Learning/volunteer abroad (LVA) programs offer important opportunities for students to develop cross-cultural skills and global competence. Universities recognize the value of international experiential learning programs in terms of skills development and career preparation as one component in their internationalization policies and priorities. Scholarly studies on international education and LVA programs have examined university internationalization priorities in promoting international experiential learning. Other scholarly contributions to the field of LVA have documented the nature of students’ experiences, learning outcomes, critical analysis of impacts, and motivations, among other important research areas. Within the LVA scholarship, there are frequent references to the importance of pre-departure training and preparation of students. Many of the references to the value of pre-departure training move beyond practical information (such as staying safe and staying healthy while abroad) to more critical discussions of cross-cultural learning opportunities, ethical considerations, and impacts. Despite these references to the importance of pre-departure training, there are few studies documenting the nature and content of pre-departure training for students participating in international experiences through an academic institution. As a result, there is no clear sense of the range of pre-departure training programs, what information students are receiving as part of their pre-departure training or the impact of training on the outcomes of the students’ learning. This thesis aimed to fill this gap by examining the preparation and training provided to students prior to their international experiences. Through the utilization of a case study approach based on the University of Ottawa’s LVA programs’ pre-departure training, this research specifically analysed the content that is currently employed during pre-departure training and how it ranged across LVA programs. The findings demonstrate that, while all LVA programs provided pre-departure training and covered similar content themes, there was also a range in the content provided across the LVA programs’ pre-departure training. Specifically, the greatest diversity in content was found in the depth of discussion provided to students regarding cross-cultural understanding, ethics, experiential learning, and reflection. Analysis of the identified differences across LVA programs suggest there are likely implications for students’ learning generated from their experience abroad. When students are not prepared to critically understand the complexities associated with living, studying, and/or working cross-culturally and how to reflect upon and generate knowledge from their experiences overseas, learn/volunteer programs may have limited or even negative impacts on cross-cultural understanding and global competence.

Thesis advisor: Laura . Rumbley / Thesis advisor: Hans . de Wit / Internationalization of higher education continues to transform the field of post-secondary education around the world. Student mobility, and specifically study abroad, operates as tool of internationalization that receives a lot of attention from institutions, nations, and students alike. Support for studying abroad is rooted in the many benefits, including but not limited: exposure to new cultures and perspectives, improvement of foreign language skills, development of independence and personal confidence, and expansion of problem solving skills. However, the transition back home after an experience abroad can often be a difficult experience for students who lack intentional and specific support through their institution. This re-entry period is often overlooked by institutions, however, it is a part of a student’s study abroad experience and should be supported as such through resources and programming for returned students. American Jesuit institutions in particular promote participation in study abroad as it aligns with the Jesuit mission and values rooted in serving God through serving others. As institutions that place a high value on engaging with the world and a holistic view of the educational experience, American Jesuit institutions have an obligation to support students through re-entry. This study looks at how these institutions support students as they return from abroad, the major challenges they face, how they integrate Jesuit values into their support, and what can be done in the future. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

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The impact student mobility has on academic achievement has been researched in the United States since the early 20th century (Goebel, 1978). Mobility for students is a risk factor often compounded by poverty, ELL students are at a higher risk of lower achievement. Educators face challenges in tracking records, monitoring, remediating, gap closing, and assisting students in transition periods. The data collected in this quantitative study was analyzed to determine the impact mobility has on English language learners and their attainment of a second language. This quantitative study examined the relationship between non-mobile and highly mobile ELL students in 1st through twelfth grade from one small school district. An analysis was utilized to identify the difference between male and female, mobile and non-mobile ELL students. The frequency of mobility was evaluated to identify the impact mobility has on language attainment. The findings propose that no significant relationship exists between mobility and language attainment.

