How else can we use the wheels we have? Reimagining global learning to better serve a diverse student population

by DA Global | Apr 28, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Spring 2021

Authors:

• Kelly Brannan Trail, PhD, Director, Office of Education Abroad – University of Dayton

The current pause in mobility has provided an invaluable opportunity to rethink how current infrastructure can be used to better serve a diverse student population and reenvision the ways students can engage in global education. If certain populations of students are participating at a lower rate, we cannot assume the issue is recruitment; we must look at deeper systemic practices that prevent and exclude participation. We must rethink what we are offering and the ways students can access those experiences. For instance, exchange program partnerships and structures for faculty-led programs can provide a wealth of opportunity for students to enhance their intercultural and global learning but can also be exclusionary in their current forms. We should be inspired to consider how existing infrastructure can be reimagined to provide more accessible and inclusive opportunities. 

For example, many universities have exchange programs, but these typically require a full semester of mobility where students from one university travel to and take courses at the other. How could these programs be reimagined to allow students to participate in a single course remotely or even a full virtual semester? For some students, a full semester abroad is out of the question. This could be related to physical mobility, the need to work during the semester, neurodivergence that requires a consistent schedule, concerns around how aspects of one’s identity(ies) will be received, or even curricular constraints. At the University of Dayton (UD), we have been developing new avenues for enhancing our relationships with exchange partners in an attempt to better serve all students. These new avenues include taking one course remotely at a partner university while remaining at your home institution, taking summer courses with the partner (in person or remotely), or engaging in a full semester abroad, but taking one or two courses online at home to meet curricular needs. These new opportunities to engage in a global experience through our exchange partners can be appealing to students who may not want to (or be able to) travel abroad or to those with more rigid degree programs. 

In addition to exchange programs, many universities offer faculty-led programs where a faculty member and group of students travel abroad for a course. How could that infrastructure be used to develop thematic programs where mobility is not required? Themes can be selected to focus on critical global issues that are relevant to a diverse student population. For example, UD has developed the Global Learning Academy and our inaugural theme is “Racial Equity and Social Justice.” Students choose from four courses being offered that relate to this theme and select a field study site, choosing from two international sites, one domestic site, and a virtual/local option. The flexibility of field study sites allows students to choose what fits their intellectual curiosity, comfort level, and budget. Travel is not required, as a virtual experience is built in as a standard option. There is flexibility in how students engage in the experience. We can broaden the pool of students who are able to benefit from meaningful global learning around a critical theme. For instance, our colleagues who work with students with disabilities believe this model will be appealing to students who are not comfortable going abroad. They can still gain the critical global and intercultural skills needed in today’s society. 

Let’s go one step further and consider how faculty-led programs and exchange program agreements can work together. We have some exchange partners who are unable to send very many (if any) students to UD for a full semester. Oftentimes, this is due to the financial resources of their students. We have determined how students from those partners can take a virtual or in-person course in the summer or winter and have it count towards our exchange. Those students could participate in a traditional faculty-led program or the Global Learning Academy, allowing us to form a true global learning community with diverse perspectives, while also honoring our reciprocal commitment to our partner. 

This pause in mobility presents an opportunity to reexamine our programs, who they serve, and what we can do to reimagine how we offer global learning programs; we should not simply resume “business as usual.” This work should be done by brainstorming with various colleagues; that is how all these ideas were generated. This type of creativity dramatically expands the options for participation amongst a diverse range of students. We do not need to reinvent the wheel; we just need to consider other ways of using the wheels that we have.

