, and the future. There is power in the “phenomenological approach inherent in currere [that] makes visible the importance of conceptual knowledge in the development of practice and the extent to which it is a prerequisite of the needs of the practice,” and in the complex conversation that is central to it is an understanding that there is a contribution that academic studies impact one’s life (Gibbs, 2013, p. 152). The stages of currere (regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthetical [Pinar, 2012]) guide the exploration of the students’ narratives. In-depth interviews are employed to obtain a clear understanding of their encounters with curiosity in their lives and education, including in the context of study abroad. Students observed their own functioning and experiences in the past and record with present responses, while considering the future where their curiosity will influence what is not yet present in their lives. My personal currere narrative is embedded into
9 each phase. The subjects are not only students in unfamiliar cultures, but also myself, the researcher, immersed in new cultures, experiencing encounters with intercultural wonderment and curiosity, and reflecting on the phenomenon throughout my life and learning experiences, and finding meaning in the present, particularly in the contribution of this scholarly work (Pinar, 2012). Let the journey begin!
We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. ~ Walt Disney4
4 As quoted in the closing credits of the animated film Meet the Robinsons (Borden, et al., 2007). 10
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. ~Albert Einstein5
The premise of this study is to explore the phenomenon of curiosity as it manifests in an intercultural learning experience in an unfamiliar culture. With the expectation that an educational sojourner experience into another culture will increase the student’s cultural competence, it is implied that the experience will be intentionally designed to cultivate competencies, such as curiosity, the object of this study. The literature review first explores the history of international (later called “global,” with the two terms used interchangeably here) education and the role of study abroad, the context for this research journey. The second part reviews the published research on intercultural competence, and the assumption that it is the intended outcome of a study abroad experience. One of these competencies is curiosity – the object of this study, and the third part of the literature review examines the theoretical and psychological frameworks of curiosity. The final section considers currere, the framework on which this project rests.
…to ascertain where one is, one must locate the past… ~William Pinar6 Part I: International Education Following World War II, the nations of the world entered a period of redefining relationships with one another. For United States citizens, perspectives progressed beyond Americentric, with the war exposing military personnel and civilians, first hand, and through news stories, to foreign cultures and world events. The subsequent launching of the United Nations, with the goal of preventing future, similar global conflicts, brought the world to the United States in a more immediate way. This opening of perspectives and global immediacy served to stimulate efforts by United States educators to promote internationalized education
5 Einstein, 2016, p. 45 6 Pinar, 1994, p. 2 11
(Sutton, 1998), and for educators themselves to gain a more global perspective. Legislation established the Fulbright program in 1946, drawing strength from the new commitment to develop the United States as a postwar leader and engage with nations across the world. The prestigious scholarship is awarded to students, teachers, and scholars who represent the United States abroad and teach, study, or conduct research. Fulbright funded foreign exchanges for educators thrived, the numbers of educators taking advantage of the opportunity grew steadily, and today more than 3,600 candidates are recommended annually (Brickman, 1977; Sutton, 1998; Institute for International Education, 2018). Educators engage in sponsored projects abroad that examine myriad facets of global perspectives – political, economic, educational, professional, interdisciplinary, and beyond. As the Fulbright initiatives suggest, in the post-war period, from about 1947 to 1967, there was an increasing of awareness of comparative and international education systems and issues. This served as a catalyst for a re-examination of what schools and universities were teaching about United States relations with other countries and people throughout the world (Bragaw, 2001). With the 1957 Russian launch of Sputnik, a surge of government programs began to involve secondary and higher education students, not only in enhanced scientific education, but in cultural and cross-cultural studies (Sutton, 1998). Also, in the post-World War II period, and in reaction to the Cold War, advocates for international education drew on two key rationales as motivation for increased attention to a globally focused education at the primary, secondary, and post-secondary levels: 1) peace, and 2) the need to know more about our enemies (Hanvey, 1982; Sutton, 1998). In this time, the media was flourishing – television, newspapers, news magazines all served to enhance attention to the need for educational efforts that had a more global perspective. Robert Hanvey (1961) addressing the need for media literate young people, in consideration of the “undisciplined vigor of the mass media in the production of information” (p. 135), called for changes to social studies education at the secondary level because young people “have questions about the world around them. They want explanations – explanations that transcend local perspectives” (p. 128). By the late 1960s a new theme emerged to support the need for global education – the earth as seen from space, or “The Big Blue Marble” representation that became the symbol for the movement toward a more internationalized education. The image was one that reflected the images coming back from space exploration – looking at the planet Earth from above. This
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perspective boosted the emphasis on understanding the world as complex interlocking systems, rather than self-contained political units (Sutton, 1998). Lee Anderson, a pioneer in advocating for global education in American schools, argued that an internationalized education, in its content and pedagogy, is an attempt to understand an interconnected, yet increasingly divided and problematic world, offering the following definition of global education: “’Global education prepares… people to understand and interact within a culturally diverse and globally interconnected world’” (Knighten, 2004, p. 1). Anderson delineated a perspective that distinguished the emerging field of international education, from the historically dominant approaches, as one which emphasizes “the ‘unity,’ the ‘wholeness,’ the ‘interdependence,’ the ‘systemness’ of the modern world” (1968, p. 640). By 1979 “global education” and “global perspective” had moved to the foreground as critical areas of schooling (Hanvey, 1982; Landorf & Nevin, 2007). The dimensions of this new notion of a global mindset in education were (as articulated by Hanvey): perspective consciousness, “state of the planet” awareness, cross cultural awareness, knowledge of global dynamics, and awareness of human choices (Hanvey, 1982; Sutton, 1998). Moving into the 21st century, the increasing prevalence of an intense focus on international education at all levels has been increasingly a result of globalization, a powerful force that (both positively and negatively) shapes the environments in which we live and work. Globalization links individuals and institutions across the world with unprecedented immediacy driven by economic forces and digital technologies and communications (Knight, 2003). Writing in 1991, Siegfried noted that, “Now, at the edge of the 21st century, all the countries of the world are interconnected in virtually every aspect of life. … the flow of ideas, information, and services is linked globally, and these linkages reach every household and every person” (p. 44). As Hanvey and Anderson had supported in an earlier time, Siegfried advocated for instruction that supports student learning to see through “the eyes, minds, and hearts of others” (p. 45) with a strong ethical dimension that calls for accepting responsibility for the well-being of the planet. From the period after the war, through the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st century, innovation in transportation modes allowed people to connect globally, and quickly. People who wanted to travel further outside of their home locales could now do so and may be motivated to explore because they had benefited from the international and global focus of
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education that has become the norm. Gradually, the incentive to travel and immerse into other cultures and countries was also embedded into educational opportunities. Education abroad. As a result of globalization, and the subsequent internationalization of higher education, general education requirements progressively emphasized the imperative of a globally focused curriculum. In the emphasis and focus, “the intercultural is stressed as an important part of internationalization” (Leask, p. 337, 2004), resulting in increased student mobility across borders and cultures with learning outcomes that include intercultural competence to address the pressure on higher education to prepare globally engaged, world minded, global citizens (Knight, 2003; Leask, 2004; Paige & Goode, 2009; Root & Ngampornchai, 2012). In the United States, there is a long history of students studying languages and cultures outside of our borders, with a goal of earning credit toward degrees, engaging in missionary work, or studying with students from other countries (Hoffa, 2007; Twombly, Salisbury, Tumanut, & Klute, 2012). An organization serving higher education, The Forum on Education Abroad, has set ethical, risk management, educational, and other standards for what is now considered a professional field of endeavor – education abroad. The Forum has provided a definition of “study abroad” which is simply: education for academic credit that takes place outside of the participant’s home country resulting in a degree. The Forum distinguishes “study abroad” from “education abroad,” which is a broader domain, encompassing any form of formal or informal educational, academic credit or not for credit experience abroad, and not necessarily leading to a degree (Forum on Education Abroad, 2018). The types of education abroad programs offered for post-secondary students include: internships or other practical experiences; language immersion; cultural engagement; direct enroll in a foreign institution; faculty-led; non-profit provider coordinated and organized; research- or field-work based; integrated into a university abroad; or, an island program where students live and study with others in a program with curriculum designed for American students. Engle and Engle (2003) have proposed a classification system for American study abroad programs in higher education that allows for differentiation of efforts by their level of cultural immersion. They examined seven components of study abroad programs: Duration; entry target-language competence; language used in course work; housing; provisions for cultural interaction; experiential learning; and, guided reflection on cultural experience.
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Assuming the goal of study abroad is cultural competence, Engle and Engle further argue that the immersion levels of any study abroad classification system must align with the stages of progress in cultural adaptation, and at whatever the “departure point a student begins, the goal of overseas education could be summed up as movement as far as possible” toward increased competence (p. 7). Using the seven components, they developed a classification system with five levels of increasing immersion. See Table 1 for components related to each of identified levels. In this project, it was important to understand the classification of the program in which research subjects were enrolled to frame the context of the student study abroad immersion experience, and better understand connections to curriculum and pedagogy in future action research projects that emerge from the findings here.
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Table 1. Study abroad immersion levels and descriptions. Adapted from Engle & Engle (2003). Program Level I: Level II: Level III: Level IV: Level V: Cross- Components Study Tour Short-Term Cross- Cross Cultural Cultural Study Cultural Contact Immersion Contact Program Program Program Duration Several days 3 to 8 weeks, Semester Semester to Semester to to a few summer academic year academic year weeks programs Entry target- Elementary Elementary Elementary Pre-advanced Advanced language to to to to advanced competence intermediate intermediate intermediate Language Home English and English and Predominantly Target-language used in institution target- target- target-language in all curricular course work faculty language language and extracurricular activities Housing Collective In-house or Student In house Local norms, institute for group or student group partial or foreign with other complete direct students international enrollment students Provisions for None Collective None or Optional Required regular cultural and /or home limited participation in participation in interaction, stay occasional cultural experiential integrations integration learning activities program, extensive direct cultural contact via service learning work internship Guided None Orientation Orientation Orientation Orientation reflection on program program program initial program, cultural and on-going mentoring, on- experience going orientation or course in cross cultural perspectives, reflective writing and research.
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Stakeholders and expectations. As the increasing numbers of students studying abroad (noted in Chapter 1) imply, multiple stakeholders emerge in the undergraduate study abroad experience, including the university administration and academic support, students, faculty, student families, program providers, potential employers, and graduate schools seeking students as they transition deeper into academia after receiving a bachelor’s degree. There are varying expectations for the cross-border encounter, but at the core is the belief that students will be transformed by their experience (Clifford & Montgomery, 2015; Hadis, 2005; Mezirow, 2003; Root & Ngampornchai, 2012; Savicki, 2008; Vande Berg, Paige, & Lou, 2012). The concept of transformation is not consistent or clear across the reviewed literature, but Jack Mezirow, a leading proponent of transformative learning, offers the following description: “…learning that transforms problematic frames of reference – sets of fixed assumption and expectations (habits of mind, meaning perspectives, mindsets) – to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, reflective, and emotionally able to change” and connects transformative learning to an understanding of the self and how one sees the world, based in ideals of “democracy, justice, and equality” (Clifford & Montgomery, 2015, p. 48). As Hanvey suggested in the late 1970s, there is an expectation that students can transform their perspectives of the world through education. The literature overwhelmingly points to an expectation for transformation that suggests the high impact global learning experience will change the student perspective and identity and transform the sojourner into a “global citizen,” or someone who is aware of the wider world (Schattle, 2009), and a sense of their own role in it (Dolby, 2007; Hadis, 2005); respects and values diversity (Clifford & Montgomery, 2015; DeGraaf, Slagter, Larson, & Ditta, 2013; Hovland, 2010); understands how the world works (Wynveen, Kyle, & Tarrant, 2012); is aware of and outraged by social injustice (Blake-Campbell, 2014; Hovland, 2010); tolerant of ambiguity (Paige, Fry, Stallman, Josic, & Jon, 2009; Parsons, 2010); is civically engaged (Ramirez, 2013; Sample, 2012); and, takes responsibility for personal actions (Stearns, 2009). Embedded into the expectation of transformation is an understanding that the global learning experience will transmute students into global citizens through attitudes, skills, and knowledge gained in the cross-cultural encounter that emphasizes intercultural competencies such as empathy, curiosity, adaptability, self-efficacy, independence, and perspective taking (Bennett, 2008; Deardorff, 2008; Dolby, 2004; Spitzberg & Changnon, 2009).
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Part II. Intercultural Competence Culture is at the foundation of the study abroad experience and the rationale for building intercultural competencies. The concept and experience of culture is multi-tiered, layered, and complex, but it is generally understood to be the customs or protocols of a society and the expression of the deep sets of codes and rules known by the functional members of the community, including the rules of making and interpreting meaning (Abrams, 2002; Cajander, Daniels, & McDermott, 2012; Paige & Goode, 2009). Essential in this concept of culture are the systems of values and patterns of thought embedded into the group memory of the community and integrated into the patterns of human behavior (Cajander, Daniels, & McDermott, 2012; Goodfellow & Hewling, 2005; Paige & Goode, 2009; Wang & Reeves, 2007), and what values the group associates with insiders, and outsiders. For the purposes of this review and project, culture is considered simply as, “enduring yet evolving international attitudes, values, beliefs, rituals/customs, and behavioral patterns into which people are born that is structurationally created and maintained by people’s ongoing actions” (Spitzberg & Changnon, 2009, p. 6). Building intercultural competence “includes fostering an attitude that makes it possible to interact peacefully, respectfully, and productively with fellow human beings” (Reimers, 2009, p. 25). To re-emphasize, closely tied to intercultural competence is the range of skills used to communicate between and among cultures. The primary actor in this is the learner, and in international education we attempt to keep the focus on the learning and study aspects of the abroad experience. Rather than suggesting the student is merely a tourist or even a traveler, we refer to the student who chooses to study beyond the borders of their home location as a “sojourner,” implying that someone is not just a student traveler, or a tourist (Byram, 1997), but is living, even for a short time, immersed at some level (see Table 1) in the abroad foreign location, with an emphasis on the living and learning, and not necessarily on the travel or the voyeuristic allusions of travel. Institutions of higher education generally define intercultural competence in the context of the institutional internationalization goals. Deardorff (2006) reviewed institutional definitions in higher education and found that there are differing understandings of this competence, but a majority of responding universities in her Delphi method study preferred a general definition applicable to institutional internationalization strategies and goals. The definition that is relevant to this project is one which is most widely used in higher education, and is the one preferred in
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Deardorff’s study, and is drawn from Byram’s (1997) landmark work, building on Knight’s (2003) definition, combining communicative competence and intercultural competence (Jackson, 2011): “’Knowledge of others; knowledge of self; skills to interpret and relate; skills to discover and/or to interact; valuing others’ values, beliefs, and behaviors; and relativizing one’s self. Linguistic competence plays a key role’” (Deardorff, 2006, p. 249). The sojourner experience, and intercultural competence, is framed in the imperative to develop students as global citizens. Many institutions of higher education in the United States have “development of global citizens” as a stated goal, but this is a broad concept and usually not well defined, even within the institution. It is well noted that “global citizen” is a “highly contested and multifaceted term” (Tarrant, Rubin, & Stoner, 2014, p. 142). For the purposes of this project, the meaning of global citizenship is focused on an awareness of the interdependence of individuals and systems and the sense of responsibility (Schattle, 2009) that emanates from the acceptance of global community accountability. This working description encompasses the three key dimensions of global citizenship that are found in the study abroad literature: social responsibility, global awareness, and civic engagement (Geertz, 1973; Dolby, 2004; Lewin, 2009; Tarrant, Rubin, & Stoner, 2014). The recurring concepts of culture, intercultural competence, sojourner, and global citizenship are critical to understand in this project. Each of these concepts has its own complexity and multiplicity of meanings, and is worthy of its own paper, article, or even, a multi-chapter book. In this project it was critical to focus on how these concepts are embedded into the research subjects’ experiences and how they make sense of the underlying complexities in these concepts, as well as their curiosity about them. Evolving out of the need to select effective United States Peace Corps volunteers in the 1960s and 1970s came an interest in the characteristics of intercultural competence and the subsequent demand for training and assessment. Models emerged which conceptualized intercultural competence education models in distinct modes: compositional, co-orientationally, developmental, causal process (Reid, 2013; Spitzberg & Changnon, 2009), and adaptational (Reid, 2013). A review of conference presentations from the most recent 10 years of NAFSA: Association of International Educators7 and the Forum on Education Abroad (international
7 The original name of the organization was National Association of Foreign Student Advisers. In 1990, the membership formally renamed the organization NAFSA: Association of International Educators with the acronym 19 education professional organizations), in addition to the literature, reveals that there are four models drawing on these modes that appear to be informing one another and are the most referred to in international education. The models are: Bennett (1986) Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) (developmental); Deardorff (2006) Model of Intercultural Competence (compositional); and King and Baxter-Magolda (2005) Intercultural Maturity Model (developmental). These models all draw from Byram’s developmental Intercultural Competence Model (Byram, 1997; Reid, 2014). Among the four models referred to most frequently in literature specific to study abroad, it is Deardorff’s Process Model of Intercultural Competence that continues to be developed and is the most widely discussed, as well as being the one most frequently referred to in the most current literature. In Deardorff’s process model, the degree of intercultural competence depends on the acquired degree of attitudes (respect, openness, curiosity, and discovery), knowledge/comprehension (cultural self-awareness, deep cultural knowledge, and sociolinguistic awareness), and skills (listen, observe, evaluate, analyze, interpret, and relate). Ideally, in the Deardorff model (Figure 1) the various identified components of intercultural competence lead to desired internal outcomes (adaptability, flexibility, ethno- relative view, and empathy), and desired external outcomes (the behaviors and communications that are effective and appropriate to achieve individual goals). The theory holds that individuals move in a process from the personal level to the interpersonal levels and the degree of intercultural competence depends on obtaining a degree of the fundamental elements.
retained to reflect the organization’s pasts and name recognition (NAFSA, 2018). In the interest of brevity, referred to here as NAFSA. 20
Figure 1. Deardorff Model of Intercultural Competence. Source: Deardorff (2006, 2008).
Another model which is widely used (and is often cited as the foundational model for others) is Milton Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) (Bennett, 1986; Bennett, 2008). In this developmental model, mindset develops from monocultural to intercultural, or ethnocentrism to ethnorelativism, through stages of denial, defense, minimization, acceptance, adaptation, and integration. (See Figure 2.)
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Ethnocentrism Etnorelativism
Denial Defense Minimization Acceptance Adaptation Integration
Monocultural Intercultural
Figure 2. Bennett Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity. Bennett (1987).
The Developmental Model of Intercultural Maturity (DMIM) developed by King and Baxter Magolda (2005) is three dimensional and builds upon the DMIS. These researchers argued that the developmental ability that provides a foundation for regarding another culture favorably is the same ability at the foundation of the capacity to respect interpersonal difference. They suggested that Bennett and other scholars have taken a one-dimensional approach that may be ineffective because they do not consider one or more of the specific domains of development – cognitive, identity, or interpersonal (King & Baxter Magolda, 2005). The DMIM traces development in each of these domains, and provides benchmarks for the initial, intermediate, and the mature levels of development. Among the intercultural competence development models, there is a commonality – they all include a starting point in which one has limited understanding of culture and identity (understanding, superficially, their own background and self-identity), and moves to a point where one is capable of building cultural bridges, shifting perspectives, and mediating across cultures. Assessment. The concept of intercultural competence is complex (Sample, 2012). A recent international education professional organization report effectively argues that global learning must be first defined by the individual institution, then curriculum and pedagogy is carefully and intentionally designed so that the student learning outcomes are aligned, and finally
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“ultimately judged by evidence that students are performing well in the agreed upon outcome areas” (Hovland, 2014, p. 2). A review of assessment models and tools reveals many choices, and it is valuable to align the instrument with the learning outcomes (Hovland, 2010). However, at this time, assessment of global learning outcomes is not mandated by regional accreditation requirements, which may explain why the research in study abroad outcomes assessment has not kept up with the growth in study abroad, in general (Braskamp, Braskamp, & Merrill, 2009). With the focus in study abroad on degree requirements, in addition to expectations of stakeholders, including accrediting bodies, there is a need to ensure that learning outcomes are defined, based on how the institution or program defines intercultural competence, and then assessed. There is some tension between assessing for accountability and assessing for student learning. The two realms of rationale for assessment, when applied to study abroad, imply that it is necessary to take the concerns of stakeholders seriously, use the findings of assessment to make changes that will improve student learning outcomes, embed the assessment in the ongoing processes related to the study abroad program (pre-departure, on-site, and post-travel study), and consider the impact of the students and program activities on the host communities and partners (Savicki & Brewer, 2015). In this context, assessment does not refer to grades, nor does it refer to program assessment or evaluation collected from a cohort and reported at the program level in connection to departmental goals. Assessment of intercultural competence focuses on assessment of the learning and development goals, or what students will know and be able to do, and measurable objectives of student learning and performance that lead to achievement of stated goals (Deardorff, 2006). There are quantitative instruments used in intercultural competence assessment, as well as qualitative. The quantitative instruments used in assessment of study abroad, intercultural competence, and intercultural communicative competence, are being developed at a rapid pace as more universities increase their study abroad programming and encourage students to study abroad. There is a need to ensure that the programs are cultivating competencies that will serve the students upon graduation. Quantitative instruments have numerical values attached, and the information is used to provide insights into the breadth of the assessment context, and qualitative assessments provide verbal (written or oral) information with richer insights into the depth of the assessment context (Savicki & Brewer, 2015).
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As noted, assessment instruments and tools are proliferating, and it is critical to understand the reliability and validity of instruments and methods and ensure alignment with expectations of stakeholders as well as the learning outcomes and the intercultural development model being used to design the curriculum, pedagogy, and learning outcomes. For example, the Global Perspective Inventory (GPI), now widely used in higher education, was developed by Larry Braskamp, and based on King’s and Baxter Magolda’s (2005) Developmental Model of Intercultural Maturity and uses a broad framework as provided by the Deardorff model. Another assessment tool is the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), developed by Milton Bennett (1986), and based on his work with the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS). Other instruments are based in the Deardorff Intercultural Development Model including the Global Competence Inventory (GCI) and the Global Competence Aptitude Assessment (GCAA). Well developed, reliable, and validated, quantitative assessments abound, but qualitative assessment methods are not as widely used. In the qualitative realm, it is important to have methods to pursue an in-depth understanding, with a limited number of participants, and in a restricted context. A qualitative approach allows for more flexibility, is iterative and dynamic (less linear), and strives for a more nuanced and deeper understanding. The qualitative approach to assessment of intercultural competence is a way to inform the process of learning and getting at the meaning students construct through their experiences abroad (Bleistein & Wong, 2015). Beginning with identification of the outcomes or goals, in general, qualitative methods of assessing student learning outcomes in study abroad mirror qualitative research methods: interviews, focus groups, narrative survey, observations, student artifacts, and case studies. The literature suggests that rubrics are a helpful tool in qualitative assessment (Bleistein & Wong, 2015; Hovland, 2010, 2014). Rubrics have been developed by higher education professional organizations that serve to jump start the process of qualitative assessment by developing the outcomes associated with the various competencies. The Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) has developed widely used global and intercultural learning rubrics (Rhodes & Finley, 2013) that can be adapted to institutional level assessment, as well as research projects. The American Council on Education (ACE) has adopted Wu and Wong’s (2013) International Learning Assessment Project rubric in their study abroad research where they explored evolving themes and indications of learning in and development of cultural self-
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awareness, cultural knowledge, intercultural skills, and a positive outlook toward the host culture and inhabitants (Bleistein & Wong, 2015). There are various results available in numerous realms of global learning and outcomes. The literature shows that students are making gains in learning outcomes that lead to the attributes associated with global citizenship, including global mindedness (Akande & Slawson, 2000; Twombly, Salisbury, Tumanut, & Klute, 2012; Hadis, 2005; Tarrant, Rubin, & Stoner, 2014); increased interest in global issues (Hadis, 2005; Tarrant, et al., 2014); civic and global engagement (DeGraaf, et al., 2013); intercultural sensitivity and adaptability (Dolby, 2007; Paige, et al., 2009; Sample, 2012); and, an increased understanding of the role in the world as an American citizen (Dolby, 2007; Pike, 2000). One particularly intriguing study found that study abroad nurtured ecologically conscious behaviors by reinforcing connections among values, beliefs, and norms (Wynveen, et al., 2012). In addition, students are individually enriched in areas related to personal growth, including independence, self-efficacy, and attributes such as listening and observation and awareness (Deardorff, 2012; Dolby, 2007; Hadis, 2005; Parsons, 2010).
Intercultural Interventions It appears, from the review of the literature on study abroad, intercultural competence, and the assessment of competencies, that the realities are meeting the expectations in transformational learning that lead to becoming global citizens. The literature is clear – transformational experiences must be intentionally designed to effectively immerse students in another culture for long term impact (Lutterman-Aguilar & Gingerich, 2015; Deardorff, 2006; Pasquarelli, Cole, & Tyson, 2018; Vande Berg, Paige, & Lou, 2012). Emerging in the literature on transformational education abroad experiences are the theoretical foundations that point to strong rationale for pedagogical interventions in study abroad programming “designed to deepen the critical intercultural awareness and engagement of student sojourners at various stages of the study abroad cycle: pre-sojourn, sojourn, and post- sojourn” (Jackson & Oguro, 2018). Vande Berg’s work (2012) has raised question s about what students actually gain in an immersion experience abroad when there are no pedagogical interventions, such as guided reflection and journaling, and intercultural mentoring. There is growing recognition that development of intercultural competence is lifelong and does not begin
25 when the student lands on foreign soil, or end when the student returns home (Jackson & Oguro, 2018; Vande Burg, 2012; Deardorff, 2015; Savicki & Brewer, 2015). Much has been written in the past 10 years on intentional design of study abroad programs. Coming out of the literature are suggestions such as the following. • Start with clarity about what we want students to learn and accomplish (Deardorff, 2008; Lou, Vande Berg, & Paige, 2012). • Consider the tenets of “surface” learning versus “deep” learning, or the difference between learning facts and constructing knowledge (Fink, 2003; Passerelli & Kolb, 2012). • Identify learning outcomes and then design programs that will support students in achieving them. This seems like common sense, but this is not how study abroad programs have been designed, in general (Vande Berg, Paige, & Lou 2012) when they do not include the pre- and post-study abroad curricular scaffolding. • Faculty should familiarize themselves with the literature on student learning abroad. Our faculty are experts in their respective fields, but not necessarily in the research on study abroad or culturally relevant teaching and curricular design (Lou, Vande Berg, & Paige, 2012; Deardorff, 2004). • Interventions are necessary, and there is no single best way to intervene in student learning abroad (Lou, Vande Berg, & Paige, 2012). Interventions that have proven effective include cultural mentoring (with trained mentors) to facilitate learning and development; and, aligning separate intercultural relations courses with the study abroad courses; and, robust pre- and post-study abroad courses and programs (Savicki & Brewer, 2015; Vande Burg, 2012; Vande Berg, Quinn, & Menyhart, 2012). • Use effective assessment measures with valid and reliable instruments and rigorous methodologies (Savicki & Brewer, 2015; Lou, Vande Berg, & Paige, 2012) and use the results to make adjustments. It appears that if we know more about a specific phenomenon that comprises and identifies intercultural competence, such as empathy, or curiosity, we could design better pedagogical interventions to support a deeper, richer transformational sojourn experience for students.
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I’m not sure what I’ll do, but – well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald8
What Study Abroad Looks Like in My Practice As a higher education administrator (in continuing education, and then later international education) in a public doctoral university for over 30 years, I have worked closely with faculty led study abroad programs as part of my portfolio of responsibilities. Today, in my university, there are about 160 faculty led programs, with about 1,700 student sojourners enrolled annually (an additional 300 study annually at our European campus, and 200 in programs offered by study abroad providers or other universities). The majority (about 95%) of our programs are short term, three to twelve weeks in length, traveling during the winter term or summer session. Typically, in my practice, programs are designed, delivered, and led by a faculty director who transforms a course (or courses) into a global learning experience. What does “transform” mean in this case? It means that we expect the faculty director, or leader, to align the anticipated learning outcomes with the culture and geographic location; with local customs, events, and learning opportunities for students found in the schools, businesses, museums, historical, and cultural sites of interest; and, with local communities of people. The typical student in these faculty led programs is, now more than in the past, a young adult who came to the university with the intent to study abroad. It is a hallmark of the engaged learning experience we offer and use to recruit students to our university. We proudly proclaim our number one standing in study abroad as a public university, with more than 50% of our undergraduate students studying abroad by the time of graduation. About 60% of these students are women, 19-22 years old. About 90% of the men who study abroad at this university are from the Business School. In my early years as an administrator of these programs, the study abroad courses did not meet any general education or degree requirements. These were choices that students made to immerse themselves in another culture to learn about it and themselves or develop language skills. Faculty also made a choice to lead these programs, and it is a heavy obligation – representing the university in the foreign location, with 24/7 responsibility for student health and
8 Fitzgerald, 1996, p. 2. 27
well-being, as well as the budget, logistics, risk management, crisis response, compliance with various university requirements, and of course, teaching. The motivation is not salary – they make the exact salary they would make staying home during the winter term or summer session and teaching a class or two on campus or online. Looking back to that time, the 1990s and early 2000s, I speculate that the motives, for students and for faculty, rested somewhere in the curiosity and intercultural wonderment spectrum and desire to travel and engage with other cultures. By 2004, general education requirements had changed, and global and intercultural perspectives categories were added as those realms became a part of the internationalized curriculum. Students could meet the requirements through six credit hours of study abroad but would have to take nine credit hours to meet the requirement with on-campus courses. The revised curriculum incentivized students and has led to a significant increase in the number of students choosing a study abroad experience to fulfill requirements. In 2008, the university moved to a budget model in which the academic divisions profited from the revenue generated by these programs, which in the past had been held at the institutional level. Administrators, deans, and department chairs began encouraging faculty to develop these lucrative programs to support students in fulfilling the requirements, but also because they generated revenue for the division. Students motivated by a short-term experience to fulfill liberal education general education requirements, in addition to the financial motivation, led to where we are today. Over the most recent 10 years, I have traveled with about 12 faculty led programs to do site visits and reviews. I am not seeing intercultural interventions in these programs. The pre- and post-study abroad efforts are minimal and based more in the risk management aspects of orienting students than they are in the cultural preparation and subsequent re-entry and reflection. In my experience, these aspects should all work together. A student who is well prepared to immerse in a culture is prepared personally, professionally, academically, and interculturally to do so, and risk is mitigated at the same time. The goals for study abroad (and our liberal education general education requirements) are to develop global perspectives for life in a changing world. The global learning outcomes of courses in the general education requirements are assessed at the course, departmental, and divisional levels, but global and intercultural competencies are not consistently assessed at any level. However, every student who studies abroad at my university goes through the study abroad
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office and a web-based system for process-management. In that system, students are given an option, in the pre- and the post-study abroad time frames, to take part in an assessment – the Global Perspectives Inventory (GPI) – an assessment of individual experiences and development of global perspective with emphasis in the cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal dimensions (GPI.iastate.edu). Recent results of this assessment indicate that our faculty-led programs are not having an impact on students’ intercultural competence. Eight years of the GPI assessment show that our students are scoring high in the “knowing” cognitive domain (that is, they know about the visible aspects of a culture – food, currency, music, language, dress, or literature in a given country), but low in the intrapersonal and interpersonal domains. That is, they are not grasping the nuances of culture (for example, the hidden aspects of culture – values, religious beliefs, body language, or gender role expectations), or the impact of the culture on their own identities. And, there is no significant difference in these domains from the pre-study abroad phase to the post phase. The variables correlated with a higher interpersonal and intrapersonal impact for our students are: previous travel abroad and choice of a non-Western location for study abroad. Although I do not have assessment data from the 1990s and early 2000s, I know it would be different from what we are seeing today. From my perspective, study abroad (at my university and others) has become commodified, and we are not intentionally designing cultural immersion experiences that serve to transform our students and cultivate intercultural competence. We are generating revenue… significant revenue. We are measuring success by the number of participants and the revenue – superficial metrics, at best, which do not indicate anything about student learning. The questions that come out of this, for this researcher, at this time, and in the context of this study are: What does this all of this say about students and faculty who choose these experiences today, compared to an earlier time? Do these motivational factors have curricular implications? Pedagogical implications? Are we seeing a commodification of study abroad that has led to the “bucket list” mentality? Am I seeing tourism for financial gain and not true sojourner immersion experiences? Those are great questions for future research and exploration. Most relevant now for this study is does a student who chooses to study abroad to meet a requirement to exhibit curiosity? Could curiosity be cultivated in this student? Can we transform
29 study abroad to not only generate revenue, but to satisfy curiosity, and cultivate it, along with other intercultural competencies?
