Chapter 4: Reflective Interventions: Enhancing Students’ Learning From Intercultural Experiences Abroad

Students study abroad to complement, deepen, or widen their educational programs and enhance their academic competences. Through intercultural encounters, students develop intercultural competences and employability skills such as leadership, problem solving, teamwork, and flexibility. Unfortunately, these skills are not clearly articulated and are hardly reflected upon before, during, or after their academic stay abroad. Literature has shown that learning and reflection require guidance and feedback. How can this be effectively stimulated while students are abroad? We describe the design and outcomes of two interventions implemented by the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University, the Netherlands that use reflection to enhance active learning during an academic stay abroad. Both interventions are based on the PEER-model (Prepare Engage Evaluate Reflect) of Holmes and O’Neill (2010). The engagement and the reflection stages in this model strongly align with the learning approaches of experiential and transformative learning, respectively. Our results show both interventions stimulated students to reflect upon their stay abroad and to articulate the competences developed. Through specific assignments, students actively practiced self-reflection, thus developing and documenting their intercultural competences over time. Students participating in the intervention groups actively adjusted their research strategies or were on average more positive about employability skills learned abroad than other students in the control group. In curricula, more attention should be paid to reflective practice, to stimulate active learning, and encourage students to translate their reflections upon intercultural encounters during an academic stay abroad to employability skills and new goals.