Deconstructing the Colonial System of International Education*: Setting Standards and Expectations for Equity, Belonging, and Inclusion

by DA Global | Apr 28, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Spring 2021

Authors:

• Hannah Sorila, Custom Programs Coordinator, SIT Study Abroad

*This piece was originally titled Decolonizing International Education: Setting Standards and Expectations for Belonging and Inclusion. Through continuing to educate myself on the use of the term “decolonize,” especially as a white person, I have learned that systems rooted in white supremacy, capitalism, and (neo)colonial structures cannot be “fixed” to become “decolonized.” Rather, the systems need to be torn down completely and built new within a framework of inclusion, ethics, and equity. This piece aims to reflect that notion, although imperfectly, and begins to point to the ways in which international educators need to dismantle our current systems within the framework of decolonization. I welcome feedback and further discourse around this topic, especially as it relates to study abroad programming.

International Education serves many purposes through study abroad, including increasing intercultural competency, developing engaged global citizens, and expanding students’ knowledge of the world through global perspectives. As professionals developing such experiences, it should be our intention, as it is our responsibility, to uphold ethical standards, dismantle the white supremacist, capitalistic, and (neo)colonial roots of International Education, and effectively prepare and support our students within study abroad programming. In the face of COVID-19 and the ongoing global racial crisis, there is no better time to deconstruct International Education as we know it and rebuild a system that is rooted in prioritizing equity, creating belonging, elevating inclusion, and aligning our intent with our impact through a lens of ethical programming.

International Education, like higher education, has become commodified and commercialized over the years, which has influenced many aspects of study abroad, including practices in the field and governmental policies, as well as student attitudes and advertising methods (Bolen, 2001). This shift has created a capitalist nature which prioritizes the profitability of study abroad, over ethical and equitable programming. Further, some studies have shown that international immersion alone does not lead to increased intercultural competence (Root & Ngampornchai, 2013), which may be caused by this misaligned priority. This detaches the impact of study abroad from the assumed intention of our programming.

Our programs, curriculums, resources, and institutional leadership need to be a major focus in making systemic and sustainable change in International Education (Stroud, 2010). Otherwise, our efforts to become more inclusive and equitable will be limited and will ultimately maintain and uphold the status quo. 

Deconstructing the Colonial Narrative in International Education

The slow change of the study abroad student demographic implies that belonging has not increased, despite efforts to increase diversity. Possibly the focus on diversity, rather than decoloniality, is part of the problem. Decoloniality, equity, and inclusion systemically foster a sense of belonging for all students, especially Black, Indigenous, and Students of Color, as well as students in the LGBTQ+ and other underserved communities. In addition to looking critically at whom our programs are for, we must also address who is developing, running, and profiting from the programs that students have access to. If local communities, local staff, and local organizations are not the leaders in such decisions and do not receive the profits of the programs run in their communities, we are perpetuating a (neo)colonial narrative that goes against the nature of the intention of the work we do.

Although there are limitations to decolonizing systems that uphold racist, colonial, and ethnocentric structures, this framework should be used in deconstructing International Education as it is now, and creating a new system based in equity, belonging, and inclusion.

“Decolonization is the process of deconstructing colonial ideologies of the superiority and privilege of Western thought and approaches. On the one hand, decolonization involves dismantling structures that perpetuate the status quo and addressing unbalanced power dynamics. On the other hand, decolonization involves valuing and revitalizing Indigenous knowledge and approaches and weeding out settler biases or assumptions that have impacted Indigenous ways of being.”¹

International educators need to “[deconstruct] colonial ideologies of the superiority and privilege of Western thought and approaches” that are rooted within study abroad programming. Study abroad programs need to be developed with and by Indigenous and local perspectives. Not only does our current system uphold ethnocentric and colonial practices, but we are perpetuating such perspectives and systems through our students as well—creating an endless cycle that inflicts harm and violence that is disguised as International Education.

Until we address the ethical responsibility we are failing to uphold, and the dynamic of global inequalities and power structures, International Education will continue to perpetuate (neo)colonialist and ethnocentric ideals which will prevent us from moving forward as a field.

