This thesis examines the spiritual development of students participating in international study programs. A baseline questionnaire was administered to 64 students traveling to Kenya, Ecuador and Jordan for four to six weeks during the summer of 2010. Fifteen students were then selected to participate in pre-travel and post-travel interviews. Using Fowler’s (1981) theory of faith development, students’ international experiences were analysed for dissonance and new beginnings as an extension of their pre-travel spiritual journeys. Students’ observations and perceptions of their host country’s religion are shown to be filtered through their program curriculum. While the majority of student participants in this study did not adhere to any formal system of beliefs, the narratives of some students suggest that their academic field of study and a related passion to help the world provide a unifying narrative for their ultimate environment.

This thesis examines the spiritual development of students participating in international study programs. A baseline questionnaire was administered to 64 students traveling to Kenya, Ecuador and Jordan for four to six weeks during the summer of 2010. Fifteen students were then selected to participate in pre-travel and post-travel interviews. Using Fowler’s (1981) theory of faith development, students’ international experiences were analysed for dissonance and new beginnings as an extension of their pre-travel spiritual journeys. Students’ observations and perceptions of their host country’s religion are shown to be filtered through their program curriculum. While the majority of student participants in this study did not adhere to any formal system of beliefs, the narratives of some students suggest that their academic field of study and a related passion to help the world provide a unifying narrative for their ultimate environment.

With sport organizations venturing into the global realm, it is important to discover sport management students' interest in studying abroad in sport. Previous research has attempted to discover career intentions using the social cognitive career theory (SCCT). SCCT focuses on the interaction of several factors which include personal behaviors such as self-efficacy, outcome expectations, choice goals, barriers, and supports. The purpose of this thesis was to identify barriers and supports to studying abroad, the relationship between the barriers and supports and one's study abroad self-efficacy, and the relationship among study abroad self-efficacy, outcome expectations, interests, and choice goals (i.e., intent). Two different studies were administered with Study One taking a qualitative approach to better analyze supports and barriers, while Study Two incorporated the results from Study One, providing a quantitative aspect to the research. Data were collected from sport management undergraduate students from a southwestern Division I institution for Study One (n = 19), as well as for Study Two (n = 71). Questionnaires for both studies were developed using the basic tenets of SCCT to measure self-efficacy, interest, intent, supports, barriers, and outcome expectations to studying abroad in sport. Data analysis included coding data into themes and calculating percentages for Study One, while items for Study Two were analyzed for reverse coding, and descriptive statistics for the study variables were performed. Means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations were included with the statistics in Study Two. Likewise, linear regression and bivariate correlations were performed to evaluate the basic relationships between all the study variables within Study Two, while reliability estimates (Cronbach's alpha) for each study variable were assessed. The results revealed that barriers (e.g., cultural differences) and supports (e.g., further education) were correlated with self-efficacy. Furthermore, there were correlations between interest and intent, self-efficacy and interest, self-efficacy and intent, and self-efficacy and outcome expectations. Recommendations and implications were provided for sport management academia followed by limitations and future directions of this study.

This thesis has established exchange students as a particular group of tourists and a segment in their own right. The purpose of the study was to find out to what extent a study abroad destination’s role as a tourism destination affects exchange students when they choose where to study abroad. The study was conducted through an online survey answered by exchange students of multiple nationalities and study abroad destinations. The study found that although there were clear individual differences in the degree of motivation, tourism affects the choice of study abroad destination to a great extent and the vast majority of exchange students choose to study in what they view as a tourism destination.

This study investigated the linguistic, affective, and intercultural outcomes of a four-week study abroad program for Korean teachers of English offered through a U.S. southwestern university. In an effort to understand better what the 42 participants experienced during their study abroad, mixed methods including quantitative and qualitative data analysis, were used. To measure the participants‟ linguistic development, pretest and posttest measures of Listening, Reading, Structure, Speaking, and Writing were administered by the study abroad program. Also, participants responded to Self- Assessment questionnaires developed by the National Language Service Corps that asked them to assess the degree to which their reading, speaking, and listening had improved. The participants‟ daily journal entries were collected throughout the program, and some of the participants were interviewed at the beginning, at the middle, and at the end of the program on a volunteer basis. For the quantitative data analysis, the pretest and posttest scores of each measure were statistically compared by using MANOVA with follow-up ANOVA tests. Except for the reading scores, the other four measures showed significant improvement from pretest to posttest. For the Self-Assessment questionnaire, most participants checked only a few items as having improved. Interestingly, a few perceived that they had become less able to do some of the listening and speaking items over the program. These findings can be explained as resulting from overestimation before this program or as a result of increase in self-monitoring processes during the program. Through the constant comparison method (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), four themes emerged from analysis of the qualitative data. First, many participants were motivated to improve their English proficiency and increase authentic contacts with local people, with various sources shaping their motivation. Second, they increased their awareness of cultural and linguistic differences between the United States and Korea. Third, some participants showed a feeling of resistance to the dominant culture represented by native English-speaking instructors of the program. Fourth, at the end of the program, many showed improved intercultural competence. Results provide some theoretical, methodological, pedagogical, and policy implications for study abroad researchers, participants, and program instructors. / text

