Crossing Borders with Students 2: Be Learning-Centered

In my most recent blog post, I listed five essential elements for an effective international trip; in fact, I ended that post by stating if any of these elements were missing, you should cancel the trip.

In the next few posts, I'll explain why I feel so strongly about these five elements. The first one is having a learning-centered perspective. Below is the summary from the introductory post on Crossing Borders with Students.

Be Learning-Centered. Everything a school does should foster learning and should be guided by student learning outcomes. Leaders should be as intentional about planning the trip as they would be with classroom lessons. International trips with students are not vacations; they are powerful learning experiences. Also, team members (and leaders) must leave the American arrogance in America and plan the trip with humility ... they should plan/expect to learn from the people and culture that they will be visiting.

As soon as students cross a border, they are learning. Most of us who have led international trips can attest to actually seeing learning happen as students enter another country ... they are a little quieter, their eyes are open a little wider, and their brains are spinning. Literally, students learn a great deal just by stepping off the plane in another country and moving through customs. This is only the beginning of the learning that can happen when students travel to another country/culture.

Of course, every school program should foster student learning and be guided by student learning objectives, but it seems that leaders of global trips often forget to be intentional about being learning centered. This is due to a number of reasons ...

1. Logistics -- Leaders (especially inexperienced ones) are usually so focused on the logistics of the trip that they neglect the "guide on the side" role of the team leader. If most of the logistics can be handled by a cultural guide or a student travel organization, the team leaders can remain learning centered.
2. End of the Year -- Often international trips depart a few days after the end of the school year, and the busyness of that time of the year prevents proper preparation. This is hard to avoid with early summer or mid-year trips, but carving out preparation time to learn before the trip is essential to maintaining a learning-centered perspective.
3. Assumptions -- Everyone assumes that an international trip will be "life-changing"; however, without being learning centered, the learning may not be positive or optimal ... remember, "life-changing" can also be negative. So many variables (and many outside of your control) can impact the trip; be intentional about the learning, so you can have some control over how the trip is "life-changing."  
4. Short-Term Missions -- The short-term missions movement (which is not learning/learner centered) has expanded from churches to Christian colleges and Christian high schools. This has negatively impacted school and college international trips. Some discussion is below but much more is needed.   

Why Do Schools Run Short Term Mission (STM) Trips?
Most Christian colleges and Christian high schools today provide STM trips for their students, some even require it. School-run missions has always been a "square peg in a round hole" conundrum for me. While Christian schools should prepare students to live out their faith, missions is the function of the church and not the school ... thus, when schools try to run STM trips, a few problems arise:

1. School programs are for the benefit of the student; mission trips are for the benefit of the receiving people/community. 
2. Mission trips (evangelical or service-oriented) have the premise that the "goers" have something that the receiving community needs, i.e., the gospel message, financial resources, labor. This is counter to a learning-centered educational experience.
3. American arrogance, unfortunately, abounds in the short-term missions movement. Students often enter a STM trip with the perspective that "they need us" rather than "they need God."  

Should Christian schools and colleges administer STM trips?  That discussion will need to wait for another time; however, it is enough in this post to note that the STM movement negatively impacts a learning-centered perspective. 

Application
So how can we remain learning centered in the planning and implementation of international trips? First, never forget that you are an educator. Second, spend time immersed in study abroad and service-learning literature.

Elements of Learning
Don't forget that the pedagogical elements that are effective in the classroom also work on international trips. Although it looks differently in a foreign country and outside of the classroom, trip leaders should pique a student's interest before a learning experience, be a guide on the side during the experience, and encourage meaningful reflection/assessment following an experience.

Study Abroad
While most international trips are not the length of a traditional study abroad program, the research on international study abroad is beneficial to this discussion. In planning a global trip, leaders should respect the research of the Study Abroad community. Below are a couple short summary articles on the benefits that students see when they participate in global learning-centered trips.

• Academic Outcomes of Study Abroad 
• The Benefits of Study Abroad 

Service-Learning
Students often expect that global trips will include some community service (another carry-over from the STM movement, at least in the Christian community). However, students serving can be an integral and powerful part of international trips, and service-learning research can help ensure that these can still be learning centered. Remember, service-learning is an intentional learning-centered project that is connected to the objectives of the trip or the class. Significant research has been done on service-learning ... see Where's the Learning in Service-Learning by Eyler and Giles (1999) for a solid foundation in Service-Learning research. The Global Service Learning Research website also has links to a variety of articles specifically for international service-learning.

As you consider leading an international trip, begin from a learning-centered perspective. Many resources have been written on cross-cultural learning; one of my favorites is Learning from the Stranger by David Smith (2009).

Crossing Borders with Students 1

Tomorrow morning, my son leaves for Rome. He is taking a May Term class with Providence Christian College and Geneva College. This trip and my prayers for him, his classmates, and professors have caused me to reflect back on some of my doctoral research on study abroad programs. 

As Thomas Friedman notes in his book, The World is Flat (2005), we live in a global world, and, thanks to technology and transportation advances, it has become even "flatter" over the ten years since he published. The ease and ability to travel and communicate across borders is astounding. This global travel is not only vacations and business travel, nor is it only a part of the adult world, nor is it only for the wealthy. Students, from all backgrounds, are traveling internationally before they leave high school. One study (10 years ago) reported that 29% of students have traveled internationally before graduating from high school (Livermore, 2006); this number jumped to 83% when surveying students at research universities (Siaya & Hayward, 2003). Students also are given opportunities to travel globally through study abroad programs, and this is now an expectation of higher education today. North American students expect that learning in another country will be a part of their college experience, with 55% of seniors planning to study abroad while at college (Fischer, 2008). These figures support Friedman's claim that our world is flat (and becoming "flatter"), and not only in the business world but in education also. 