Setting Student Expectations and Institutional Standards of Practice

Although our programs aim to increase students’ intercultural competency, a lack of preparation for such an experience can inhibit this learning outcome and the sense of belonging on a program (Root & Ngampornchai, 2013). This happens in multiple ways: the first being the lack of setting student expectations which may result in ethnocentrism and, therefore, a lack of deepened intercultural competency—setting student expectations helps to create an anti-colonial student mindset. Discussions surrounding white supremacy, racial capitalism, ethnocentrism, power, privilege, and positionality are essential to preparing students to study abroad. Further, it is important to empower students to identify, acknowledge, and address these systems themselves, too. 

The second way this inhibits learning is through students not having the resources or support they need to succeed. Students need preparation for their in-country experiences based on their identities and background. For students with disabilities, preparation needs to include honest conversations about accessibility in-country based on what support can be offered and the limitations a student may face. For LGBTQ+ students, preparation needs to include honest conversations about the local context—not only including the law, but also cultural perceptions and social practices. 

All students may have their identities challenged, in various ways and to various extents, throughout study abroad programs. In order to prioritize equity, study abroad program staff need to be prepared to support students, especially through identity-based challenges since identity is interconnected with belonging. Program staff need to receive proper training in order to effectively support study abroad students. Study abroad staff around the world should be equipped to create a safe and brave space for students, and work to set the boundaries on where that space begins and ends (e.g., students can express themselves openly in the program center, but local site visits will be influenced by the local context). 

Conclusion

In order to address the white supremacist, capitalist, and (neo)colonial roots of International Education, program design, structures, and models need to be reimagined to foster a sense of belonging for underserved students, and developed with and by local leaders and local communities; program recruitment needs to expand beyond the means of capitalist gain and focus on equity in order to become more inclusive; and student preparation needs to include addressing the policies and contexts in which students will be living, as well as opening and encouraging discourse on power, privilege, and positionality. Additionally, local staff need more support and training to better prepare their teams for creating a sense of belonging on study abroad programs. These actions will require shifting the paradigm of International Education, and in a moment when our systems cannot function as they typically would, we have the opportunity to dismantle the systems that uphold the status quo and work to imagine and develop a new way forward.

1.  Pulling Together: A guide for Indigenization of post-secondary institutions. A professional learning series 
   by Ian Cull, Robert L. A. Hancock, Stephanie McKeown, Michelle Pidgeon, and Adrienne Vedan, 
   2018 (https://opentextbc.ca/indigenizationfrontlineworkers/chapter/decolonization-and-indigenization/) ↩︎

Resources

Bolen, M. (2001). Consumerism and U.S. study abroad. Journal of Studies in International Education, 5(3), 182–200. https://doi.org/10.1177/102831530153002

Cull, I., Hancock, R. L. A., McKeown, S., Pidgeon, M., & Vedan, A. (2018). Pulling together: A guide for Indigenization of post-secondary institutions. A Professional Learning Series. https://opentextbc.ca/indigenizationfrontlineworkers/chapter/decolonization-and-indigenization/

Root, E., & Ngampornchai, A. (2013). “I came back as a new human being”: Student descriptions of intercultural competence acquired through education abroad Experiences. Journal of Studies in International Education, 17(5), 513–532. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315312468008

Stroud, A. H. (2010). Who plans (not) to study abroad? An examination of U.S. student intent. Journal of Studies in International Education, 14(5), 491–507. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315309357942

Centering DEI in Study Abroad Curriculum and Design

by DA Global | Apr 28, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Spring 2021

Authors:

• Lizzy Monroe, Assistant Director of Global Experiences at Stanford University Graduate School of Business

I spent the majority of 2020 pondering the purpose of international education (IE) and if its essence can be captured without travel. Without the physical “abroad” part of studying abroad, it’s hard to convince students of its merits. It’s an interesting statement on study abroad as a field that as soon as the exotic allure of a new location is removed, the purpose seems moot.

Prior to the pandemic, I attended many IE conferences where words like “trip” and “tourism” were deemed taboo because they risked portraying study abroad as a recreational leisure activity, too far removed from the intellectual venture its practitioners champion. I now think this was a reaction to something we worried to be true and thus protested strongly against: that study abroad programs rely on the tourism industry, encompassing both its toxins as well as its beauties. 

