“Should I Go to Ireland or Mexico?”: A Comparison of Two Pre-Student Teaching Study Abroad Programs Offered by the Same Department

Background

In a review of the relevant literature, the authors found that most of the work concerning study abroad programs offers a large amount of details on the qualitative and quantitative results and the perceptions of the students who participated in them. A large number of colleges and universities offer study abroad programs for their pre-student teachers. Though research has suggested that these programs are useful for helping students come back with new perspectives about the world and how to teach diverse students, there are also some critics of the usefulness of these types of programs (Biraimah & Jotia, 2012; Garii, 2009; Phillion et al., 2009; Stachowski & Sparks, 2007; Willard-Holt, 2001; Woolf, 2006). In this section, we will briefly discuss the literature describing both the benefits and challenges of study abroad programs for pre-student teachers and what students gain from participating in these programs

Generally the literature concerning study abroad programs is favorable, with the exception of few authors such as Woolf (2006) who critiques study abroad programs geared toward “non-traditional countries” as “a kind of voyeurism in which privileged young Americans go to observe relative poverty in a developing country” (p. 136). In the same vein, Zemach-Bersin (2007) claims study abroad programs “reproduces the logic of colonialism, legitimizes American imperialist desires, and allows for the interested of U.S. foreign policy to be articulated through the specious rhetoric of global universality” (p. 17).

More often than not, however, the authors of these studies, who are usually faculty leaders of these programs, praise study abroad for the positive impact that they have on their students. This is especially the case for those students who do their student teaching abroad. For example, Garri (2009) offers that students who student taught in developing countries learned flexibility, “increased comfort and ability to work with ambiguity and uncertainty” and had increased “self confidence” in their teaching practice (p. 97). In their own study about the cultural understanding gained by pre-student teachers, teaching abroad, Phillion, Malewski, Sharma, and Wang (2012) support Garri’s findings by claiming “preservice teachers begin to develop the awareness, sensitivity, and skills they urgently need to bridge the gap between White teachers and their historically underprivileged student populations and to understand the rapidly diversifying classrooms in which they will teach” (p. 336). Biraimah and Jotia (2012) contend that not only do students who student teach abroad show growth in cultural understanding and awareness, but they also have a deeper understanding of important teaching skills such as professional development, teaching methodologies, and teaching content (p. 451).