Proposal Information

Gender awareness is often shaped through formal curricula and institutionalized forms of education. However, everyday experiences beyond the classroom, particularly those involving mobility and cultural transition, also play a crucial role in how individuals learn, negotiate, and reconfigure their gendered understandings. This study explores how international students’ travel experiences function as an informal yet powerful site of gender learning, where gender norms are encountered, questioned, and reinterpreted across cultural contexts.

As international students move between their home societies, host institutions, and travel destinations, they are exposed to diverse and sometimes contradictory gender regimes. These encounters frequently disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions about gender roles, expectations, and identities, prompting processes of reflexivity and re-learning. Rather than viewing gender learning as a planned pedagogical outcome, this study conceptualizes it as an emergent and situated process embedded in mobility, everyday practices, and social interaction.

Guided by an interpretive qualitative approach, the study addresses the following exploratory research questions:

1. How do international students’ cross-cultural travel experiences contribute to the development of gender awareness beyond formal education?
2. How do international students negotiate, perform, and reflect upon their gendered identities while navigating different cultural and social contexts?
3. In what ways can mobility and travel be understood as informal sites of gender learning and re-socialization?

The primary objective of the study is to examine how gender consciousness is produced and transformed through cross-cultural mobility. Focusing on the lived experiences of international students studying in Taiwan, the research aims to illuminate how gender learning occurs through informal, incidental, and embodied encounters rather than through explicit gender education curricula.

Conceptually, the study draws on theories of informal learning, particularly Schugurensky’s (2000) framework of self-directed learning and socialization occurring outside institutional settings, which distinguishes between intentional and incidental learning processes as part of everyday experience. This perspective is complemented by feminist theories of gender socialization, which emphasize that gender learning is continuous, relational, and deeply embedded in everyday life. Feminist Geography and Critical Mobility Studies further inform the analysis by foregrounding mobility as a gendered and power-laden process rather than a neutral act of movement. The concept of the “Third Space” is employed to examine how international students navigate the tension between home and host cultural norms, creating liminal spaces in which dominant gender assumptions may be unsettled and reconfigured. Together, these perspectives frame gender learning as an ongoing, informal educational process shaped through mobility and cultural encounter.

This study adopts a qualitative narrative inquiry approach to capture the complexity and reflexive nature of gender learning through mobility. The participants are international students currently studying in Taiwan and Thailand, representing diverse national, cultural, and gender backgrounds in order to reflect a range of gendered experiences. Data collection involves multiple qualitative methods. Semi-structured interviews are conducted to elicit in-depth narratives of participants’ travel experiences and moments of gender-related reflection, tension, or disruption. Photo-elicitation is incorporated by inviting participants to share images from their travels that symbolize significant gendered encounters or realizations, facilitating deeper reflection and dialogue. In addition, reflective journals may be used to supplement interview data, allowing participants to articulate ongoing processes of gender learning over time. Data are analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis, with attention to recurring patterns related to gender awareness, identity negotiation, and informal learning processes. The analysis remains sensitive to intersectionality, considering how gender learning is shaped by the interplay of nationality, culture, race, and positionality. This methodological design enables an in-depth exploration of how gender education unfolds beyond formal pedagogical settings.

As a research proposal, this study anticipates demonstrating that gender learning is not confined to formal educational programs but is deeply embedded in everyday mobility experiences. It is expected that international students’ travel across cultural contexts generates moments of dislocation that destabilize familiar gender norms, prompting heightened reflexivity and critical gender awareness. The study is expected to reveal how mobility functions as a liminal educational space in which students feel both challenged and enabled to reconsider gender expectations inherited from their home societies. Travel may provide relative freedom to experiment with gender expression and identity, while also exposing participants to new forms of gender regulation and inequality. Through these encounters, gender learning emerges as an informal, embodied, and ongoing process of negotiation rather than a linear or intentional outcome. The anticipated contribution of this research lies in advancing understandings of gender education beyond institutional boundaries. By theorizing cross-cultural mobility as a site of informal gender learning, the study offers insights into how gender consciousness is shaped through lived experience, social interaction, and movement across space. These findings may inform broader discussions in gender and education research regarding informal learning, gender socialization, and the educational significance of mobility in international higher education contexts.

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