Curiouser and curiouser! cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for a moment she quite forgot how to speak good English). ~Lewis Carroll9
Part III: Curiosity: Philosophical, Theoretical, and Psychological Frameworks In the review of intercultural competence, intercultural development models, and assessment of intercultural competence, curiosity is consistently revealed as one of the pieces of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that is associated with the competencies, and there is a need to assess. The instruments, tools, and methods explicated above assess intercultural competence in general, but it was necessary in this project to assess curiosity, specifically. However, first it is essential to understand the complex concept of curiosity. Is curiosity a virtue, or a vice? It is considered a quality that is desirable in language, science, religion, and especially in education where it is the “first source of all our enquiries” (Benedict, 2001, p. 1). However, in myth and fictional literature, curiosity has been the cause of tragedy, and at the root of evil and naiveté. Often being curious leads to being a curiosity. Consider the curious cat, Eve in the Garden of Eden, Frankenstein’s monster, and Alice in Wonderland. Curiosity is thought of as one of the noblest of human drives but is commonly denigrated as dangerous. Curiosity is a rudimentary part of human nature, and so deeply entrenched that we are often oblivious to its pervasiveness in our lives, and it is only relatively recently that theorists, psychologists, and neuroscientists have coordinated efforts to unlock the mysteries of curiosity (Kidd & Hayden, 2015). Curiosity is associated with the contexts of human development, educational experience, and creativity, and is considered a sign of human, native, intelligence. Yet, it is “rarely itself the subject of inquiry” (Zuss, 2012, p. vii), with philosophers and theorists neglecting to work on it (although psychologists did not neglect it over the years).
9 Carroll, 2015, p. 15 30
Philosophical and Theoretical Foundations. In the introduction to his work on the philosophy of curiosity (which an Amazon.com book review claims was the first book-length treatment of the philosophy of curiosity), Inan (2012) writes: As a quest, curiosity is paradoxical, at once an elusive and focused desire. Its cunning ruses and researches, though often oblique and indirect, work with preexisting maps, schema, or a priori category. It can be at work and play where something is hidden, anomalous, missing, or uncertain. Generating genuinely inquisitive questions and persisting in searching for their place among the phantoms and ephemeral streams of experience, practitioners of theoretical curiosity suspend expectation. (p. viii)
This elusive, yet focused, phenomenon is a conundrum, and as Inan suggests, when studied, it is necessary to suspend expectation, to search for simplicity within the complexity of the spectacle of curiosity. In 20th century philosophy, Inan claims that only Heidegger explicitly discussed the significance of wonder in depth, making a distinction between wonder, on one end of the continuum of curiosity, and astonishment, amazement, and admiration on the other end. Heidegger further claimed that wonder is not “mere curiosity” and it is “pitiful” to interpret wonder as a form of curiosity (Inan, p. xi, 2012). The preponderance of theoretical work in human curiosity comes from Daniel Berlyne (1954a, 1954b, 1962, 1978), a British and Canadian psychologist and philosopher, whose research centered on “why, out of the infinite range of knowable items in the universe, certain pieces of knowledge are more ardently sought and more readily retained than others” (1954a, p. 180), and he looked to “modern” learning theory to lead him to look for motivational variables to answer his questions which drew distinctions between “perceptual curiosity” or that which leads to the increase of perception of stimuli in animals, and “epistemic curiosity” whose “main fruits are knowledge” (p. 181). Berlyne’s theory drew on the concept that knowledge is “habits mediating believed, designative symbols” (p. 182) that form sequences, or trains of thought. The train of thought is determined by cue stimuli that are externally stimulated or self-stimulated and result from previous items in the sequence and motivational stimuli which include drive-stimuli and goal stimuli, produced by goal responses. Using this behavioral theory approach, Berlyne posits that epistemic curiosity relies on questions as “thematic probes” and “learned conflict of curiosity is aroused by strange, surprising, or puzzling situations or questions” (p. 189). It is in this conflicting state where learning takes place.
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In later work, after more experimentation, Berlyne (1962) theorized that the strength of epistemic curiosity increases with the degree of “conceptual conflict or conflict between symbolic tendencies – beliefs, attitudes or thoughts” (p. 27). In turn, the degree of conflict increases with the number of competing response tendencies and the degree of mutual incompatibility. Berlyne’s theory resonates when considering Paulo Freire’s (1998) explication of a pedagogy of freedom, a philosophy through which he explores the role of the teacher and learning, as well as the process of genuine education. Freire argues that the foundation of the process is human curiosity. Freire’s vision was a space where the teacher and learner come together as intellectuals to produce knowledge, and where there is no pretense that the teacher is neutral or impartial, but the teacher is supporting the preservation of and respect for what the student knows, and building upon it, toward transformation, requiring reflection as an intervention. Further, at “’the foundation stone of [genuine education] … is human curiosity’” or what makes us “’question, know, act, ask again, recognize’” (p. 19). Curiosity evolves, according to Freire (1998), from ingenuous (or common sense), to critical, in a necessary process that is aligned with a rigorous ethical formation and an aesthetic appreciation. Further evolution takes place as we process knowledge. As it intensifies it becomes more methodologically rigorous, progressing from critical to epistemological curiosity, which is needed in the production of knowledge. The capacity for epistemological curiosity is developed through conscientization. In Freire’s view, people are born with spontaneous or ingenuous curiosity, and that is transformed into epistemological curiosity through critical pedagogy, or it is dimmed by banking pedagogy in which students become containers filled with knowledge, reinforcing oppression through the absence of critical thinking (Vandenburg, 2002). Freire notes, we are all unfinished as humans, and this is essential to our human condition and naturally connected to our ingenuous curiosity, but the world requires unveiling (Lewis, 2012), and students, with their politically conscious teachers, are subjects in the co-unveiling of reality and recreate knowledge through reflection (Duarte, 2000). It is critical to take care and note that critical pedagogy, as theorized by Freire, is not a method or technique, but an approach and a practice that provides the knowledge, skills, and social relations to enable students to expand their possibilities of citizenship. It is important to not appropriate it in ways that remove its significant political perceptions (Giroux, 2010).
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However, Freire does provide a foundational understanding of human curiosity as it evolves in an educational experience that aligns with this project that explores a pre-conceptual notion of curiosity. As Freire well notes, reflection is essential in the uncovering of knowledge. Reflection is key in this project to revealing knowledge. Going back to the cultivating of intercultural competencies, such as curiosity, the interventions which support transformation include places to reflect – journals, blogs, free writing, photographs, social media, art, or role play (Savicki & Price, 2015). In more recent work, McCall (2011) finds that philosophical and theoretical approaches to curiosity have been one-dimensional, and lack richness, and most relevant to this review, he observes that there is an absence of phenomenological depth. Reviewing curiosity through the works of philosophers Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Hans Georg Gadamer, McCall finds that there are aesthetic dimensions of curiosity, as well as critical and hermeneutic dimensions, but acknowledges that clarity of meaning is impeded by the complexity of the concept, as well as many philosophical ambiguities. To comprehend the nature of curiosity, McCall contends, we must also acknowledge that “curiosity is both a will to knowledge and a condition of critique” (p. 190). Psychological Foundations. The earliest psychological research studies exploring curiosity were on “question-asking behavior” and were carried out by Hippolyte Taine (1877), Charles Darwin (1877), and G. Stanley Hall (Hall & Smith, 1903). These researchers determined that curiosity is a prerequisite to intellectual achievement (Benedict, 2001). This is basic knowledge today but was groundbreaking in its time. Hall and Smith’s (1903) work in the early 1900s is particularly intriguing and remains today as highly cited in research and reviews on the topic of curiosity in young people. In their research project, they gathered data to explore the emergence of curiosity in infants and children, including adolescents. The project concluded that four stages of development are recognized in the first five months of life: passive staring as a reflex, surprise, wonder, and interrogation or curiosity “proper” (p. 320). They found that the primary stimuli of curiosity during the first six months of life is sight. Beyond that point in life, the order in which other sensations develop and manifest as signs of curiosity are: hearing, touch, muscle, smell, and taste, passive and active observation, experimentation, questioning, destructiveness, and a desire to travel. Their findings in the “desire to travel” realm was that it “seems well nigh universal in the American
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adolescent,” with only 3 of the 482 teenagers (N.B. this is a study from the early 1900s) saying that they have never had the desire to travel. Loewenstein (1994) identifies two contemporary waves of psychological research on curiosity, one occurring in the 1960s, and one following in the late 1970s into the early 1980s. Noting that Berlyne’s theoretical work was groundbreaking as foundational to the 1960s psychological speculations on curiosity, the first wave focused on the underlying cause, or why people voluntarily seek out situations that they know will induce curiosity, and they examined situational determinants of curiosity. The second wave of research focused almost exclusively on measuring curiosity to cross-validate developed scales, but this proved to be difficult, and only three scales are mentioned as reliable and valid: the Melbourne Curiosity Inventory (MCI), the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory (CEI-II), and the State Epistemic Curiosity Scale (SECS). In the psychological research, types of curiosity are identified. Without a single, widely accepted definition of the term, researchers rely on Berlyne’s (1962) distinctions between the types of curiosity most commonly exhibited by humans and give them a taxonomy – perceptual (driving force which motivates see out novel stimuli) versus epistemic (accessing information bearing stimulation and acquiring knowledge), and specific (desire for a specific piece of information) versus diversive (a general desire for perceptual or cognitive stimulation) (Loewenstein, 1994; Kidd & Hayden, 2015). Curiosity and Intercultural Wonderment. Curiosity can be described as the fundamental yearning for new information that will relieve uncertainty or arouse interest (Kashdan, Rose, & Fincham, 2004; Litman & Pezzo, 2007; Loewenstein, 1994), and this is corroborated by the theoretical, psychological, and philosophical foundations which describe two types of curiosity: epistemic (Litman & Spielberger, 2003), or intellectual knowledge, and perceptual (Reio, Petrosko, Wiswell, & Thongsukmag, 2006; Sharron & Abraham, 2015), or that which stimulates the senses. Others identify another type of curiosity – interpersonal, or information about people (Litman & Pezzo, 2007). Interpersonal curiosity is the desire to explore new habits, make new friendships, and interact across difference, and is what Opdal (2001) says motivates a spirit of intercultural wonderment, or the manifestation of sojourners intentionally pushing themselves outside of their comfort zones, immersed in a host country while they are exploring new habits and behaviors in the unfamiliar cultures (Engberg, Jourian, & Davison, 2016) and encountering “’provocative moments’” (Engberg & Jourian, 2015, p. 2).
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These challenging moments are also sites of information gaps (or Berlyne’s “conflicting state” [1962], where curiosity forms the desire to fill the gap (or resolves the tensions in the gaps). This has implications for education aimed at stimulating or cultivating curiosity, and Houghton (2014) identifies characteristics of curiosity that manifest in intercultural wonderment – surprise, interest, readiness to experience, seeking the unknown, contact with cultural interlocutors, imagining, self-reflection, demonstration of courage, connecting theory to reality of culture, and observations of attitudes. Also identified as characteristics of curiosity are creativity and creative thinking (Lee, Therriault, & Linderholm, 2012). The notion of intercultural wonderment moves the concept of curiosity forward to focus more explicitly on the direct effect of a sojourner experience and how this wonderment “encapsulates the underlying curiosity in individuals to seek out new and different experiences while studying abroad and involves a willingness and capacity to deal with discomfort and disequilibrium” (Engberg & Jourian, 2015, p. 1). In examining the role of intercultural wonderment in fostering student development of a global perspective in study abroad, Engberg and Jourian find that the influencers in the cultivation of it are the study abroad context, pre- and post-departure distinguishing features, the curricular context, the co-curricular and community context, and the developmental influence of faculty and staff leading the program abroad. Their research suggests that by engaging in unfamiliar cultures and environments and experiencing diverse values, students encounter “’provocative moments’ that trigger the disequilibrium needed to develop their ‘capacity to define [their] beliefs, identity, and social relation’ and achieve self- authorship” as described by King and Baxter Magolda (2005). This aligns with other research which shows that students develop intercultural competence in moments of conflict (or provocative moments) – resolving conflicts presented to them in the experience and developing an ability to overcome the challenges found in the “cultural fault lines” (Basharina, Guardado, & Morgan, 2008) or the places where diverse cultures collide. These spaces of conflicting states, gaps, and challenging moments are where learning happens, knowledge is gained, and competencies are cultivated. In further research, Engberg, Jourian, and Davidson (2016) attempt to validate the intercultural wonderment construct and find that it acts as a “critical mediator” between the programmatic components of the sojourn experience, and the cognitive, intrapersonal, and
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interpersonal dimensions of student development, finding “significant direct effects of intercultural wonderment on each of the global perspective outcomes” (p. 34). In reviewing all of these complex philosophical ruminations and claims on curiosity, there is a prevailing assumption of what curiosity is, and what it looks like as a singular phenomenon as it emerges in human beings, but that has not been deeply described or explored as a phenomenon. All the reviewed research on and explication of curiosity assumes a perceived phenomenon that is distinct and has various qualities, but the researchers do not elucidate the essence of the phenomenon; that is, what distinguishes curiosity as an object of personal experience, its intentionality, and its consciousness? The purpose of this research is to explore the phenomenon of curiosity as it emerges in a cross-cultural sojourner experience in order to recognize it and then exploit in future projects that develop curriculum and pedagogy to intentionally cultivate curiosity.
Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form. ~Vladimer Nabokov10
Part IV: Currere: The Autobiographical Journey The concepts of global education, study abroad, and intercultural competence form a contextual foundation on which the phenomenon of curiosity is explored. To achieve a deeper understanding of the phenomenon, I employed William Pinar’s (1975) autobiographical curriculum theory, currere, the verb form of “curriculum” which means to run the course (Schubert, Schubert, Thomas, & Carroll, 1986). Currere provides a self-reflection strategy to examine the relations between academic experiences and life history that give meaning and context to our autobiographical knowledge. The internal work manifests as external work in generating innovation in curriculum (Beierling, Buitenhuis, Grant, & Hanson, 2014). As I have progressed through a doctoral program focused on leadership, curriculum, and culture, I have made an effort to exploit every assignment, paper, project, discussion, and presentation in a way that informs my practice as an international educator. I have intentionally developed myself professionally and personally, even as I have absorbed and discovered in the journey to becoming a researcher and more effective educator. Currere has been powerful for me in this journey by providing a starting point where my personal biases and beliefs are examined
10 As quoted in Nafisi, 2003, p. 45 36 and analyzed. Sharing these experiences provides opportunities to step back from the experiences and see them through fresh eyes. As an autobiographical examination of self through currere we become aware that we are “undergoing experience in all its multi-dimensionality and elusiveness” (Magrini, 2014, p. 145). As a method, this focuses on the individual’s educational experiences as they are grounded contextually, rather than trying to establish a causal relationship. Personal experiences become the data sources (Pinar, 2012). Currere engages in four moments that are “temporal and reflective” (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 2008). The moments Pinar identifies in currere are regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthetical. Regressive. To know where we are, we have to know where we have been. In this first moment we revisit past experiences, to observe actions and functioning, to reveal the present (Pinar, 1994, 2012). In this regressive step, free association allows for re-entering and re- experiencing the past to “enlarge – and transform – one’s memory” (Pinar, 2012, p. 45). Progressive. In this phase we look at what is not yet present with the knowledge that “the future inhabits the present” (Pinar, 2004, p. 36) and we can imagine possible futures, including fears and fulfillment. In the progressive moment we begin to see the interdependent nature of our interests and the historical situation. Analytical. This moment is where we examine the biographical present, bracketing out the past and future, but aware of our responses to them (Pinar, 1994, 2004). In the analytical moment we ask, “How is the future present in the past, the past in the future, and the present in both?” (Pinar, 1994). In this space, we understand how history and culture are particular to how we live and work (Pinar, 2012). Synthetical. In this moment, we explore the meaning of and re-enter the lived present (Pinar, 2012). Looking at the contribution of professional practice and scholarly endeavors to the present, this is where we tap into what our new understanding of self brings to the curriculum. The knowledge gained mobilizes us (Pinar, 1994, 2004). The four perspectives of currere encompass the temporal, cognitive, and conceptual spheres of an autobiographical study of educational experience. Currere intellectualizes curriculum from simple course objectives to a complicated conversation with oneself and others – a conversation that looks at the relationships between academic histories, life histories, identity, and social (re)construction (Pinar, 2012).
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Through currere we find ways to connect personal and professional experience with practice and my research. I use it to reflect on my own educational history, as well as my professional international education practice, as it developed through this project. I find power in the “phenomenological approach inherent in currere [that] makes visible the importance of conceptual knowledge in the development of practice and the extent to which it is a prerequisite of the needs of practice” and the complex conversation that is central to it as an understanding that there is a contribution that academic studies makes to one’s life (Gibbs, 2013). Guiding the reflexive practice with currere as a meta-narrative in this research project allowed for connecting academic content and subjective knowledge of both the student sojourner and myself. Currere is accomplished within a social and historical framework. Currere offers the possibility of “reflecting on educational practice in research and holds the prospect for transformation based on the insight gained during this process” (Maritz, 2013, p. 162). The literature on the history and context of global education and internationalization form the foundation for the growth in study abroad designed to enhance intercultural and global competence. In higher education the emphasis on the need for a globally focused curriculum has led to an increase in the number of students who study abroad as a transformational educational experience that will immerse students in an unfamiliar culture, and with a goal of increasing the student’s intercultural and global competence. Curiosity emerges as an intercultural competence, among many models. The intercultural competence of curiosity has been identified as far back as the early 20th century in psychological research as an impetus for travel exploration. The ultimate goal of the project is to inform future theorizing and research in the realm of curriculum and pedagogy in globally focused educational sojourn high impact experiences. Stepping back to examine the phenomenon of curiosity through currere allows for an exploration of the educational experience and the contribution of academic studies to life (Pinar, 1994), and the curriculum becomes the interpretation of the lived experience (Schubert, Schubert, Thomas, & Carroll, 1986). Perhaps we can allow ourselves to go into temporary exile, To undergo estrangement from what is familiar and everyday And enter a third space, neither home nor abroad, But in-between, a liminal or third space. ~William F. Pinar11
11 Pinar, 1994, p. 17 38
CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY AND METHODS
Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. ~Zora Neale Hurston12
The foundational question in this research project is: What is the lived experience of human interpersonal curiosity as it manifests in an intercultural learning experience in an unfamiliar culture? As I carefully considered the question, I determined that the direction forward in this research journey is a qualitative research project informed by Paulo Freire’s emancipatory theory of education, with a hermeneutic phenomenological philosophy, and an approach to study the lived experience of curiosity through the perspective of the student sojourner, as well as the researcher. This study takes the form of a qualitative narrative inquiry, using currere to deepen understanding of the phenomenon.
Qualitative Research With an understanding that the approaches to research (qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods) are not as discrete as they appear, and are on more of a continuum as approaches, this study was framed in the qualitative realm in order to deeply explore and understand curiosity as an intercultural competence manifested in study abroad – and this experience is in the social realm where qualitative research honors an inductive style, focuses on individual meaning and the “importance of rendering the complexity of the situation” (Creswell, 2014, p. 27). Eisner (1998) explicates the six features of a qualitative study that contribute to the character of the study. First, it is field focused and not only in places in which people interact, but also in studying inanimate objects, such as architecture, textbooks, and classroom design. The location and setting are observed, the participants are interviewed, there are descriptive aspects, and settings are considered as they exist. In the setting, “the self is an instrument” (p. 13), the second characteristic of a qualitative study. The researcher is the means through which what needs to be seen, is seen, and provides a frame of reference by engaging the situation and
12 Hurston, 1942, p. 143 39 making sense of it. Related to this is the third quality, qualitative research is interpretive in nature and the researcher brings her own “signature” (p. 14) to the project. The unique mark is a way of bringing a distinctive perspective to the research. The distinct voice brings an expressive language to the research (or, as Eisner [1998] describes, “educational criticism” [p. 14]), and this is the fourth quality. The signature of the researcher is an indication that it is a person, not a machine, behind the words. In this study, I found this to be critical. Curiosity has been studied through myriad quantitative methods that bring a robotic and unemotional presence to this very human emotion. The presence of voice, along with “thick description” (another hallmark of qualitative research) is important in furthering understanding and empathy. The expressive language is also highly detailed, the fifth quality of qualitative research as outlined by Eisner. The research pays “attention to particulars” (p. 14) with consideration of the aesthetic features of the exploration and situation. It is in the “particulars” that the nuances of the phenomenon begin to emerge. Finally, qualitative research is persuasive and becomes believable because of its “coherence, insight, and instrumental utility” (Eisner, 1998, p. 15). Unlike studies that demonstrate cause and effect, or correlations, a qualitative study uses multiple types of evidence and persuades through reason: …how studies are designed, the kind of instruments used, the settings studied, the statistics employed, and the way data are interpreted are ultimately intended to yield a persuasive case that will withstand the doubts of skeptics and the attacks of those whose values lead them to see the situation differently” (p. 15). The six qualities described by Eisner provide the organizational structure for this study, and the ultimate reporting of the study. The focus is the field, which is the study abroad experience and location, the culture, as well as the cultural artifacts with which students interact. The germane aspects are guided by and drawn out by the researcher, who also brings a signature to the project through her expressive perspective with details that present a persuasive portrayal of curiosity as it emerges in the sojourn experience – in this study, the persuasiveness comes through the real-life experiences of the researcher and the subjects.
Interpretive Paradigm. The interpretive paradigm is where I focused in this research project. The associated methodologies or analyses include ethnography, phenomenology,
40 narrative, or grounded theory (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2016; Creswell, 2007; Glesne, 2015). When I considered carefully what I wanted to explore (curiosity in study abroad, and as an intercultural competence) with a narrative method (and a phenomenological approach), I wanted to begin with the experiences of the student as expressed in their “lived and told stories” (Creswell, 2007, p. 54) as they travel in an unfamiliar culture. Through their reflections, and even the images they produce (keeping in mind this generation of traditional American college students are prolifically posting images in social media), there were many ways to analyze and understand their stories. The narrative provides an account of the students’ experiences while elucidating the attitude of curiosity, and how it manifests in the study abroad experience. With a narrative analysis it is important that the research question fits this type of research, but I found it is the best way to capture the details of the lived experiences in the journey. Contextualizing the stories within the personal experiences, the student’s culture and identity, and in the time and place, produces a powerful narrative with a strong “plot” or “storyline” (Creswell, 2007, p. 55). The account is necessarily collaborative with the participants to get those narratives that are “lived and told” (p. 57).
Educational Connoisseurship and Criticism. In the early phases of this project, as I read and reflected on the qualitative research distinctions, from textbooks, articles, and books, I found that I was reading many of the same concepts over and over, which is good and reinforcing, but it was in those areas in which I was reading something new and enlightening that my interest was piqued. New and clarifying concepts illuminated innovative ways of thinking about qualitative research, my research question specifically, and deepened my appreciation of it in many ways. This was the case with the concepts of educational connoisseurship and criticism as developed by Eisner (1998). Where other texts address deep understanding (Creswell, 2007), thick description (Creswell 2007, 2014; Geertz, 1973; Glesne, 2015), field issues (Creswell, 2007, 2014; Glesne, 2015; Van Maanan, 2011), and methods such as purposeful sampling, interviewing, and observing (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2016; Creswell, 2007, 2014; Glesne, 2015; Gray, 2014), it is the development of the concept of educational connoisseurship that brought me to a deeper awareness of what it means to do qualitative research, and how it performs for my project.
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Educational connoisseurship, according to Eisner (1998), is an ability to see, and not simply to look. It is an application to educational settings that comes from the visual arts, and is the art of appreciation, or “the ability to make fine grained discriminations among complex and subtle qualities” (p. 63). Putting this into practice, viewing an educational experience as an expression of creativity or art, allowed me to look beyond the technical aspects and develop more creative and innovative responses, as well as insights, into the settings and encounters in those settings. This methodological concept is one which I brought to this project. I have noticed that, as I travel abroad with students, there is a tendency for them to look at the foreign setting and cultural artifacts, more often than not, through the lens of a digital camera while they are taking a selfie against an exotic background to post in their social media. What would lead to deeper immersion and more effective learning experiences is for students to genuinely see, comprehend, experience, and develop an ability to observe and put the location, history, language, etc., into the context of culture their interaction with people and situations across cultures. As a connoisseur of the cultural experience students and others, would experience this immersion in a deeper way. I understand that Eisner is illuminating connoisseurship as a research approach, but it works well at the participant level also in this project which explores the emergence of curiosity in a student sojourner. To be an educational connoisseur, the researcher must be able to employ an extensive array of information to place the experience and understanding into a wider context. A full grasp of connoisseurship allows for deeper perceptivity, requires a profound awareness of different qualities, and depends on experiencing qualities as a sample of a larger set, not only to differentiate from the larger set through senses, but also to contextualize it in memories, experience, and understanding the conditions that give rise to the qualities and aesthetics (Eisner, 1998). The dimensions of connoisseurship that Eisner delineates include intentional, structural, curricular, and pedagogical, and within these dimensions I found relevance for this research project in the realm of study abroad. There is, according to Eisner, a complexity in people and their spaces, and in these dimensions. He is speaking to the classroom space, of course, and in this project that “classroom” is a location outside of the United States, in a culture that is unfamiliar to the students, and they will be mobile within spaces they encounter. The dimensions
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Eisner explicates are all areas in which I anticipated finding applicability of connoisseurship to the study and findings.
Positionality In qualitative research it is important to recognize positionality as part of the process, and there is a need for some level or awareness of subjectivity (Creswell, 2007; Creswell, 2014; Glesne, 2015). As I considered positionality, reflexivity, and identity, I found a need to back up and review my own location and situation before further considering epistemological stance, methodology, and other pieces of the conceptual framework and research techniques. Eisner (1998) says, “Personalization undermines objectivity; that is, we fear that it will suggest that what we have to say about the world will reflect more about ourselves than the world as it is” (p. 45). As I consider subjectivity and positionality, I believe that complete objectivity is unattainable, and it is most important to continue to assess my positionality through all stages of inquiry. My assumptions have been shaped by my unique experiences and identity, and my own continuing dialogue (internally and externally) is centered on embracing perspectives, and how I engage with them in this research endeavor. I know and understand my own privilege, as well as my implicit biases, and I continue to struggle with how my identity, as a white, cisgender, woman with 60 years of life experience and knowledge informs my daily life in higher education as an administrator. I strongly believe that my highest priority in my professional responsibilities is educating students for a life in a world beyond university that looks very different than the one I encountered in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. However, that priority is challenged daily by state mandates, accreditation directives, and the reality of economics and finance in higher education today. This is what I bring to a research project that is exploring a phenomenon in a study abroad program in higher education that is becoming more and more commodified and an object of assessment and quantification. How does look positionality look in practice? I was, for the final semester of my undergraduate education (returning after stepping out a few years to travel the world with only a few credits left needed to graduate), a non-traditional aged, commuter, English Literature/Women’s Studies student, with a husband and family, including two young daughters. I was in a marriage that was clearly failing. Complicating my academic experience was that I
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was taking my classes with other students at a traditional, residential university where I was also employed as a clerical staff member – I knew where the bones were buried at the university! I was, by about 20 years, the oldest person in all of my classes, and in some cases, I was 10 years (or more) older than the instructor. All of these aspects of my education, professional, and personal experience informed my identity as a continuing higher education and international educator, and definitely as a student, and, of course, as a researcher executing inquiry in higher education. My positionality in this research reveals the subjectivities that frame my epistemology and does bias what I see, but also allows me, I believe, to notice, critique, and appreciate what others may not see and comprehend. In considering how this manifests in this research project, I know that my experience as a non-traditional student undergraduate, at the master’s level (when I was in my 50s), and as a 60- year old doctoral student, allows me to see that I tend to experience something in my practice as a precursor to delving into it academically or through research. For example, I unexpectedly fell into13 higher education administration long before I studied higher education leadership. And, I studied and lived abroad before I became a practitioner in study abroad or knew it as a discipline or professional field. I knew I was building cultural competencies through edification abroad before I had words for it or researched and educated myself on the theoretical and practical implications of intercultural competence. I immersed myself in the practices of leadership, the meanings of culture, and the preparation and administration of curriculum long before I came to the academic study of leadership, culture, and curriculum. Clearly, I believe in and am immersed in experiential learning and the notion that one has to experience and do something to best understand it and make sense of it – that’s how I live my life, academically, professionally, and personally. The existence of something, or to know it well, comes out of the experience – doing it and interpreting it. Everyone interprets (whatever “it” is) in a unique way, bringing our own experiences and social reality to the interpretation. I also believe that these are complex systems, and necessarily so. International education, continuing higher education, and academia embody complexity. I live in the gray areas, thrive in the complexity, and the process through which I am building knowledge is complex –
13 Literally, the director of my unit left the university unexpectedly, and I was the only person with enough expertise and knowledge to run the unit. I was an hourly staff member put into an administrative role, all within the span of five days. It was a surprise to everyone, including me, that I became the lead of that unit at that time. 44
interrelated and interconnected systems of knowledge and knowledge building are at work as adaptations are being made as a result of learning, interpreting, and knowledge. Within the complexity of these concepts and manifestations of social reality, each of us, as a social being, brings our own complexity and intersectionality. I navigate the complexity through curiosity. I ask questions, seek the unknown, and I’m not afraid to say, “I don’t know.” This is what guides me and positions me as I move forward into developing research skills and projects, and definitively plays out in how this project progressed and was implemented.
Curiosity is the thirst of the soul; it inflames and torments us, and makes us taste every thing with joy, however otherwise insipid, by which it may be quenched. ~Samuel Johnson14 Methodology Ontology. The object of the study is curiosity as an intercultural competence. The literature review in the previous chapter suggests that there are many ways to look at curiosity, and even more ways to contextualize the attitude of curiosity. In this project I explored interpersonal curiosity, or the craving for new information about people, their lives, activities, and experiences. I examined curiosity as a phenomenon and secondarily explored whether it is externally cultivated through an educational experience that takes a student into an unfamiliar culture, or whether it is internal and the sense of wonderment is a part of humans from birth and may be the guiding antecedent in choosing to enroll in an education abroad experience. An interpretive methodology allows for understanding how students make meaning out of curiosity in the context of a cultural encounter. A phenomenological approach follows Edmund Husserl’s philosophical linking of consciousness to the external world “to try to describe the way in which the consciousness worked on and transformed our sense perceptions into recognizable objects” (Benton & Craib, 2011, p. 83). In this approach, “everyday life social experiences are accessed to discover what is meaningful to social, political, cultural, and other groups, and to the individuals within them, as well as to understanding how meaning is developed, expressed, and communicated” (Yanow & Schwartz-Shea, 2006, p. 11).
