What is it about?
We know a lot about the experiences on university students who study abroad but not about high school students. This study looks at the experiences of seven high school students who studied abroad for three weeks and the things that mattered to them. In particular, it looks at the effects on their identity and language learning and contrasts this with their peers in other studies.
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Why is it important?
It shows that there are some parts of study abroad which are similar to their older peers, such as women finding freedom from the expectations placed on women in Japan through English. It also shows there are some factors that are different, such as parents playing a more influential role in the students' decision to study abroad and a sense of duty towards parental expectations. Perhaps most importantly, it shows that the way students understand the challenging experiences they have can be influenced by the cultural ideas they bring with them. This means they may become less 'internationally-minded' as a result.
Perspectives
Through the generous sharing of the students featured in this article, I began to realise that there is a lot more to understand about the different reasons that teenagers decide to study abroad. It can be a daunting thing to leave your friends and family to live with strangers in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by a language you may not be able to communicate in. Yet so many high school students each year make that decision in an incredibly tumultuous and influential period of their lives. I hope this article gives you some insight into those decisions while also showing the importance of looking at the experiences of a broad, diverse range of people to better understand study abroad.
Levi Durbidge
Monash University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Duty, desire, and Japaneseness, Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education, December 2017, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/sar.15016.dur.
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