This study examined the impact of involuntary mobility on the academic achievement of tenth grade students in a Central Florida school district. Students of involuntary mobility were selected as the result of new attendance boundaries due to new high school construction. Students were compared against non-mobile peers at schools of like demographics (i.e. poverty level and ethnicity). Mobility status (involuntary or no mobility) was the independent variable. The dependent variable, academic achievement, was measured by students’ tenth grade developmental scale scores in reading and mathematics on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Students’ ninth grade test scores were used as a covariate to control for students’ prior achievement and isolate the impact of mobility. Additional subgroups (minority and poverty) were compared to determine if involuntary mobility had a more significant impact on these groups. Finally, a hierarchical linear regression was used to determine if a model for reading and mathematics could be used to predict future academic performance for students of involuntary mobility. Findings showed consistently there was no statistically significant difference in the achievement performance among groups or subgroups and the subject tests of reading and/or mathematics with one exception. There was a statistically significant difference in mathematics achievement in the all students group when comparing those students of involuntary mobility with students of stability. Students of mobility actually indicated a modest level of higher achievement than non-mobile peers. The hierarchical linear model iv was found to be marginally significant for predicting achievement among involuntary mobility students in the area of mathematics, but not necessarily in reading. Future research recommendations include broadening the research to additional grade-levels. This research only considered the impact of achievement on high school students. Future research should consider similar impact on students at both the elementary and/or middle school levels. Qualitative measures would provide additional information, particularly the perceptions and experiences that stakeholders have throughout the involuntary mobility process. Other at-risk subgroups, particularly those of residential mobility and/or previous retention, provide additional considerations that would add to this body of research. Finally, involuntary mobility as the result of school closings would provide additional insight as this factor often has public negative perceptions.

For the purpose of internationalization of higher education, the European Union has established a scheme to facilitate student mobility under the Erasmus project. Erasmus programs are intended to provide participating students with the opportunity to experience education and cultural exchange in different countries. Erasmus programs are not only for European students; it is also available for non-EU students. However, while European students under the Erasmus scheme can experience free movement within EU borders during their studies, it is unclear to what extent the visa programs of Member States allow the same mobility for non-EU students. Through thematic policy analysis, this research addresses the policies implemented to facilitate non-EU students' mobility during their study within the EMJMD program, a multiple mobility master’s degree programs under the Erasmus+. The analysis covers the policies of the European Union as the benefactor of the program and the national migration agencies of the countries where students reside and study to see how national migration regulations comply with the European policies on student mobility.

