Session Information
99 ERC SES 08 B, Education in an Age of Uncertainty
Paper Session
Contribution
The presentation topic is located in the intersection of internationalization in higher education and formal and non-formal educational activities. Learning abroad, especially in higher education, but also in the non-formal education field, receives a lot of attention in the last decades. Emerging neoliberal pressures have affected the domain of learning abroad and keep pushing towards the direction of sending future professionals overseas in order for them to acquire valuable skills and competencies for their education and future career (Moscovitz & Zahavi, 2019; Rizvi, 2011; Thimmel, 2013; Waldow, 2018; Yang, 2020). These developments have fueled the further diversification of the available programs for learning abroad and, as a result, an increasing number of individuals has visited multiple countries today by getting involved in several types of learning experiences (e.g., study abroad, volunteering, language courses, au-pair, work & travel).
The objective of this research is to collect experiences of current higher education students as well as recent graduates who have participated in at least two different types of international learning experiences. Individuals with multiple experiences abroad were chosen as the most suitable group to determine what people find meaningful across different types of international learning experiences because of their ability to compare their experiences overseas. This presentation focuses on one aspect of the wider research project that is being conducted, and attempts to discover to what extent participants of formal and non-formal international learning experiences find meaningfulness in personal development aspects and/or aspects regarding their contribution to/influence on the world.
Regarding the conceptual framework, I examine meaningfulness mainly in subjective terms (Yeoman, 2019). This means that the assessment of worthiness and the subsequent feelings cultivated by the interviewees should imply that the action is perceived by the individual as meaningful, irrespectively of whether the results could be characterized as ‘objectively meaningful’. The interviewees’ assessment is taken into account first and foremost. Further, to determine and categorize where individuals find meaningfulness and if this is primarily associated with the self or the world, I take into account two theories regarding the sources of meaning (Aguinis & Glavas, 2019; Rosso et al., 2010 in Yeoman, 2014: 18). These theories mention the self, others, the context (skill variety, task identity, task significance), and spiritual life as major sources of meaningfulness.
The analysis under the above-mentioned lens offers a better understanding of what individuals aspire to gain when choosing to go abroad for learning purposes. Following Baumeister (2018), a differentiation is made between happiness and meaningfulness in international learning experiences. This means that positive feelings of happiness during an experience abroad do not necessarily guarantee meaningful results and vice versa. Approaching international experiences from a lifelong perspective, meaningfulness is examined under a lifelong lens in order to help future students and current professionals in the field of internationalization to choose their international learning experiences more consciously.
Method
The research paradigm that the study adopts is social constructivism / interpretivism (Creswell & Creswell, 2018: 7-8; Mason, 2002: 56). According to this framework, each individual seeks to understand the world around them by developing their own unique subjective meanings of their experiences. The research design is exploratory, since there is a very limited number of studies that investigate the phenomenon of multiple international learning experiences, as most research until today has either focused on a very limited spectrum of target groups (mainly university students going abroad to study) or has primarily compared only up to two different target groups with one another (e.g., Streitwieser et al., 2019; Gu et al., 2010; Hudson & Inkson, 2006). Also, the topic of meaningfulness has been approached from psychological and educational perspectives, but has not been investigated specifically in relation to learning abroad apart from the model of Thomas and Kerstetter (2020). As a result, an exploratory, inductive methodological design that is data-driven instead of theory-driven has been selected. Within this framework, the chosen methodological approach is hermeneutical phenomenology (van Manen, 1990 in Creswell, 2013: 79-80). Phenomenology focuses on the lived experiences of individuals who all have experienced the phenomenon which is being investigated. Consequently, this approach is aligned with the research outlined above, since it aims to investigate common or shared experiences of different types of programs for learning abroad based on the individuals’ perception of meaningfulness. Hermeneutical phenomenology, more specifically, engages in an interpretive process during which the researcher attempts to bridge the gap between different meanings (the several meanings coming from each research participant and the researcher’s own meanings and interpretations). As a researcher with experience of multiple formal and non-formal learning abroad programs, I intend to actively use my own lens to interpret the data through a reflexive lens. In terms of sampling, purposive sampling has been applied which is used in cases where it is not possible to identify and list all the individuals belonging to the population that is being investigated (Blaikie, 2000: 205; Silverman, 2022: 294). Interviewees were recruited from Europe (Germany, Greece) and Canada. Lastly, the data will be triangulated by combining the verbal data (semi-structured interviews) with visual data (visual creations by the interviewees, based on the method of the ‘river of experience’ – Iantaffi, 2012).