As educators, we are committed to preparing our students to enter this brave, new, global world; as the Harvard College Curricular Review stated, the college "must aim to prepare students to live as citizens of a global society" (2004). This is true for educators in both K-12 and Higher Education. One of the ways that high schools and colleges prepare students to live in this global world is by taking students across borders.

My dissertation focused on study abroad, international service-learning, and short-term mission trip research, culminating in a phenomenological study of a college short-term mission trip. The findings of the study highlighted components of effective educational international trips. These are listed below (I'll expand them in future posts).

1. Be Learning-Centered. Everything a school does should foster learning and should be guided by student learning outcomes. Leaders should be as intentional about planning the trip as they would be with classroom lessons. International trips with students are not vacations; they are powerful learning experiences. Also, team members (and leaders) must leave the American arrogance in America and plan the trip with humility ... they should plan/expect to learn from the people and culture that they will be visiting.

2. Learn Before the Trip. I know most learning will happen on the trip; however, pre-trip learning is essential to optimize the learning on the trip. Although most instructors may focus on the culture/history of the country, equally important are lessons about culture shock (and reverse culture shock), cross cultural interactions, ethnographic techniques, and group dynamics. Learning before you go seems obvious for a school trip, but with the busyness at the end of the year, many summer trips leave with little or no preparation.                                                                                  

3. Involve Cultural Guides.  An ideal cultural guide is someone from the country (or one who has spent significant time in the country), who knows the local language, who also knows American culture, and has an educator mindset. It is best for the cultural guide to be a part of the entire trip, as cultural interpretation can be needed at any time, but an initial orientation and frequent check-ins may also work well.

 4. Choose Team Leaders Carefully. Just as the success in a classroom is closely tied to the strengths of a teacher, the success of an international trip depends on the leaders. Team leaders should have experience with travel to the country (or, at least, region) of the trip and success in working with students outside of the classroom. It is one thing to teach a class to students one hour a day, and it is quite another thing to spend 24 hours a day for a number of weeks in a foreign country with students. Poor team leaders can destroy an otherwise amazing trip for students; effective team leaders can make any trip an amazing learning experience for students.

5. Learn After the Trip. Due to students being homesick and eager to see their families, educational trips often end with little to no reflection on learning. Time should be set aside to debrief and reflect. Additionally, students should be challenged with "how now should we live" type of questions. The research, unfortunately, points to little change of behavior after returning from a "life-changing" international trip. Intentional reflection, discussion, and challenge by the team members and leaders help the lessons learned to stick with the students. 

While there are many other elements to crossing borders with students, these five are essential to making the trip an effective learning experience. In fact, I would say if you don't have each of these elements in your trip, don't go.

Fail Forward

Failure is an essential 21st Century skill. I know that this sounds like an odd statement, but we need to do a better job of teaching our students how to fail ... and fail forward.

C.S. Lewis, coined the phrase, "fail forward" with his quote on success:"Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success." 

Failing Forward

Adults often rush in to "save the day" for children. This is an inherent quality of parents and teachers ... we hate to see children fail. However, by interceding too early and too often, we eliminate powerful life lessons for children. I'm concerned that our over-protective, "everyone gets a trophy" society is going to produce adults who do not know how to learn from failures. In fact, we fail to learn (pun intended).

Can you imagine a future world where scientists don't learn from their mistakes?  Einstein and Edison were two who knew the power of failing forward. We need to ask why we failed, what caused our failure, and how to improve in the future ... and that learning only happens after we fail.

In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006), Carol Dweck presents the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. In a very short summary, a growth mindset is one that wants to fail forward and grow from mistakes. Check out Dweck's 10 minute Ted Talk on the power of a growth mindset in school.

The word "failure" has such a negative connotation (especially in schools), and a person who fails is seen too often as a "loser." How can we celebrate failing forward in schools? Carol Dweck, in her Ted Talk, refers to a school that has replaced an "F" grade with "Not Yet." What a powerful, growth mindset message this sends to students! Students need to realize that failure is part of the process of learning, and when they receive a "Not Yet" grade, they need to keep working. A "Not Yet" mentality encourages grit/perseverance, an essential characteristic for success.

So, how do we teach students to fail forward?

Classroom Applications

1. Reflect on what some of these "losers" had to say about "failure"

Write one of the following quotes on your board tomorrow morning, discuss the potential learning power of failure, and share how to fail forward.

• "Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it." -Mia Hamm
• "Failure isn't fatal, but failure to change might be." -John Wooden
• "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas Edison
• "Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts." -Winston Churchill
• "Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." -Winston Churchill
• "The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing." -Henry Ford
• "Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely." -Henry Ford
• "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure." -Colin Powell
• “It is fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” -Bill Gates
• “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” -Michael Jordan
• "Failure is success in process." -Albert Einstein

2. Create a safe environment

• Ensure students have the opportunity to express ideas without ridicule
• Implement risk-taking and problem-solving into your curriculum
• Focus on formative assessment; provide regular "not yet" conversations with students and provide meaningful feedback on how to improve.
• Provide opportunities for students to collaborate with others to correct work, peer edit, and revise "not yet" work.

3. Change your educational paradigm to encourage Failing Forward.  Here are a few articles/websites to get you thinking.

• Growth Mindset Education Resources 
• MakerSpaces in Education 
• Tinkering in Education 
• Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in Education

Go fail forward with your students this week!