Stepping out of the study abroad bubble: An ethnographic study of U.S. based students' direct enrollment experience at the Autonomous University of Madrid

• Autores: Mary Katharine MacKenty
• Directores de la Tesis: Isabel Alonso Belmonte (dir. tes.), Daniel Chornet-Roses (codir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid ( España ) en 2022
• Idioma: español
• Número de páginas: 445
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Anne Marie Mc Cabe Lascara (presid.), María Fernández-Agüero (secret.), Megan Strom (voc.)
• Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Educación por la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en: Biblos-e Archivo
• Resumen

  • The internationalization of higher education aims to develop interculturally competent, global citizens. In the United States, mobility programs for studies, internships and volunteering for university students, known as study abroad programs, play a central role in internationalization policies. This is due to the traditionally held belief that study abroad positivity impacts students’ intercultural and second language learning. For U.S. universities, the direct enrollment experience of taking courses in a local university is often considered logically, academically and linguistically more challenging, which has led study abroad programs to rely on U.S academic programs despite the possible learning opportunities that the immersion of direct enrollment offers.

    In this educational context, this study investigates the study abroad students’ perspectives of both the challenges and opportunities of direct enrollment at Autonomous University of Madrid in Spain. The study’s main aims are to: 1) understand how study abroad students perceive the culture of learning at the local university; 2) how they adapt to the new environment, and 3) analyze what and how they are specifically learning from the direct enrollment component of the study abroad experience. The research uses Kim’s (2001) integrative theory of communication and cross-cultural adaptation coupled with Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory.

    The data was collected during the academic year of 2017/2018 at the Autonomous University of Madrid. The methodology uses a social constructivist theoretical perspective to explore how study abroad students make meaning from their academic experiences. The thesis takes an ethnographic approach to gain a deep understanding of the objectives of the investigation. The participants were study abroad students and program staff as well as UAM professors, students and international office staff. The ethnographic methods utilized were semi-structured interviews, participant observations and informal focus groups.

    The analysis of my findings reiterates that the study abroad is a highly personal experience that results in a large variation in perspectives. The most significant result that my analysis reveals is that study abroad students use a combination of five strategies to adapt to the Spanish classroom: withdrawal, separation, academic integration, social integration, and relaxing expectations. Their decision-making process is regulated by their motivation, self-efficacy beliefs and agency utilized to interact with local actors. Study abroad students find the most stressful aspects of the experience to be the implicit differences between their expectations about university classes in Spain and the reality. The study also discovers that study abroad students perceive that the local classroom provides opportunities for second language learning, understanding new cultural perspectives, and academic learning as well as personal growth; however, the depth of their learning depends on their level of integration in the local university.

    The study suggests that although the direct enrollment experience is inherently more challenging than courses provided by U.S. study abroad institutions, the immersion forces study abroad students to adapt to cultural differences hence expanding their opportunities to learn. Nevertheless, the study recognizes that situational and individual components can lead to study abroad students’ maladaptation which would prevent such learning. Therefore, the study concludes with recommendations for all actors to improve the integration of study abroad students in the local classroom with the goal of improving the intercultural competencies of all students.