14 Johnson, S., 1797, p. xi 45
I found my research journey converging with Freire’s (1998) Pedagogy of Freedom. Duarte (2000) argued that Freire’s concept of co-intentionality, in which teachers and students are simultaneously both educators and learners, and both subjects. This is tied to the basic aim of Husserl’s phenomenology in its identification of critical consciousness as a collective intellectual experience, and the concept of “unveiling” the world. Epistemology. The research question implies a phenomenological study. In reviewing the development of phenomenological thought beyond Husserl (chronologically and philosophically), it becomes clear that “phenomenological philosophy itself diverges epistemologically, although its proponents hold similar ontological presuppositions” (Yanow & Schwartz-Shea, 2006, p. 11). According to Husserl, it is in the “lifeworld” where meaning making takes place. This concept of lifeworld is described as, “the bedrock of beliefs against which the very ordinary, mundane moving through one’s everyday world, interacting with others, takes place and through which one shapes and reaffirms one’s sense of oneself and the elements of one’s social world” (p. 12), or simply, the lived experience. This lifeworld is understood as what is experienced without reflection and what is taken for granted, and the study of the phenomena re-examines the experiences to discover new or forgotten meanings. In this (re)examination, Husserl proposed “bracketing” to reduce the individual biases to connect with the essence of the experience (Laverty, 2003). I could not get to a frame of mind where I was convinced that I could effectively rationalize claims as legitimate if the biases are reduced or bracketed out, and I questioned whether that is even possible. Like philosopher Martin Heidegger, I want to situate claims within the full context of the complexity of being in the world – the time factor and the participants’ existence and the relation to the world around them. Heidegger’s interpretation of Dasein is one which resonates for me in this project – the possibility of being involved in the world in which one lives, while being aware of the dependency of that immersion in the world, the significance of the world to the individual, and the developing character of the self (Magrini, 2014). For this project, a credible interpretive illustration of the lived experience of curiosity in the study abroad experience through pure phenomenology was not workable, but it is through hermeneutic phenomenology (as developed by Heidegger from Husserl’s foundation) with a formation of the historically lived experience that elucidates a consciousness that is not separate from the world (Sloan & Bowe, 2014). The background and history of the student, as well as the
46 researcher’s situatedness (or position) in the world, including culture (both the participant’s culture as well as the one in which the study is taking place), has to be considered – there is an “indissoluble unity between a person and the world” (p. 24). Traveling even further in the corridor of hermeneutic phenomenology, I employed Max van Manen’s (1997) phenomenology of practice: …the kinds of inquiries that address and serve the practices of professional practitioners as well as the quotidian practices of everyday life…. More specifically, this phenomenology of practice is meant to refer to the practice of phenomenological research and writing that reflects on and in practice and prepares for practice…it serves to foster and strengthen an embodied ontology, epistemology, and axiology of thoughtful and tactful action. (p. 4-5) This contemporary reading of the methodology of phenomenology respects the foundational philosophy of Husserl, while taking hermeneutic phenomenology into the professional context and practice. Van Manen also emphasized the writing and rhetoric of phenomenology which forces the individual into a reflective space where writing becomes deeply embedded (Laverty, 2003). The claims to be made about the ways that a student sojourner and researcher-practitioner experience curiosity can be constructed with a phenomenological study. The legitimacy of the argument is found in the deep empathetic understanding (Verstehen) that emerges from the interpretive methodology as it is understood in hermeneutic phenomenology. Theory. Paulo Freire’s dialogic theories of education and pedagogy informed this project. A close re-reading of Pedagogy of Freedom (1998) emphasized the importance and value of human curiosity. As I judiciously considered curiosity, I became more intentionally aware of the phenomenon in my practice and in the academic and experiential learning lives of student sojourners. Lewis (2012) posits that, “If there is a philosophy of mind in Freire's work, it must begin from a careful analysis of curiosity as the central cognitive process that either enables or disables critical consciousness raising” (p. 27). In Freire’s view, people are all born with “spontaneous curiosity” and that is transformed into “epistemological curiosity” through critical pedagogy, or it is darkened by “banking pedagogy” where students are merely containers to be filled with knowledge, reinforcing oppression through the absence of critical thinking (Vandenburg, 2002).
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Freire writes about our “unfinishedness” as humans, which is essential to our human condition and is naturally connected to the idea of spontaneous curiosity. Beyond this theoretical connection to Freire and curiosity, there are synergies found in Freire’s fundamental concept of dialogic pedagogy. According to Duarte (2000), Freire’s articulation of this, “describes critical consciousness as a co-intentional experience” – students and teachers who are co-intent on reality are subjects in the co-unveiling of reality and the task of recreating that knowledge through common reflection (p. 180). In the dialogical theory of education supported by Freire, the world requires unveiling (Lewis, 2012). There is synergy here with the experiential, study abroad sojourn experience in which the faculty leader is also immersing in a culture unfamiliar to the student and creating knowledge through the cultural connections, learning spaces, cultural artifacts, and encounters. Throughout Freire’s work, there is embedded an assumed definition and concept of curiosity. This proposed study moves back to examine and explore the pure phenomenon, and come to an understanding that is pre-conceptual, and that then can be used to develop conceptual frameworks in the future to inform a dialogical theory of education, and the co-intentional learning experience in study abroad to intentionally cultivate curiosity. Although not explored in this project (again, this study is meant is to gain an understanding of curiosity that is pre- conceptual), the realms of power and authority in learning relationships, critical education, as well as literacy and consciousness, all arise in the pedagogy in experiential learning, study abroad, and educating for global citizenship. Freire speaks to creation and construction, wonder and venture. “True knowledge, Freire contended, emerges only through restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful, critical inquiry with other people about their relations to the world” (Specia & Osman, 2015, p. 198). The Frierian theoretical touchpoints are embedded in this project, and the pedagogy of freedom is relevant here, as well as in future developments emerging from this initial endeavor to understand curiosity.
Methods Interpretation is critical to the process of understanding, and hermeneutic phenomenology is an interpretive process that brings understanding of phenomena through language (Laverty, 2003). It is through language that I looked for a deeper and richer understanding of the phenomenon of curiosity, especially through the texts that hold “intended or expressed
48 meanings” (p. 24). I considered language in the broadest sense of the word – human communication, spoken or written, using words and images. Texts include verbal communication gathered in observations, interviews, and focus groups with student sojourners in various phases of their journey – pre-study abroad, during the sojourn, and in the post-study abroad period. In consideration of this generation of students’ propensity toward a prolific social media presence, I also reviewed their social media to illuminate my understanding. Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter images and texts that student posts are a rich resource to assess for presence of curiosity or a sense of wonderment. I have been surveilling social media images posted by students studying abroad for a few years – they capture digitally what they are seeing, but perhaps more. With an interpretive process that moves through hermeneutic circles, from parts of the experience, to the whole of the experience, and back and forth, there is, perhaps, an increased understanding of the texts (Laverty, 2003), therefore, an increased understanding of the phenomenon of curiosity in a student sojourn. Further, this study is a qualitative narrative layering descriptive pieces with the related theory, analysis, and reflection, and focused on the lived experiences of a small number of participants to understand the perceptions of each and explore the differences and similarities across the cases (Glesne, 2015). This narrative has a spatial element in the writing (Creswell, 2007) that is a progressive-regressive journey, working backwards and forwards through events, contexts, sites, and other aspects of the study. I, the researcher, serve as a signpost pointing to the essential understandings of not only the research approach, but also the essential understandings of the phenomenon (Kafle, 2011). As I considered my positionality, and how it translated into the methods, and considered van Manen’s (1997) view of hermeneutic phenomenology, I chose to use anecdotal narrative that serves to “illuminate the silences” (p. 24) and bring a hybrid text to the project to engage the phenomenology in a way that “demands for a writing to serve pedagogy” (Kafle, 2011, p. 190). My experience with currere led me to believe that I could use it in the narrative to better understand the lifeworld stories that tell of the experience, and bring myself, the researcher, into conversation with them. Currere as a method. The literature review in Chapter 2 provides details on the currere phases. For this project, the four realms of currere are used to scaffold and guide the exploration of curiosity with students. Questions were designed to elicit responses that reflected on the past
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(regressive), the future (progressive), a response to the present (analytical), and the meaning of the present with an understanding of the past and future (synthetical). The narratives resulting from this approach allowed for interpretation, as well as a way for me, the researcher, to engage with the subjects. My own currere narrative is embedded through this project and allows me to engage and question assumptions, as well as to connect my own personal and professional experience with the research process and findings. The contribution of academic studies to one’s life is at the heart of the complicated conversation with oneself that deepens the understanding of the phenomenon (Pinar, 1995). Writing. In qualitative research, the writing is what ultimately gives form to the collected and organized data (Glesne, 2015), and it is in the writing where the descriptions and themes from that data come to life in the context of the setting and individuals (Creswell, 2014). Detailed descriptions of the experiences, interpretations of the data, and explication of the context will allow for that deep understanding I am seeking. Van Maanen (2011) argues that writing “requires at minimum some understanding of the language, concepts, categories, practices, rules, beliefs, and so forth, used by members of the written-about group” (p. 13). This is the stuff of culture and that is what is being pursued, in the narrative, and in the field for my research, but as Van Maanen notes, the trick to this is to effectively present the culture in a way that is meaningful to readers, without distortion. As a practicing international higher education professional, I have the requisite understandings and care is taken to ensure that I interpreted the participants experiences accurately in the narrative. Participants. Purposeful selection is key to qualitative research, and the logic of this approach lies in gaining insight and understanding of the phenomenon through “information-rich cases” (p. 148) that allow for accessing the appropriate data for the study and framing who and what matters as data (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2015). For each data collection approach used in this study, the choice of participants was deliberately based on the objectives of the study as well as the characteristics of the population. The participants in this project are American undergraduate, traditional aged (18-24 years old) student sojourners from a public, U.S. Midwestern, mid-sized university. I selected a sampling of students from each of the three phases of a sojourn – pre-study abroad, during study abroad, and post-travel.
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Data Collection. All aspects of this project received Miami University Institutional Review Board approval (see Appendix 4). The appropriate invitations to participate and consent forms were signed and returned by respondents. (See Appendices 4 and 5) The data in this study is, in general, descriptive. I observed, considered, re-considered, and recorded descriptions and input from the students on behavior (in setting, students and anyone coming into contact with the students), events (cultural tours, meals, classes, research groups), locations (institutions, accommodations), appearances (clothing, spaces), accounts (what people say and do), talk (actual words that are used), and perhaps the key piece of data, documents (images and comments relevant in the setting) (Glesne, 2015; Gray, 2014). In each data collection method, the entire context was taken into consideration. Interviews. A significant part of this research project is the interviews with the student- subjects. As noted above, I listened to their stories that serve as the context to their images and social media posts, but there is also a biographical narrative methodology that focuses on the participant telling a story. It was necessary to ensure that I allowed the students to tell their story, uninterrupted, following questions carefully designed to prompt rich narratives (Leavy, 2014). The sample size for one-on-one interviews was 10, divided among the three phases of study abroad, and to get a cross section of gender, immersion level, and study abroad locations (see Table 1). The students were enrolled in programs that traveled outside of North America. The students represented participation with a mix of short-term (winter term or summer session, three to six weeks) and full semester (15 weeks) programs. Students in the pre- and post-study abroad phases were interviewed face-to-face, on-campus in my office in the international education building.
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Table 2. Study Abroad Interview Participants Name Location Pre-During-Post Immersion Level15 Jim Peru and Spain Post V Phyllis The Netherlands Post III Oscar Spain During IV Angela The Netherlands Post III Erin Spain During IV Marilyn Spain Post V Luxembourg Post II
Pam Italy Pre II Andy Spain During IV Toby Argentina Pre III Dawn Dijon, France Post V Meredith Luxembourg During II
The interview questions were designed with attention to the theory and method of currere (See Appendix 1 for the Interview Question Matrix). The participants were told that all questions are voluntary, and they could opt out of any questions. They provided background information, and then were guided through questions that allowed them to consider their experience through the stages of currere – regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthetical. Observations. Observations took place in three, short-term summer session programs in Spain, Italy, and Luxembourg. A total of 87 students were observed as they navigated their experience abroad and experienced a new culture. The choice of these three programs was deliberate in that they would likely draw first time sojourners, and the programs were designed at three different immersion levels. All of the programs are embedded in the institution, either faculty-led or university center (as opposed to a provider program or a foreign university), and again, this was a purposeful choice. As noted previously, I anticipated that the findings of this project would inform our institutional study abroad program design in the future to plan and
15 See Figure 1. Engle & Engle, 2003. 52
present programs, curriculum, and pedagogy that will more effectively cultivate curiosity as an intercultural competence.
Table 3. Observations in Situ Program Program Academic Immersion # # Students # Name Location Focus16 Level17 Days Faculty Observed Arts & Rome, Italy Cultural II 6 23 1 Culture in artifacts, Italy locations, history El Camino Portuguese Pilgrimage V 7 33 4 de Santiago Route, Vigo and to Santiago language de immersion Compostola, Spain European Differdange, European III 3 31 2 Center Luxembourg history, Summer language, Program and culture
Classroom Observations. I intended to conduct two, one-hour focus groups with students in pre-and post-study abroad courses. The first course was a two-credit hour course designed to prepare students for the travel and cultural aspects of study abroad. These students had not yet studied abroad and anticipated studying abroad within the upcoming year. The course is designed to support their preparation for the experience. The second intended focus group was with students enrolled in a one-credit hour post-study abroad re-entry and reflection course. These courses were chosen for their obvious connection to the phases of study abroad, but also because the students in these courses had chosen to enroll in a course focused on study abroad that was credit bearing, but not required. Beyond the learning experience, there is no value for the student – it does not count toward degree, major, minor, or any other university requirements (See Appendix 2 for course descriptions).
16 See Appendix 3 for program descriptions. 17 See Figure 1. Engle & Engle, 2003. 53
The intent of the focus groups was to bring together all participants and the researcher for a discussion after all pre- and post-travel interviews were conducted. I arranged with the instructors to come to their classrooms and asked them if I could have a discussion with the students as a group. I provided the questions to the instructors that would guide the discussion. Both instructors agreed, but my communication was not as clear as it should have been. The instructors provided the questions to the students in advance and the students were prepared to present on their chosen locations for study abroad (the pre-study abroad courses) or to present on their experiences (in the post-study abroad course), guided by my questions. My research on focus groups had prepared me to be flexible, and the focus groups became classroom observations. Reflecting on this I have come to understand that the classroom observations may have been more effective than a focus group. I was a stranger to the students, and I am not convinced that an outsider coming into the classroom to lead a 75-minute discussion would be able to instill trust in a short period of time – or enough trust to elicit the insights I was seeking. By simply observing the students in the classroom, mid-semester, I did not disrupt the camaraderie they had developed, yet was able to gain some insight into the student preparation and reflections on study abroad. Once I realized how valuable the first two classroom observations were, I made arrangements to do a third one at a nearby university in another pre-study abroad course.
Table 4. Classroom Observations Course # Students IDS 154 Introduction to Study Abroad (2) 8 IDS 156 Study Abroad Re-entry (1) 6 INS 150 Preparing for Cross Cultural Engagement (1) 17
Social Media. Each student in the interviews and focus groups was asked if the researcher could have access to their social media for observation. This, perhaps, was not as purposeful a sample, and more random. Most students did provide access; however, many of the students indicated that they do not utilize social media as much as their friends.
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I have observed students in study abroad over the past few years, both in situ and through their Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter texts and images. Images have become an integral component of human communication (Ibrahim, 2015), and they are now instantaneously available through cell phone cameras and technology. We live in a time when we are imaging the everyday digitally, and traditional aged, digital native college students in particular are embracing and accepting a need to image the “banal and trivial in our everyday lives” (Ibrahim, 2015, p. 42). This pervasive proliferation of daily life through images reframes the prosaic and becomes an expressive and insightful way to connect, even forming the basis to extend identity and social capital and providing self-validation through endorsement of others (Rose, 2016). The available technology allows us to tell stories with images, rather than about images. In storytelling through images, students can, and do, construct the social reality of their travel study experience, and the individual self is very much present in this story. There is a construction of the self through the images (literally, consider the “selfie”), and while there is probably an entire dissertation to be written on the objectification of the self and the public and private gaze in social media, I wanted to analyze the stories told through images to understand how curiosity is captured, or not, in them. This required reviewing the images, but also interviewing the subjects and the photographers, and even those who viewed and commented on the images. The students who provided consent for review of their social media with full access are detailed in the following table (see Table 5).
Table 5. Social Media Participants and Images Name Gender Location Program Type Immersion # of Level Images Reviewed Oscar Male Spain Faculty Led V 16 Erin Female Spain Faculty V 11 Pam Female Italy Faculty Led II 8 Andy Male Spain Faculty Led V 6
With social media, it is always possible to click on a commenters’ name and that goes to the commenter’s social media account. Sometimes that is private, more often than not, especially
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with traditional-aged college students, it is not blocked. In a deeper dive into those commenter’s social media accounts, I was able to review photos and posts for about 50 other random students. In addition, I reviewed many university international education social media accounts which featured study abroad students.
Data Analysis and Interpretation A narrative inquiry necessitates thinking narratively to structure a narrative through “living, telling, re-telling, and reliving” (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2015, p. 50). As researchers in this genre, we are immersed in the layers of complexity through our day-to-day lives as human beings. In this study, I am interpreting the lives of the students at a particular moment in which they are stepping outside of their cultural comfort zones. Their experiences are explored through their stories, and the inherent reflexivity that “demands the attention of the researcher and the participant collaborators as the story emerges and evolves” (p. 51). The analysis of the data gathered included an examination of interviews, observations, social media images, and text. The analytic induction process involves the analysis of data from individual cases to identify patterns (Gray, 2014), and themes (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2015; Glesne, 2015). In this study the intent was not about building theory, rather, this is a pre- conceptual study, and I sought data toward a conceptual framework to use in future research, and to inform future curriculum development for study abroad immersion programs. The strength of a thematic analysis is the ability to reveal the underlying complexities to identify distinctions and tension and explain why there is deviation from a general pattern (Glesne, 2015). How the text is (re)arranged will illuminate the discoveries in a process of testing, clarifying, and deepening understanding (Reissman, 1993). Close and repeated listening is required, along with methodical transcribing. My preferred method is to first look at the organization of the narrative, and how the informant develops the story in the conversation. Then, I get inside and look at the meanings encoded in the “form of the talk” (p. 61), moving outward, to identify what is missing from the narrative, or what might be assumed, but is not explicit. What I will elicit is what will inform the current research but I will take care to open up to other interpretations and possibilities, and always attempt to assess the point-of-view of the informant.
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Social media images and text. As a researcher, images were new to my repertoire and I did some additional due diligence to ensure I had a thorough understanding of how to analyze the images in order to make the connections to this project. Analysis of the images was accomplished through deconstruction of the photos to understand how the student communicates through signs and symbols to uncover meanings that are below the surface (Glesne, 2015) – backgrounds, objects included in photos, clothing worn, etc. It was important to analyze what is in the photograph, but also what is not there. Students experiencing study abroad encounter loneliness, logistical glitches, difficulties, and culture shock, and this may not show up in the images. This is where interviews, focus groups, and observations deepen the understanding and give additional substance to the study. Rose (2016) argues that there is a necessary critical approach to interpreting visual images: take the images seriously, consider the social conditions and effects of images and their modes of distribution, and consider your own way of observing images. A “critical visual methodology” (p. 24) considers four sites: production of the image, the image itself, where it is circulated, and where it is seen by the audience. Further, in each of these sites the observer- researcher considers three aspects or modalities: the technological, compositional, and social, or “the range of economic, social, and political relations, institutions, and practices that surround an image and through which it is seen and used” (p. 26). As I considered the complexity of these three levels or approaches, I turned to my own Instagram feed and randomly chose a post to review. The image I chose (see Figure 3) was taken on my iPhone 6 camera by one of the four travelers on a ten-day trip to Malawi, Africa, in August of 2015. The person who took this photo had just gifted me and a fellow traveler with beautiful scarves on our final night in Mzuzu before heading out on an eight-hour journey to the airport in Lilongwe the following morning.
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Figure 3. Instagram post @cheryldyoung. August 27, 2015.
In considering the social setting, as the text message says, we were in an Indian restaurant, but we ordered pizza because the waiter claimed they had the best pizza in Malawi. Also, we are drinking wine, for the first time during this trip – it was not available in our remote locations and home stays during this trip. I recall that at least one other person at the table was having gin and tonic and claiming that the quinine would fight malaria. In thinking about the scope of economic and political practices (as suggested by Rose [2016]) inherent in this photograph, this is where it gets interesting. After my fellow traveler made this claim about the quinine in gin serving to combat malaria (several times on this trip, and he is a seasoned traveler in Africa and malaria-ridden countries), I did some research when I returned home. Gin and tonic has been called the “British Empire’s secret weapon” in controlling India (Salon.com, 2013). In the 17th century the Spanish found that they could use tree bark with quinine to cure ailments, including malaria. As quinine powers became critical to the British Empire, soldiers were using the bark for their protective doses, and since it is bitter, they mixed it with soda and sugar. There is more history, but this is illustrative of the economic and social aspects of an image, even the story behind the part of the image that is not shown. Background provides
58 critical rationale for post-travel interviews with students to better understand their images and allows me to interpret them within the critical visual methodologies. My observation of this image is personal. I was there, I had come to know this small group of travelers very well, and I know that we each had a powerful transformational experience in Malawi, but in different ways. For the woman who took this photo this was her eighth trip to Malawi, and she had a close relationship with every person we met and institution we visited, and many connections through her church at home in Oklahoma. It was a homecoming, of sorts, for her. For two of the travelers, a husband and wife, it was their first time in Malawi, but they had been to Africa many, many times. What I see here is my friend smiling at her husband, seated next to her, out of camera range. They are relaxed and happy. I recall that the traveler who took this photo was also quite jolly that evening. She had, she felt, a very successful experience, and she loved giving us the gifts of the lovely scarfs she had found at a roadside vendor earlier in the week. This was my second time in Africa, the first time in Malawi, and everything I was experiencing was new, it seemed. I see that on my face in this photo. And, yes, I see curiosity on my face. I chose this post randomly from my feed, but I see that I was curious about my fellow traveler who had picked up my cell phone to take a picture (and she knew, I don’t like my picture taken – I tend to take photos of sites, architecture, natural life, etc., and not people, and definitely not myself). I see what I know I felt, but I imagine that someone looking at this photo without the personal connection would see unease, perhaps, on my face, perhaps even some fatigue, but that isn’t really what I felt that evening. There will be multiple interpretations of any given image, and it will be important for me, the researcher, to observe and interpret, but then work through the image with the student-subject to gain a deeper, richer understanding of the visual, as well as the context of the image. This image was also posted on two Facebook sites – my personal page (mostly for my mother, who is home-bound and enjoys seeing photos of her family on Facebook), and my professional page (used mostly to keep my professional life separate from my personal, especially in this politically charged period of American history). It appears that the people who “liked” it on Instagram are a mix of family, friends who live in in the same town as I – one who is living abroad – and two professional contacts. The sites of distribution are an important
59 consideration in the analysis of this image. Why did I choose to post for both professional and personal contacts? This is one of only 56 images I have ever posted to Instagram – why? Finally, the accompanying text. According to Rose (2016), in analyzing visuals in social media, the text cannot be separated from the image, and in this example, which comes through clearly. Without the text, and context, this could be me and a friend eating in any bar or restaurant, anywhere, with curious, lingering questions about why we are outfitted in the scarves!
Data Analysis The data collected in this project, through interviews, observations, and social media amounted to hundreds of pages of transcripts, and scores of social media photographs and postings, all collected through QSR International’s NVivo 11 qualitative analysis software. Also held in NVivo were a codebook, all audio recordings, a research journal detailing actions and thoughts, as well as memos on critical phases and phrases of this project. The transcripts and social media documents were coded in NVivo 11, allowing for queries and analysis across source and case classifications. Always at the forefront of my computer screen and notes was an electronic or hard copy reminder of the questions in this research journey into the emergence of curiosity in a university student sojourn experience. The questions that formed the basis of this study included: Does a student value the focus on developing intercultural competence as an outcome of the study abroad experience? Does the student sojourner understand and value curiosity, specifically, as a competence that sustains the ability to navigate unfamiliar cultures? And, what is the progression of thought students go through when making sense of the study abroad experience, competencies (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) gained, and how it connects to sense of their personal identity? Is curiosity a part of this process? How do American student sojourners express curiosity in texts (written and verbal reflections, photographs, and social media)? Does the education abroad experience cultivate higher levels of curiosity in students? From the context of these questions, the primary research question guiding this project was: What is the lived experience of interpersonal curiosity as it manifests in an intercultural learning experience that takes the students into an unfamiliar culture? In considering the reading and interpretation of the raw data, and the questions underlying the study, I shaped my codes in a way that is natural and resembles the phenomenon
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being studied, in this case, curiosity, as suggested by Chenail (1995). I began with codes that are characteristics of curiosity, as found in the literature, and they are based in the well-researched psychological theories of curiosity, as well as the work of Engberg and Jourian (2015), and Engberg, Jourian, and Davidson (2016) on intercultural wonderment. In the initial reading and first cycle coding, other characteristics emerged from the student narratives, as well as my own experience with curiosity and with students in a sojourn experience. This was a simple beginning but led to a more complex second cycle that brought in the characteristics of threshold concepts and student self-efficacy. A final layer of complexity in the second cycle brought in the students’ social media, through which I would visually enhance the student narratives. Through the coding and reflection processes, I found the stories, and I was mindful of what was most important, my research questions, but was also ready for surprises and discoveries, and keeping my mind’s eye on the “end goal” of using what I gained from this project in future curriculum and pedagogy. In my review of the theories underlying the techniques for unraveling qualitative data, I entered the process knowing that this was a mix of techniques. As an observer embedded in higher education at a traditional, residential, public, mid-size university for over 30 years, I have studied the culture of higher education and the students in their academic habitats. Further, I have immersed myself into several groups of students as they studied abroad over many years, and four times during this project. The naturalistic, or ethnographic, technique was brought to bear in this research instinctively as it progressed. I am fluent in the language, and education abroad in higher education is my culture – I have learned the subtleties of expression used in these groups and the meanings that are typically attributed to statements or actions (Armstrong, 2008). Layered onto the ethnographic method of interpretation in this project, I used narrative analysis to compose the essence of the experiences and events as the participants understood them. By coding around the stories, I was able to discover the general patterns and classifications (Schutt, 2011) and stylistic dimensions.
Moral and Ethical Issues A qualitative project with human subjects who are actively reflecting on their personal experiences, attitudes, perspectives, and emotions in their cognitive transformation during a
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cross-cultural sojourn can be a sensitive area in which to research. Emotional stress resulting from culture shock and reverse culture shock is a reality within which this project transpired. This project was developed and designed within the Institutional Review Board guidelines and reviewed to ensure the rights and welfare of human subjects were protected during their participation. Although the student participants are adults and provided free and informed consent, I took additional precautions with this 18-24-year-old age group, especially those who were experiencing a culture foreign to them for the first time. I did not deceive participants about any aspect of this research project; in addition, I took that a step further to support an understanding of purposes of the project, and potential emotional impact of their participation. This project was developed as “backyard research,” that is, the project was conducted in higher education, in the institution of higher education in which I am an administrator. I understood the messiness that can result from research in my own or a colleagues’ institutional programming efforts – political situations and information that is risky to know as an insider (Glesne, 2015). Care was taken in considering the research location and participants, and consideration was given to protecting the students.
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CHAPTER 4 THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS18: WHAT I FOUND THERE
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ~ Lewis Carroll19
Curiosity is a sneaky phenomenon. Most of us know what it feels like, but as it emerges it is quickly and easily concealed among other emotions, thoughts, or yearnings. Curiosity is transitory, and not easily localized. It is not always recognized. We do not generally stop and intentionally consider our own feelings of curiosity because they are often ephemeral and hastily surrounded by other thoughts. From the beginning of this project, I knew that curiosity was not going to be a simple cerebral encounter to describe or narrate. Curiosity can be a simple thing – as simple as a question that spontaneously emerges. In its simplicity, there is complexity. Curiosity can be exciting and thrilling, but it can also be agitating and troubling. This is particularly true when a student is traveling and experiencing new cultures, trying to understand his or her own identity and perspective among others, while navigating daily life in an unfamiliar location and culture. This project attempted to explore this sometimes straightforward, but often complicated, phenomenon of human curiosity as it is experienced by students who choose a university study abroad experience, and intentionally take themselves out of comfortable personal spaces and home places where they are relaxed and content. The questions that guided the inquiry in this project were contextualized in how American college students make sense of the education abroad experience. Specifically, what is the process that students go through and what are the actions that students describe when they pause to make sense of curiosity as it emerges in their lives, and the study abroad experience? How do American student sojourners express curiosity in their language, memories, and social media? And, does the cultural immersion experience itself cultivate curiosity in students? Embedded in these questions is the international educator’s expectation that students should develop intercultural competence, and we have identified curiosity as one of those competencies; therefore, there is a need to examine it and recognize it. These questions and perspectives
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enveloped and informed the key question that is at the core of this project: What is the lived experience of interpersonal curiosity as it manifests in an intercultural learning experience that takes the students into an unfamiliar culture? I went into this project with the intent of exploring these questions through a thoughtful and attentive thematic reflection and interpretation of the student narratives. First, I identified themes that are revealed in the words, or the semantic themes, and I did not look for anything beyond what the student said or wrote. Then, I circled back around and took a deeper dive to review beyond the words to identify and examine “the underlying ideas, assumptions, and conceptualisations – and ideologies – that are theorized as shaping or informing the semantic content” (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 84). As Van Manen (1997) suggests, I tried to put aside my own common sense to reveal the essential elements. I wanted to illuminate the elements that cannot be removed from the experience, without changing the meaning of the experience, or, the emerging themes. I found the essential elements as they displayed and revealed themselves, and they became the themes that guide the story. The themes open the lived experience with a meaningful focus, to solidify my interpretation of the phenomenon.
Participants The analysis begins with a review of the participants. They are revealed to be a privileged group of student sojourners. They were educated in a mix of large, medium, and small-sized private and public schools, and from rural, urban, and suburban hometowns. Although they became a part of this inquiry by responding to an open call for interviews, therefore representing a somewhat random sample, their educational experiences prior to coming to the university are marked by opportunities and advantages. Even the two students who self-identified as low socio- economic status and as first generation college students were able to take advantage of social capital and described pre-college educational experiences similar to the students who self- described themselves as being from middle or upper socio-economic level backgrounds. All of the students were between the ages of 19 and 22, and attending a large, public university, and all but one of them was a student at a university which consistently ranks in the top 10 most expensive among all public universities in the United States. Finally, these students all found the means and opportunity for a study abroad experience. Only two of the students received scholarships, fee waivers, or grants to cover the some or all of expense of the program.
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The students interviewed in this project chose to respond to the request for interview participants, and they knew the subject was curiosity and study abroad. The bias is noteworthy – these were students who were curious enough about this subject to choose to take part in the interview. They were unmistakably coming into this as curious beings. However, I was able to discern, through the interviews, varying levels of curiosity. The students interviewed and observed were unexpectedly and not intentionally representative of students who study abroad at my university: more females than males; most were enrolled in short term faculty-led experiences in Europe; few in semester long enrollments; few had studied abroad more than once; one identified as gay; and, all but one identified as White. Illuminating the Essential Themes The themes that emerged through the interviews – and that were explored further through observations, focus groups in pre- and post-study abroad courses, and students’ social media – were both expected and enigmatically unanticipated. The first theme emerged very early in the interviews. Every student interviewed identified a teacher, or more than one, who recognized them as a curious or very aware student seeking something more than what was offered in the classroom. Once recognized, the students were acknowledged, and chosen for enrichment opportunities which cultivated their curious nature. As I sought out the ways in which curiosity emerged in students as they were exploring, it appeared in a surprisingly bifurcated way – either in connecting with people, or in discovering places. These two connections (people or places) merged at some point for the students, but in their explorations, curiosity emerges in one way or the other in every case for this particular group of student subjects. This is the basis of the second theme, intercultural wonderment, which captures the underlying curiosity in students in seeking out new and different experiences in a sojourn experience (Engberg & Jourian, 2015) whether that is through curiosity about people or places, which includes a willingness to deal with discomfort and disequilibrium of the unknown. Intercultural wonderment is illustrated through the potency and increasing intensity of the students’ questions, as well as demonstrations of empathy and creativity (Engberg, Jourian, & Davidson, 2016). The third theme came out of intercultural wonderment, further cultivated and driven by curiosity, where I found my own deep learning moment when I discovered the theory of
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threshold concepts (Meyer & Land, 2006). The notion is that threshold concepts are portals which open up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. More than a core concept, it “represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress. As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view” (p. 1). Students encounter provocative moments when they are trying to grasp concepts, and this generates troublesome knowledge, or knowledge that is conceptually difficult, counter-intuitive, and/or unfamiliar. It is in this realm of disequilibrium and troublesome knowledge related to crossing cultures that students begin to grasp and understand concepts that break them through the portal into intercultural competence. Specifically, the concept of culture as the higher level, pervasive context of all encounters among people is one which, when students grasp, understand, acknowledge, and accept, it becomes a breakthrough point which transforms their world view and leads to enhanced intercultural and global competence.
Theme One: Discovered, Acknowledged, and Enriched In this study, the role of parents in encouraging curiosity was not a surprise. It was expected, and every participant confirmed that their parents and families had an impact through encouragement and support of the students’ curiosity and exploration from an early age. They related experiences such as being encouraged to use their imagination in play, learning new dance moves with their parents on rainy days with MTV as their guide, family vacations, museum visits, being read to consistently, as well as being encouraged to read. One student said, My parents didn’t have a lot of opportunities. There were no opportunities, financially, for them. Both of my parents basically used education to get out of their situations. But I give them a lot of credit for that because they really instilled how important education was for me. They were always pushing me to look into things that I was interested in and figure out how to discover things myself. It was like giving [me] a telescope for my birthday and inviting all my buddies to come over and look at the stars at night and we camped in the yard.
