Resumen de Cultural encounters: enhancing students’ learning from a stay abroad
Gery Nijenhuis, V.A.J.M. Schutjens
Students at the Department of Human Geography & Spatial Planning at Utrecht University leavetheir classroom to learn abroad: they go on exchange for a semester in Malaga, embark upon a fieldtripto Stockholm for 6 days, or do a 3-month fieldwork in Africa. Learning outside the own classroom isan essential element of the training of geographers. Well-developed intercultural competences are vitalto reap the benefits of such stay abroad, and, later on, to work in an increasingly internationalized labormarket. However, immersion in a different cultural setting does not itself assure intercultural learning:an active learning environment is needed to achieve this (Trede et al., 2014; Brendel 2014). Thus far,for several reasons, the stay abroad was a rather isolated component in our students’ educational programmes.Upon return, exchange students often point to the immense impact of the period abroad ontheir academic and personal development, but they can hardly articulate their advances in specific interculturalskills and attitudes. This is strongly related to the fact that upon departure, students do notknow what to expect regarding intercultural differences in the field. Furthermore, they are not stimulatedto reflect on their intercultural experiences during their stay abroad. As a consequence, the learningof fieldwork abroad is not optimized. Previous experiences and literature call for an approach thatconfronts students with their own expectations and world views, that stimulate reflection and provokediscussion. Against that background, we developed two projects to prepare students better for a stayabroad, and to train their intercultural competences, using a three-step approach: before, during andafter the stay abroad. This paper first introduces the topic and the literature on enhancing the learningoutcomes of a stay abroad. Then, we will introduce our projects, one dealing with Master’s students thatdo their fieldwork in Africa, Asia or Latin America, a second one dealing with undergraduate studentsthat go on exchange. Next, we will present our preliminary findings on the impact of these projects onstudents’ learning. We conclude with the observation that reflection as a skill deserves more attention inour curricula.