“Reading, Writing, Roaming: The student abroad in Arab women’s literature” details new developments in a sub-genre of Arabic travel literature, the study abroad narrative. An increasing number of female writers, and particularly female writers born after the colonial period, study in Europe and write about their experiences in memoirs or fictionalized accounts. Their intervention in the genre offers alternative modes of cultural interaction to the binaries of power detailed in earlier narratives. They suggest a move away from earlier texts such as Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, where the binary between colonizer and colonized is inverted rather than demolished. The protagonists of Fadia Faqir’s My Name is Salma and Somaya Ramadan’s Leaves of Narcisuss deconstruct this binary by creating specific spaces of multiplicity and heterogeneity. These spaces can be physical, as is the cottage in which Salma rents a room, or they can be literary, like the traditions of British and Arabic literature that Ramadan’s novel brings together. The women in these narratives embark on not just travel but education, developing tools of reading and writing to help them re-construct a literary and political history. The traditions and places produced by feminine narratives alter the framework of canons and spaces defined by national terms, creating what Jahan Ramazani calls transnational “alliances of style and sensibility.” Using Kristeva’s work on women’s and monumental time, I argue that women participate in specific modes of time and space, modes defined by dynamic, cyclical changes, that allow them to create these kinds of projects. Through shared living spaces and hybridized literary traditions, Faqir and Ramadan re-write the study abroad narrative to include for a greater possibility of experiences and interactions. They appropriate a structure originally available only to privileged young men and apply it to women, even to an impoverished refugee in Salma’s case. These novels encourage readers to move beyond the colonial and even the postcolonial discourse by developing new vocabularies for discussing traditions, cultures and the value of education. / text

This study investigated digital storytelling as a meaningful and effective assessment instrument and practice for faculty-led study-abroad programs. The research was prompted by critiques from faculty and staff members citing study abroad programs in higher education lack the academic rigor of traditional course work and that study abroad sites are not "all it should or could be" (Bok, 2006; Engle, 1986; Hoffa, 2007; Van Berg, 2003, 2009). Through a qualitative research approach, a digital storytelling project was administered as an assessment tool over four summers in one study abroad program, and then expanded to three additional study abroad programs differing in locations and disciplines. The research questions explored ways in which digital storytelling not only influence the learning outcomes and experiences of students, but also touch on the building of students' personal identity. The study revealed digital storytelling to be a method conducive to demonstrating and assessing personal and academic learning outcomes through a dynamic, introspective, reflective and organic process that concluded with a digital artifact. Digital storytelling as a tool and process allowed students to become more engaged and to take ownership in their own learning while participating in a study abroad program. This study contributes much needed research related to digital storytelling as an assessment practice for measuring not only identity building, but particularly, as a method for assessing academic learning outcomes in summer faculty-led study-abroad programs.

Literature pertaining to English-speaking L2 learners of Arabic on study abroad programs in the Arabic-speaking world is almost nonexistent. This may be due to the fact that not even one out of a hundred American students chooses to study abroad in the Arabic-speaking world each year (Gutierrez et al., 2009). The small number of American students studying in the Arabic speaking world is at odds with the MLA's most recent language report in which Arabic enrollments increased more than any other language from 2002 to 2006 (Furman, Goldberg & Lusin, 2007). With the increase in Arabic enrollments it is probable that more and more American students will desire to study Arabic in the Arabic-speaking world. The benefits of study abroad have long been praised (Carroll, 1967; Kinginger & Farrell, 2004; Berg et al., 2008). Not all studies, however, have been congruent (Freed, 1995). This dissertation investigates L2 learners of Arabic on study abroad programs in the Arabic-speaking world. The primary countries in this research are Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen. This research focuses on issues related to acculturation, language variety preference, proficiency and the use of technology in learning Arabic among students of Arabic on study abroad programs in the Arabic-speaking world. Particular attention is paid to the binary nature of Arabic as manifest in a host of spoken colloquial varieties. For example, the spoken colloquial Arabic in North Africa differs to a great extent from the Arabic spoken in the Levant. This feature of Arabic is referred to as diglossia (Ferguson, 1959a).Over 90 L2 learners of Arabic participated in this research, though not all of them answered every question. These learners completed an extensive online survey pertaining to their cultural experiences and interaction, language situations and functions, proficiency in Arabic, and which technologies they or their teachers used to assist in learning Arabic. It is hoped that this research will provide empirical insights pertaining to the cultural and linguistic experiences of L2 learners of Arabic in the Arabic-speaking world. General implications for Arabic programs are also presented.

This thesis is a phenomenological description of the experience of planning to study abroad from the perspective of Chinese students who have not yet left their home country. The themes of Differences in Education, Career Prospects, Intercultural communication, Independence and Escape, Discrimination and Isolation, and Fulfilling Dreams emerged from their answers. The author discusses in detail the approach to the study and concludes with a discussion of the findings. Themes and findings generally indicate that meaning for students lies in an expectation or hope that they can be more self-reliant and in control of their lives and careers.

Since 1992, most US transnational adoptions have occurred between White American parents and female babies born in China. Many of these adopted girls grow up in the US as a racial minority, but when visiting their birth country they become the racial majority. I collected both qualitative and quantitative data from Mandarin language learners during a summer language program in China to find the similarities and differences among six adopted and 11 non-adopted American adolescents. The data reveal that adoptees are initially perceived to be insiders for racially belonging in China, but cultural and linguistic differences place them as outsiders. Most adoptees fit in-between belonging and not belonging in Chinese society by attempting to "pass" as Chinese citizens in public spaces. Their accounts emphasize how race, nationality, and adoptivity contribute to larger themes for identity development and belonging in "third spaces" across globalized contexts.