However, it was not only parents who encouraged exploration to satisfy curiosity in their children through opportunities to explore. Repeatedly, in interviews with the students in this study, and in conversations with them in situ in study abroad, when they considered their elementary and secondary school experiences, they recalled teachers who made a difference and
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related that to their childhood experience of emerging curiosity, often, even more than family and parents. The teachers recognized that the student was paying attention, asking questions, and had a desire to know more. One of the participants in this study was Oscar, a senior Marketing major from suburbs of Chicago, with an engaging smile and approachable personality. Oscar had a lot of energy during the interview, and this was during the evening of a sweltering hot summer day when we had walked for many hours, and many kilometers, on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain. This was Oscar’s first sojourn outside of the United States, and he had perhaps more questions for me than I had for him – he is a very curious young man if we are measuring it in the number of questions. In reflecting on his elementary school experience, and his third grade teacher, who encouraged him to ask questions and keep digging until he found answers, he said:
In elementary, my favorite teacher was Mrs. Flax. She came up to me the first day, we were standing outside, in the lines to the teachers. I had no idea who this woman was. She comes up to me and says, “I remember seeing you and your eyes and your smile when you did your kindergarten program. I just fell in love with you there. And now you’re in my class!” I’m like, “Okay.” I’m a third grader, and it was really just weird to be recognized by a teacher, and she seemed like a really cool lady. Looking back, I don’t know, that just had a huge impact on me just to know that a teacher could recognize me and remember me for something as simple as a kindergarten program a few years ago.
Oscar further described a “pull out” class that Mrs. Flax had suggested that he enroll in early in his third-grade year. He described it as an enrichment program for students who demonstrated a desire for learning beyond the classroom experience. This was not an unusual experience for the students interviewed in this study. One-by-one they described impactful enrichment programs. In the interviews with students, they were asked open-ended and broad questions about their elementary and secondary school experiences (see Appendix 1). The intent was to take them back in time to a place where they were learning to be students, experiencing and immersed in the curriculum, the hidden curriculum, and all aspects of American educational culture, and draw out of them how they navigated that experience, and then, how that manifests in their university learning experience, as well as the decision to study abroad, or being abroad in an unfamiliar culture. Enrichment activities (generally academic) in elementary and secondary education, for
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these students, were identified as critical in the participants’ experiences with curiosity and satisfying the student’s inquisitiveness. These students also described enrichment activities in which they were engaged which motivated them in their pre-college educational background. When students revealed these enrichment experiences, they often realized that it was a teacher, school administrator, or school paraprofessional who perceived some unmet energy in the student and connected the student with the enrichment activity. These enrichment activities included the usual physical activities: sports (with soccer and field hockey being the most prevalent), and programs for gifted students – although the students did not always use that word, “gifted,” it was clear that what they were describing to me were what I would identify as programs for talented or exceptional young students. According to the National Association for Gifted Children, these programs vary widely across the United States, and there is no Federal law that offers specific requirements for serving gifted children. There were approximately 3.2 million students in public school in gifted and talented programs in 2015-16 (National Association for Gifted Children, 2018). As the students recollected their pre-college educational experiences and lives, they associated the emergence and satisfaction of curiosity to enrichment programming. Often it was these same teachers who recognized the spirit of wonder in the students and encouraged the student into a program to enhance the classroom experience. Jim, a senior Interdisciplinary Studies major from Southwestern Ohio, described himself as an average student, and poor test taker, but he had thrived in his elementary years in a private Montessori school. Recognizing his curiosity about cultures and languages, his teachers guided him into the local Model United Nations program. Of that experience, he says: It was fifth through eighth [grades]. And that [Model UN] was a great experience because we really learned how to not only debate, but also to give speeches. We dedicated three months to this project and during that three months we write a resolution. We did a bunch of research. We had cameras, and we would record ourselves giving the speech and then we had to go watch it to critique ourselves. When I got to high school, I was much better at public speaking than most students. I learned about my strengths and even if I wasn’t strong at something, I could practice it and get better. I learned so much about the world and figured out that I could go to other places and solve problems with other people.
To further support this notion that students who choose to study abroad have benefited from enrichment programming, students interviewed in this project reported that they brought
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college credit to the university upon arrival as a first-year student. This implies that they continued accelerated opportunities into their secondary school experiences with credit earning honors and Advanced Placement courses, and post-secondary enrollment options programs in which academically high achieving students are given the opportunity to enroll in college-level courses while still in high school.
Theme Two: Curiosity and Intercultural Wonderment Talking with students in the interviews revealed an intriguing dichotomy. When asked about exploring new places, whether that was as a first year student on a college campus living in a residence hall, or an unfamiliar culture in a host country, students either said they made connections with the people in that place to discover more about it through questions or conversation, or they connected with the physical place and explored the location with their senses and feet. They asked questions, but of themselves, and answered their questions through exploration. All students eventually connected with people and places, but their entry point into a new experience was through one or the other. Questions are the first sign of curiosity emerging. In describing her first day as a student on a college campus, Marilyn, a senior Creative Writing major from Indiana, did not mention the location at all, but said, “I wanted to meet new people and I kind of want to know more about them. I would ask people, ‘Why did you do that?’ or ‘How do you do this?’ or ‘What is this?’ and things like that.” Alternatively, Pam, a first year student from Southwestern Ohio majoring in Biomedical Engineering, said of her first day on a Big 10 college campus, “It was difficult to figure out at first because it was so big and didn’t know the campus, but I wandered around, and walked and walked, just going in and out of buildings, and finally got it all memorized.” When asked about people she met, she said she “really didn’t meet anyone those first few days except [her roommate] ‘cause I was so busy trying to figure out the campus… it’s so big’.” Pam did not specifically ask questions, but questions about the campus and community guided her exploration. Almost a year away from her first study abroad experience in Italy, she was unsure about exploring in a new culture in an abroad location but anticipated using this same technique – exploring with her feet and senses, asking questions.
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When probed further on this and asked to imagine a location that they had never been in, the students had a strong preference for describing either the people there, or the sights, sounds, and feel of the location, for all of the students in this study. Either way, exploration through people or places, the students exhibited signs of curiosity, using their imagination, being observant, and tolerating ambiguity. Curiosity leads to exploration (whether through people or places) and intercultural wonderment, which further informs the threshold concepts that allow students to view the world in a new way through an understanding of culture, and that supports reaching the ultimate goal – enactive mastery in intercultural competencies. After her first study abroad experience, Marilyn reported that she thought she had learned a lot about herself through her athletic cross-country experiences. She was pushed to know her own physical and mental limits throughout high school and college and she learned how to adapt to situations where she was uncomfortable and to cope with any situations in which she found herself. However, in reflecting on her semester-long study abroad experience in Spain, she said that her self-confidence had increased even more than she expected. While she was comfortable in sports competitions in front of many people and peers, she never felt confident speaking in front of a group. In her study abroad experience, she learned to evaluate herself more effectively and her abilities, including public speaking in a foreign language. She learned to realistically pursue improving herself in this area, as well as to be more willing to take on calculated risks and feel accomplished when that risk paid off. Marilyn described her growth: I could have studied abroad for just the J-term, but I wanted to really dig in and be a part of the Spanish culture for longer. After a while I realized that I could speak Spanish so much better and everyone understood me, but also my English had gotten better, and being able to go back and forth between the languages was easier all the time. Being better in Spanish got me to talk with my host family better and, well, like fluently. I knew what was going on without having to stop and think about it or even, like, interpret in my head first. I started talking to people wherever I went and got really confident in it. I was probably getting really annoying [laughter]. But I think I was becoming Spanish in a way, like… I could imagine what it was like to be Spanish and live like a Spanish person all the time there.
Marilyn demonstrated growth in many ways – tolerance for ambiguity and behavioral flexibility –signs of increased intercultural competence (Deardorff, 2006). However, it was empathy that developed when she could imagine herself completely immersed in the Spanish culture and
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feeling Spanish herself. She experienced breaking through a personal confidence portal as an athlete, but through her sojourn experience, she gained a higher level of confidence in herself. Driven by curiosity about people or places, students interviewed for this project, experienced diverse ways to explore new cultures. Angela, a junior Statistics and Data Analytics major, said she explored her new environment in The Netherlands (in her first study abroad experience in a place where she had never traveled before) by going to the grocery store. In the store, near the international house at the university in Maastricht where she studied for a semester, she walked each aisle, picking up products that were unfamiliar and new to her, and trying to read the labels and understand through the context (other foods around the unknown product) and the words she could pick out that she understood on the product. She reported that she would just walk around and observe, and she discovered no bags were provided (customers expected to bring their own, and bag the groceries themselves), only debit cards were acceptable for payment, along with cash, and to use a cart there was a small coin deposit. Most of this she learned by observation, but she also asked questions of friendly English-speaking people in the store when they asked if she needed help. Angela said, In the store one day I realized that it is something that every town has… big ones and tiny ones have a place for buying food… and it was really different from my Albertson’s at home, and it had all of these different fruits, vegetables, yogurts, cheeses and the eggs on the shelves not in a cold place… but it reflected this place and what the people in this place eat and buy, what they need to survive.
Angela noted that she now uses this technique (visit a local grocery store or market) whenever she is in a new culture or country. At first, she just observes and asks questions, but she learns about the culture and navigating it through this practice. She now has a wealth of information about grocery stores in France, Italy, The Netherlands, South Africa, and Cuba. However, she also has gained a rich and appreciative understanding of how she can respectfully navigate food and shopping for it in the culture. She had one other insight about this: after exploring the world more over time, she found that shopping in an international airport in a foreign location is not reflective of that culture and is actually more reflective of globalization. She said that “you really have to find a market that is surrounded by a neighborhood” for an authentic cultural experience. This student’s experience also effectively illustrates the concept of intercultural wonderment in study abroad among university sojourners: “Intercultural wonderment
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encapsulates the underlying curiosity in individuals to seek out new and different experience while studying abroad and involves a willingness and capacity to deal with discomfort and disequilibrium” (Engberg & Jourian, 2015, p. 1). In their seminal work on threshold concepts, Meyer and Land (2006, 2010, and 2016) identify discomfort as one of the emotions that students must face to cross portals of understanding and get to the post-liminal stage where they achieve a new way to view the world. Curiosity fuels the students to intentionally push themselves outside of their comfort zones, to feel immersed in the culture, and explore new habits and behaviors, while interacting with people in the host location (Engberg & Jourian, 2015). These “provocative moments” are captured in intercultural wonderment.
Between Themes (If You Don’t Know Where You Are Going, Any Road Will Take You There)
I was pleasantly surprised to find in this project that there were educational concepts that I had not learned about or even considered as I moved through the doctoral program courses, preliminary and comprehensive examinations, and then finally to my dissertation proposal. Along the way, curiosity was revealed to me very early as the area of focus for my research, even as I vacillated among the possible areas of my practice as my center of attention – international students and scholars, online learning, intercultural competence, internationalization in higher education, diversity programming, and study abroad were all possibilities. Finally, even with a decision to focus in the study abroad part of my practice, all of my reading, writing, and reflecting on curiosity did not lead me on to the paths that this research project took. After I had completed many of the student interviews on campus and in several abroad locations, I ran into a colleague from another university at a professional conference. She is also a Senior International Officer at a large public university. We talked about my research, as we had the previous year at the same conference, but this time, I was able to speak to some of my findings. As I described to her what I was glimpsing in my data, she nodded, smiled, and asked many questions. Clearly, another curious global soul! I told her that in my observations and reflections on the data, curiosity emerges in student sojourners when they make intentional and meaningful connections with people and places. However, I was also catching some glimpses of evidence that curiosity emerges throughout students’ educational experiences and that it is transformational, but also allows the students to
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(what I was calling at that time) cross a barrier in understanding cultures, crossing cultures, and successfully navigating cultures. “Oh,” said my colleague, “you are seeing that curiosity is necessary in the threshold concepts in studying abroad and crossing cultures.” She described these “threshold concepts” as conceptual portals through which students cross, or core ideas that, once understood, transform perceptions. These gateways and ways of thinking transmute students and allow them to understand and interpret disciplinary-specific theories, ideas, and models. She used some examples, such as the concept of gravity as a threshold concept in the disciplines of physics and engineering, and, the one that was a part of my undergraduate English literature experience, deconstruction of text for in-depth analysis of the symbolism, themes, literary value, and to uncover new meanings and truths. How well I remembered when I got that and then was even able to apply deconstruction to film, and other genres. In a few short minutes she had succinctly led me to a new concept and something I had never known about or considered before, threshold concepts. Rather than a brisk walk to the Smithsonian Zoo, as I had planned on that snowy day in Washington, D.C., I went to my hotel room and logged onto the university library online search engines to review the literature on threshold concepts. I was excited about what I found there, but a little confused as to why there was nothing in the literature about the threshold concepts in study abroad. I suspected it was because study abroad is cross-disciplinary, and threshold concepts seem to about a specific discipline. But, as always happens when I fall into the literature review rabbit hole, I wandered on to another path, the concept of self-efficacy – the notion that our own beliefs in our abilities and actions are formed through various sources: enactive mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological or affective states (Bandura, 1977). This was not a new concept for me. I have read about self- efficacy in the student affairs in higher education literature on international student support, and in some other research that another doctoral student had accomplished in this area, but I had not considered it deeply, or in connection to curiosity, American students studying abroad, or what it means in considering our life stories and how they work to inform curriculum. My personal aha moment in all of this, was about aha moments! My own thinking about intellectual, social, personal, and communication barriers students face in crossing cultures was transformed, and became irreversible, as well as integrated, when I connected threshold concepts
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and self-efficacy to curiosity, study abroad, and intercultural competence. I was able to put words to these notions and findings. My findings became threshold concepts, and my confidence in my own ability to organize my findings became my own self-efficacy aha moment, all of which emerged from my own curiosity, of course.
Theme Three: Threshold Concepts as Gateways to Intercultural Competence As all educators know, teaching and learning are complex and challenging processes. This difficulty is necessary – gaining knowledge should not be easy, and it should be demanding, or it will be lost. We have all had the experience of trying to learn something, or learn to do something, and getting stuck, unable to grasp the concepts required to get to the next level of knowledge, ability, or skill building in a discipline, theory, model, or perspective. However, there is a theory that there are certain concepts, or learning experiences, that once mastered, impel the learner through a portal, and from there a new perspective opens up “allowing things formerly not perceived to come into view” (Land, Meyer, & Baillie, 2010, p. ix). These are known as “threshold concepts” (Meyer & Land, 2006; Meyer, Land, & Baillie, 2010; Land, Meyer, Flanagan, 2016). Once thrust through the portal, learners have a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something that represents a transformed way of understanding. Learners are introduced to a previously obscure perspective through the challenges presented by the concept, which are transformative, irreversible, and integrative – the key elements of threshold concepts (Land, Meyer, & Flanagan, 2016). A transformed view of the subject matter, the disciplinary area, educational activity, or even a worldview (Meyer & Land, 2006), may emerge. Examples of threshold concepts are found throughout the literature, and in diverse disciplines. In the geosciences, geologic or deep time is a thread that runs through the discipline and is so crucial to the field that if you don’t understand it, you can never really be a specialist in this area (Cheek, 2010). In biology, the threshold concepts include cellular metabolic processes like photosynthesis and respiration, and genetics (Ross, Taylor, Hughes, Kofod, Whitaker, Lutze- Mann, & Tzioumis, 2010). The literature reveals threshold concepts in other disciplines including computer science (data collection) and grammar (sentence structure). However, also described are less traditional ways of thinking about a discipline and how a threshold concept can change the way a discipline is considered. For example, Kabo and Baille (2010) consider
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how social justice as a threshold concept for engineering brings a social context to the field that can play a key role in challenges such as poverty and environmental sustainability. In the literature about threshold concepts, there is little found about the experience of the student sojourner or navigating cultures. One researcher, Nahavandi (2016), proposes that “culture as a meta-context” (CMC) (p. 795) in the academic discipline of Management is a threshold concept that facilitates students crossing a conceptual gateway in developing a cultural mindset that is key to working across cultures, locally, nationally, and internationally. Using culture as a frame in a higher level abstraction, according to this research, allows students to view the world differently through “guiding perspectives, cognition, perspectives, values, behaviors, and even emotions” (p. 801). Culture-as-meta-context, Nahavandi posits, allows students to fully understand and consider the impact of culture, and they keep culture in mind in all interactions with people and places. Again, Nahavandi is specifically using this in the discipline of management, where student learning outcomes are related to Management which involves organizational administration, managing resources, including human resources and technical aspects of businesses. However, CMC appears to be effectively and appropriately applied more broadly in ways that will support students breaking through the conceptual barriers of crossing cultures, and more specifically, to use the knowledge of the discipline to work more globally, or with a more global mindset. Culture-as-meta-context, as Nahavandi (2016) suggests, moves beyond learning about culture as an important factor that is scattered throughout the curriculum; she suggests that teaching with consideration to culture, and not as a meta-context, and without a unifying theme, that students only gain a superficial understanding of culture, and not the full complexity and pervasiveness of cultures. Students will not learn to apply the knowledge or integrate it with other knowledge and information. To be an authentic breakthrough concept in any discipline, “students must view culture as a meta-contextual factor” (p. 801). Bringing a finer focus to the higher order context of culture as a threshold concept, Killick (2013) found that significant learning is found in the narratives of undergraduates in study abroad programs and cultural understanding thresholds are crossed through personalizing the once distant “other”; perceptions that envision one’s own cultural practices differently; recognizing our own cultural rituals as arbitrary and potentially offensive to others; and, witness ourselves in successful interactions with cultural others. As a result of crossing through the portal
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of understanding, students (and others) transform their lifeworld, according to Killick, from “act- in-the-world” agency to “self-in-the-world” (p. 722) or an enhanced sense in which “dimly visible cultural others cross lifeworld horizons to stand as more hued and familiar individuals” (p. 727). Killick argues that cultural practices and unfamiliar values are opened for exploration because they now have a human dimension. I propose, based on my findings, that culture as a meta-context, driven by curiosity and intercultural wonderment, develops the cultural mindset that emerges in students through an effective, immersive study abroad experience. If a study abroad experience is intentionally designed to cultivate curiosity and explore personal distinctiveness in a way that challenges students’ identity, they can be propelled into an unknown and uncertain space, where the role of the educator is to teach students to tolerate the unknown (Lather, 2005). When the student crosses the portal and achieves the new way of understanding, interpreting, and viewing the world, there is a repositioning of the self that comes from this integration of knowledge and thinking (Meyer & Land, 2003). Curiosity opens up culture as the pervasive context which frames the transformation from acting as a traveler in the “other” culture, to an enhanced sense of the self in the culture and as a member of diverse local and global communities.
What’s Next? Curiosity emerges somewhat instinctively for the students in this project, and there is an expected progression to how it threads through the themes discovered in the lifeworld texts contributed by the student subjects. Curious students thrive when they are acknowledged by educators, and intentionally enriched through educational and other experiences. The students’ increased curiosity, exhibited through their increasingly complex questions, demonstrated empathy, and illustrated creativity, leading them into a space of intercultural wonderment. Curiosity, in turn, propels them to cross conceptual thresholds that allow them to gain previously inaccessible perspectives and develop cultural mindsets (Nahavandi, 2016) that serve to increase their intercultural competence. In the next three chapters, each of the three themes is more deeply explored and illuminated through the experiences of the student sojourners. In the final chapter there is a deeper analysis and exploration of the application to practice of these findings, and an exploration of the pedagogical implications of curiosity and the insights gained.
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“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” ~ Lewis Carroll20
CHAPTER 5 A TEACHER SHALL LEAD THEM
Genius is almost always cultivated by parents and teachers who support and nurture the seeds of greatness. ~Kalb21
Although I don’t remember many specifics about my childhood or early educational experiences, one piece that has always been a part of my personal, professional, and educational memory is that I ask a lot of questions and it has been well noted by parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers, and others. When I was in Kindergarten I remember that the teacher, Mrs. Baker, was our neighbor on Tallawanda Street, and she would tell me to leave my questions until “later” which meant she would walk home with me from Kramer School and I could ask all the questions I wanted. I don’t remember my questions, but they must have been relevant to me, but perhaps not to others. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Arthur, was my favorite teacher of all time, and is the only teacher I’ve kept in touch with over the years. She was very patient with my questions and taught me how to find answers. Encyclopedias became my life-long friends. Fifth grade was a crazy year. The teacher, Mrs. Bond, had surgery early in the year, and we had a series of substitutes. That is the year I know I learned that there are questions that adults do not want to answer and that make them very uncomfortable. My questions in 1967-68 (my fifth-grade year) were difficult, I realize now, and not easily answered by Weekly Reader or my long suffering substitute teachers. Why did that man kill Martin Luther King? Why did that other man kill Bobby Kennedy? What is a “bippy”? Why is everyone mad at the Smothers Brothers? And, yes, many, many other questions about the Viet Nam war, and the horrible scenes Walter Cronkite was showing on TV every night. I know that
20 Carroll, 2015, p. 142 21 Kalb, 2018, p. 104 77
was the year that I put my teachers, friends, parents, and my grandmother over the edge with my constant questions, and they became less willing to answer, and in some cases, even listen to them. I learned that I had to control my peppering of questions or I would not be liked, and like most fifth-grade girls in the late 1960s I just wanted everyone to like me. My sixth-grade teacher was hateful, that’s all there is to it. She deemed my questions as being “nosy” and my friend Janice from grade school says she remembers Mrs. Ziepfel telling me once to “shut the hell up.” I do not remember that, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it is true. (Janice is now a public school district administrator in Arizona and says it was a defining moment in her life.) By junior high school my “nosiness” was put to what must have been considered good use, and I was named editor of the school newsletter gossip column. I recall that was quite unfulfilling, and actually did seem quite intrusive. My mother says I cried a lot over it. I left that position after one year and became the photographer. As I’ve matured and taken my journey through an undergraduate program in English literature, then through graduate school in Educational Leadership, I have learned that questions don’t always have answers, and sometimes I need to ask certain questions internally and just continue to seek the answers on my own. There are also times when I need to use the expertise of professors, colleagues, and others to have a dialogue and come to a consensus or agree to disagree with multiple answers. I am so curious about so many things in life that I have also learned to focus my questions. I have read and re-read Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of Freedom (1998), where he explores curiosity and the value of having a curious mind as it relates to critical pedagogy. I feel vindicated in a lot of ways through his work. Along the way I have learned that curiosity is a competence valued in lifelong learning, multicultural leadership, global education, and liberal education. In my opinion (and Freire’s), it is a pre-requisite for learning. This all leads me to believe I’m in the right field at the right time and that there is not as much randomness and luck as I thought there might be in my professional and academic trajectory. However, this also leads to me more questions – why aren’t the students I encounter today as undergraduates more curious? Why do they often just accept everything as reality and fact and move on? Why don’t they ask questions? (I’m thinking about media for the most part and the lack of questions surrounding what is shown in the media today and reported as fact, when it is actually opinion in many cases.) I have had undergraduate students in my classes who
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cannot formulate questions, and my question is, are they curious? Has that been something that has been cultivated in their academic and personal lives? How do we ignite curiosity in students? Are we quashing curiosity through what a writer recently said is a “malpractice of inquiry” (Boehlke, 2008) – or when a question is asked and the answer is pre-determined or is so definitive there is no need for discussion (as in standardized tests)? Have we produced a generation of students so stressed out and anxious about wrong answers that they can’t ask or answer questions?
The teacher … if [he or she] is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of [his or her] wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind. ~Khalil Gibran22 Teacher Heroes What became clear from talking to students and observing them in various contexts is that teachers are critical in their formative years, and beyond, into their university experiences. Just as my Kindergarten teacher in the early 1960s was attentive to my curiosity and need to ask questions, students in this project, every one of them, had a teacher (or more than one) who made a difference in their lives. The teachers they talked about acknowledged their need to be curious and their yearning for more information and answers. When the college student participants in this project were interviewed, they were asked to go back to their elementary and secondary school experiences and consider how those experiences informed their present day university experiences, and their decision to study abroad. Currere, the educational autobiographical process developed by Pinar (1975), provided an opportunity for learners to mine the depths of their lives as they examined the impact of their thoughts on their own educational experiences and discovered the influences on their present selves (Moore, 2013). By guiding students to explore what they have learned about themselves over time, they discover themselves and their evolution (Pinar, 1994). Not only does the learner regress to a place where he or she can uncover the impact of their experiences on their extant identity, the researcher enters the biographic past and discovers where it exists in the present, and contributes to the biographic present (Pinar, 1975).
22 Gibran, 1923, p. 18 79
My personal experiences with questions and curiosity in the 1960s and 1970s did not align with what our current traditional-aged undergraduate college students are reporting. When the students I interviewed entered their “schooled beginning” (Pinar, 1975, p. 8), they found, sometimes to their own surprise, that there were moments that may have led to their choices in their educational experiences today, including the decision to study abroad in the present. Gabe, a spirited young woman, a sophomore with multiple majors (Black World Studies, Latin American Studies, Women’s Studies, and English Literature), recalled her fifth grade teacher, Mr. Scott. She remembered how difficult that year was for her, and beautifully expressed how the drama for girls at that age proliferates unless it is checked by both parents and teachers. She said, “If I wore something that was even a little bit different from the ‘uniform’ (air quotes) then the other girls would talk about me. But then, the next day, I would draw into it with them to talk about some other kid. It was so dramatic every day. … It wasn’t like that the year before… we were all just friends and wore whatever.” Mr. Scott became her “hero” when he would just listen to her and help her solve the challenges, not try to solve them for her. She felt he gave her the tools and skills to move from what she was feeling, to be a problem solver. He would ask her, “What do you think you should do about this girl?” or say, “Let me help you think through this.” She said she still uses those tools today, in college. When she was trying to figure out a major, during her freshman year, she remembered Mr. Scott and his questions to her. That helped her to remember to ask herself what it is was she wanted to explore – in that self-reflection, she discovered that she wanted to focus on people, culture, and social conditions, and that is what drew her into her chosen majors, and to her study abroad experiences. Teachers are supporting students in their mastery of not only disciplinary subjects but also in using their experiences to solve the problems of life, their futures, and as social and political beings. Andy, a senior Political Science major, had a very complicated elementary and secondary school experience due to his parents’ divorce. He focused most of our discussion on his coming out as gay at a young age, and how that was woven throughout his educational experiences. Andy began his elementary years at a private Catholic elementary school, but then switched to a public school in third grade. He said that even as a young boy he noticed that the public school teachers were more “passionate” about teaching and students, and in fact, his favorite part of school in those years was the teachers. When he was in the public school, he
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says, “Mrs. Bratton, my third-grade teacher, I'll never forget her. She's like a mother to me. I still stay in touch with her. She took me under her wing, and because I'd come in from a smaller Catholic school into public school, I didn't really know anyone…. I knew I was different from other boys… [and] she helped me out a lot.” Andy later attended a Catholic high school, and continuing his considerations about his teachers, he says, he loved high school, and “strangely enough, religion class was one of my biggest enjoyments … because I got to enjoy openly debating topics that were very interesting and important to me … which is one of the reasons why I'm still Catholic to this day… about gay rights, gay marriage and stuff like that. I would debate that every day openly with my religion teachers, and I am sure they hated it. But I mean, we had great freedom, surprisingly.” In that freedom, Andy also found a teacher who told the class on the very first day of school about learning in his History class, “Get comfortable being uncomfortable.” Andy says that “whenever… I don’t feel comfortable, and I don’t feel content, I know I’m learning something. I think that's something that's really stuck with me because if you're comfortable, you're not learning.” Andy connects this directly to his love of learning languages, his choice to study abroad, and his career aspiration to be a diplomat. He knows that he will continue to grow and learn because nothing is ever comfortable in the world of the foreign services. Andy also brought up several times that he there aren’t many requirements for his chosen profession, but “a curious mind” is critical because there is not a blueprint in the field of diplomacy.
Faculty Mentors and Guides The students in this study illustrated the significance of teacher mentors and supporters in their elementary and secondary school experiences. Although the students in this study were not asked about their college faculty mentors and supporters, I have uncovered evidence that students are the recipients of that critical support throughout their undergraduate years also. I have personally seen a lot of evidence of this in my years in higher education. At the end of each academic year in higher education, students receive notifications of awards, fellowships, and other recognitions. Annually, in the spring, our university holds a national fellowships recognition event at a local hotel-conference center. The student awardees are given a few minutes to talk, and every year, every student has a faculty or staff member to thank. Often more than one.
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Saida is a 22-year old junior who received the Truman Scholarship, a hallmark of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, a graduate fellowship in the United States for those who are pursuing careers as public service leaders (HST website). In her speech at the event, Saida reflected on her mentors and supporters. She said, “The way my brain clicked was bizarre to many, as Dr. Schrute, one of my mentors and supporters…would support. I am not afraid to challenge [other] students in the classroom. If I disagree, I always voice my opinion – it gives me the honor of being labelled a ‘moral idealist’ … which I am humbled to take on. And, doing this follows the exact morals that my Muslim faith has long instilled in me – gratitude in prosperity, patience in adversity, and the courage to uphold the truth.” In addition to family members, Saida named and thanked four faculty and staff mentors who supported her in challenging not only other students in the classroom, but also, faculty and the university administration who encouraged her to question how things are, and more important, how she can make a difference. She credited a faculty member in her first year, on her first day of classes, with showing her that she should not accept what she sees as wrong, but take that further, and shape a solution. Challenging authority, or the status quo, is a sign of curiosity (Benedict, 2001), and even though she spoke for only 5 minutes, Saida exhibited a great deal of curiosity as she acts in the world. She has, during her time in the university, established a foundation where she is working to create a national hotline for resettled refugees. She is also working on a project to integrate health screening into the state’s refugee health examination. She credits her faculty mentors at the university with encouraging her, especially during those times that became difficult to work through, including a time when she wanted to leave the university. It was a staff member mentor in the University Honor’s office who guided her through the thought process in this pivot point in her life, and she decided to stay at the university – a victory for the staff member and the university, but most important, for Saida. She found her path through to her objectives, and also credits this same Honor’s staff member with getting out of her way when she needed to independently move forward to accomplish her goals. Another student, Kelly, a junior in biochemistry and physics, spoke about applying for the Goldwater Scholarship (which she was awarded). In her remarks, she said she struggled in developing her application which asked her to address a singular instance of inspiration. She had so many, and could not pick one, but when she reflected deeply and thought about the many
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turning points in her life that led to her successes, she “found that there is a common denominator” and that is a teacher, whether it is a faculty member, a staff member who took time with her, or a fellow student who taught her something. However, when she had to choose one definitive inspirational moment, it was when her family physician told her he was also dyslexic. He became not only a source of inspiration for her, but also a guide, advisor, and supporter as she considers a career in medicine. This illustrates the need to think outside of the traditional faculty/staff mentors, advisors, and guides, to support our students in connecting them with anyone who can take the time to recognize their strengths and support their learning goals.
Engagement, Encouragement, and Education In the 1980s a child psychology researcher, Bruce Henderson, studied curiosity in children. In one study (Henderson, 1984), kindergarten and first grade children looked at pictures of varying complexity and chose the one they liked the best. The children were also offered toys that were in full view, or ones that were partially hidden. Finally, the children were given time to explore a box that had 18 drawers in it, each one with small toys, as well as a board with items to be controlled and maneuvered. The children explored these pictures, toys, and drawers on their own, and were given a curiosity score – low, medium, or high. They were then taken to explore in another room, and the play was facilitated by an adult who was actively interested in what the children were exploring and encouraging the children’s behaviors with eye contact, smiling, and talking to the children. The adults would point out novel features of the toys or pictures and encourage the child to explore. With adult encouragement, children expressed a higher level of curiosity, and this was the strongest for children who had been rated “low” in curiosity when they explored on their own. We have good evidence from Henderson’s research (Henderson & Moore, 1980; Henderson, 1984), as well as similar research about guiding curious children, that adults make a difference. Findings from other research found that preschoolers ask more questions when they get informative answers from adults (Endsley & Clarey, 1975; Chouinard, 2007; Harris, 2007). In a study specifically with teachers and children, Zimmerman and Pike (1972) found that when teachers established a framework and urged students to brainstorm around questions in response to stories read to them as a class, the students asked significantly more questions on follow-up tests.
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Teachers have a powerful influence in cultivating curiosity in children. They do this by encouraging discussion, engaging with the students’ questions, and asking questions, especially in the American culture where the exchange of ideas is valued. Questions become the key ingredient in the educational process (Engel, 2015) that cultivates curiosity. When thinking about curiosity, Angela (who studied abroad for a full year in Maastricht, The Netherlands) says, I think to me, curious is wanting to know more than you already do and asking questions about things. So, the sky is blue. Okay. But then you can ask, ‘Why is it blue?’ And kind of do more research about that. And I would say that being curious, definitely, it's something that I was really, really lucky to have instilled in me by my parents and teachers.