The tourism industry enables study abroad to exist. Turning a blind eye to our field’s reliance on such a complicated industry is not only irresponsible, but also makes us vulnerable to the same faults we find in tourism. As with most businesses, tourism caters to its client: the tourist. Those with enough economic and social capital can visit almost any pocket of the globe and participate in whatever activity they desire. This grants tourists unprecedented power to shape their own experiences with people in places in which they have no official authority, frequently exacerbating inequalities (locally and globally), fabricating realities, and commodifying culture. What if we built our programs around the acknowledgement of the economic and social capital that enables our students to travel in the first place, as opposed to running from it?

This is where I believe insights from diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work can help IE offer opportunities to learn new perspectives and encourage self-reflection. I am of the firm belief that even a short trip can be a form of IE, when done with thoughtful reflection and questioning. If I go to a café in Paris, order coffee in French, sit for a bit, and people watch, this is not a transformative learning experience. Yet if I reflect on why I chose this café as opposed to another and observe the demographics of who’s at the café—Who’s working here? Who’s being served here? Who’s absent from this scene? Why do or don’t I feel comfortable here? How do the café’s demographics compare to the rest of the street? Neighborhood? City? Country?—that’s a different story. The questions I’m asking focus on belonging, power, and difference, which are central tenants in the field of DEI. 

Centering these tenants could improve currently failing aspects within IE. While increased diversity in study abroad is to be celebrated, we are doing a disservice to our students if we stop there. In her study analyzing the experiences of Black women studying abroad, Tasha Y. Willis identified several cases where “microaggressions from peers were actually more troubling than any the student may have experienced from the local culture” (Willis, 2015). Furthermore, NPR reported that 110 of 186 surveyed students received “no resources or advice about study abroad as an LGBTQ person” (Nett, 2018). To truly create equitable study abroad programs, we must develop basic scaffolding for all participants to understand and discuss identity-based inequality—not only to provide context for the inequities students will encounter via travel, but also to enable discussions about inequality within our cohorts.

DEI could also benefit from incorporating components of IE. Studies have shown that perspective-taking is one of the most effective and underused strategies in DEI training (Lindsey, 2017). International education is well versed in techniques to prompt precisely that. I have also witnessed international staff and students lose interest in DEI trainings focused exclusively on US-based examples and rhetoric. If trainings were based in theoretical foundations to understand global phenomena of systemic oppression and marginalization, these trainings could double as global learning opportunities to include international participants. Providing this foundation also centers the systemic nature of inequality, which are important but oft-overlooked components of unconscious bias trainings (Asare, 2020). 

International Education and DEI need each other to remain effective and comprehensive. Combining DEI and IE provides students with frameworks to confront global power structures. IE possesses a unique gateway to introduce examples in various contexts, while DEI provides critical foundations to understand identity-based issues. This path would not only enable our students to become more responsible visitors, but also allies to each other abroad, and agents of change back home. 

References

Asare, J. (2019, December 29). Your unconscious bias trainings keep failing because you’re not addressing systemic bias. Forbes.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/12/29/your-unconscious-bias-trainings-keep-failing-because-youre-not-addressing-systemic-bias/?sh=5a74c9251e9d 

Lindsey, A., King, E., Membere, A., & Cheung, H. (2017, July 28). Two types of diversity training that really work. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/07/two-types-of-diversity-training-that-really-work 

Nett, D. (2018, August 22). Know an LGBTQ student itching to study abroad? Here are some things to think about. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/22/606018920/know-an-lgbtq-student-itching-to-study-abroad-here-are-some-things-to-think-abou

Willis, T. Y. (2015). “And Still We Rise…”: Microaggressions and intersectionality in the study abroad experiences of Black women. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 26, 209–230. https://frontiersjournal.org/index.php/Frontiers/article/view/367/327

