Interculturality in study abroad

Study abroad (SA) is now a well-established domain of enquiry in applied linguistics and, like the phenomenon itself, is extremely varied. This variety can be traced back to the 1990s, when the bulk of research on SA began to appear (Freed, 1995; Parker & Rouxeville, 1995). Nevertheless, within this multiplicity, three trends in research topics and perspectives can be identified and historically contextualised.

First of all, Coleman (2015) points out that, when SA emerged as a subject in applied linguistics, it was approached according to the methodological principles of mainstream research in that period: thus, mobile students’ language gains were mostly measured through pre- and post-sojourn tests, which tended to focus on the acquisition of discrete language skills (e.g. listening or writing) or dimensions (e.g. morphology or syntax). In addition to interests intrinsic to applied linguistics, explanations for this initial trend in SA research can be found in external broader socio-educational factors: in the 1980s and 1990s, the phenomenon of SA was not yet seen as an important step in formal education – at least in terms of numbers. According to the OECD, in 1975 there were 0.8 million students worldwide enrolled outside their country of citizenship, while they were 4.5 million in 2012 (2015, p. 360). This substantial rise in numbers thus created a widespread interest – also on the part of investors such as international political organisations and educational institutions – in establishing what concrete benefits SA had on foreign language learning based on scientific (i.e. measurable) outcomes.

In the last decade or so, SA has experienced a new substantial change in perspective and purposes (Kinginger, 2009). Again, this shift does not represent a break with previous research, but rather can be interpreted as the development of a synergy between more general socio-cultural factors and a new turn in applied linguistics. Affecting the former is a growing – almost avid – interest in student mobility, framed within the politics of internationalisation on the part of higher education institutions. After all, in the context of globalisation, the growing numbers of students spending a period of time abroad has triggered the interests of the various stakeholders, who see mobility as way of increasing the students’ employability potential and global citizenship (Lewis, 2009; Paige, Fry, Stallman, Josić, & Jon, 2009; Schomburg & Teichler, 2011). Within applied linguistics, the increased insistence on the benefits of SA has inevitably brought with it a need not only to evaluate, but also to understand better what factors foster or inhibit students’ learning outcomes. This has also been motivated by the fact that many studies employing pre- and post-tests seemed to suggest that students’ language gains abroad can be highly variable (e.g. Kinginger, 2011). As a consequence, researchers have been striving to identify what personal and social variables (e.g. type of accommodation, participation in local leisure activities, social contacts in general) foster or hinder students’ second language learning abroad (Dewey, Belnap, & Hillstrom, 2013; Isabelli-García, 2006; Llanes, Tragant, & Serrano, 2012). Coleman (2015) ironically wonders why applied linguistics failed to take into account such crucial factors for so long. When historically contextualised, it appears clear that this shift in perspective was made possible by the broader social turn (Block, 2003) in applied linguistics. Nevertheless, according to Kinginger (2013), there is still a dearth of studies in applied linguistics approaching SA from a sociocultural perspective.

The step between focussing on mobile students’ whole experience in the destination country and analysing their language encounters also in terms of intercultural learning is short; if language learning is situated in interaction, it becomes necessary to explore the nature of the students’ contacts as well as their stances towards those they spend time with. A new trend – the third anticipated at the beginning of this Editorial – thus emerges in SA research within the field of applied linguistics, bringing into focus the students’ intercultural relations and possibilities for intercultural development in relation to their stay abroad. While research addressing intercultural phenomena linked to SA pertaining more to the domain of cross-cultural psychology (adaptation, culture shock, etc.) has tended to marginalise the role played by language learning and use (for an overview, see Furnham, 2012), in SA as a domain of enquiry within the field of applied linguistics, language undoubtedly plays a central role also when intercultural issues are addressed. Moreover, ‘language’ as a construct assumes several meanings in these studies: it refers to multilingualism and personal plurilingual repertoires (Borghetti & Beaven, 2015; Kalocsai, 2009), to discursive construction of diversity (Dervin & Layne, 2013), and to a key factor in performing and shaping identities (Benson, Barkhuizen, Bodycott, & Brown, 2013; Jackson, 2008; Pellegrino Aveni, 2005). Crucially, awareness of (multiple) language use is also the means through which mobile students’ intercultural learning can be fostered (Anquetil, 2006; IEREST, 2015). Once again, interest in the intercultural dimension within SA can be linked to a more general shift in applied linguistics, the so-called ‘cultural turn’ (Byram, Holmes, & Savvides, 2013) in language education, which binds language learning/teaching to interculturality, here broadly defined as the learning process through which individuals become aware of differences as well as able to act upon such awareness.

Although nearly two decades ago Coleman (1998) claimed that European research on SA had had interculturality as a central concern for some time, our impression is that interest in the link between SA and interculturality has been increasing recently, and is now shared well beyond Europe. This domain of investigation – whose boundaries are by no means well-defined – is varied also in terms of perspectives and discourses, as it catalyses different motivations and expectations on the part of the various stakeholders, be they international political organisations, educational institutions or the students themselves.

In this publication we have therefore striven to gather some of these voices, with contributions on topics such as the features, dynamics, advantages and shortcomings of student mobility in terms of the relationship between SA and young people’s intercultural learning, but also how best to prepare the students so that they make the most of their experiences. Our aim has also been to allow the perspectives of the different actors involved in higher education mobility programmes to emerge: not only those of researchers, but also of academic staff, of mobility programmes administrators and, of course, of the students themselves.