Reflecting further on the value of curiosity and questions, Angela said:
One of the things that I would say about being curious is that when I was studying abroad it was different than the classes in the business school [at the home university in the US]. Where I was [in The Netherlands] I took classes from two different places. So, there were these Center for European Study classes, and those were more traditional like what we were used to [in the U.S.]. But then in the Maastricht University classes they do question- based learning. And so, if you have lecture, it's usually not even required, at least for my classes. And you do a lot of work in smaller groups with a tutor. And the tutor kind of helps facilitate, but for the most part, the students are the ones who are supposed to facilitate questions and really talk to each other, and the tutor just kind of helps them keep on track, so I think I learned more in that type of learning.
As suggested by Angela’s reflections, as well as the remarks from the university student award and fellowships recipients, and the research, questions form the basis of curiosity, but students need more in the form of guidance, facilitation, mentoring, and support to cultivate their curious nature. Students seem to move from a stage where they ask questions and begin to process the answers, to where they start to use those answers to put them into a context, and from there to use the answers in context for application, and finally, how it applies to them, personally, academically, and socially to develop knowledge, skills, and attitudes. The students I encountered in this project found the value of questions, informal ones, as well as those guided by teachers (and tutors). Educators look beyond the basics of standard school subjects to engage students to reach their potential. Interviews with students in this project revealed that all of them had not only teachers who made a difference and whom they connected to cultivating curiosity, but they also had opportunities, through their contacts with
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teachers to participate in enrichment programs. Educators helped the students in the trajectory from questions to application. As students entered and moved through higher education, faculty, staff, and other mentors also became touchpoints, supported and facilitated the students through pivotal points in their academic and personal lives, and, perhaps most critical, got out of their way when it the student needed to soar on their own.
School Enrichment As a child going through elementary and secondary school in the 1960s and 1970s, in a small university town, I had educational opportunities that may not have been available to my peers in other places without institutions of higher education embedded into their communities. I participated in a Saturday Art program through the Department of Art from first grade through sixth grade. That program exists today, and I now know that it is a collaboration between the Teacher Education and Art departments. It provides an opportunity for pre-service Art teachers to develop curriculum and pedagogy, and then teach children. My sisters and mother, and I, spent many summers of my youth with the university summer theatre – a town-gown initiative. My mother was a master seamstress who made costumes, I worked behind the scenes, and my sisters acted in plays. These were, I believe, instrumental in developing our imaginations and creativity. Beyond these great openings for learning experiences, in elementary school, I participated in Camp Fire Girls, and in the sixth grade, spent a week with my class at an outdoor education center. In high school, I was a member of many organizations – the local community swim team, a literature club, and I was an avid protestor against the Viet Nam conflict. None of these experiences was arranged (except the outdoor education “field trip”), as far as I know of, by the school. These were activities that my mother knew about, and in which I was enrolled, or which I was passionate about. Certainly, they were “enrichment” programs, but not as organized as what the students in this project described, and what I know from being a parent in the 1980s and 1990s, and now, a grandparent of four. Today, young lives are very structured with enrichment and other activities, much of it is organized by the school systems, and this became evident in the interviews with student sojourners as something they connected to their own developing curiosity about people and places, and decision to study abroad. School Enrichment Model. Arising out of the notion that “talent development” is important to increase human capital to provide people with opportunities to identify their
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potential and reach their highest levels of competence (Hernandez-Torrano & Saranli, 2015), the School Enrichment Model (SEM), developed by Joseph S. Renzulli at the University of Connecticut, has gained widespread acceptance among educators throughout the world (Ford, 1999; Hodges, McIntosh & Gentry, 2017). The SEM is an organizational plan for talent development through enrichment and acceleration, with a focus on developing creative productivity by exposing students to challenging learning experiences based on their abilities, learning styles, and interests (Renzulli & Reis, 1997, 2013). This is accomplished through an integrated continuum of services. “Integrated” is emphasized because “maximum payoff is achieved when a service provided through one component of the model enables students who show superior performance or advanced interest to escalate their experience through options that are available through other service delivery components” (Renzulli & Reis, 2007, p. 2.) See Figure 4. The Integrated Continuum of Special Services.
Figure 4. The Integrated Continuum of Special Services. From Renzulli & Reis (2013).
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This pedagogical model for developing creative productivity, more recently, has been complemented with a theory focused on the creation of social capital and leadership in young people who have high potential to enhance their ability to impact positive change and innovation in the world (Renzulli, 2012; Renzulli & D’Souza, 2012). In studies looking at the effects of the model on both children identified as “gifted23,” and those who were not, it was shown that the Schoolwide Enrichment Model, and the methods that arise out of the model, improve creativity, and the effects are long term (Hebert, 1993), while also increasing students’ self-efficacy (Starko, 1986). The Integrated Continuum of Special Services (Figure 4) details the processes and services that are included in the Schoolwide Enrichment Model. Student sojourners participating in my study mentioned many of these services – including curriculum modification and differentiation, pull-out groups by targeted abilities and interest areas, Odyssey of the Mind, Science Fair, Subject Acceleration, College Early Admission, and College Classes. The Odyssey of the Mind (OotM) program was not new to me, as I recall the program taking over the Collee of Education, Health, and Society building on our university campus on weekends during the academic year. I took breaks from my work to observe the action. I watched as young people with adult guidance came together in teams to express ideas that were focused on evaluating and solving problems using creativity and critical thinking. They explained to me that this is a competition in which the teams can advance until the finale at the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals, held annually at a university campus. The OotM website says it “is an international creative problem-solving program that engages students in their learning by allowing their knowledge and ideas to come to life in an exciting, productive environment. Participants build self-confidence, develop life skills, create new friendships, and are able to recognize and explore their true potential” (Odyssey of the Mind, 2018). Meredith, a 22 year old Entrepreneurship major, participated in Odyssey of the Mind in middle school in Iowa. She reports that a teacher recommended her for the program, and she was reluctant at first because it conflicted with her passion at that time – field hockey. She didn’t recall how she finally gave up field hockey that year to participate, but she “loved, loved, loved”
23 The National Association for Gifted Children in the United States defines gifted as follows: “Children are gifted when their ability is significantly above the norm for their age.” It may manifest in one or more domains, including intellectual, creative, artistic, leadership, or in a specific academic area such as language, arts, math, or science. 87
the program. In response to a question about how she goes about tackling problems and using curiosity to do it, she says, “After Odyssey I didn’t see problems as problems anymore, if you know what I mean…. I see problems as openings and getting at something with a different point of view…. it was fun, and I made a lot of friends. I connected with someone from Odyssey here at [my university] and we hang out sometimes.” Another student, Toby, a 21 year old Interactive Media Studies major, who participated in Odyssey of the Mind for two years in grade school, remembers being urged to ask questions and use his imagination to think in innovative ways about everything, not just the problems they were focused on considering. He said, “Mr. Tim [the adult leader of his team] said something about curiosity and we should use it in everything… like everything… when we are walking around, playing games, doing math…, and everything, all the time. He just kept saying ‘be curious’ and that is how I just keep doing that and remember it. He said to identify the problem, keep thinking and brainstorm[ing], decide if the ideas will work, choose one and go…just keep going… even finding and thinking about new problems and solving those, too.” Odyssey of the Mind meets the three goals of School Enrichment Model programs – enjoyment, engagement, and enthusiasm (Renzulli & Reis, 1997). The programming and processes that the integrated model is focused upon are designed to develop aptitudes, talents, and abilities. These are all elements that provide opportunities for higher level thinking and cultivating curiosity in students. Moving out of elementary and into secondary school through this enrichment model, students are offered opportunities such as advanced placement in core subjects, and early admission to college to get a jump-start on their higher education. As noted earlier, every student interviewed in this project reported coming to the university with advanced placement or college course credit. Arriving on campus in the first year of college, many students I encountered in this study are academically second year students, and two students interviewed arrived at the university with third year, or junior status. This accelerates students academically and gives them the freedom to focus on second or third majors, minors, and co-majors, or even study abroad. Another choice students make is to engage in co-curricular programming, such as experiential learning opportunities like internships, fellowships, service learning, practicums, clinical
88 experiences, volunteering, or research projects. Enrichment at the university level cultivates curiosity, just as it does at the elementary and secondary school levels. As I reflected on the impact of enrichment programs at all levels, I met a young man who had recently joined the alumni board of our European campus. We were together in a series of meetings and social events over a period of two days, and I had sporadic opportunities to ask him about his experience while at the university and beyond. Kevin had studied abroad at our European campus for a full year in 2006-07. This is unusual. In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, many students studied abroad for a full year, but after that, students trended toward semester, or short- term programs in the summer session or winter term. When I asked him about this, he said that he had determined in high school, perhaps even in middle school, that he would use his college experience to its fullest extent, and he knew he wanted to spend a full year abroad, his junior year. The impetus for this was a program that he participated in as a child. The program he participated in brought in children and teenagers to contribute to globally focused projects. Children’s International Summer Villages (or C IS V, with the program known by the acronym only) was developed in the late 1940s, in the post-World War II era when the world was opening up and there was in increased interest in global issues, and how to maintain a peaceful world. According to the CISV website, Dr. Doris Allen, a “progressive child psychologist,” developed the concept for the organization on the precept that it would be “an organization that would foster inter-cultural understanding and friendship as an essential step toward world peace. Dr. Allen believed that by creating opportunities for children of different cultures to come together to learn and make friends, they would grow up to become ambassadors for a more just and peaceful world” (cisv.org). Beginning in Ohio in 1950 with one village, the program has now grown to nine countries, with over 7,000 programs for over 300,000 participants. There are multiple types of programs, including summer camps (known as a “village”), exchanges (known as “interchange” where students engage through a travel delegation and then are hosted by a family abroad), youth meetings around the world, seminar camps for older students, service learning projects, and more. In his CISV experience, Kevin participated in a month long Village camp as a sixth grade student, with children from other countries. Kevin recalls that he had a great deal of fun with the other children, including, Kevin remembered, eight children from eight other countries. What he recalls, very specifically, was that in listening to other children talk about their lives, schools, and
89 families, he became “intrigued” by knowing that “not everyone has the same experience” as his experience. He came from a suburban Ohio town where everyone’s lives were, in his words, “nearly identical…. Our houses looked alike, our families looked alike, and I can only describe it as ‘normal’… I thought that my life was ‘normal’ and everything else was ‘different’” until he went to the Village camp. In that experience, his revelation was that “there is no ‘normal’ because everyone has a different experience, there is diversity in experiences.” Today, as a young man in his early 30s, Kevin has not only studied abroad as a junior in Luxembourg for one full academic year, he also studied at the University of London for a summer and has spent most his post-baccalaureate years working in Oman, first for a provider of study abroad experiences in Oman, and more recently as a student affairs administrator for a scholar program. As he transitions back into the United States, he entered an MBA program at a New York university to focus on International Business and Strategy. Kevin is one of the most eloquent and insightful young men I have encountered in recent years, and as he spoke of his CISV experience, he persuasively articulated the straight line from his first Village to his choice to study abroad for a full year, and then his current educational path. However, along the way, he credits high school teachers who took the time to listen to him and then guide him in his exploration of universities. He was led to the university by a high school teacher who knew that study abroad is an emphasis, even as a guidance counselor was trying to steer him to an Ivy League school. That Ivy did not stress study abroad and a global experience, and that was not what Kevin was looking for – he knew that he wanted to be in a place that was not “normal” and was emphasizing global diversity. He very deliberately underscores that even as a privileged, young, white, heterosexual male, he believes that diversity is critical, and without the complexity of global diversity, we cannot achieve a just and peaceful world. This comes directly from his CISV experience, and was emphasized through his chosen enrichment activities in high school and college – continuing with CISV activities and eventually as a leader in Model UN and Foreign Affairs and Policy clubs in high school and college, engaging with international education professionals whenever he had an opportunity, and “evangelizing” about being a global citizen in his university years with other students in his residence hall and even the other students on his broomball team. In discussing all of this with Kevin during a very loud, celebratory, event in New York City with a lot of VIPs present, I asked very specifically about curiosity. At first, he couldn’t
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make a connection between his own curiosity to his focus on diversity and global engagement. However, later in the evening, he approached me and said he had thought about it a bit more, and “I think you are on to something – I was absolutely funneling my curiosity. I was piloted by it, I think. Maybe even managed by it.” We agreed to sit down and talk about it at a later date, where it was more conducive to a deeper conversation. We exchanged business cards. Unfortunately, that date has not yet arrived. Nonetheless, good to know that he thinks I am “on to something.” The student sojourners demonstrate curiosity, and it is evident that teachers and enrichment programming encouraged inquisitiveness and wonder in these students. It was revealed through their words, and an exploration of enrichment programming advances through the years, that this is a critical component in cultivating curiosity, along with the specifically identified teachers and educators along the student journey through their educational experience. The students made interpersonal connections with teachers, faculty, and others who made a difference in their lives by cultivating curiosity and thinking skills, and they were given many creative and enriching opportunities to explore.
Final Thoughts My own curiosity leads me to ponder this – how would my younger self have benefited from something like the Schoolwide Enrichment Method? The process model identifies “grade skipping” as an acceleration open in the Integrated Continuum of Special Services. When I was in first grade, the teacher suggested to my parents that I skip second grade and go to third grade because my reading skills were at the eighth grade level. My parents were concerned about doing this because my math skills were at first grade level, and they were afraid that I would suffer academically in that realm, and perhaps in others, especially social and emotional needs. I brought this up with my mother recently to confirm, and she doesn’t recall other enrichment opportunities being suggested at the time. Once the decision was made to leave me at my grade level, my mother made sure I was provided higher level books to read (my love of libraries evolved from this). My parents made the right decision. I managed to make it through Calculus I in college, but it was a struggle. My math skills would have suffered if I had skipped a year of math at a young age, and I know that because my reading skills were highly developed, an assumption was made along the way that I was proficient in grammar and sentence diagramming. It was not until I was preparing for college entrance examinations that everyone
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realized I had completely missed that piece of my education because I had been accelerated through it. My 1960s and 1970s experiences were ones, I believe, of “children should be seen and not heard” socially, and even in school. I know that was the rule at the extended family Thanksgiving table. As a girl child, I believe my experience was weakened even more in school. Boys aggressively asked questions, dug in the dirt for answers, had much more freedom to explore, took things apart, and were not only allowed, but encouraged, to be curious in school settings. That was my experience. I was taught to be a “lady” and to be quiet. I was identified as a young girl who had excellent reading skills and fast-tracked in that sphere in a very holistic way that seems now to have been unguided and not well facilitated, certainly not “enriched” except for the books and readings I was “allowed” to access, and the time alone, even in school, when I read independently. However, I also don’t believe even the boys had access to enrichment programs in those days. So, the question remains, how did I manage to have my curiosity cultivated? This finding, that students’ lived experiences with teachers, educators, and programs, make a difference, is valuable. However, there is divergence. Baby boomers, like myself, have gone on to do some very innovative things, exhibit curiosity about people and places, solve world problems, and engage effectively, even without being embedded in school enrichment programs. We had effective and engaged teachers, but not much enrichment. There is more to the cultivation of curiosity than this, and there is more understanding needed to know how curiosity emerges in a study abroad experience. The impact of teachers cannot be understated. The evidence here, and in my own life, emphasize that teachers are critical in students’ lives, academically and personally. Educators recognize the importance of cultivating curiosity in students, from early childhood through post- secondary education. Teachers understand and impel students into enrichment programs that further encourage and foster curiosity. As the students I interviewed said, teachers are heroes.
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CHAPTER 6
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER24: CURIOSITY AND INTERCULTURAL WONDERMENT
Curiosity is instilled in us throughout our childhoods and in our early educational experiences through parents, teachers, enrichment programs, and in our daily lives. As demonstrated in the previous chapter, curiosity emerges and if cultivated through educators, and intentionally developed through supplementary attention and encounters, it is further enhanced. The lived experience of interpersonal curiosity frames the core questions in this study, and this is further contextualized within an intercultural learning experience that takes the student sojourner into an unfamiliar culture. Interviews, observations, and social media proved to be the most fruitful areas in which to explore the manifestation of curiosity; however, emergence of the phenomenon was illusive, and not easily discerned. In a cyclical review of the data, with the characteristics of curiosity used as the coding mechanism, it would finally surface and make itself known and present through the sojourner experiences as they recount them. What was revealed was that curiosity motivated and inspired the student’s readiness and ability to embrace and engage with their own discomfort and uncertainty, or, intercultural wonderment (Engberg & Jourian, 2015). In turn, students enter spaces of troublesome knowledge (Meyer & Land, 2013), and by working through the disequilibrium, they break through the portals of understanding culture and cultural perspectives to gain an increased ability to navigate across borders, and in unfamiliar cultures.
Emergence of Curiosity Curiosity emerges in students about places and people. They begin to ask questions – they demonstrate empathy, and exhibit creativity in their questions about the world and their place in it. Their questions show they are observant, and they are looking inward and outward. Beginning with the assumption that curiosity is an intrinsically motived desire for information and a passion for learning (Loewenstein, 1994; Markey & Loewenstein, 2014), and that a curious student asks questions (Houghton, 2014; Kashdan, Rose, & Fincham, 2004), exhibits creativity in their thinking and actions (Lee, Therriault, & Linderholm, 2012; Phillips,
24 Carroll, 2015, p. 22 93
2016; Sharron & Abraham, 2014), and demonstrates empathetic qualities (Houghton, 2014), the student interviews were reviewed, examined, analyzed, considered, and reconsidered to gain a deep appreciation and understanding of how participants described their own curiosity and what it looks like when it emerges.
Questions. Generating authentic questions, and then persisting in the search is a skill we develop, nearly unconsciously, throughout our lives (Inan, 2012). Curiosity is demonstrated in questioning behaviors or “thematic probes” that come out of conflict between stimulus and response where we find the “kernel of curiosity,” and is attributed to some stimulus that is surprising or puzzling (Berlyne, 1954a). For the student sojourners in this study, this came to them instinctively and without effort.
When they considered curiosity, it was very logically and easily linked to questions, which is probably true for all of us. However, the student sojourners took this to another level. They described curiosity that emerged through a question, but that was only a seed. Many of the students described their own curiosity as going further than asking questions. Pam said, “I want to know more. I’m not just done after I wonder ‘why’?”
After the initial “why” there are more questions for most of the students and they continued with their probing. Oscar said:
I think curiosity to me means always asking questions until you find an answer that you might be looking for, an answer to your question, and then asking new questions from that example. … And I think that learning that at a young age and having it instilled in elementary school [that] there's not a dumb question. I think questions keep people curious. That keeps people wanting to know more, to understand more, to learn more. And yeah, to me curiosity is finding questions, asking those questions, getting an answer and new questions from that answer. Sometimes I [am] not satisfied by the answers and I really do want to find the right answers.
As Oscar suggests, questions beget questions in his experience. The questions lead to a need to seek a deeper level of understanding and looking for more explanations. Questions do not seem to be random, they are sequenced and scaffolded (Engel, 2015). Oscar said that he really cares about getting the questions answered, also.
In talking with Marilyn, I witnessed a very natural expression of questioning behavior and I could see for myself the physical emergence of curiosity as she talked to me. We were at a small round table, in my office on campus, in the evening when it is very quiet in the building. 94
Behind me was a Chinese banner I had purchased in the Silk Market in Beijing. When I purchased it, I clearly remember my own curiosity about this piece, the meaning, and message. It portrays painted blue jays sitting in a peach tree, with vibrant colored peaches hanging from the branches of the tree. The Chinese characters and words, I have since been told, are from a poem about youth and freedom. It is a piece that I had to have, even though I knew it wouldn’t fit into my suitcase. I talked a colleague into bringing it back to the United States for me in her big suitcase. I am fond of the piece and it is featured prominently in my campus office.
Marilyn was facing me, and she said:
Curiosity to me is looking at the world around me and trying to find all the different perspectives. I don't know if that makes sense, it's kind of how I look at things. Just always realizing that there's more to everything you're looking at than just the way you can personally view things.
At this point, I noticed her body language change. She sat up straight, her eyes widened, then she leaned forward, toward me, with her forehead furrowed. She went on:
Like that flag, banner thing – I have no idea what it is, but it's very pretty. I'm assuming it's from a[n] Asian country, but I look at it, and I want to know where it's from. What do the symbols and colors mean? I’m always just trying to be aware of the things that you're ignorant to and [I have] the desire to know more and learn about them.
I told Marilyn all that I knew about the banner and how it came into my possession. That led to about 12 minutes of questions from her about China, the markets in Beijing, bargaining in the markets, the places I’ve been to in China, why I was there, when I was going again, and even about Chinese ethnic minorities. The questions about the banner were the kernel that led to building upon her knowledge by asking more questions. She truly cared about gaining more information and knowledge, and she wanted to know more, not stopping until she was satisfied.
Empathy. Empathy is being aware of and sensitive to, even living vicariously through, the feelings, thoughts and experience of another. Empathy, like curiosity, is an intercultural competence (Deardorff, 2004; Deardorff & Arasaratnam-Smith, 2017; Vande Berg & Paige, 2009) that can be cultivated in student sojourners. Curious students are shown to exhibit empathy (Deardorff, 2006; Fu, 2015). As Oscar and Marilyn both demonstrated, they cared about the answers to their questions. Marilyn went on with her train of thoughts on curiosity and questions and connected it to her
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own Native American culture. She is studying at the university with a full scholarship from her tribe, the Myaamia Nation in Oklahoma. She is a part of the Myaamia diaspora, and thinks a lot about how she can give back to her tribal community, and how her culture has formed who she is and what she believes in. In talking with the director of a center on campus dedicated to deepening the connections to the tribe through research, education, and outreach, Marilyn was surprised to learn something new:
… then he was like, "But you know, in the past, we also had a third gender. …two-spirit people,” but I never heard of that before. I was like, "Oh my gosh." He explained them and told me the [Myaamia tribal] name of them, which I don't remember because it was long and confusing, but I thought that that was really… well.... I actually cried because it was very powerful to me. I was emotional, but I had so many questions and we talked for a long time.
It was difficult for Marilyn to talk more to me about this, as she became emotional, and anything I would say beyond that is speculation; however, she was clearly moved and was experiencing this in terms of people and their feelings. She said she continued her questions to the director about this, but she wasn’t willing to disclose what those questions were, or why this new cultural and language understanding was connecting so deeply for her. It intensely connected her to the tribe and culture, and she expressed compassion for people she knew who could personally benefit from and embrace the concept of a third gender or two-spirit people. In the end she said, “It’s just so complicated and personal.” Caring about people and cultures is revealed as the students talk about questions and questioning behaviors that guided their inquiries in life and supported satisfying their curiosity. Several students spoke to the connections they made with people abroad, including strangers, and bonds made with their host families. It was when he first saw host families waiting for their students to arrive that Oscar realized that he was launching into a transformational experience. Oscar said:
Well, the first day we arrived in Gijon. Really exciting. We get off the airplane, we were waiting for the bus to take us there, then we're all on the bus chatting away. And we pull up to the bus station and we see all of our host families waiting there for us. And in that moment, it hit everybody on the bus that this is happening. This is real. I remember, we saw the host families and we all went silent. And we all looked at each other like, "Oh my God, they're there."
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As Oscar described this, a broad smile came over his face. It was a very happy memory and connected him back to that day in Spain when it all became real to him. His words did not necessarily express the empathy that his facial expressions and body language were communicating. He was acting out the feelings he had in that moment when he saw the host families waiting for the students – his arms and hands went out in front of him showing his attention was focused outward, his head tilted to show he was curious about these strangers, and his smile broadened as he described how he looked at the other students, with an expression of wonder in his widened eyes, and his hands moving to either side of his face.
Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way. ~ Edward de Bono25
Creativity. As suggested by Oscar’s physical actions, curiosity is expressed in different ways, and this also extended to creativity and imagination demonstrated by the sojourners, which are signs of a curiosity (Nordland, 2013). The words of the students in interviews are at the core of the findings, but observations of students in their study abroad experiences, in their pre- and post-study abroad focus groups, as well as reviews of their social media, were revealing. In a pre-study abroad program at a public university in a nearby city, I recently observed 17 students presenting on their chosen study abroad locations for their upcoming short term experiences abroad. One-by-one the students got up to present with PowerPoints filled with words and pictures, along with links to travel videos on You Tube. The fourth student to present first reached into his backpack to pull out an Alpine hat, placed it on his head, and picked up a box sitting next to him, then went to the front of the auditorium. His presentation, on Germany, with his hat on, was animated, filled with examples from German culture, which were handed out to the other students to discover. He showed them coins, a Hummel figurine of his grandmother’s, an old beer stein (he didn’t explain the origins, but hinted it was well-used in his family), a Christmas ornament, and… gummy bears. Yes, he told us, Germany is the birthplace of the gummy bear. In his presentation he wove in his favorite German fairy tales and demonstrated how to drink from the beer stein. He talked about the places he would go and described them in his imagination. He talked about the Oktoberfest Volksfest in Munich where
25 de Bono, 1970, p. 191 97
he wasn’t going just for the beer, but he couldn’t wait to hear the music, eat the food, and meet the people. He also spoke eloquently and respectfully about death camps and the Berlin Wall. He ended with his imitation of a cuckoo clock, a souvenir he hoped to bring home to his German grandmother. Not surprisingly, he was the only student who asked questions of the other students during their presentations. A curious being, but also quite creative in his words and actions, as well as a student who has some understanding of his own cultural heritage. Other students demonstrate creativity in their social media posts connected to their study abroad experiences. Many of them post selfies in scenic locations with their fellow travelers, but the ones that were not selfies show the most creativity. Instagram offers a platform in which pictures are featured and they are using a creative process, a work of photo art that is shared with an audience. I suspect that the image is influenced by that audience, but in a temporary way. The images are in a feed, seen, commented on, or not, and then they go away, but not really away. They move to the bottom of a feed, not to be seen again unless the viewer goes looking for them again in an account. The impact has to be great for someone to pause on the picture, and it seems to drive the creative process in a way that allows the user to create a representation of themselves, whether that is a selfie or an arrangement of items, a scene, or simply words. Oscar’s Instagram feed is full of pictures of himself and friends, for the most part, but they show curiosity and creativity. In the photo in Figure 5 we see Oscar, in Toledo, Spain, sitting on a wall against the backdrop of the city. The caption says, “My aunt said that my family has heritage in Toledo so I made it my personal mission to see if this city held answers to why my family is so crazy. After a few hours of adventuring, I found no evidence that can explain it so here I am without answers in a city that my great great great great great relatives lived in once upon a time.” In his words and actions, documented in this fleeting post, he demonstrates creativity and curiosity. It must be noted here that this photo is Oscar’s second trip to Spain. When I interviewed him in Spain in the summer of 2017, it was his first trip abroad. He went back over spring break 2018, and this was posted during his subsequent vacation back to Spain to visit his host family and continue his exploration.
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Toledo, Spain
oscarmmunez My aunt said that my family has heritage in Toledo so I made it my personal mission to see if this city held answers to why my family is so crazy. I found no evidence that can explain it so here I am without answers in a city that my great great great great great relatives lived in once upon a time.
324 likes July 7, 2017
Figure 5. Oscar’s Instagram post from his second trip to Spain.
Oscar’s post is not a selfie in the conventional sense (which is notable when considering his age and generation), rather it is a portrait, through someone else’s eyes, and not just his face. Against this place that is part of his heritage the photo features Oscar, not just a selfie, against the city that represents his identity. He is having an “adventure” and creatively communicating about his foray into his family history. It is his story. Another student, Erin, a first generation college student who is a junior Spanish and Pre- Med Major, is a prolific Instagrammer. Her posts are like still life paintings. She composes them, and through the items she uses in her framed pictures we learn a little bit about her, but we also see creativity fueled by curiosity. In Figure 6, a pre-study abroad post to Instagram, Erin composed the picture with a quote from Rupi Kaur, with her own tattooed foot, fashion forward jeans clad leg, and her manicured and polished fingernails, against a fabric background. She is asked by a friend in a comment about how many times she took the shot to get a “perfect angle” and reports that it was “many.” She is creative, and curiosity is reflected in her self-awareness demonstrated by the manipulation of the image that recognizes how her body is situated in relation to her environment. Her self-portrait says, “This is me” and everyone can see me, and what I love to wear, how I modify by body, and where she draws her inspiration – Rupi Kaur, a poet, writer, illustrator, and performer, who is, herself, an Instagram celebrity. Kaur’s poems are about love, sex, rejection, and relationships as well as abuse, beauty standards, and racism. She is
99 a social media poet, and a bit controversial, with one critic saying she “treads a fine line between accessibility and over-simplicity, and often stumbles into the latter” (Khaira-Hanks, 2017).
erinhannon a little rupi kaur for your rainy day friend1 How many times did it take you get the perfect angle erinhannon @friend1 a lot erinhannon @friend1 you should see my camera roll friend2 ~aesthetic~ goals
189 likes April 6, 2017
Figure 6. Erin in a pre-study abroad post. 6 April 2017
As Erin prepares to board her flight for her study abroad program, she composes another still life portrait that includes a Rupi Kaur book, her passport and tickets, and we again see only her Birkenstock shod feet, bangled bracelet wrist, and manicured fingers and hand. Another composition that reflects creativity, is not a typical selfie showing a smiling face against a background and contextualizes her curiosity about the cross cultural experience as she embarks on it through her travel documents and time frame of her journey. She comments, “Hasta que dos meses America!” or “Until 2 months America!”
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erinhannon ¡Hasta que dos meses America! friend3 No vamos pronto! erinhannon @friend3¡muy emocionado! friend4 GAHHHHHHH I LOVE MILK AND HONEY friend5 I’m reading that same book friend6 So excited for you!!!!! erinhannon @friend5 I bought it today friend7 So excited for you @erinhannon!! friend8 have so much fun!!!!!
215 likes May 14, 2017
Figure 7. Erin boarding her flight for her study abroad program. May 14, 2017
During my time with this program in Spain, there were two students who stopped, looked at the views, and took pictures – Erin was one of them. Other students would always take selfies against the view. Not Erin. She did take selfies but not until she took in the view, often for a long time.26 She composed her pictures, tried again and again to capture exactly what she wanted, and exhibited signs that she was taking the opportunity to fully take in the experience of the landscape before she took many pictures of it. She viewed the scenes first, seemingly without judgment, and sought surprise in what she was seeing. Most illustrative of her curious and creative nature that she appeared to be fully present and mindful in each moment – she takes the time to honor her curiosity and creativity, even after walking 30 or more kilometers through the mountains of Portugal.
26 Although I had unlimited access to Erin’s social media, I did not ever see one of these selfies posted. 101
El Camino de Santiago
erinhannon the views make 39 kilometers worth it friend9 Gorgeous! well worth it ♥
215 likes June 25, 2017
Figure 8. Erin’s landscape portrait on the Camino de Santiago, Day 2. June 25, 2017
On returning home after the pilgrimage in Spain, Erin posts yet another composed portrait that reflects her relaxing in the evening, in a seemingly isolated location, with a book titled, On Trails, by Robert Moor. Erin had returned to the United States the day before, after a 4 week language immersion course work in Gijon, Spain, and then walking over 200 kilometers on the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago, and then a weeklong cultural tour culminating at the airport where the students dispersed for their next destinations – home, or more travel. Erin lands at home where she is relaxing with a book that is about exploration and how trails help us understand the world – “from invisible ant trails to hiking paths that span continents, from interstate highways, to the internet” (Moor, 2016). Erin appears to be reflecting on her own journey, a sojourn through Spain, including the pilgrimage she has undertaken, which was “exhausting” and at the same time, “inspirational, provided life lessons, and brilliant” according to Erin in a post on her friend’s account when she returned.
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Burbank, Ohio
erinhannon my kinda night friend10 Cool book where’d ya get it erinhannon @friend10 in CHI
187 likes July 16, 2017
Figure 9. Post-study abroad relaxing and reading with Erin. July 16, 2017
Based on her social media story, this sojourn was a powerful experience for Erin. She did not say that to me in our interview, and that says a lot in itself. She is a self-described “introvert who is attracted only to friends who are extroverts,” but she could not explain that in a way that I understood it, until I saw her social media posts and pictures. She clearly loves life, food, her dog, parties, and her friends, but she also, equally, loves her privacy and alone time. I believe that what I see in her social media is a young woman who knows that if she has extroverted friends they will always be there and include her in the fun and laughter, but she can also be herself away from other people. Even though she didn’t say that the experience was powerful, we can see it in her series of photographs and posts which reflect how she gains inspiration, her self- awareness, and what she chose to read on her return from the pilgrimage. Just over two months after her return to the United States, Erin reposts a picture taken from an airplane window as she is about to land in Spain. Her comment says, “Nostalgia has never felt so strong” – she is yearning for Spain and remembering the experience she had there. Interestingly, Erin didn’t express in our interview, or in her social media, nostalgia, or longing for home when she was abroad; however, she does long for Spain after her return to her life on campus.