“BUT WE CAN’T CHANGE THE PAST, NOW CAN WE?”

by DA Global | Apr 28, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Spring 2021

Authors:

• Henning Martin-Thomsen, Associate Academic Director, DIS – Study Abroad in Scandinavia, Copenhagen, Denmark

“Universities are contradictory spaces. They govern knowledge through hierarchies of control whilst simultaneously providing temporary and contingent spaces to think within and beyond themselves. When speaking of universities, it is imperative that we do not attempt to silence the realities of power that regulate what is legitimate to be known.”

— Akwugo Emejulu, Professor of Sociology, University of Warwick, UK¹

Universities are not innocent. Most of us, having made an academic career and living within higher education, willingly subscribe to the critical foundations of universities. Professor Emejulu reminds us that “there have always been limits to who can know, what is allowed to be known and what is deemed knowable in universities.”²

It is from these types of (self-) critical thinking about higher education that the notion of decolonization springs. Decolonization is a call to “re-shape and re-imagine what the university is for and whom the university should serve (…) To decolonize is to imagine that another university is possible.”³

Decolonization is a very deliberate scrutiny of bias, oppression, and racism originating in the colonial past of Western societies and universities. It is furthermore used as shorthand to indicate a wider and more general ‘opening up’ of higher education to more diverse voices, backgrounds, and aspirations.

This article is not a comprehensive take on decolonization. Rather, my aim is to advance a conversation about how decolonization might be initiated in a specific study abroad context (Scandinavia) where the notion of a ‘colonial’ past is not generally acknowledged—though this may hold true in other places of the world as well. 

I am writing this as a non-BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color) and as an academic affairs administrator. As such, I have firsthand experiences with study abroad students who have had painful encounters in class. I have encountered faculty who have been unaware and unable to acknowledge how this pain might originate in the way the class was taught or from the subject matter presented (or not presented).

IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO

Scandinavia is often praised for its welfare society of democracy, equality, and justice. Many issues that countries around the world struggle with have found a peaceful resolution in Scandinavia—fair access to voting, equal rights, little to no corruption, low crime rates, etc. In fact, these and similar topics are the reason many study abroad students come to Scandinavia in the first place.

And yet, in Scandinavia as elsewhere, aspects of the past are suppressed, hidden, or bypassed. Denmark and Sweden have a colonial past that is largely ignored in official history writing and education.⁴ It is not common knowledge in Scandinavia how the wealth and power structures created through Scandinavian slave trade and exploitive colonialism in the 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th centuries helped lay the foundation for economic progress in the 20^th century and continue to shape Scandinavian societies. 

This disconnect with history has left Scandinavians strangely oblivious to the fact that we, much like all colonial nations, have built our society on racist foundations. In any case, most Scandinavians would think it was such a long time ago (and took place so far away from ‘home’) that it cannot have any bearing on how and what we teach in higher education today. This hardly holds true.

STARTING A DECOLONIZATION PROCESS

Hence, a call for decolonization of the curriculum is as relevant in Scandinavia as elsewhere. Universities do not exist independently from society. They are an integral part of society as much shaped by the colonial past as other structures in society. 

Being predominantly white societies, Scandinavian higher education reflects this in both who is teaching and in what is being taught. In my own field, architecture and design, we did a quick survey of courses in the program that disclosed that 75% of readings were by men and that 95% were by white European and North American authors. Obviously, this does not reflect the realities in the field nor the student population we are eager to welcome. It certainly doesn’t reflect the end users of design and architecture in cities and society in general. My faculty used the survey as an opportunity to change individual syllabi.

Initiating surveys of syllabi and readings to identify bias or exclusive pre-occupations, whether they are based on academic traditions, gender, ethnicity, or other forms of exclusion practices, is an obvious way to advance decolonization. A common dismissal is that readings of a given syllabus have been chosen very carefully and represent the ‘canon’ of a given field. This might hold true, but only if one has eyes closed to alternatives. Stimulating faculty’s academic curiosity to discover new and more diverse voices within their field can advance decolonization of syllabi as well as inform faculty’s approach to their discipline and teaching as a whole.