The present special issue comes at the end of the three-year European project Intercultural Education Resources for Erasmus Students and Their Teachers (IEREST) co-funded by the European Commission within the frame of the Lifelong Learning Programme 2009–2012 (IEREST, 2015). The project produced a set of teaching modules to be taught before, during and after SA, in order to guide students to take advantage their first-hand experiences abroad in terms of intercultural and personal development. Some of the contributors to this issue were directly involved in the project, while others manifested their interest during its lifecycle. Although the project was aimed at Erasmus students, we have not limited the category of students involved in the studies reported here to this particular European programme or to other within-degree mobility programmes.

This issue opens with a conceptual paper by Adrian Holliday. Through the use of a creative nonfictional narrative of three students studying abroad, he discusses on the one hand the concept of ‘cultural blocks’ – in particular linked to national cultures and their solid, uncrossable boundaries – and the alternative concept of ‘cultural threads’, which enable individuals to identify commonalities and weave understandings between individual cultural trajectories which acknowledge complexity. Intercultural training programmes aimed at mobile students, Holliday concludes, should pay greater attention to the concept of ‘cultural threads’, moving beyond the ‘cultural blocks’ approach prevalent in people’s conception of diversities.

Narratives have often been employed in SA research since interest began to rise in the social and intercultural dimension of students’ L2 experience abroad, and they are also employed in the following three case-study papers.

Jane Jackson describes how Serena, a Hong Kong student spending a semester in England, developed a more intercultural mindset while abroad. Part of a larger investigation conducted on a number of case studies, Serena’s narrative sheds light on how students’ developmental trajectories in terms of L2 and intercultural gains are influenced by both individual and social factors.

Through the use of longitudinal data provided by Angela, an Italian Erasmus student, during her temporary life abroad, Ana Beaven and Helen Spencer-Oatey ‘mapped’ the ups and downs of her adaptation process. The study shows how Angela’s adaptive journey followed different patterns in the personal and academic domains of her experience abroad, with language playing a different, though crucial, role in both areas.

Lou Harvey draws on the Bakhtinian concept of ideological becoming to conceptualise the language and intercultural development undertaken by Federica, an Italian student in the U.K. The analysis of her narrative shows how boundaries between self and other are negotiated through language. Similarly to Holliday’s ‘cultural threads’, Federica’s process of becoming is relational and based on her creative understanding of others and of herself.

The students’ perspective continues in the paper by Jan Van Maele, Basil Vassilicos and Claudia Borghetti, who asked 990 mobile students to name the most important criteria for considering a SA experience successful. This open question was included in a larger questionnaire, submitted within the IEREST project to past, present, and future mobile students. The paper focuses on three prevalent themes which emerged from the data analysis: language proficiency, openness and friendships. While language proficiency is the most frequently mentioned aspect, the authors argue that the importance attributed by students to openness and friendships should be taken into account when planning intercultural education courses for mobile students.

The paper by Xavier Martin-Rubió and Josep Maria Cots analyses the views of Catalan students studying abroad in a Danish university offering English-medium instruction, and of the Danish university staff, on the subject of multilingual repertoires. Through the use of Membership Categorisation Analysis, they show the discursive strategies that the Catalan students use to justify the fact that they consider learning the local language (in this case Danish) unimportant, despite the fact that their linguistic repertoires include a lesser-spoken language (Catalan).

The perspectives of academic staff involved in intercultural education is the focus of the paper by Paloma Castro, Jane Woodin, Ulla Lundgren and Michael Byram. In it, they analyse the views of staff working in 28 different institutions in 15 countries on the role of student mobility within discourses of internationalisation, and show how mobility is often framed within instrumental and economic discourses. They also highlight the importance of institutions taking up responsibility for the intercultural dimension of SA programmes.

Still within the discourses of internationalisation, Will Baker’s paper focuses on intercultural awareness and the use of English as an academic lingua franca in ‘transcultural universities’, namely those characterised by the use of several languages, where English is often employed as the medium of instruction, and whose population belongs to different (national) communities. Transcultural universities are increasing worldwide (in non-Anglophone countries as well as in Anglophone countries in the case of international universities). In the light of this phenomenon, and considering there is no longer a clear connection between the language of instruction, a local community and a national language and culture, Baker claims that there is a need to re-think SA and the language/intercultural preparation of both mobile and non-mobile students.

The following two papers turn to the issue of intercultural learning within the context of student mobility.

In the first, Prue Holmes, Luisa Bavieri, Sara Ganassin and Jonathon Murphy analyse how, though three of the IEREST activities, two different groups of students developed a sense of the complexity of “interculturality” by exploring the ‘small cultures’ (Holliday, 1999) they took part in and/or observed around them. The study highlights the importance of combining first-hand experience and critical reflection for intercultural development in mobility contexts; moreover, it reveals how personal investment is necessary for students to expand understandings of self and other and grow as global citizens.

In the next paper, Claudia Harsch and Matthew Poehner present what to our knowledge is the first empirical study employing Dynamic Assessment (DA) to investigate intercultural learning. The authors asked 13 international students in the U.K. to comment upon a number of Critical Incidents, and provided mediation in order to identify the students’ emerging intercultural learning in terms of cognitive processes. Overall, this study shows the potential of DA in revealing intercultural learning needs and, thus, in informing the design of intercultural programmes for mobile students – but not only for them.

The special issue finishes with a two pedagogical papers reporting on implementations of the IEREST educational resources.

Ana Beaven and Irina Golubeva’s paper focuses on one of the activities designed for students before departure, ‘Perceptions of self and other’. After introducing the activity, it reports on the feedback received from students, teachers, and class observers involved in the initial piloting of the activity, in seven higher education institutions.

Differently, the paper by Borghetti describes and discusses two pilotings of ‘24 h Erasmus life’, one of the IEREST activities meant for students when they are abroad, at the University of Bologna (UNIBO); one involved international students through face-to-face teaching; the other was conducted with UNIBO students who were doing their SA in a variety of European countries, by means of a Learning Management System.