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Europe
ernhannon nostalgia has never felt so intense
194 likes October 8, 2017
Figure 10. Post-study abroad nostalgia. October 6, 2017
As I reflected on creativity and curiosity, as well as nostalgia and curiosity, it became a chicken and egg conundrum. Does creativity fuel curiosity, or does curiosity stimulate creativity? Does curiosity power nostalgia? Do reminiscences of the past trigger curiosity of what was or might have been? The literature suggests that general curiosity leads to information seeking, and that resonates with what was found in this study. Further, information seeking has a role in idea generation, which in turn leads to creativity and originality (Wilma Koutstaal, adapted from Hardy, 2017). To ignite creativity, we need to ask questions, explore, and observe. Our experiences and knowledge, along with curiosity, lead us to creativity and innovation (Nordlund, 2013, Winnicott, 2005). When students are in the post-study abroad phase, there is a wistfulness for the experience. It’s over, and even as they may be planning the next journey, they know that they have transformed, and nostalgia could be a reflection of the curiosity in looking back to try to remember who they were before the experience, and how they became who they are after the experience. The student sojourners ask questions and explore their sojourn opportunities as their curiosity emerges. They take this beyond the initial questions, and they probe more deeply, fueled by curiosity. The revelation, for this researcher, is how effortlessly curiosity energized empathy and creativity, further enhancing the student intercultural competence, in some cases,
104 before the student had yet studied abroad. Looking back at the experience, students are still curious, still longing to satisfy the curiosity cultivated by the experience and contemplating how they will fulfill that need for another sojourn experience.
Curiosity and Study Abroad Study abroad is a way to satisfy curiosity about the world and cultures. All of the participants in this study had made the choice to study abroad and were in the pre-, during, or post-study phase. As evidenced in Chapters 4 and 5, the students exhibit curiosity to varying degrees, and that curiosity was cultivated by teachers along the way in their educational journeys, as well as through enrichment programs. The sojourners express their curiosity not only in their words, but also in their photos, and in their body language. They have questions, they answered their questions, and that leads to more questions. This has somewhat innately led them to study abroad. Oscar said, “I think I knew I had to study abroad to satisfy all the questions I had about other people, but especially people in Spain where I know my family came from generations and generations ago.” The students had already made the decision to study abroad, and that provided a way into understanding how their curiosity emerged to explore and learn more before they traveled. Today, that means the internet, talking to friends and family, exploring social media feeds, and, we hope, discussing with their academic and study abroad advisors. Through the interviews I found that students all had their own methods of exploration about their chosen location, or what they wanted to know about the world. Marilyn’s go-to sources were blogs and her friends, and friends of friends:
So, I read some blogs that random people have posted online. Like Nomadic Matt is this kind of popular guy, travels a lot, and seems to be a guy that is an expert on this. I sort of don’t know if he is a real guy, but my study abroad advisor recommended him. I just read what people like the most and then kind of from there, go and research those things or places on more reliable websites. I love to learn about all of these places, and I would look at stuff about places I had never thought about going. … all of these places under his destinations tab. I would go in looking at Spain, and end up in the Seychelles, Aruba, and Iceland, just from the little picture and the name of the country.
Love of learning is a sign of curiosity (Carver-Akers, 2013; Yao-Yi, 2015), and Marilyn demonstrated this in her exploration of travel and locations. Again, when talking to Marilyn, her body language indicated that this really excited her. We were talking early in the morning, in a
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hotel lobby in Vigo, Spain, on the third day of what had been an arduous trek on the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. The two previous days of walking had been through mountains, and late into the evening. But Marilyn was animated and excited talking about her exploration of Nomadic Matt’s travel guides and resources. She went on to tell me about her further explorations in the pre-study abroad phase. Or if I had any friends [who had been to Spain], I'd like ask all these questions, until they got tired of them! And then Google some more for websites and especially pictures. I really wanted to see pictures of the places where I was going. And pictures of people in those places. I randomly found some of my friend’s friends on Insta [gram] or, whatever, and saw their posts of them in the places I was [going]. I would look at those and kind of see if I could see myself there, and I always could. I can see myself in all of these places, walking on those streets, and looking at those places, like churches, and the people. And, now, here I am.
Imagining themselves in a location abroad, in another culture, was a theme woven through the students’ stories of their study abroad explorations. Phyllis focused on differences, and her desire to be in a “different” place. She said:
For me, because I do think I am naturally curious, I wanted to go to all these different places and different cultures and not just go to London and Ireland, and those are the two ones that really speak English, and just stay there the whole time. I want to go to places that have differences. I didn't do a lot of Eastern Europe, but I went to Prague, and so it's very different in Prague than it is in the Netherlands. And it's very different in Belgium than it is in Germany, and those are bordering countries that I could see myself in. I like [to] see and understand how they are different, why they are different… like their histories, how they were colonized, or whatever, and then their buildings are a result of who colonized them, or where their people came from to that location….
The discussions with students about their desires and a sojourn experience morphed into intention, which was stronger than desire, and then finally, decision. Andy also described his exploration of potential locations to study abroad, and had, in fact, studied in several locations, before our talk in Spain, during the Camino de Santiago, on the fourth day. He expressed his desire to see places and people that would inform his future as in the diplomatic corps. That led to his intention to study abroad not only once, but several times. Finally, decisions were made. Andy spoke about the value of study abroad for not only himself, but everyone:
…I think that study abroad is critical for – and I hope that it will eventually be mandatory in education because it forces you to be curious. You can be as closed-minded as you
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want, but if we throw you into a foreign country, that's not going to get you very far. You can have the mentality that America is the only right country, number one, everything we do is right, stuff like that, only speak American, blah, blah, blah. We can throw you into France, Spain, Luxembourg, Russia, and you can try and go with that mentality. But you're not going to last very long, and self-preservation will force you to be curious because it's either – my study abroad in China I think, was one of the most interesting because I had no – I mean, I had an idea on the political situation in China. I had no idea on the language, their culture, anything like that, but getting thrown into it, by the end of that trip, I was able to barter with hawkers and vendors. I bought a whole suitcase of fake Rolexes!
Although he was saying it in a bit of a roundabout way, Andy clearly understands that it is the discomfort of being in an unfamiliar place that provides the context for learning, as well as growth, and the value of curiosity in these experiences. The skill set he says he built was bartering, but embedded in that are skills like negotiation, communicating across cultures to reach a satisfactory result, and knowing when you have been the target of a scam. I suspect that all of these skills are going to be useful in his future as a diplomat, or in any civil service position abroad. It all begins with curiosity.
Intercultural Wonderment Dawn left her home in Cleveland for the airport, to get her flight to Boston for a connection to Charles deGaulle Airport in Paris, to catch a flight to her final destination of Dijon, France, where she would study abroad for the summer. A delay out of Cleveland due to bad weather caused her to miss her flight from Boston to Paris. After rebooking on another flight to Paris, she spent the night in the Boston airport hotel, and caught a flight the following day, still hoping to get a flight to Dijon. On her flight to Paris, she sat next to a friendly, seasoned traveler who suggested it would be easier, and probably less expensive, to take the train from the Paris Gare de Lyon railway station terminal to Dijon. With the flight getting into Paris late due to the fog on the ground below, Dawn decided that when they landed, she would get a taxi to the train station, and take the train into Dijon. What I have left out of the re-telling of Dawn’s travel story above is the emotion and the anxiety this 19-year old student sojourner described when this happened to her on her first time traveling alone, and her first time out of the United States. Her apprehension and angst, and the
107 emotions on her face when she described moments of panic, were intense, even a few months after her return to her life on campus in the United States. Thrown into more than one “provocative moment” (Engberg & Jourian, 2015; Engberg, Jourian, & Davidson, 2016), Dawn pushed through the anxiety and fright she encountered. When asked about the process she went through to navigate problem after problem in her travel, she did not say specifically that it was curiosity that got her through. She described watching other people in the gate area who were anxious about the delay, and they would go up to the desk at the gate and ask questions. So, she did that also, and found out that the airline would get her on another flight to Paris if she missed her first one. She suspected that but was very relieved to know. Also, in the gate area, she asked the travelers around her if anyone else was on the Boston to Paris flight, and there was a woman who was also expecting to be on the flight. Together they perused potential flights on their devices and concluded that they would be spending the night in Boston. Dawn assumed that meant sleeping in the airport, but her fellow travelers told her about the great hotel at the Boston Logan airport, which was short indoor walk outside of the airline terminal. She investigated that on her iPhone and watched the time. At the moment she knew that she was going to miss her Paris flight, she booked a room at the hotel, and immediately felt calmer knowing that she had a place to sleep that night and could wake up refreshed and ready to travel in the morning for the next leg of her adventure. The next moment of panic was when she started considering taking a train from Paris to Dijon, instead of flying. Although she had flown many times in the United States, and airlines have a familiar process she had navigated previously, she would have to figure out how to get from the Charles de Gaulle airport, to the train station, and then navigate purchasing a ticket, and getting to the train to Dijon. She doubted her ability to do it. She said that on the flight from Boston to Paris she went through moments of being positive that she could do it because “really, there are probably thousands of people every day who get from the [Paris] airport to the train station, maybe even more of them… I can do this, I know I can.” But then, she had conflicting moments of complete doubt that she would be able to navigate this, with only French 101 and 102 language skills in her personal toolbox. “No way, I can do it. I’ll just stay in the airport and get a flight, whenever that happens. The airline owes me a flight.” But, she bounced back, “I’ve got this, I’m going to take a train. I’ll be riding on trains the whole time I’m in Europe, I am
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going to start doing that now because I need to learn how and the scenery is better on the ground than in the air.” Dawn confidently stepped off the plane in Paris, went to an agent and made arrangements to pick up her luggage in Paris (which turned out to be more difficult than she assumed). Once she had her bags, she found the taxi stand, made her way to the train station, and although there was another moment of panic when she couldn’t determine which hall in the station she would depart from, she powered through, guided by her inquisitive nature, translator app on her phone, and growing sense of competence. She felt like she had really achieved something when she realized she was observing French culture, architecture, and daily life in the train station, and took a moment to be mindful of how fortunate she was to be there and have the experience. When she finally arrived in Dijon, in the evening, and a full day later than expected, she was exhausted, but she felt like she had learned a lot from the experience and enriched her life. She said: I feel like you're not really living if you're not trying new things or putting yourself out there and just staying in your little bubble. I feel like there's a lot of people at home, like I said, that are that, and I'm happy that I have the opportunities and strive, I guess, to be able to step out of my comfort zone and really live and learn.
Although it was not intentional at the beginning, Dawn encountered a “provocative moment” (Engberg & Jourian, 2015, p. 2) described as a moment that triggers disequilibrium that develops beliefs, identity, and social relations. Dawn pushed through the moment, and learned that she is capable, mindful, and was able to change her perceptions of who she is. Her identity changed. She thought of herself as an American student, someone who had been educated to be global, but until she found herself in an unfamiliar location, and using her novice language skills, and learned competence, she became truly global. Curiosity fueled an “active and curious disposition” to explore and appreciate new learning and cultural opportunities (p. 15). Dawn’s experience is not unusual. Other students describe being uncomfortable and uneasy, along with experiencing a sense of cognitive dissonance, during their sojourn experiences. Andy describes his philosophy on this, and takes it to the interplanetary level: I think it really goes back to being comfortable being uncomfortable. I’ve traveled a lot and still get really uncomfortable sometimes. Really in not being content with your current situation because, although, having a very – having a content and comfortable life
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is nice. But while I can still breathe and fight against that dying light, I'm going to try and experience as much of this world as possible because, I mean, the next generation could be interplanetary. So, having a planetary experience could be insignificant in the future, although still valuable, but looking back they would say, "Oh, how can people just experience one planet?" the way I say now, "How can people experience just one country or one continent?"
The students exhibited and demonstrated intercultural wonderment. Intercultural wonderment is described as theoretically incorporating mindful wonderment (acting in a way to maintain open wonder and curiosity about possibilities for seeing, hearing, and responding to others from a fresh perspective [Lewis, Lenski, Mukhopadhyay, Cartwright, 2010]), mindfulness (conscious and aware), and cognitive disequilibrium (confusion because a new experience is jarring and incomprehensible [Piaget, 1936]) spawned through encounters with difference, meaning making, and intercultural maturity. Operationally, it is a construct that encompasses students intentionally pushing themselves outside of their comfort zone, immersing in another culture, exploring new personal habits and behaviors, and interacting with residents of a host country outside of a classroom. Student development is mediated by intercultural wonderment, a process that “encapsulates the underlying curiosity in individual to seek out new and different experiences while studying abroad and involves a willingness and capacity to deal with discomfort and disequilibrium” (Engberg & Jourian, 2016, p. 3). Curiosity emerges in a student and from the resulting questions, creativity, and they demonstrate empathy, the student becomes a sojourner, a global explorer who studies abroad in an unfamiliar location to satisfy that need to know more, learn more, and understand other cultures and peoples. From there, the student experiences intercultural wonderment, continuing to be guided by curiosity and a need to learn from being uncomfortable. Intercultural wonderment and the disequilibrium associated with it becomes the entryway into the portal through which a student eventually breaks through a threshold and accesses a new way of thinking about something, and has a transformed understanding of themselves, and their ability to navigate in an unfamiliar culture.
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CHAPTER 7
I’M NOT MYSELF YOU SEE27: BREAKING THROUGH THE THRESHOLD TO INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE
Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle. ~Lewis Carroll28
Reading has always been my sanctuary. I read at an early age and spent a lot of time in the library uptown in the small college town where I grew up. The cantankerous librarian, Mrs. Bertram, knew me, and steered me to the new books, including those that would challenge me. I know that now; I didn’t know back then she was challenging me. Now I believe she liked me, because I liked books. I learned from reading. I learned about nearby and far-away places, historical events, about real people’s lives who were very different from me. My appetite was insatiable for reading and not just for information, but also for stories about other people and other lives. I learned from fiction. From Nancy Drew I learned to be prepared, never stop learning, and not to panic. I learned about life in Appalachia through Where the Lilies Bloom. I learned, as a small-town girl, about life in the city through A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. As I reached junior high, I read To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and (oddly enough, even to me, now) Shakespeare’s Macbeth, again and again. I tackled Dante’s Inferno, but it wasn’t until high school that I really began to understand it. My father introduced me to the short stories of O. Henry, and those are favorites of mine even today. Through the Gift of the Magi, I learned that being poor and loved is better than being rich and unloved. That is a lesson that was at the core of my last conversation with my father before his recent death. I learned from the stories in non-fiction also. I learned about the horrors of Nazi Germany through Anne Frank’s diary. From the many biographies of Amelia Earhart that I consumed over my childhood, and even into adulthood, I learned women can be pioneers, take risks, and be independent, empowered, and successful. Perhaps most important for this woman child of the 1960s and 70s, I learned that I can be a woman in a man’s world.
27 Carroll, 2015, p. 57 28 Carroll, 2015, p. 26 111
In each book, and each reading, I was finding something new, discovering myself in the stories, or never finding myself there, but realizing that my life and circumstances was very far removed from other lives, in other places and times. What was unfortunate was, at that time, I was not discovering many stories that took me outside of my Ameri-centric experience. Beyond The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, the books that were available to me were not the globalized titles and stories available to children today. My reading was an escape for me, but I was also, definitely, satisfying my curiosity while I was learning and growing through them. As I read in my childhood and into my teenage years, sometimes I would get to a part of the story that was uncomfortable… frightening, startling, painful, or difficult in some way and outside of my comfort zone, I would leave the solitude of my bedroom, hammock, or whatever space I had isolated myself in, and find my German Shepherd, Cindy, my sisters, or parents. The presence of someone I loved provided a level of comfort that I needed to get through what I was reading and wherever it had transported me to in my imagination. It was in the solitude of reading that I pursued my questions and interests. Through the discomfort, and troublesome parts, I learned and grew as a human, a person, a social being, a woman, and as a student-learner. I learned to cope with and learn in my discomfort. Looking at the picture of myself as a reader, today, through the lens of who I have become, I see a woman who is an explorer. I did not have the privilege of studying outside of the United States, but as a young girl, and then as a young woman, I explored other cultures and lives through reading. I felt the discomfort of being in someone else’s skin through reading. When it became too much for me to handle, I sought comfort, but worked through that discomfort to a place where I learned and grew. As I learned and grew, I also realized that I yearned to travel and actually find myself in other places and be with people who lived a life that was different from mine. As a result, there came a time when I was no longer satisfied with living vicariously through literature and words. I left my undergraduate studies in the university before completing my bachelor’s degree because I found the opportunity to escape Southwestern Ohio and discover the world. The adventure was everything I thought it would be. I spent time living in San Diego, Seattle, and Pearl Harbor in Hawai’i. I spent a lot of time across the border from San Diego in Mexico and journeyed to and explored British Hong Kong in the late 1970s, was at the 1979
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Nambassa festival in New Zealand, and in Fiji for the general elections in 1982. In these journeys I also found myself in spaces and places where I was uncomfortable, but those were all learning adventures spurred by intercultural wonderment.
Threshold Concepts As described in earlier chapters, curiosity emerges and the student becomes a global explorer, physically or vicariously, but this does not satisfy the need to know more, learn more, and immerse into other cultures, with diverse people, and have different experiences and perspectives. Curiosity pushes the sojourner to seek out novel and varied experiences, and with this intercultural wonderment there is a capacity and readiness to manage the uneasiness and anxiety (Engberg & Jourian, 2015; Engberg, Jourian, & Davidson, 2016). Intercultural wonderment encompasses the disequilibrium that also emerges in threshold concepts. Arising out of research in in the United Kingdom in Economics education, the notion of threshold concept was introduced into discussions on learning. These concepts were described as ones that represent gateways or portals to new knowledge or a new way thinking about something (Meyer & Land, 2003; Meyer & Land, 2006; Meyer, Land & Baillie, 2016). These are fundamental understandings, or pieces of knowledge, which are at the core of a body of knowledge. Students need to get them before they can make sense of knowledge that is specific to subjects, phenomena, or experiences. Threshold concepts, once understood, open up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking (Meyer & Land, 2003). Identifying a threshold concept in a discipline or experience allows educators to approach the topic in a way that transforms students and helps them view the world from a new and different perspective. Threshold concepts are characterized by troublesome knowledge, knowledge that is conceptually difficult. The learner will encounter threshold knowledge that is troublesome. The characteristics of a threshold concepts are: transformative, irreversible, integrative, and possibly bounded by “terminal frontiers, bordering thresholds into new conceptual areas” (Meyer & Land, 2006, p. 8) which serve to demarcate disciplinary areas. The final characteristic is troublesome, for the reasons noted above. See Table 6 for descriptions and examples.
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Once I began to understand threshold concepts, after exploring some of Meyer and Land’s work in this area (Meyer & Land, 2003; Meyer & Land, 2006; Meyer, Land & Baillie, 2016), and applying it to my own educational experiences, I recall transformative moments, and particularly ones that expanded across disciplines. For example, a paper I was assigned as a college freshman in a Political Science course on the meaning of “liberty” served to transform how I perceived history in my Women’s History course, as well as a Social Problems course in Sociology. In that paper, I wrote myself clear on liberty as it applied in political science, to understand political systems, and be able to compare them. However, it was also a threshold concept that, by understanding it, allowed me to understand the history of women in the United States and the ways in which they stood for liberty, were given or denied choices, and how women have made a difference in American history, but in a way that is hidden and oppressive. By definition, threshold concepts are irreversible, so I don’t know what liberty meant to me before working through it in that paper, I suspect it had something to do with patriotism, since it was the bicentennial year of 1976 when I wrote it. After getting through the threshold in my understanding of liberty, it meant more to me as freedom from oppression of authority, and the right to have choices when it comes to my body and my life. I also found that the threshold concepts in literary theory were the portal to a deeper understanding of life beyond literature. The concept of signification in literary theories was problematic for me, but my thinking and reasoning transformed once I fully comprehended that all systems of meaning29 function as signifiers30 in language, and that expressions and lexes get meaning from each other. They also gain meaning from what is not there, allowing insight into how the text is structured by values or priorities (Meyer & Land, 2006). Troublesome knowledge broadened as I entered an Educational Leadership master’s degree program and made my way through social and educational theories. The threshold concepts I had overcome in literary theory provided transferable skills when undertaking the complexities of the philosophy of education, and the sociocultural context of education. In the final phases of the doctoral program courses, I also found that I was better able to deconstruct
29 Systems of meaning defined as the relationships between words and the meanings attached to them. 30 The physical form of a sign, such as a printed word or image. 114
research methodology concepts because I had mastered the threshold concepts in using literary theory to deconstruct literature. Troublesome knowledge manifests in other ways. Sometimes troublesome knowledge is tacit and not explicit and needs to be surfaced. It can be counter intuitive, going against logic. I have also seen knowledge that just needs a more conscious explanation. Finally, it could just be a very difficult concept or an understanding of how concepts are linked together Application of troublesome knowledge and threshold concepts has not been deeply explored in the literature as it impacts culture, cultural studies, or crossing cultures. Bayne (2002) suggests that one threshold concept in this realm may be breaking down barriers between high culture and popular culture. That is, the cultural products of value in a society which are culturally bound and represent the broad range knowledge and traditions that are embedded in the culture (high) are different from the cultural products that are fleeting and dominant during a point in time and based in the historical moment (popular). For example, in Victorian England, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and Thomas Hardy were writers that were representative of high culture. The “gift books” of the period were collections of poetry, fiction, and essays with elaborate pictures and intended as gifts, rather than reading. They were part of the popular culture – mass produced and meeting a demand with a growing middle-class. The gift books represented the first time that literature, once only a product of the high culture, was commodified and available to a growing population with discretionary income. This example from Victorian England is not just an example of high culture versus popular culture, it was another threshold concept in my life, not in my understanding of literature, rather in my understanding of cultures and the fundamental approaches to appreciation of and understanding culture. It led to a later breakthrough in my understanding of the visible and invisible aspects of culture. In the literature on teaching culture in the disciplines, Nahavandi (2016), a researcher and professor in the disciplinary field of Management, teaches culture-as-meta-context (CMC), and posits that it serves as a threshold concept to developing a cultural mindset. To navigate and be successful in global and diverse organizations, which are standard today, educators know that students have to understand the impact and complex role of culture, at all levels at which it operates, national and global. As a meta-context (a context in which other contexts can be applied, or a concept which is an abstraction behind another concept), culture becomes “an
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abstract and high-order construct that frames events and guides perceptions, cognition, perspectives, values, behaviors, and even emotions” (Nahavandi, 2016, p. 801). Liminality. In their seminal work on threshold concepts, Meyer and Land (2003, 2005, & 2006) suggest that there are stages that a student moves through when learning threshold concepts: Pre-liminal, liminal, and post-liminal. These stages are appropriated from the discipline of Anthropology where they are used to describe humans as they progress through formal rites of passage in life. Applied to threshold concepts, they are used to assess where students are before they are introduced to a concept, and then track their progress as gain an understanding of it (Nahavandi, 2016). The acquisition of threshold concepts often involves some oscillation, and it is not necessarily as sequential as these three stages suggest. It is not an easy passage in learning – mastering threshold concepts “often involves messy journeys back, forth, and across conceptual terrain” (Cousin, 2006, p. 21). In the pre-liminal phase, learners are encountering troublesome knowledge. Their perspectives are coming into view. They may feel that the concept is appealing, or, paradoxically, discomforting, in this phase, but that exciting and provocative, even stimulating the learner, especially a highly curious learner. In the pre-liminal stage, the learner may be thinking in an abstract way, or have a common sense approach to the concept. This is reflective of the lack of knowledge, and the lack of understanding of the concept or concepts that will move them into the liminal stage. Moving into the liminal phase the student is stuck in an in-between state in which they equivocate between an earlier, less sophisticated understanding and a full appreciation of the concept. This stage is like being an adolescent – not yet adults, not quite children. It is an unstable place where the learner is going back and forth between old and emergent understandings (Cousin, 2006). It is a suspended state of partial understanding, and the insights the learner is gaining as they are crossing the threshold may be exciting, but it can be uncomfortable (Land, Meyer, & Baillie, 2010). In the post-liminal period, the student has transformed. This phase can also be disconcerting. When the learner crosses the threshold, there could be a sense of loss because the truth may be an unpleasant awakening, or disillusioning (Meyer & Land, 2003). In the post- liminal phase, the student has crossed the portal and has achieved a new way of interpreting of the world. This comes with “a new language and sometimes a new identity, a repositioning of
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self that comes from the integration of new knowledge, thinking, and affect” (Nahavandi, 2016, p. 796). Again, although these stages imply a linear approach, it can be, and usually is a more complex journey during which there may be deviation, digression, further points of departure, and revised direction (Land, Cousin, Meyer, & Davies, 2005). In these liminality phases the previously described characteristics of threshold concepts are woven throughout. Understanding culture-as-meta-context as a threshold concept, the stages of liminality, deconstructing it based on the identified characteristics, illuminates its value (see Table 6) (Nahavandi, 2016).
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Table 6
Characteristics of Threshold Concepts and Culture-as-Meta-Context as a Threshold Concept Adapted from Southern Cross University Teaching and Learning Resources (2018) and Nahavandi (2012) www.scu.edu.au/staff/teaching-and-learning/teaching-resources/threshold-concepts/
Characteristic Description Example Culture as a Meta Context31 Transformative A shift occurs in the learner's In a Law course students learn the Changes the way students think perception. New understandings principles of justice and of ethical about culture from something are assimilated into a learner's practice in lawyers' roles - codes about others to a contextual factor biography, becoming part of who of conduct, ethical rules and that is ever-present and must be they are, how they see and how responsibilities, limitations taken into consideration in many they feel situations. Irreversible Once understood the learner is In an Education course students Once students become aware of unlikely to forget it. New patterns are required to reflect on CMC, they know the world and connections are recognized performance feedback to identify differently, and no longer look at and earlier patterns of and action learning opportunities “difference” or the “other” the understanding cannot easily be and self-improvements. Reflective same way. They always consider retrieved. Subsequent variation or and critical thinking become the impact of culture. Ontological a rejection of the new concept is inherent in their professional work and epistemological views shift to still possible. include culture as a foundation of context and lead to a new worldview. Integrative Exposes inter-relatedness, In a Health course students learn It is theory and practice, enabling students to coherently to deliver safe and effective knowledge and doing, self and integrate what were previously collaborative healthcare. This calls other, abstract and concrete, seen as unrelated aspects of the upon their knowledge of the roles cognitive and behavioral, art and subject. Things start to click into of other health practitioners science. place
31 Nahavandi, 2016 118
Bounded Bordering with other thresholds or In a Tourism course students Bound by the disciplines from new conceptual spaces. The more consider the social, economic, which it borrows. Leads to critical interdisciplinary a subject, the political and biophysical thinking to interpret and integrate more complex this will be dimensions of sustainable tourism knowledge from many disciplines. Troublesome Difficult to grasp concepts - this In an Accounting course the Forces students out of a routine. knowledge may include concepts that: clash, students' desire for the 'correct Students experience tension as compete or interact; appear answer' is counter intuitive to the their expectations of what is illogical, unfamiliar or alien; modelling process that emphasizes appropriate are violated. Makes counter-intuitive and initially very alternatives used to support them aware of their limited difficult for learners to accept problem solving worldview and its effectiveness and efficiency.
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When I had the opportunity to hear Saida speak (see Chapter 5) at the awards ceremony, after I had begun to understand more about threshold concepts, I observed that her curiosity has been fueled by her own cultural background, and she exhibits signs of a cultural post-liminal conscious – she is aware of her cultural self and cultural others, and she has developed the language, knowledge, and skills to address culture and cultural aspects of her life and other lives (Meyer & Land, 2006; Nahavandi, 2016). Saida’s speech hinted at troublesome knowledge that may have thrust her over the threshold to the level of cultural and self-awareness she exhibits now, as a graduating senior. She talked about her first month at the university when she was thinking about transferring, but her mentor encouraged her to find an area where she is passionate about making a difference in the world. Diving deep to better understand herself, what she wants in life, and who she is, she found that passion for refugees in the U.S. escaping oppression or religious persecution and supporting them in their journey toward new lives in a new country. It was a difficult time for her – self-discovery, understanding how her own cultural and familial background played a role in who she is today and why she was in this place, at this time. Once she broke through that threshold, pushed by curiosity, and encouraged by a mentor, she came to a more concrete view of the world and herself. She may have routinely applied to universities and accepted the place with the best offer, but she had broken routine, moved past expectations, and thrived as a transformed young woman who knows what she wants for herself, her family, and the world, and how she will navigate her next steps in her life journey. As she has completed her incredible undergraduate career, Saida and her sister were discussing her experience, Saida’s sister called her a “California poppy” and she explained that this is a flower that grows in the desert, and spreads it seeds through the winds. The seeds stay dormant until the next rainy season. Saida is that poppy, who thrived in what she perceived was a university desert where she felt out of place. She has transformed, flourished, and will spread her seeds throughout the world in her future. There is not much doubt about that. Transformative. Marilyn reflected on her semester-long study abroad experience in Spain, and how it served to build her self-confidence, but it was language that supported a cognitive shift from considering culture as being something about others, to a context where culture is ubiquitous. In addition to the feeling that she had “become Spanish” through language, she also reported that she was drawn to the Spanish sense of style – conservative and fashionable, and (late by American standard) Spanish meal times became her norm. The point
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when she knew that she had changed was when she found herself staring at someone. She had noticed not long after her arrival in Spain, people will stare at you, without apology and often for no reason whatsoever. She said, “I was waiting for a bus ride with my host sister, and all [a] sudden I notice we were both staring at a guy sitting on the bench, like, just a random guy on a random bench, and when he looked back at me, I didn’t look away, I just stared. Then, like, I realized I was doing a very Spain thing … [I] saw Maria doing it too … I laughed at myself. I had to explain to my sister why I was cracking up.” Her sister acknowledged that other students who had stayed with them had mentioned the “Spanish staring thing” also. When the two arrived at home, they greeted their mother with a traditional kiss on both cheeks, something which was awkward when she arrived at the homestay, but now felt natural for Marilyn, even though she wasn’t getting along well with her host mother. As she considered how enmeshed she had become in the family and the culture, she said, “It wasn’t just language, [it] was not just about the cultures, I was part of the culture. My life tempo was slower like everyone in Salamanca, my behavior was better….” When I asked more about what she meant by “behavior,” she said that in Spain, greeting everyone with a friendly “hola” is expected with everyone she meets, even after greeting them similarly minutes earlier. After her time in Spain, she believes that Americans are, in general, blunt and just get to the point without acknowledging the humanity in front of them: “they [Americans] don’t greet each other, recognize each other… it’s bad manners!” She had gone through a portal of understanding about cultures and was able to see herself from a new perspective, and she was able to critique her own culture. Marilyn’s understanding was transformed when she grasped culture as the meta-context, specifically that culture matters, there are many different cultures, and no one culture is perfect, or ideal. The first characteristic of a threshold concept is transformative, and this is a critical element in study abroad. We want a sojourn experience to be transformative. Marilyn’s way of thinking about culture transformed from something that was about “others” to something that was pervasive and continued to inform her perspective even as she transitioned back in to the United States, life with her own family and friends, and American higher education. Marilyn’s sojourn and immersion in another culture was truly transformative, and it was her understanding of culture-as-meta-context that underpinned the changes in her perspective and worldview. Irreversible. Once understood and absorbed a threshold concept is unlikely to be forgotten, although it could later be rejected (Meyer & Land, 2003, 2006). When students
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become aware of culture-as-meta-context, the world becomes a place where they consistently consider the impact of culture on themselves, the people in their lives, people with whom they superficially interact, organizations, and institutions – perhaps all social action. In every interaction, including conflicts, they will consider the potential cultural values involve (Nahavandi, 2016). In my daily life, as an administrator in a university, I understand that this is a threshold concept that many students have not grasped, and in fact, I will say that some faculty, staff, and administrators do not comprehend culture-as-meta-context. For many, young people, as well as mature adults, it is an elusive concept, but if better understood, could mediate conflict. The irreversible nature of threshold concept is apparent with Marilyn, with no evidence that she will later reject this worldview. By all appearances, she has transformed and fully accepts her new global identity. Personally, I know that at some point in my life I did not understand the pervasive nature of culture in my life, but now, I very well understand it and how it unfolds on a daily basis in my personal, professional, and academic lives. It is omnipresent in my life as an international educator, when I travel in the United States and across international borders; it is inescapable in every point, idea, and situation I encounter. I can definitively say that understanding the culture- as-meta-context is irreversible, and I am likely to never forget it. It resulted in new patterns and connections for me and how I look at life and the world. But, when did I cross that threshold of understanding? I have no idea. Was it at some point in my reading life? In my educational experiences as a young child, adolescent, or adult? Was it when I first found myself in a new culture? I wish I knew and could find myself there to hover over it and absorb the learning moments that I know happened, but I can’t recall. In student interviews, it was clear that most had some level of understanding of culture- as-meta-context, but there was no real evidence that it is irreversible for every one of these students. However, Alice, the student I observed in Italy (see Chapter 1) years ago who was disappointed in the culture (based on the pizza, inability to understand the language, and her perception that all Italians are rude) clearly did not understand the meta-contextual nature of culture. She had not gone through the portal of understanding; there was no threshold concept that propelled her into a new world view.