Acknowledging a colonial past is a necessary step to establishing a more welcoming, validating, and subsequently inclusive learning environment. Giving a platform to faculty with experience in the field to open up the past for their colleagues is a simple approach that has proven valuable.

Providing new vocabulary and a better understanding of cultural diversity is another necessary step. In particular in a study abroad context, where English is not their first language, faculty often lack the terms that will allow them to address decolonization productively. This has proven to be a common and real obstacle in a Scandinavian context in spite of the otherwise excellent language skills faculty exhibit.

Biases in hiring practices, promotion structures, and advancement opportunities based on ethnicity, race, gender, social background, and other identities form other obstacles that need to be addressed when engaging in decolonization. “Far from being a meritocratic system, academia is still struggling to overcome ingrained structural inequalities,” as James Muldoon, University of Exeter, succinctly phrases it.⁵ These structural inequalities are real obstacles that need real solutions in the form of radically different hiring and promotion practices.

It is important to accept that “decolonization is not a single event or prescribed blueprint but a complex and contested process of unlearning and undoing centuries of colonial ideas, desires, and infrastructures, and of (re) learning how to be together in the world differently.”⁶ Fundamentally, the past is not given to us but constructed by us. What became history, and what was left out, is primarily shaped by racist power structures originating in colonial times. Yet the past can be re-written if we empower the oppressed voices. To decolonize is to imagine that another university is possible, where true inclusion and belonging for all is possible.

1. “The University is Not Innocent: Speaking of Universities,” Verso Books blog, 29 March, 2017, Akwugo Emejulu, (viewed 20 July, 2020 https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3148-the-university-is-not-innocent-speaking-of-universities). ↩︎
2. Op. cit. ↩︎
3. “Another University is Possible,” Verso Books blog, 12 January, 2017, Akwugo Emejulu, (viewed 22 July, 2020 https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3044-another-university-is-possible) ↩︎
4. New Sweden along the Delaware River in North America, Cabo Corso in present-day Ghana, and Saint Barthelmy in the Caribbean were some of the Swedish possessions; Tranquebar in present-day Tamil Nadu, India, the Danish West Indies in the Caribbean, and Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands were some of the Danish possessions. ↩︎
5. ”Academics: it’s time to get behind decolonizing the curriculum,” The Guardian, Wed 20 March, 2019, James Muldoon, lecturer, University of Exeter (viewed 24 July, 2020) https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/mar/20/academics-its-time-to-get-behind-decolonising-the-curriculum) ↩︎
6. Stein, Sharon: ’So you want to decolonize higher education? Necessary conversations for non-Indigenous people’, Medium.com, Dec. 5, 2017, (viewed 24 July, 2020) https://medium.com/@educationotherwise/https-medium-com-educationotherwise-so-you-want-to-decolonize-higher-education-4a7370d64955) ↩︎

References:

Ekman, E. (1975). Sweden, the Slave Trade and Slavery, 1784-1847. In Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer, tome 62, n°226–227, 1er et 2e trimestres 1975. La traite des Noirs par l’Atlantique: nouvelles approches. (pp. 221–231).

Gøbel, E. (2016). The Danish slave trade and its abolition. Studies in Global Slavery Vol 2, Leiden: Brill.

Stein, S., & Andreotti, V. D. O. (2016). Decolonization and higher education. In M. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory. Singapore: Springer Science + Business Media. doi: 10.1007/978-981.

Stein, S., Hayes, A., & Luckett, K. (2021). Possibilities and complexities of decolonizing higher education: Critical perspectives on praxis. Teaching in Higher Education (Routledge) Special Issue (to be published Summer 2021).

Tuck, E. & Wayne Yang, K. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40.