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).