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Integrative and Bounded. Bringing together concepts from multiple disciplines is valuable to culture-as-meta-context because culture is informed by a variety of topics and concepts (Nahavandi, 2016). Although I cannot say definitively that any of the students in the Arts & Culture in Italy program I observed in the summer of 2017 in Rome had yet reached the post-liminal phase of understanding culture-as-meta-context, I could see liminal phase characteristics as they oscillated between a not yet complete understanding, and sparks of grasping the cultural components, as well as the meta-context of culture. In the troublesome liminal phase, the students relied on not only their unique disciplinary knowledge and how it informed their experience, but also their personal experiences. The program in Italy draws students from all majors, undergraduates and graduate students. It is designed to introduce culture as a meta-context. A graduate student studying Art in her master’s degree program, sketched places, people, and scenes throughout the program – the Colosseum, the many cathedrals and churches we visited (there are 365 in Rome, one per day of the year is possible!), Trevi Fountain, and the Forum, were all in her sketchbook, along with many sketches of the Italian tour leader, restaurant interiors, and outdoor public scenes, including one of a Chinese couple having wedding photos taken at the Colosseum. Another student, an undergraduate who has dual majors, one in Music and one in Classics, could be found with the street musicians, or asking questions focused in the locations and dimensions of the Roman aqueducts, identifying Roman mythological characters etched into the stone facades, and quizzing the instructor and guides on the cultural connections between contemporary Rome and Ancient Roman civilization. The aqueducts were also the focus of an undergraduate Engineering major, who found himself unexpectedly fascinated by the architectural aspects of the Pantheon and developed a convincing argument that Michelangelo was a great engineer. In the final reports, on the penultimate day of the program in Florence, the students each presented on the arts and culture of Rome from their disciplinary or personal focus in the program. By bringing this together, the students (as well as the faculty director and myself) better understood the collaborative nature of the knowledge, which allowed us to critically think about and integrate the knowledge from multiple perspectives. One of the students, Jan, an undergraduate History major, was an excellent student throughout the program. She was attentive, inquisitive, and naturally able to immerse in the culture. She self-disclosed multiple learning disabilities and was given extra time to complete
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and present her final project. Once back in the United States in mid-August, she presented to the director, myself, and two students who were back on campus early before the start of the new academic year. Jan presented a “travel guide” (through a Prezi presentation, and a hard copy book-like guide) for American students studying in Italy. Integrating what she learned from not only the academic curriculum (readings and lectures), but also the site visits and tours, informal discussions with the local tour guides and hotel staff, and the other student presentations, she developed a handbook built on the concept that arts and culture do not occur in a vacuum, and they are developed in the context of civilization. Chronicling the history of Italian arts and culture through photographs, fashion photos, music, narratives, and sketches from her Art student colleague, as well as her own research and perspective, she effectively considered the social, artistic, economic, linguistic, political, geographical, historical, and architectural dimensions of navigating arts and culture in Italy as an American student. Integrative in its theory and practice of culture, Jan demonstrated that the culture-as-meta-context is bounded by the many disciplines from which it borrows and exhibited critical thinking skills as she brought it together to benefit future students in the program. Troublesome Knowledge. It is through language barriers and homestay arrangements that I observed troublesome knowledge in threshold concepts and culture-as-meta-context. Marilyn transformed her identity in her experience through immersion in the language, and in the culture, through her homestay experience. In the homestay, she had a host mother and father, as well as two sisters. One sister was the same age as Marilyn, another was a younger, very charming, child. Marilyn came to love both of her host sisters. She also liked her host father, but he worked a lot and was not present in the home during the week while he was working long hours, and when he was home, he was the center of attention in the home. However, from the beginning, she did not get along with her host mother. Marilyn is a very confident young woman, and her host mother is more subservient. Her host mother, she believed, was concerned about Marilyn’s influence on her daughters, who were also being socialized through school (in the case of the younger sister who was in elementary school), and in their home lives, to be submissive to men, obedient to the Catholic church, and deferential to authority. In social contexts, Marilyn found that her host sister was less compliant with what Marilyn considered an “old timey and man influenced” environment in the home. In social settings, and at the university, her host sister represented herself as an equal to the men in her classes (and even felt she was more intelligent
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than most of them), discussed the Catholic Church intelligently, but not deferentially and acknowledged that she didn’t agree with most of the teachings. While she respected authority, she expressed, outside of the home, disagreement with her parent’s politics and had some strong opinions about the constitutional status of Catalonia in its dispute with Spain that conflicted with what Marilyn heard in the home. Often, the focus of conversation in the home between the mother and daughter was on the progress of finding a husband at the university, not about her classes, tutors, or other students, beyond potential suitors. This was quite difficult for Marilyn, she said, “I was crying a lot [in my] last week there when I really… well, when it hit me, like… that Sofia had to live these two really different lives and her life would be about finding a boy to marry her.” She acknowledged that this is not “horrible” or “abuse” but also that it was taxing for her, difficult to “let go,” and she wanted to intervene in some way. She continues to try to get her host sister, Sofia, to come to the United States for a semester at Marilyn’s university. For Marilyn this was troublesome and it forced her to consider the tension in the realm of what was appropriate for her in the situation. In her experience, parents and children could agree not to disagree, and it was going against her own socialization to not be herself at home and at school, and out in the world. She was curious about this, and it was on her mind, even when I spoke to her months after her return to campus. This represented a provocative moment for Marilyn, an intercultural wonderment. When we discussed it, we explored the idea that culture was the context for this, and she agreed that was part of it. However, she also believed that it is a universal mother-daughter/family dynamic, she said, “Yeah, a lot of my friends are different people with their parents, especially their moms, than they are when they are with me. I’m just not like that and I don’t like that.” She felt that being present, in the home, albeit as a guest, she was part of the family, and that caused the tension both with her own feelings about her host sister, and in her relationship with her host mother. Culture-as-meta-context was at play, but Marilyn also parsed through the universality of family dynamics as she worked through the problematic dimensions of relationships between culture and the undercurrents of family life. Oscar was immersed in a household in Spain. His host family included a young mother and father (he thought they were in their late 20s or early 30s) and their toddler daughter, CeCe. Before leaving the United States for his study abroad experience, he had a lot of anxiety about living with a host family while in Spain. He says he “stalked [my] host father on Facebook” before going over to Spain, because he wanted to learn about him, and he was curious. From that
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online shadowing he became a bit more comfortable about the experience. It was the relationship with his host sister that solidified the relationship with the family. He bonded with the little girl, he says, because he was the youngest in his family, and he had never had a younger child look up to him the way this “little Spanish angel” looked up to him. In Oscar’s case it was also navigating family life in another culture that was troublesome. He struggled with the etiquette, feelings that his host gift was inadequate, or offended them (he brought them some university branded items from the bookstore), that his room wasn’t clean enough (his host mother insisted on cleaning it every day, although it was clean, in Oscar’s opinion), that they weren’t communicating effectively, and that they knew that he was struggling with the food and the late dinner hour (that is customary in Spain), and were affronted by his American college student lifestyle. In a post on Instagram during this time, it’s clear that Oscar connected with CeCe, and he makes light of the partying and sleeping too much, but when we talked about this photo, he was a bit embarrassed that perhaps he had disappointed his host parents. Gijon, Asturias
Oscarmunez hopefully I prepared Pablo & Ana enough for when CeCe is a 20 year old college student who sleeps too much and parties too hard!
294 likes June 22, 2017
Figure 11. Oscar and host-family sister CeCe, June 23, 2017
It was his curiosity that supported him to successfully navigate the experience. In spite of Oscar’s deprecating language about his behavior, he also described an experience in that homestay that was transformative and irreversible. Oscar says he finally determined that he
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needed to follow the family routine when in the home, so he took a step back and observed the family customs and rituals. Rather than stressing out about doing something “wrong,” he let the family lead and teach him the family and cultural etiquette. He asked questions of the faculty director of the program, and of his friends who were also in homestays, and he figured out that he needed to get to know the family, not worry about doing or saying something wrong. He learned to be patient and he appreciated that they won’t always understand him, and he won’t always understand them, but everyone will adjust and, his professor told him, it will get better. That worked for Oscar, and he bonded closely with his host family. He even went back to visit them 8 months later during his spring break. There is a real connection between them that I suspect will be lifelong. According to Oscar, the cultural context was prevalent in the relationship with his host family and rather than just disrupting the Spanish home life culture, he tried to engage and “knit” into it. He described his young host family as “cheeky” and said that they self-described as a “typical Spanish family” (that is, if his Spanish translated correctly – he did struggle with language in the experience). The host father did the cooking, and every meal was distinctively Spanish. In a discussion with them, he asked about the idea of Spanish machismo, and his host mother said “Yes, it exists,” while his host father said, “No!” However, he also observed that the mother does all the “chores, cleaning, laundry, and that kind of stuff” even though the father does cook. The mother wants to go back to work as a teacher, but her husband would like her to stay home until their daughter is older. Although Oscar does not describe himself as “being Spanish” like Marilyn does (although, Oscar does have a deep family background that is Spanish), he does see himself as more an expert in crossing cultures, and he credits the homestay with this proficiency. He says that while the courses in Spanish in Spain, traveling through the country, walking the Camino de Santiago, were all powerful cultural experiences, they were simply the peripheral experiences to the homestay and the immersion into a “real life Spanish family.” The troublesome knowledge in Oscar’s case was understanding and being a part of Spanish family life. He struggled with the language but using in the home supported better language learning. The physical experience of walking hundreds of kilometers on the Camino was life-changing in other ways – connecting with his peers, knowing more about their lives and various American cultures from which they came, and sharing the spiritual experience of the
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pilgrimage. It was the experience of the homestay where he had his troublesome knowledge moments that led to irreversible transformation, underpinning his understanding of culture-as- meta-context, and moving Oscar through the threshold concept that changed his worldview.
Cultural Mindset We are curious beings and as described in Chapter 5, student sojourners’ curiosity has been cultivated by teachers and enrichment activities throughout their educational experiences. In these students’ experience, curiosity underpins intercultural wonderment, which encompasses provocative moments as students experience disequilibrium when they cross cultures. The provocative moments also represent troublesome knowledge, or information and encounters that are conceptually difficult or counter-intuitive. In the disequilibrium, students find transformation. They understand better culture and cultural mindset which is key to managing and working across cultures, globally and locally. In connecting the threshold liminality stages to a cultural mindset, Nahavandi (2016) suggests that in the pre-liminal stage, the student has an unconscious and mindless view of culture. Their worldview is parochial – “people are people and everyone should be like me” – there is not a recognition of culture and difference. The behaviors associated with this include: • “difference, when present is highly threatening and challenging to the worldview;” • “culture is likely to be ignored;” and • there is a “reliance on tacit and ritual knowledge” (p. 804). This resonates in my experience as behaviors of students before they study abroad, or in students who do not want to study abroad, such as the one I encountered in Italy, 10 years ago (see Chapter 1). Alice was threatened by the differences she encountered in her experience and relied heavily on the ritual knowledge she has gained. In the current dataset, I did not encounter students who were in the pre-liminal stage. It appears that a student who is choosing to study abroad most likely is ready to be challenged by a new worldview, but still relying on his or her own knowledge to navigate their educational life. In the liminal stage, the cultural mindset includes a conscious and mindless view of culture, according to Nahavandi (2016). The presence of other cultures is recognized, but there is a focus on the self and home culture.
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In the current dataset, there was one student who exhibited some of this behavior, but it was connected to her lack of understanding of another American student in the program while she experienced her semester in The Netherlands. This other student was described by Phyllis as “frugal.” Phyllis’s attitude was “Let’s see what we can do, and let’s go try all of the food.” But her “frugal” friend “was like, let’s see if there are free things. Let’s ask the hostel worker where to go for affordable things to do.” Her friend, “just kind of wanted to cook her own food, and that’s kind of like she – I know she likes to cook all different things… whereas most of my friends were like, ‘All right, let’s go see what food we can find and try something at each of the restaurants in our neighborhood.’” Her friend would go out to a restaurant only once each week. Phyllis understood that her friend was thrifty, but it had not occurred to Phyllis that her friend could not afford the adventure that Phyllis and her other friends were having. When I brought this up, from her body language, I believe that Phyllis was a bit embarrassed, which was definitely not my intention. There is a great deal of evidence that Phyllis comes from a very privileged background. The school district she attended during her elementary and secondary school years is consistently rated among the top five in Ohio, her family has a home in a suburb of Cincinnati, they own the house she lives in during the academic year, as well as vacation homes in Michigan and Florida, and she is able to get internships for her friends in a Fortune 500 company where her father is a Vice President for Supply Chain Operations. Phyllis had not yet reached a stage of understanding that, even in America, there are different cultures, and perhaps, that not all students who study abroad are as privileged as Phyllis. Even in talking to her about it, she demonstrated a lack of ability to understand that her friend did not have access to whatever she needed to experience study abroad to its fullest extent, at least from her point-of-view. The behaviors associated with the liminal stage include: other cultures are seen as alien knowledge that is unfamiliar; aware of other cultures, but the differences are troublesome; no skills to prevent bias, slow down processing, or act appropriately. Phyllis exhibited an awareness of the differences in The Netherlands culture, and recognized the presence of other cultures in her stories of travels throughout Europe during her experience, but she was quite focused on herself, and found the difference between herself, and her American friend, troublesome. In the post-liminal phase, the cultural mindset is conscious and mindful. There is a recognition of culture-as-meta-context, and other cultures are recognized and accepted. The
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behaviors exhibited include: aware of cultural self and cultural others, non-evaluative or culture just “is;” new vocabulary, language, knowledge, and skills to address culture, development of expertise on cultures, and conscious and appropriate use of thinking to address cross-cultural situations (Nahavandi, 2016). Both Oscar and Marilyn, through their homestay experiences, worked through cultural aspects, and were able to express an awareness of their own cultural being, as well as the cultural other. I cannot say that either of them has completely suspended judgment, but that may simply come from a lack of maturity, and I believe that is going to be, if not already, a part of their cultural mindset.
Conclusion In the literature review (see Chapter 2), the developmental models of cultural mindsets were explicated. In Deardorff’s Process Model of Intercultural Competence (see Figure 1), the researcher posits that there are “requisite attitudes” (Deardorff, 2006, 2008) that include curiosity and discovery, openness, and respect, and in a continuous process, the individual gains knowledge and comprehension through cultural self-awareness, deeper understanding and knowledge, and skills development. Overlaying the findings in this project onto the Deardorff model, teachers and mentors support, guide, and facilitate the development of knowledge and comprehension, as well as skills, and intercultural wonderment encompasses the curiosity that moves the learner toward the desired internal outcomes as the learner encounters troublesome knowledge that comes with trying to comprehend culture as the meta-context. Once the learner breaks through that threshold of understanding, the learner is transformed, the internal outcomes, and that is irreversible, which is the external outcome. Where I suggest that the Deardorff model may not align with the current findings is that a learner has to enter the process with the attitudes of respect, openness, curiosity and discovery. While the learner could enter with these attitudes and can be further cultivated by the learning experience process, I would suggest that the appropriate guidance, facilitation, cultural mentoring, curriculum (including learning outcomes that are intentionally designed to develop intercultural and global competence), along with assessment used for continuous iterations of reflection, the attitudes can be developed.
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The findings reveal that culture-as-meta-context is a threshold concept, driven by emergent cultivated curiosity, and the disequilibrium of intercultural wonderment and troublesome knowledge, develop the cultural mindset that we hope to encourage in students who choose a study abroad experience. Students gain a new way of thinking about the world, along with a transformed and empathetic understanding of themselves through their ability to navigate in an unfamiliar culture – they increase their intercultural competence. An intentionally designed study abroad experience, with appropriate preparation, authentic cultural immersion, and space to reflect during and after the experience, is the goal. Using these findings, the final chapter will explicate a deeper analysis and suggest an application to the international education practice.
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CHAPTER 8
Ignorance Killed the Cat, Curiosity was Framed32
Curiosity was framed. Avoid it at your peril. The cat’s not even sick. If you don’t know how it works, find out. If you’re not sure if it will work, try it. If it doesn’t make sense, play with it until it does. If it’s not broken, break it. If it might be true, find out. And most of all, if someone says it is none of your business, prove them wrong. ~Seth Godin33
The journey started with a desire to explore, with the hope that exploration would lead to discovery. When the expedition began, I knew that my research questions were not going to be easily answered. I also knew that exploration was going to be a critical element in this project. I recognized that I might not be able to answer some of the questions, but I was convinced that the inquiry would put me into an intensive examination, and from there I would obtain findings that would be the core component to get me to the next phase of my research journey. I also believed that whatever I found could effectively transform study abroad curriculum and pedagogy for curious student sojourners. The phenomenon of curiosity has been described, measured, observed, and tested by psychologists, educators, interculturalists, and other researchers; however, the lived experiences of students during study abroad experiences are difficult to surface for academic examination. When I began this project, I knew that this was going to be a difficult phenomenon to capture and isolate. As a state of consciousness, curiosity is illusive, but I did glimpse the lived experience of curiosity as it manifested in student sojourners. I saw curiosity in their body language; I also heard it in their judicious questions and the profound statements they made, as well as in the spontaneous thoughts, and impulsive, innovative ideas that had characteristics of curiosity embedded in them, including confidence, imagination, love of learning, observant, self- aware, and tolerance of ambiguity.
32 C.J. Cherryh, as quoted in an interview (Bannon, M.O., 2012). In that interview Ms. Cherryh also said that she gets most of her story ideas from travel. 33 Godin, S., 22 Sept 2012 132
Summary of Study The findings that emerged through this study suggest that students who choose to study abroad are curious, and their curiosity underpins intercultural wonderment, a process which has a mediating role in students’ development of a global perspective, and encapsulates disequilibrium brought about by troublesome knowledge that is characteristic of threshold concepts (Engberg & Jourian, 2015). There is substantiation found in this study that understanding culture as a meta- context is the threshold concept that opens up the students’ knowledge, skills, and abilities in successfully crossing cultures and building knowledge, skills, and attitudes that reflect global and intercultural competence. Student learning and developing competence are at the core of any education abroad experience. International educators and study abroad professionals strive to intentionally design opportunities to immerse students in another culture, with a goal of building intercultural and global competencies that will serve to enable the students in their future academic, personal, and professional lives. The focus is on the learner. With a deeper understanding of curiosity as it emerges in a sojourn experience, and a richer understanding of the role of curiosity in intercultural wonderment and troublesome knowledge, there are possibilities opened to enhance the learning in a student sojourn experience that takes the students into an unfamiliar culture, and helps them to cultivate critical competencies, including curiosity. What I was not able to corroborate was specific and categorical levels of curiosity or why students exhibited different levels of curiosity in different ways. All of the students volunteering in this study had made the decision to study abroad, and all of them exhibited curiosity at some level, but I did not uncover exactly what led to a higher level of curiosity, or the converse. For the students, curiosity was not only acknowledged by teachers and others, but it was also cultivated by those people in their lives who noticed it, and enrichment programs that rewarded it. All of the students interviewed described a teacher, or more than one, and enrichment activities that they felt encouraged them to be curious; however, they still had differing levels of curiosity. I concluded that students who intentionally choose to study abroad, and continue to engage in the abroad location, are curious to some extent, and that curiosity can be further cultivated in these students because they are curious about people and places.
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Alice, the student I encountered in Italy who was bored with the Italian culture, and completely unengaged, was probably not curious about it. She chose to go, I now believe, because her sorority sisters were going and she did not want to be left out, not because of any curiosity about people or places. She refused to engage with the culture and appeared to have little to no curiosity about it at any level. She was a conscientious student and she gained knowledge, but perhaps not expertise or competence. She was able to express her aversion to Italian culture and the reasons for that displeasure; therefore, she had engaged at some level. She just did not cross the threshold in her ability to understand and appreciate culture at a deeper level, the level that is invisible, and paradoxically the meta, or higher level, context. Another area where I failed to definitively connect, and develop conclusions or findings, is in the realm of how students make sense of their own curiosity and how it connects to their sense of identity. The intent of using currere to guide the questions in interviews (see Appendix 1) was to uncover this and persuade the students to dig deeper into their past, present, and future lives to discover the meaning of the present and be able to look at themselves in the present, to know and understand what the contribution is of their early educational experiences, to their intellectual interests in the future, and how curiosity connects to their sense of. The regressive, and perhaps the progressive questions, did not serve to help me dig as deeply as I hoped they would. Students who were interviewed later in the research process, after I was able to refine the questions and add to them to probe more deeply, were still not making regressive observations of their past that were revealing how they understood their own curiosity beyond asking questions and describing exploratory behaviors. I have concluded that students are curious, even about their own curiosity, but they do not have the language to discuss it, and my questions did not allow them to breach a threshold in understanding their own curiosity, or effectively reflect on it in that moment. This implies to me that there are possibilities in continuing the research in a longitudinal study that might allow students to reflect more deeply through journaling or other methods. Or, it may simply be that I am unusually curious about my own and others’ curiosity. Even without weighty and deeply insightful sets of data points, there is enough evidence to understand how to develop intentionally designed study abroad experiences that will capitalize on the natural curiosity that most students develop through their lives, as well as the more profound and intense levels of curiosity found in some students, and support them to understand
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the connections between their personal identity, interpersonal curiosity, and culture – specifically, culture as a higher order of the learning experience in cultural immersion.
Respect yourself and others will respect you. ~Confucius34 What Should Students Know? There was a very specific point in time in my non-traditional career trajectory when I knew that I was moving away from continuing higher education and toward international higher education as a professional focus. It was not long after that point that my vision was realized for a continuing education operation I was leading in a university to focus more globally, and I determined to collaborate more effectively with faculty to offer more diverse and impactful study abroad programs for both undergraduate and graduate students in the university. As a continuing educator, I still walked the talk, and continuously and intentionally took advantage of professional development. At the continuing education to international education juncture in my career, I registered for a workshop at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC) held at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. An interculturalist friend and colleague, who was also a faculty member in my university’s Department of Communication at the time, highly recommended SIIC. My friend was adamant that this would be a life-changing, perhaps even career changing experience for me. I took the leap of faith and enrolled. The week-long workshop at Reed College was a transformational experience for me, and I have gone back there each summer as I am available to do so. Almost every July I travel to Portland and engage with 100 or so other dedicated global educators and interculturalists. We live in a non-air conditioned residence hall, featuring shared bathrooms and rock hard single- sized beds with stiff scratchy sheets. Usually I have one roommate, sometimes two, and one year recently I had three roommates to share the quadruple room. As a first-time attendee, I registered for one of the most popular workshops at the Institute: Transformative Learning: Design, Development, and Delivery. On the first day of the program and workshop the instructor Mick Vande Berg (a prominent international education professional and the lead researcher on the Georgetown Consortium Study,35 who is cited many
34 Chan, S. 2006, p. 234 35 The Georgetown Consortium Project was a large scale, multi-year study of student learning abroad (Vande Berg, Connor-Linton, & Paige, 2009). 135
times in this project) asked a question of the participants: What is the one thing you want your students to know or be able to do as a result of their study abroad experience? Of course, I had thought about this, broadly, for all of the programs I worked with – on campus, online, in the local area, in the United States, as well as abroad; but, I had not genuinely contemplated this in relation to study abroad, specifically. It was an uncomfortable moment, there were so many possibilities going through my mind – self-efficacy, language skills, cultural awareness, global leadership skills, resilience, confidence, and more. These were the outcomes that the other participants were throwing out, and I agreed with all of them, but when Dr. Vande Berg came to me, I was stuck. I could not name that one thing. I passed but continued to reflect and seriously consider the question. Certainly, a troublesome knowledge moment. That night was an unusually hot one (for Portland) and it was oppressively stifling on the third floor of the residence hall in a room with one window and no cross breeze. My roommates, two that year, were sleeping soundly, but I could not sleep. I was concerned about being respectful, and not allowing my tossing, turning, sweating, and deep sighs of discomfort and restlessness to disturb their slumber. I got up and made my way down to the common area on the first floor to see if some late-night television could tame the disquiet I was feeling, physically and emotionally (intercultural work is hard!). It was more comfortable, temperature-wise, on the first floor, with the summer nighttime mountain breezes coming through the big open windows on both sides of the building. As I cooled down, I had a revelation that disrupted my monkey- mind musings – what I wanted for my students was to respect and be respected in whatever culture they found themselves immersed. Whether that was their own culture, or an unfamiliar culture, if they showed respect and they were respected by others in the culture, then they had gained not only knowledge and linguistic abilities, but also skills, perspectives, and attitudes that were allowing them to understand what it meant to respectfully navigate in another cultural context, and they had gained the respect of the people, places, and cultures in which they engaged. Respect. It became that simple for me. That is what I wanted our students to know or be able to do as a result of their study abroad experience. This insight and commitment has guided my efforts since that moment. Others have pushed back on it, especially the simplicity of it, and usually express their opinion that it is far more complicated. I hear things like, “there are people who respected Hitler.” I have not wavered. If I have to choose one thing, it is respect in the
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context of a cross cultural experience. Certainly, I also want our students to build knowledge, skills, and attitudes in all realms, but, for me, it is respect that is at the core of designing intercultural learning experiences
Findings in Action: Designing Enriching Intercultural Learning Experiences
The evidence in this project provides support for cultivating curiosity in a student sojourner by meeting them where they are at and exploiting the natural curiosity that they have developed and had enriched in their lives. Tapping into the curiosity of students requires understanding what encourages their wonder and intrigue. Just as every individual student comes to the study abroad cross cultural experience with their own cultural background and identity, they also come to the encounter with curiosity that is piqued through idiosyncratic ways and means. Study abroad professionals and faculty can unearth these portals and use them as a way into effective and transformative experiences that support increased levels of global and intercultural competence, for students and for international education professionals.
The Culture of Flooring In my international educator role, I travel. I travel a lot. Some years more than others. I have traveled a lot for about 20 years, domestically and internationally. In those years, digital photography has matured technologically making it very easy to take a lot of pictures. As noted earlier, I use these photographs to document my journey, but it is also a way to keep my family – especially my homebound 86-year old mother – updated on where I am and what I am doing, as well as the sites I am seeing along the way. It provides the “proof of life” they want when I am too cheap to text or call, especially internationally. Friends, co-workers, and family agree. They see my curious nature illuminated in the photos I take when I am traveling. I have a tendency to take pictures of sites and places of interest, including architectural details, statues or parts of them, graffiti, signs, and random curious sites I come upon. As I write this, I am in New York City for a few days. Reviewing my iPhone 7 Plus camera feed, I see photos of the lion statues at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, four random sketches of celebrities (Kermit the Frog, Lin Manuel Miranda, Josh Groban, and Jose Ferrer as Cyrano de
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Bergerac with long nose so the frame was bumped out to accommodate the nose) on the walls of Sardis restaurant bar area, and a picture of the Chrysler Building peeking out from between two other buildings taken when I was walking to a meeting on a sunny day, randomly looked up, and there it was. In addition, there are pictures from my hotel room windows. In fact, I have an entire Facebook photo album file titled, Pics from Hotel Room Windows, and it is filled with pictures from hotel room windows in the United States, as well as China, Malawi, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, and more. Along the way in my travels I began noticing what was under my feet as I moved forward in my journey. At first this was in airports. I spend a lot of time in them, and I enjoy people watching, but I also appreciate airport architecture. That awareness led more specifically to the interior design of airports around the world. I started taking photographs of, specifically, airport carpet. I posted these to my social media. It began with the carpet in Portland, Oregon. In that international airport, known as PDX, there is very distinctive carpet, and I noticed it long before it became an airport carpet celebrity and the inspiration for all manner of swag (Christmas ornaments, socks, t-shirts, and ties). The design in the carpet reflects the shape and configuration of the PDX airport terminals. Embedded on a turquoise background, the deep blue, pinkish-red, and white design is really, in my opinion, quite unique.
Figure 12. Portland, Oregon airport carpet.
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After I had taken many pictures of the PDX carpet and researched its origin by talking to airport employees to learn more about the design elements, I began taking photos of the carpet in every airport, and eventually moving beyond airports. My friends and family began commenting on these photos in Instagram and Facebook and asking for carpet photos each time I traveled. Along the way, I began taking pictures of other carpet: The “power” carpet in our university administration building, the fascinating carpet found in hotels around the world, and in museums which tend to have beautiful, vintage, often handmade, carpets. Eventually, I was taking pictures of even the urban and rural paths I found myself traveling in my journeys.
Figure 13. Carpet in the university administration offices and building.
Figure 14. Hotel carpet, Philadelphia Downtown Marriott.
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Figure 15. Hotel carpet. Xi’an, China Westin Hotel
Figure 16. Iranian-made carpet in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK
Only recently, I discovered beautiful non-carpeted, concrete, floors in hotels and airports in the United States, Spain, other locations around Europe, and China.
Figure 17. Hotel St. Francis Westin, San Francisco
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Figure 18. Terminal 4, Madrid, Spain.
Figure 19. Ceramic tile floor, Delta terminal, Heathrow, London, UK
My curiosity was definitively piqued by flooring and the cultural implications, and it led down a path where I independently learned about the cultural roots of airports. My travel stories are often now framed in what is under my feet – carpet, tile, concrete, and even the dirt of the earth.
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Recently a story went viral in the news and in social media about a corporate pilot who travels a lot and inhabits many hotels throughout the world. He has an Instagram account, @myhotelcarpet. I went to his website where I found that he is also a professional photographer (www.billyoungimage.com). Bill Young, as a professional photographer, has much better pictures than I, they are in fact stunning photographs of hotel carpets and floors. He says, "I started it kind of on a whim, a little joke to see what would happen, I didn't think hardly anybody would look at it.… If you can notice something different, that catches your eye, then why not? It's kind of fun, it's like collecting something" (Street, 2018). I concur; it is very much like collecting something, having a permanent record of a moment in time that was interesting, made me stop, look, and think. It is a something I can go back and look at to remind myself what I saw at that time, in that place, and how I look at that moment in time now, reflecting on how it has impacted who I am today. Mr. Young (no relation as far as I know) has over 544,000 Instagram followers – there is something about his creativity and artistry that has caught the attention of many people. We are curious. I have been taking pictures in my travels for quite some time now while spending a lot of time in airports. That fueled my curiosity about airport design and architecture, but particularly the floor finishes. What I discovered when I researched this a little bit is that “specific patterns, colors, customizations and finishes throughout airport lounges and shopping nodes, can bear symbol and values of the city’s architecture and accordingly accentuate the cultural and symbolic values” (Koehi, 2017). When architecture and interior design firms look at airport projects, they work with the clients to “uncover and celebrate what is unique about their region and country… [and] use art and architecture to differentiate airports and make them more enjoyable and easier to get around” (Koehi, 2017). Only someone with the mindset or worldview that comprehends culture as a meta-context would be effective working in this type of architectural or interior design project, and that is the global, cultural, mindset we want to develop in our students. We need for our students to develop and cultivate a curious nature to see what they are looking at, put it into context, keep it with them, to reflect on it again and again in multiple contexts, and with diverse perspectives. Deepening the reflection, one of the findings in this project is that students connected to new places or cultures either through the artifacts of the place, or through the people in that place. In the context of our current geopolitical context, one in which there is a lot of talk about
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borders and border walls, I am mindful that we do not send students abroad to look at monuments (or the floors beneath their feet, for that matter), and instead center our value in the curriculum and pedagogy of the sojourn that the most important experience is constituted by the cultivation of human relationships. For students to build a cultural mindset that will lead to genuine transformation, in themselves, and in the world, we need the courage to say we are doing this to transform human relations, also. Students who choose to study abroad are curious at some level. Instructors can mindfully and intentionally tap into that genuine human curiosity and meet the students where they are to support finding what it is about people and places that intrigues them, where the portal into the culture is for them. In my case, more recently it is the flooring in airports. For the students interviewed in this project there was a range of portals – language, statuary, something going on in the homestay (consider Oscar, and his toddler homestay sister, CeCe), for Angela it was grocery stores and what she found on the shelves and in the experiences of shoppers in an unfamiliar culture and location. To be truly transformational, for the student, and for the world, it is the human relationships that come out of these portals that will make the difference. That is our social responsibility.
