As Teachers Not Tourists: Creating Knowledge During a Short-Term Study Abroad Program

Abstract

Here, I address the call for teacher education programs to feature international elements to help pre-service teachers craft powerful classroom instruction and successfully work with students from culturally diverse backgrounds. I share a qualitative investigation of participants’ experiences during a short-term study abroad program in Japan that explored contemporary disaster preparedness as a result of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. The program sponsors, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, hoped participants would develop an appreciation for the people and culture of Japan while they learned about disaster preparedness. I wondered if collecting curriculum items during a short-term study abroad program could help social studies pre-service teachers create—not just receive—historical domain knowledge? In Japan, participants collected items to use as featured resources around which they designed classroom activities for secondary students. Their activities demonstrated three levels of second-order historical domain knowledge and two elements of civic competence. This study suggests that pre-service teachers with no previous international experience may require explicit modeling and scaffolding to translate their short-term study abroad participation into dynamic learning. Another implication is that participants need strong support to consider the photographs they capture as artifacts of contemporary material culture.

Keywords:

• Short-term study abroad program
• second-order historical domain knowledge
• civic competence
• international education
• global education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

The research presented here was approved by the University of Alabama’s IRB Office of Research Compliance (e-Protocol 22-09-5991).

Notes

1 The National Council for the Social Studies (2016, para. 3–4) states: “Global education and international education are complementary approaches with different emphases…. Global education focuses on the interrelated nature of conditions, issues, trends, processes, and events while international education emphasizes specific world regions, problems, and cultures.” Because this study emphasized both, I use the combined term “international and global education.”

Additional information

Funding

The research and materials presented here are sponsored in part by the Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.