Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-2024

Disciplines

Contemplative Education | Higher Education | Holistic Education | Humane Education | International and Comparative Education | Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Education abroad is held up as a high-impact practice with the potential to engage college and university students in a transformative learning experience (Kuh, 2008). The Institute for International Education (IIE) reports that 347,099 U.S. students received academic credit for study abroad during the 2018-2019 academic school year (IIE). Extensive research into student learning gains abroad have demonstrated that developing student metacognition, or one’s ability to be intentionally self-reflective, is central to transformative learning in the study abroad experience (Vande Berg et al., 2012; Zull, 2012). Consequently, international educators are continually searching for pedagogies (praxis) to facilitate metacognitive learning within study abroad programs.

The burgeoning discipline of contemplative pedagogy (Bai et al., 2009; Zajonc, 2013) provides such a praxis for metacognitive learning. Yet the research on the use of contemplative pedagogy within the context of study abroad is still in a nascent stage (Clancy, 2020). In this paper, we present an exploratory case study of contemplative pedagogy and mindfulness practice on a semester-long study abroad program and, namely, its potential long-term impact on student participants. Analysis of questionnaires, answered on a voluntary and anonymous basis, 18 months after the return to the home campus, reveals that students continue to use those practices: Students report sustained attentiveness to surroundings, in the present moment, greater self-awareness, improved connection to those in their communities, and a heightened remembrance. We conclude that contemplative pedagogy, associated with student metacognition, was a successful intercultural praxis within the exploratory case study, and may potentiate long-term effects in participants.

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