A Sociocultural Investigation of Identity: How Students Navigate the Study Abroad Experience

From the recruitment of international students and the establishment of cross–border research partnerships to study abroad programs, internationalization is viewed as a necessary means to prepare students for thoughtful action in a globalized world (Altbach & Knight, 2007). In particular, studying abroad is regarded as a powerful vehicle for increasing students’ global awareness, intercultural competence, and appreciation of difference (Engberg, 2010). Experiences abroad can have a positive impact on students in all areas of development, including the cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal domains (Engberg). Recent studies have explored how students make sense of their experiences abroad and how, for example, their constructed identities and assumptions in relation to race, gender, and national identity shape the ways they do so (Dolby, 2004; Jessup–Anger, 2008). To further contribute to this body of literature, the purpose of this study was to explore how study abroad students approached and negotiated the sociocultural practices they encountered at a South African university, and how their multiple identities and assumptions shaped this sense–making process. The site of this research is especially salient, given the growing number of students who are choosing to study in locations outside Europe and other nontraditional locations (Institute of International Education, 2011). The experiences that await American students in these destinations are sure to be different from those in Western nations, potentially resulting in greater degrees of disjuncture as well as new possibilities for increased development. Program leaders need to understand how students negotiate settings such as these, where incongruities—whether obvious or unexpected—challenge students’ conceptions of their identities, assumptions about what they encounter, and the choices they make to navigate what they encounter.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: JAMES GEE’S DISCOURSE, WITH A CAPITAL “D”

The work of James Gee (1996), a sociolinguist, was used as a framework to explore how students negotiated their study abroad sojourns. His theory provided insight into the ways that individuals make sense of a society’s socially and culturally contested practices and values. Gee (1996) developed the concept of Discourse, with a capital “D,” to explore how language, literacy, and power function in society, and meant by the term much more than simply the spoken or written word. Gee wrote, “What is important is language plus being the ‘right’ who doing the ‘right’ what. What is important is not language, and surely not grammar, but saying (writing)-doing-being-valuing-believing combinations. These combinations I will refer to as Discourses” (p. 127, orig. emphasis). Discourses are “ways of being in the world” (1996, p. 127). He argued that the use of social languages, or ways of saying-doing-being-valuing-believing, must be demonstrated in appropriate ways and, more important, recognized as such for an individual to gain membership within a given Discourse. Students may encounter various Discourses during their sojourn. According to Gee, navigating them requires instant guesses about ways of being, guesses that are often unconscious, habitual, and learned from membership in other Discourses. From this perspective, studying abroad removes the student from familiar Discourses into sociocultural environments that are structured by unfamiliar ones. These encounters result in unexpected disjunctures that make visible how students utilize known ways of being— whether unconsciously or deliberately—and how they socially construct new ones.

RESEARCH DESIGN

A social constructivist worldview (Creswell, 2008) guided the study. A qualitative interview approach, framed by an interpretivist perspective, guided the data collection and analysis procedures (Rubin & Rubin, 2005). Anthony Giddens’s (1991) concept of fateful or critical moments was used as a tool to operationalize the theoretical framework within participants’ experiential world. In Thomson’s (2002) use of Giddens’s concept, she defined a critical moment as “an event described in an interview that either the researcher or the interviewee views as having important consequences for their lives and identities” (p. 339). Use of this concept enabled the identification of conspicuous moments of disjuncture and incongruity in students’ narratives, which were then analyzed using Gee’s (1996) notion of Discourses as spaces influencing membership within social fields and social construction of identity.

Procedure

Participants

This study was conducted at a large, urban...