Curriculum and Pedagogy: Culture as a Meta-Context Education abroad is, of course, about learning in an abroad location, in an unfamiliar culture, and the intent is to enhance the students’ intercultural and global competence which will strengthen their ability to navigate respectfully in our increasingly globalized world. Whether they choose to live in the United States, or elsewhere, the ability to respect and cross cultural boundaries, and be a respected member of the culture, are the core goals of a study abroad sojourn experience in higher education. Curriculum includes the courses or learning experiences in a study abroad program, as well as the pedagogy, or the methods and practices of teaching not only the subject matter but for a program abroad it has to be embedded into the context and culture of the location. Education abroad programming can and does wrap around any discipline or subject matter, and the co- curriculum, or the planned activities that concentrate on program learning outcomes and goals which will further the student learning and cultural adaptation.
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The education abroad experience is accomplished within communities which can be visualized as three concentric circles of a program. The first circle, at the center, is the program community, including the faculty leader and other students. This is a community which provides stability for the student and program, as well as a sense of shared purpose and program identity. The second circle comprises the local community in which the students are interacting on a regular and organized basis, e.g., the homestay families, other travelers in a hostel or lodging, or resident advisors. The third circle is the larger community in which the students are learning to function, perform, and interact. The greater community includes people such as taxi drivers, restaurant staff, and neighborhoods in which they reside, or places, like the country in which they are living and studying. Holistically, the second and third circles contribute to cultural adaptation, but the interactions in and among all of the circles of community together must be developed in the program and are critical to the student’s cultural experience and learning (Gillespie, Braskamp, Dwyer, 2009; Gudykunst & Kim, 2003). Curricular and co-curricular experiences are designed to engage the students in the communities of learning and encompass culture as the higher order context – the cultures of each of the communities are taken into consideration. Culture is always present, never inert, and is fluidly and dynamically constructed, continuously. This is the context for an impactful study abroad experience that builds intercultural competence, including being respected and respecting others when navigating a culture, whether that is abroad, or locally. As a threshold concept in study abroad, the meta-context of culture has the potential to be transformational and develop global perspectives. It frames and is embedded in all aspects of the design and delivery of the study abroad program: Learning outcomes, preparation for the experience, learning interventions, and the lifelong post-immersion reflection. In developing clear learning outcomes for study abroad programs, we can frame them with culture as a meta-context to support students in becoming increasingly aware of the underlying notion that culture frames what they encounter, but also that culture simply is (Nahavandi, 2016). It begins with self-awareness of students’ own cultural backgrounds and history. With intercultural competence as a goal, and an understanding that it is a lifelong process, a short term study abroad program can be designed with consideration to the knowledge that no single course, experience, or training is going to result in achieving intercultural competence and each student (or any person) has to be met where they are in their own
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intercultural journey in life. In the end, development is about the process of learning interculturally about ourselves and the world (Deardorff, 2018). With a focus on the process itself, learning outcomes are developed that support students in becoming aware of what they do not know and becoming comfortable with ambiguity (Lather, 1998). Learning outcomes need to challenge students to move beyond knowledge such as geography, census data, and history, to engage in a cultural vocabulary and learning that includes understanding their own assumptions and biases, developing cultural awareness, understanding diversity in cultural values, engaging with the impact of culture on themselves and others, facing the lived experience of culture, and navigating cross-cultural interactions (Nahavandi, 2016; Pasquarelli, Cole, & Tyson, 2018; Vande Berg, Paige, & Lou, 2012). In approaching culture as the meta-context of a threshold concept, students can transform and develop a cultural mindset as they consider how taking culture into consideration influences how they comprehend the world. This has an impact on how they perceive themselves and interactions where they can recognize their own biases and opt for appropriate behaviors that fit the situation, “culture becomes… a way of thinking about self, others, and organizations, a cultural mindset” (Nahavandi, p. 813, 2016). It is essential that programs are designed around culture as the highest order context to engage learners in achieving the intercultural and global learning outcomes and developing a cultural mindset. Specifically, personal cultural self-awareness, guided by curiosity, when interconnected with understanding its impact and values on themselves and others, allows learners to clarify their own complex cultural identity. Culture is pervasive and becomes interconnected with their own identity, awareness, and perceptions (Nahavandi, 2016), as culture as a concept embedded in the learners’ experience and mindset becomes increasingly troublesome, then transformational, and ultimately irreversible (Meyer & Land, 2006; Meyer, Land, & Baillie, 2010; Land, Meyer, & Flanagan, 2016).
Faculty Mentor and Guide Cultural immersion is necessary for an educational sojourn experience (Vande Berg, Paige, & Lou, 2012; Deardorff, 2018), but not sufficient. Immersion in an unfamiliar culture has to be combined with learning interventions and guidance (Pasquarelli, Cole, & Tyson, 2018; Vande Berg, Paige, & Lou, 2012). The evidence resulting from this project is very clear –
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students thrive and succeed when teachers, professors, and educational mentors recognize and reinforce a students’ curiosity and yearning for learning experiences and enrichment. In the previous section, it was noted that the first circle of community in a study abroad experience encompasses the faculty leader, and it is that educator who plays a pivotal role in faculty-led study abroad not only as an instructor, but as a cultural mentor who guides students in their journey toward greater intercultural competence. A cultural mentor is defined as supplying “intercultural pedagogy in which the mentor provides ongoing support for, and facilitation of, intercultural learning and development” and involves “intentional and deliberate pedagogical approaches, activated through the study abroad cycle… designed to enhance students’ intercultural competence (Paige & Goode, p. 29, 2009). With strategic and intentional mentoring, educators can consciously guide students in their interactions and reflection (Gala & Garrido, 2018). Faculty supporting students with cultural mentoring and providing space and time for them to reflect on and engage with culture and themselves as cultural beings will encourage the students’ ability to grasp the threshold concept and navigate through the portal of transformational learning. A part of this journey is the liminal space where knowledge is troublesome, and curiosity has brought them to the disequilibrium of intercultural wonderment. The cultural mentor’s role and presence is important throughout the student experience, but particularly in cultivating the process of intercultural wonderment that encapsulates the underlying curiosity in the student to continue to seek new experiences and support the student willingness to handle the discomfort that comes with the troublesome new encounters and understandings. Figure 20 illustrates the process of the cultural mentor relationship and how the mentor can intervene and guide the student with culture as a meta-context.
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Curiosity Intercultural Wonderment
Culture as Meta- Context
Threshold Troublesome Concept knowledge
Figure 20. Faculty/cultural mentor process throughout the study abroad program with culture as the meta-context for the experience.
Cultural mentoring is ongoing throughout the entire study abroad cycle and begins before departure. Preparing students for the sojourn experience and crossing cultures is critical. Mentors can begin to understand what motivates curiosity in the individual student and start initiating cultivation of their curiosity. Mentoring during the program can take many forms, but at its core it is about engaging students in an ongoing discourse about their experiences and helping them understand the cultural and intercultural implications of their encounters. It is during the immersion phase when students are learning to apply the knowledge gained in their previous courses, experiences, and co-curricular activity. As they apply their knowledge, they are increasingly able to behave and communicate effectively and appropriately in the unfamiliar culture, and they are grasping the concept of the pervasive nature of culture. The post-immersion phase goes on their entire lives, but cultural mentoring guides their reflection on their intercultural experiences, as it supports the students in making meaning of their encounters.
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Students will begin to challenge their own cultural assumptions, and the cultural mentor supports their consideration of other cultural perspectives at home and abroad (Paige & Vande Berg, 2012). The students’ frame of reference is shifting as they cross the threshold and have a transformed critical understanding of culture as a meta-context.
Knowledge, Application, and Threshold Concepts In the Curriculum as a Process model, Knight (2001) suggests that knowledge, application, and threshold concepts come together at varying levels and ways to support learners. In an attempt to clarify the complexity of threshold concepts, knowledge, and application, an unknown author on the website HE Reflections (2015) illustrates Knight’s process as a Venn diagram that begins from a position of viewing knowledge as a building block on which concepts are understood, but application is the practical use of the emerging learning (see Figure 21). At the intersections of knowledge, concepts, and application is where curriculum can be realized with critical understanding and application.
Figure 21. Curriculum as a process using threshold concepts to build knowledge (Knight, 2001).
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Modifying this to consider curiosity, with culture as the higher order concept which represents the threshold concept in a study abroad curriculum designed to develop cultural competence, Figure 22 illustrates how a practical scaffolding for developmental learning outcomes which provide knowledge, along with opportunities for application, connects and intersects with the transformed understanding of culture as a meta context which frames the knowledge and application. Curiosity enhances the knowledge, as well as the application, and allows for deeper immersion that moves the learner to the threshold concept of culture as a meta- context that leads to a transformed understanding and enhanced curiosity, as well as other intercultural competencies.
Figure 22 Curriculum as Process Model with curiosity built into the model. Based on and adapted from Knight (2001) and Stenhouse (1975)
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Interventions As noted, immersion is not sufficient for building competencies. Students learn and develop more effectively when there are intentionally designed and focused interventions throughout the study abroad process. The literature review in Chapter 2 introduced an effective rationale for pedagogical interventions in study abroad programming that will deepen the awareness and engagement of students at the various stages of the sojourn cycle – pre, during, and post study abroad. The findings of this project support the literature and include the importance of educators in the impact of a sojourn experience with a further impact on the student through enrichment programs at the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels. Like enrichment programs, interventions will more fully support the student in gaining skills, competencies, and abilities before, during, and after their study abroad programs. Storytelling. This project suggests there is power in a story. Through the interviews with students, before, during, and after study abroad, it was evident that they had stories that they wanted to tell. Also apparent is that I, the researcher, had a story to tell that guided my own reflections on my educational sojourn opportunities. My experiences guided this project in many ways, but particularly as it overlays and hovers above the project, the students’ experiences, and what I will take away from this project. The inclusion of storytelling, and currere narratives, as a pedagogical intervention, are a channel through which self-awareness will develop, and that is the pathway toward understanding culture as a meta-context, and building intercultural competence (Andenoro, Popa, Bletscher, & Albert, 2012). Personal narratives are born out of experience and give shape to the experience (Ochs & Capps, 1996), so the narrative and the self are separate. Through the narrative, the storyteller builds a more powerful understanding of themselves, as well as their educational experiences, and reflects more deeply on how students understand encounters and their relationships with culture and people. Giving student sojourners time, space, and guidance in telling the story of their journey will support their own story and build self-awareness, critical for understanding culture as the higher order concept. Today students are more likely to engage when telling a story through social media, and Instagram makes that possible through a feature called “Stories” in which media and images can be embedded together with text to communicate more profoundly. The prolific Instagrammer student, Oscar, recently posted a “story” that embedded music against his Spain photos, and his
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own voice over it that said six times quickly, “life changing.” I don’t have the context for this, since at the point he posted this, he had graduated and left the university, but I believe he is sharing a bit of nostalgia for his experience in Spain the previous summer, on the anniversary of the date he would have arrived there the previous year. This is a powerful way for students to tell their stories and share them, even a year later. This could be a formidable way for the students to continuously reflect on their experience. However, it is important to note that every student will have his or her own way of reflecting. For Oscar, it is Instagram, for another student, like Marilyn, it could be staged personal still life photos, or for Erin it might be a written journal. Again, we need to meet the students where they are to move them forward. Language Learning. Also suggested by this project is the power of language learning. Study abroad programs can be based in language learning, but even programs that are not language learning based can embed conversational language learning into the learning outcomes. This project suggests what the literature also confirms (Moreno-Lopez, Ramos-Sellman, Miranda-Aldaco, Quinto, 2017; Norris & Steinberg, 2008; Savicki, 2013) language, even conversational use of the language, connects people across cultures. Jim, the student who had never taken a Spanish course but learned the language independently in his study abroad experiences, exhibited a high level of curiosity, but also intercultural competence. Through language, and collaborating with cultural natives, he embedded and immersed more deeply. Many faculty believe embedding a language component implies a 100-300 level language learning element, but even teaching students basic language skills to use conversationally encourages sojourners to engage with people in the culture. The evidence shows that they become more confident in navigating the location. Homestays. In addition to language, homestays were shown to cultivate curiosity and deepen the learning experience through a more profound sense of the self in an unfamiliar culture, which build competence. Homestays do not need to be the core of the program, but even weekend or short homestays are effective learning interventions that support satisfying curiosity about culture, connect the student with another level of community, and move the student closer to that threshold of understanding culture. Students who connect to a location, rather than people, will particularly benefit from an experience that embeds the student more deeply into the culture through a homestay in which they are living in a home in the culture and engaging daily with a family.
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Assessment. Developing education abroad programs is an iterative process of creating and implementing (Pasquerelli, 2018). Assessment is crucial in this process. As noted in Chapter 2, there are multiplying numbers of intercultural, multicultural, global leadership, and global competence assessments. If the goal is building competencies, we want to know if what we are doing is fulfilling the goals, and if not, how we intend to improve the learning experience. In our university, it is an institutional imperative coming down from our accrediting body – improve student learning. Assessing global learning should be grounded in the larger context of institutional assessment efforts and the culture, but start with learning goals, engaging faculty, and identifying and creating the learning opportunities (Green, 2012). Assessment will allow for demonstrating student development through the process of cultivating intercultural competence and whether or not the threshold concept was mastered and there is a breakthrough representing irreversible transformation. There are at least two intercultural competence assessment instruments which also provide coaching for students. One of these, the Global Competencies Inventory (GCI) “was developed specifically to evaluate the skills critical to interacting effectively with people who are from cultures other than our own” (Kozai Group, n.d.). With pre- and post-measurements, it allows for understanding changes in intercultural competencies. I am certified as a GCI administrator, and with that, I have taken it a number of times. The first time I did it, I got a call from someone at the Kozai Group who did not understand my results, and he asked me to take it again. I did. When I then met with him in the training session, he showed me the results in the 22-page report. I scored very high in almost all intercultural competences, very high in fact in one – curiosity. However, there was one area in which I scored exceedingly low – optimism. They had not seen these results before, but I confirmed that I did understand it. I tend to be a glass half empty person. The instrument nailed my naturally pessimistic nature, but it also provided suggestions for coaching myself to be more optimistic. I have used those suggestions for about nine years at this point, and they work. Students also report that the coaching that comes with the GCI report is effective. When I observed students in one of the pre-study abroad courses, they referred to their reports as they presented and talked about what areas they were going to try to develop through their study abroad experience, and how they would take on that challenge.
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Using assessment to improve global learning is a critical intervention in the learning process, but also becomes important in developing interventions that will support increased levels of global learning, self-awareness, and cultural understanding.
What Does This Look Like in My Practice? Part II
I would not have undertaken any project to complete my doctoral program requirements unless it would have application to my practice. In this case, the project and findings inform and have impact on, quite directly, study abroad at our university. I have also found collateral benefits from this immersion project into curiosity. In general, study abroad in U.S. higher education has become commodified and quantified, but more specifically I can speak to the university where I serve as the Senior International Officer, with a Study Abroad office under my administrative umbrella of responsibility. There is constant pressure to increase the number and percentages of undergraduate students who study abroad by the time they graduate. This metric is measured by the Institute of International Education, a non-profit organization that publishes an annual report in November, just before International Education Week, which details the numbers of students from the United States studying abroad by university, country, and other categories. Each year we wait, on pins and needles, to know our study abroad ranking. Over the past five years we have been ranked anywhere from number 1 to number 3 in the percentage of undergraduate students studying abroad by the time of graduation at a public doctoral university in the United States. This is a percentage determined by the number of undergraduate students who studied abroad that year as the numerator, and the denominator is the number of undergraduate students who graduated in that same year as determined by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) from information provided by the university Institutional Research office. The fraction results in a percentage, and the ranking is determined by that percentage. The difference between being ranked number 1, 2, or 3 can be as little as 3/10s of a percentage point. There are two schools with whom we “compete” for the number 1 ranking consistently – the College of William and Mary and the Georgia Institute of Technology. According to the Institute of International Education Open Doors report (2017) these universities have fewer students than my university study abroad annually, about 750 and 1,300 respectively (students who are all fully funded with scholarships, while only about 12% of our students have
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partial scholarships, and less than 1% have full scholarships), but as a percentage of their graduates, they outrank us sometimes, although we are sending 1,650 students abroad (with 3,400 graduates). It’s a game with numbers. Some years we “win” and others we “lose.”36 The university capitalizes on the study abroad rankings by promoting them in student recruitment, publications, and publicity that extol our rankings in all realms to maintain visibility in the higher education market, to position us as a “global” university, and to support our fundraising goals, proposals, and activities that are developed around the numbers and rankings to raise scholarship funds through the academic divisions. Digging in deeper, when the university promotes study abroad we promote our own faculty-led study abroad programs over direct enrollment in a foreign university, or in a program in collaboration with a study abroad provider. Why? Follow the money. When a student enrolls in study abroad credit hours in programs developed and led by our university faculty, the tuition stays at our university. Yes, there are expenses, often significant travel, salary, and benefits expenses, but in our case, as well as at most universities, this is additional revenue over and above the “regular” tuition revenue students pay for the academic year, and the bottom line is additional revenue, or surplus. In our case, if the bottom line is not a surplus for any individual program, then that program does not operate, even if it is a stellar offering by all standards – academic, intercultural learning outcomes, etc. We are, indeed, profiting from study abroad. From my perspective, the commodification and quantification of study abroad has served to diminish the quality of the experiential learning opportunity. When we develop budgets by program, ensuring that each program “floats on its own bottom” financially, rather than balancing all program budgets (revenue and expenses) at the institutional or even divisional levels, we are not investing in programs that have academic integrity (as measured in student success and enhanced intercultural and global competence) but may not be financially lucrative. Balancing at the institutional or divisional level would allow profitable programs to support those that might not be as financially sustainable but are academically and interculturally viable. We are sacrificing quality for quantity. When we focus on the financial bottom line over program integrity, the students and the learning outcomes suffer. I have seen this first-hand over the past 20 years, and I am complicit.
36 Higher education rankings, not only the study abroad rankings, would be a good research project, and I seriously considered undertaking that research for this project. 154
Further, the number of faculty led study abroad programs has grown, unchecked, exponentially, over the past six years. Academic divisions want the revenue, and I believe they do see the value of study abroad, but any program developed by any faculty member is approved. The only factor that most approvers review for an approval or a denial decision is the financial bottom line. The programs are competing with one another, even within academic divisions, but also and deliberately between academic divisions. The number of students is not rising as the numbers of programs rises, the students are simply being spread out among more programs. Therefore, the study abroad office support is spread thinly across the growing number of programs because in our university budget model, our funding is constant, and the staffing level is fixed for an academic support unit such as mine. In my own fervor and passion for study abroad and international initiatives and knowing the value of an intentionally immersive experience in another culture, as well as understanding culture as the transformational meta-context not only for study abroad, but for life in the world today, I allowed quantity to overtake quality in my study abroad practice. This research project has driven home the need to back this down, and to focus on the quality of the learning and immersion experience offered in faculty led programs, perhaps beyond. We can measure study abroad in the grades, number of students, number of courses, or number of locations, but the long term goals that are found in development of global human relationships cannot be measured; we cannot measure the human experience, but we can design, develop, and deliver curriculum and pedagogy that will have genuine meaning for all involved, and could transform the world through genuine, intentional, people-to-people building of relationships. Even before one word of this final project report was written, but after the interviews and observations had taken place, I began a strategic project to enhance the intercultural and global learning outcomes of the programs that I administer. It began with faculty – there are academically sound, interculturally relevant programs still being offered by faculty even as the numbers of programs increased and included many new programs that were simply travel and city hopping tours abroad. I started with faculty who are offering what we know to be quality programs and invited them to be a part of a “faculty collaborative” in which their programs would be featured. As a selective program we would highlight the best practices the faculty used in developing student learning outcomes, implementation of cultural learning interventions, and modeling cultural mentoring, even as a global learning specialist (retired Intercultural
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Communication professor) coached the faculty in enhancing the already great work they were doing with student sojourners and programs. The final product will be a resource guide for other faculty, as well as workshops through our Center for Teaching Excellence that will bring the best practices to other faculty study abroad leaders. The highlighted programs will be featured in advising students as programs that will enhance their intercultural and global competencies, and support them as global learners, and later in their professional or continuing academic careers. In order to allow students to credential their enhanced intercultural and global learning, a certificate program was developed. The general education requirements at our university are global in focus; however, for students who want to take that to the next level, we developed a certificate that has taken the findings of this project and embedded them into a curriculum and co-curriculum that focuses on cultivating curiosity, includes cultural mentoring and advising, is customizable, and most important, guides students toward learning outcomes that develop a cultural mindset, or the transformational understanding of culture as the high level context. Students will not necessarily study abroad in a foreign location. Students may choose curricular and co-curricular options that embed internationalized learning on campus, or in their own communities, or in an unfamiliar culture within the United States, with the understanding that culture is not just something we find outside of our home country – there is a plurality of cultures accessible to students and with the appropriate cultural mentoring, and curricular scaffolding, students will gain intercultural and global competencies “at home.” This certificate program will also support our international students studying on our campus in building their intercultural and global competence. Finally, we implemented a proposal and budget process which allows for less “automatic” approval of every program that comes forward and illustrates to the academic division a more holistic level of budgeting – all of the program revenue and expenses as a total. Divisional deans and associate deans in the approval process are able to see that even a stellar intercultural program that generates a slight deficit has value, and that deficit is covered by other revenue. This is a process, but early indications are that we are balancing curricular needs and sustainability, and strengthening learning outcomes, even as we are reducing the number of programs offered to focus on those that can demonstrate global and intercultural learning outcomes and building cultural mindsets in the student sojourners. There were simply too many
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programs competing with one another. Even though we decreased the number of programs we offer, the number of students remains steady. There is more work to do in this realm, but this has made an impact in my study abroad practice, with the unintended consequence of also supporting a deeper global learning experience for international students who enroll at our American university. The next endeavor coming out of this project is to use the findings to embed cultivation of curiosity, intercultural wonderment, and culture as meta-context into the required course for international students intended to introduce them to American higher education and culture.
Conclusion I began this research journey as a result of my own curiosity about curiosity. The student perspectives provided powerful insights into the realms of teacher support for learning, enrichment as a critical means of cultivating curiosity, how intercultural wonderment captures curiosity and throws the student learner into disequilibrium, and finally that the concept of culture as a meta-context is at least one threshold concept that can thrust learners through a conceptual entrance into previously inaccessible perspectives and help them develop cultural mindsets. The contribution to the literature is not any single finding or theme, rather, how these concepts (intercultural wonderment, threshold concepts, and culture-as-meta-context) all come together as a process that begins with the student’s curiosity, and then cultivates higher levels of curiosity in student sojourners. In my interactions with students and faculty throughout this project, I found that I was transformed also. My perspective broadened about student experiences, even as it deepened my resolve that curiosity is a critical intercultural competence that can, and should, be cultivated in students, and it needs to be recognized, acknowledged, and nurtured constantly not only in my students, but in the faculty I work with, and the staff I lead. I came to understand curiosity as a super power that supports developing bridges between ourselves and other people, places, and cultures. My curiosity has taken me a lot of places, and in those places, I have met a lot of people. I believe that this has enhanced my creativity, reduced my biases, and promoted success personally and professionally. The new knowledge and frames of reference will be used to support all students in understanding that leading across cultures requires curiosity and being sensitive to cultural
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biases. Further, in leading my own teams, I will more intentionally cultivate a culture of curiosity by encouraging questions, broadening my perception of professional development, and encouraging inquiry. This project allowed me to take it and move it forward to support others in having a clearer sense of themselves and their place in the world.
Lastly, she pictured to herself … how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days. ~Lewis Carroll37
37 Carroll, 2015, p. 149 158
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Appendix A
Key Question What is the lived experience of human interpersonal Does the sojourner value How do students understand How do students express or
curiosity as it manifests in an curiosity as a competence? curiosity? demonstrate curiosity? intercultural learning experience that takes students into an unfamiliar culture? Research Questions
Interview Questions Synthetical Analytical Regressive Progressive Background Questions 1 Birthdate 2 Where were you born? Where do you consider "home"? 3 Education -- public or private? 4 Year of high school graduation 5 6 What is your major? 7 What year in school?
8 Did you transfer in credit? Approx # of hours Have you previously traveled 9 abroad? What are your career 10 aspirations? Educational Experience Tell me about your elementary 11 X X educational experience. How would you describe the school you attended? Tell me about your favorite part of school, favorite teacher, friends, out of school activities. And your least favorite?
Tell me about your secondary 12 X X school experience. How would you describe the school you attended? Tell me about your favorite part of school, favorite teacher, friends, out of school activities. And your least favorite?
How do you think your 13 educational experience formed X X who you are today and in your university experience?
Study Abroad Describe an experience 14 of exploring a new place or X X environment. What are you looking for in a new place or environment? (consider: first day on
Imagine
Describe how you went about 16 making the decision to study X X X X abroad. Has anyone else in your family studied abroad? Who was influential in the decision? How has
If this doesn’t t come out
with this question, then follow up: 17 X X Describe how
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Appendix A
Key Question What is the lived experience of human interpersonal Does the sojourner value How do students understand How do students express or curiosity as it manifests in an curiosity as a competence? curiosity? demonstrate curiosity? intercultural learning experience that
takes students into an unfamiliar culture? Research Questions
Interview Questions Synthetical Analytical Regressive Progressive Curiosity What does being curious and 18 curiosity mean to you? Follow up: X X X how did curiosity play a role in
Would you say that you are more or 19 less curious than your friends? X X Why? Tell me about a time when you 20 sought new information about X X X X traveling or studying
When you meet someone new, what 21 do you want to know about them? X X X Think about the last time you
How do you understand 22 /think about/contextualize curiosity X in the context of study abroad? How can curiosity be stimulated by
Observations and groups
The competencies we (educators, X X X X study abroad professionals) hope that our students who choose to study abroad will gain include knowledge (self- awareness, cultural worldviews), skills (empathy and communication), and attitudes (curiosity and openness). I would like to talk about how your educational experiences have contributed to these competencies, but especially curiosity.
How would you define curiosity? X X X X Empathy?
What experiences have you had, in school or outside of school, at any X X X X level, that you think have supported building these competencies in your lives?
Discuss how cultural world views have been impacted by the experiences that they have X X X X connected to curiosity.
Ap
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Appendix B
Courses Observed – Course Descriptions
IDS 154 Introduction to Study Abroad (2) Introduces students to cultural basics, skills, and host-country specifics required for maximizing their study abroad experience and for respecting and interacting with people in other cultures. Students will consider questions, issues, and challenges that will be part of their travel, study, and daily lives while studying abroad and develop tools for increased cultural competencies. Prerequisite: spring semester sophomore, junior, or senior standing.
IDS 156 Study Abroad Reentry Seminar (1) Explores meanings of the student’s international education experience.
INS 150 Preparing for Cross-Cultural Engagement Abroad (1) Introduces students to cultural basics and skills needed for understanding and interacting with people in other cultures. Assignments are designed to familiarize with host-country specifics and prepare for a successful stay – whether in a homestay, dorm, or house.
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Appendix C
Programs Observed – Program Descriptions
Experience Arts and Culture in Italy This course in Italy introduces the roots of Western Civilization and its art and culture. Three intensive weeks and 6 credits—this study abroad experience will focus on the history, art, music and culture that developed from Ancient Rome to the present day including Florence, the center of the Italian Renaissance. Students will spend 10 days in Rome and 11 days in Florence experiencing the Ancient Roman Forum, the Colosseum, Middle Ages and Baroque architecture, the Vatican and its museums including the famous the Sistine Chapel of Michelangelo. See an opera live at the ancient Baths of Caracalla. In Florence, which once was a once a powerful republic under the powerful Medici family, students will study the Renaissance. Experience Michelangelo's David, at the Accademia. Additional trips to Tivoli, Assisi, Siena and Pisa add to the depth of knowledge of Italy beyond its urban centers.
El Camino de Santiago For the first six weeks students take courses in Gijon, Spain and have a homestay experience. Then students experience history first-hand by hiking along The Way of St. James (El Camino de Santiago) and explore Spain from North to South and from East to West.
European Center Summer Program This Intensive Summer Program is a nine-credit-hour experience designed for the serious student who wants to complete an entire European-focused Thematic Sequence or Global Perspectives and/or other potential Foundation requirements in only seven weeks during the Summer Session. Classes meet Monday through Thursday and two 6-day (5-night) faculty-led study tours are embedded in the 7-week program. All students live in a European homestay and therefore have an inside view of the local culture. They have the opportunity to interact with local people and learn about everyday life in Luxembourg.
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Appendix D
9-May-17
To: Cheryl D. Young and Thomas S. Poetter ([email protected]; [email protected]) Educational Leadership RE: Encountering the Emergence of Curiosity in a Sojourn Experience
Project reference number is: 02499e (please refer to this ID number in all correspondence to compliance administration)
The project noted above and as described in your application for registering Human Subjects (HS) research has been screened to determine if it is regulated research or meets the criteria of one of the categories of research that can be exempt from approval of an Institutional Review Board (per 45 CFR 46). The determination for your research is indicated below.
The research described in the application is regulated human subjects research, however, the description meets the criteria of at least one exempt category included in 45 CFR 46 and associated guidance. The Applicable Exempt Category(ies) is/are: 2
Research may proceed upon receipt of this certification and compliance with any conditions described in the accompanying email message. When research is deemed exempt from IRB review, it is the responsibility of the researcher listed above to ensure that all future persons not listed on the filed application who i) will aid in collecting data or, ii) will have access to data with subject identifying information, meet the training requirements (CITI Online Training).
If you are considering any changes in this research that may alter the level of risk or wish to include a vulnerable population (e.g. subjects <18 years of age) that was not previously specified in the application, you must consult the Research Compliance Office before implementing these changes.
Exemption certification is not transferrable; this certificate only applies to the researcher specified above. All research exempted from IRB review is subject to post-certification monitoring and audit by the compliance office.
------Neal H. Sullivan, PhD Director: Research Ethics and Integrity Program Office for the Advancement of Research and Scholarship
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Appendix E Invitation to Participate
Curiosity and the Study Abroad Experience
You are invited to participate in a research project being conducted by Cheryl D. Young, a doctoral student at Miami, as well as the director of study abroad. The purpose of this research is to examine the phenomenon of curiosity as it is experienced by college students before, during, and after their study abroad experience. Participation in this research is restricted to American college students, ages 18 to 25 years old. For interviews
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Appendix F Research Consent Information: Interview Curiosity and the Study Abroad Experience You are invited to participate in a research project being conducted by Cheryl D. Young. The purpose of this research is to examine the phenomenon of curiosity as it is experienced by college students before, during, and after their study abroad experience. Participation in this research is restricted to persons 18 years of age or older. The interview should take about 90 minutes. Your participation is voluntary, you may skip questions you do not want to answer, and you may stop at any time. Notes accompanying this interview will not include information about your identity. During this interview, you may be asked to share your social media account information for review. This is voluntary. By providing your social media account name, you indicate that we may review your posts for research purposes. If any direct quotes are used, you will be provided an opportunity to review and agree to dissemination. With your permission, I will digitally record this interview to ensure accuracy. The interview will be transcribed. If you inadvertently include identifying information, such information will be removed from any stored data. Only the researcher will have access to individual responses. If you have any questions about this research or you feel you need more information to determine whether you would like to volunteer, you can contact me at [email protected], 513-461-2264, or Dissertation Advisor, Dr. Thomas Poetter, Department of Educational Leadership, [email protected], 513-529-6825. If you have questions or concerns about the rights of research subjects, you may contact the reviewing body: Research Ethics and Integrity Office at Miami University, at (513) 529-3600 or [email protected] Please keep a copy of this information for future reference.
Participant Name
Participant Signature Date
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