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Student mobility in the area of Higher Education (HE) is gaining more attention nowadays. It is one of the cornerstones of the Bologna Process being promoted at both national and international levels. However, currently there is no technical system that would support student mobility processes and assist users in authoring educational curricula involving student mobility. In this study, the problem of student mobility programmes generation based on existing modules and programmes is considered. A similar problem is being solved in an Intelligent Tutoring Systems field using Curriculum generation techniques, but the student mobility area has a set of characteristics limiting their application to the considered problem. One of main limiting factors is that mobility programmes should be developed in an environment with heterogeneous regulations. In this environment, various established routines and regulations are used to control different aspects of the educational process. These regulations can be different in different domains and are supported by different authors independently. In this thesis, a novel framework was developed for generation of student mobility programmes in an environment with heterogeneous regulations. Two core technologies that were coherently combined in the framework are hierarchical planning and policy-based management. The policy-based planner was designed as a central engine for the framework. It extends the functionality of existing planning technologies and provides the means to carry out planning in environments with heterogeneous regulations, specified as policies. The policy-based planner enforces the policies during the planning and guarantees that the resultant plan is conformant with all policies applicable to it. The policies can be supported by different authors independently. Using them, policy authors can specify additional constraints on the execution of planning actions and extend the pre-specified task networks. Policies are enforced during the planning in a coordinated manner: situations when a policy can be enforced are defined by its scope, and the outcomes of policy evaluation are processed according to the specially defined procedures. For solving the problem of student mobility programme generation using the policy-based planner, the planning environment describing the student mobility problem area was designed and this problem was formalised as a planning task. Educational processes valid throughout the HE environment were formalised using Hierarchical Task Network planning constructs. Different mobility schemas were encoded as decomposition methods that can be combined to construct complex mobility scenarios satisfying the user requirements. New mobility programmes are developed as detailed educational processes carried out when students study according to these programmes. This provides the means to model their execution in the planning environment and guarantee that all relevant requirements are checked. The postponed policy enforcement mechanism was developed as an extension of the policy-based planner in order to improve the planning performance. In this mechanism, future dead-ends can be detected earlier during the planning using partial policy requests. The partial policy requests and an algorithm for their evaluation were introduced to examine policies for planning actions that should be executed in the future course of planning. The postponed policy enforcement mechanism was applied to the mobility programme generation problem within the descending policy evaluation technique. This technique was designed to optimise the process of programme components selection. Using it, policies for different domains can be evaluated independently in a descending order, gradually limiting the scope for the required component selection. The prototype of student mobility programme generation solution was developed. Two case studies were used to examine the process of student mobility programmes development and to analyse the role of policies in this process. Additionally, four series of experiments were carried out to analyse performance gains of the descending policy evaluation technique in planning environments with different characteristics.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:56:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Herbert Souza da Silva.pdf: 647001 bytes, checksum: cd3a4f857d84f004158dcf83243d2ecb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-09-12 / This work, developed through a qualitative research, with an exploratory approach, discusses the affective dimension in the insertion of foreign students in the university environment from the perspective of Wallon s theory, aiming to identify which feelings and emotions are manifested by foreign students and what extent the role of the environment and of the other influence on the integration process of these students into the university. The work is structured beginning with a discussion on the issue of globalization, noting that the internationalization of education is a necessity to keep up with the global issues and forming individuals capable of acting in this context. Subsequently, we present the extension course of PUC-SP Brazilian Portuguese: Language and Culture, locus of the human subject of the research. Then we discuss the affective dimension in the integration process of foreign student from the theory of Henri Wallon, considering the concepts of the role of the environment and of the other, and the integration of functional sets. The methodology consists of three techniques for data collection: observation conducted with a group of 47 international students at the beginning of the course in 2013, survey applied to 55 foreign students in 2014 and semi-structured interviews conducted with two foreign students. Based on the results presented, it was possible to identify, in this particular context, a diversity of feelings experienced by students, both nice shades as negative shades. It was clear, too, that the role of the environment and of the other influence on the insertion process of foreign student and may offer possibilities for their development as also limitations. The interaction with the environment and with other shows as essential to the transformation of the student, providing their inclusion and the learning process / O presente trabalho, desenvolvido por meio de pesquisa qualitativa, de cunho exploratório, discute a dimensão afetiva na inserção do estudante estrangeiro no ambiente universitário sob o olhar da teoria walloniana, com o objetivo de identificar quais sentimentos e emoções são manifestados pelos estudantes estrangeiros e em que medida o papel do meio e do outro influenciam no processo de inserção desses estudantes na universidade. O caminho traçado para o estudo das teorias iniciou-se com a discussão da questão da globalização, ressaltando que a internacionalização do ensino é uma necessidade para acompanhar as questões globais e formar sujeitos capazes de atuar nesse contexto. Posteriormente, é apresentado o curso de extensão da PUC-SP Português Brasileiro: Língua e Cultura, locus dos sujeitos da pesquisa. Em seguida discute-se a dimensão afetiva no processo de inserção do estudante estrangeiro a partir da teoria de Henri Wallon, considerando os conceitos do papel do meio, do outro e da integração dos conjuntos funcionais. A metodologia adotada consiste em três técnicas de coleta de dados: observação, realizada com uma turma de 47 estudantes estrangeiros no início do curso em 2013; questionário aplicado a 55 estudantes estrangeiros em 2014 e entrevista semiestruturada realizada com duas estudantes estrangeiras. Com base nos resultados apresentados, foi possível identificar, neste contexto específico, uma diversidade de sentimentos vivenciados pelos estudantes, tanto de tonalidades agradáveis como de tonalidades desagradáveis. Ficou claro, também, que o papel do meio e do outro influenciam no processo de inserção do estudante estrangeiro, podendo oferecer possibilidades para o seu desenvolvimento como, também, limitações. A interação com o meio e com outro se revela como essencial para a transformação do estudante, favorecendo sua inserção e o processo de aprendizagem