Expected Outcomes
Most interviewees mention that they found meaningfulness in their international learning experiences in terms of personal development on an individual level. Experiences abroad that led them to make important decisions for their lives, even if they were challenging ones, were described as more meaningful. When asked about the impact of their activities on the world, most interviewees mentioned that they did not think of their actions as irreplaceable and extremely meaningful. On the contrary, some individuals concluded that their 'impact on the world' is rather limited or not detectable at all. Therefore, situations of ‘dynamic stability’ (Long, 2014) that offered circumstances between stability and growth on an individual level were characterized as more meaningful. Furthermore, the way how the experience abroad is embedded into one’s life (preparation before departure, life phase) seems to be of great importance regarding whether an experience is more or less meaningful to the individual.
References
Aguinis, H., & Glavas, A. (2019). On Corporate Social Responsibility, Sensemaking, and the Search for Meaningfulness Through Work. Journal of Management, 45(3), 1057–1086. Baumeister, R. F. (2018). Happiness and meaningfulness as two different and not entirely compatible versions of the good life. The social psychology of living well, 1, 37-49. Blaikie, N. (2000). Designing Social Research: The Logic of Anticipation. Cambridge: Polity Press. Creswell, J. W. & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design (5th ed.). Sage Publications. Creswell, J. W. (2013). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (3rd ed.). Sage Publications. Gu, Q., Schweisfurth, M. & Day, C. (2010). Learning and growing in a ‘foreign’ context: Intercultural experiences of international students. Compare, 40(1), 7-23. Hudson, S. & Inkson, K. (2006). Volunteer overseas development workers: the hero's adventure and personal transformation, Career Development International, 11(4), 304-320. Iantaffi, A. (2012). Travelling along ‘rivers of experience’: personal construct psychology and visual metaphors in research. In Visual Methods in Psychology (pp. 305-317). Routledge. Long, T. (2014). Work Engagement and Meaningfulness: The Application of Personal Construct Theory in Iterative, Exploratory Research. SAGE Publications, Ltd. Mason, J. (2002). Qualitative Researching (2nd ed.). London: Sage Publications. Moscovitz, H. & Zahavi, H. (2019). The Bologna Process as a foreign policy endeavour: motivations and reactions to the externalisation of European higher education, European Journal of Higher Education, 9(1), 7-22. Rizvi, F. (2011). Theorizing student mobility in an era of globalization. Teachers and Teaching, 17(6), 693–701. Silverman, D. (2022). Doing Qualitative Research (6th edition). London: Sage Publications. Streitwieser, B., Bryantb, F. B., Dranec, D. & Light, G. (2019). Assessing student conceptions of international experience: Developing a validated survey instrument. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 68, 26-43. Thimmel, A. (2013). Linking Youth Work and Learning Mobility- The Research Perspective. Mobility Spaces – Learning Spaces - European Platform on Learning Mobility, Berlin. Waldow, F. (2018). “Commentary to Part III: Why Is “Being International” so Attractive? “Being International” as a Source of Legitimacy and Distinction.” In Elite Education and Internationalisation, 247-253. Palgrave Macmillan. Yang, P. (2020). Toward a framework for (re)thinking the ethics and politics of international student mobility. Journal of Studies in International Education, 24(5), 518-534.Yeoman 2019 Yeoman, R. (2014). Meaningful Work and Workplace Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
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