Student Learning Abroad: What Our Students Are Learning, What They're Not, and What We Can Do About It ed. by Michael Vande Berg, R. Michael Paige, and Kris Hemming Lou (review)

The premise of this lengthy book, Student Learning Abroad, is that traditional study-abroad immersion programs do not work. The authors claim that higher education has too long relied on data reflecting the increasing number of students participating in study-abroad programs combined with student self-reports that study abroad "transformed" them as evidence that these programs have been successful. As it turns out, the authors argue, these self-reported transformations may have little real value in terms of what students have learned in the study-abroad experience. Thus, the increasing number of students going abroad does not necessarily indicate the positive outcomes that international educators intended or that meaningful changes have occurred in program participants.

Section 1, "Setting the Scene," relates the history of study abroad in America, the assumptions under which it has operated, the paradigms with which it has been framed, and recent research indicating that students are not engaged in meaningful learning during their study-abroad experiences. The pages devoted to examining the paradigms which have historically framed study abroad are of particular interest as they trace the evolution of the nature of knowing and learning during the hundred-year history of study abroad. The paradigms, which the authors present as "master narratives" (p. 15) are: (a) a positivist narrative, which once upheld the European Grand Tour as the model for study abroad; (b) a relativist narrative, which still informs many current study-abroad practices and policies, and holds that all cultures are equal and that a common humanity is more important than any differences; and (c) an experiential/constructivist narrative which holds that an individual creates his or her world both individually and with others and that learning occurs through the individual's transactions with a culture and with others. All of the authors in the book frame their chapters using an experiential/ constructivist worldview.

Research presented on the current state of study abroad calls into question long-held assumptions about the nature of the enterprise. Effectiveness of immersion programs and program duration find little support in relation to the learning of study-abroad participants. In other words, regardless of the level of immersion or length of the program, it will likely have a negligible impact on participants if they consistently surround themselves with students from their own country, consider it a vacation from school, and do not engage in interactions with the host culture.

The authors view the phenomenon of student "transformation" as a result of study abroad with caution as potentially unreliable. They note the lack of any measurable data to back up these transformation claims. Instead cultural mentoring, provision of cultural content, reflection, engagement, intercultural learning throughout the study-abroad cycle, and interventions are suggested as best practices for improving the learning of students.

The chapters in Section 2, "Foundations of Teaching and Learning," present theoretical and research-based approaches to student learning in a study-abroad context. The authors describe the ways in which their respective disciplines, from psychology to biology to anthropology, play a role in the study-abroad experience. Chapter 10, "Learning Abroad and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning" (SOTL) by Jennifer Meta Robison, is worthy of extra attention because it applies SOTL insights to study abroad. With reference to international educators, Meta Robinson wisely notes: "A culture of inquiry may be more effective than trying to disseminate any particular set of good practices to already busy people who are deeply embedded in particular contexts" (p. 254). Rather, social support structures such as instructional workshops, communities of practice, and networks can encourage the dissemination of innovations in international education.

In Section 3, "Program Applications," six study-abroad programs which seem to be producing...