Sustainable Education Abroad: Striving for Change

Foreword

Jennifer Jones

International education and study abroad made me the sustainability professional and higher education administrator I am today. Five years as a graduate student at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and eight years directing programs on six continents for the International Honors Program (part of SIT Study Abroad) fueled my passion to make the world more sustainable and just. As the current Director of the Center for Environment & Society at Florida Gulf Coast University, I continue to draw on the skills I gained through these international experiences. Learning about sustainability in our own place is powerful and important but even more so when complemented with direct experience through study abroad. This book provides powerful examples of how sustainability in education abroad matters for students and faculty, university operations, and our planet.

We faculty and administrators in higher education have a distinct and much-needed role in advancing sustainability as a shared endeavor that fosters dialogue, collaboration, and partnerships. We can lead the way in advocating for sustainability abroad experiences to serve students from all disciplines and all career paths. Creating a world that is both environmentally and socially sustainable will require systemic changes and solutions from all aspects of our lives, from business and management to transportation planning, to models of public health, to development and marketing of sustainable foods. All university majors and career paths are both wanted and needed to construct and implement solutions for sustainability. Study abroad provides an excellent tool to engage and train students in sustainability from those majors and career paths traditionally excluded from the sustainability discourse. I routinely meet with industry leaders who want and expect their future employees to bring experience and skills in climate change, water quality, and social equity; sustainability thinking and expertise are no longer the realm of environmental students. I have seen many of my students from the arts, humanities, and social sciences subsequently incorporate sustainability into their fields or even pursue careers in sustainable development as they learned their unique skills could be employed to address the wicked problems of sustainability. To support such workforce development and student success, administrators can play a key role in aligning sustainability study abroad to all majors. In addition to content knowledge, international educational experiences are proven to grow student skills in cross-cultural communication, personal resilience & adaptability, and problem-solving. Administrators can shape university policy to reward—through accreditation, monies, etc.—participation in programs that deliver such outcomes for all of our students.

Sustainability in education abroad can also shape our universities at home. Life is not lived within disciplines, and administrators can incentivize interdisciplinary opportunities for faculty. My own experiences co-teaching with faculty from other disciplines made me a better educator and a better researcher. Leading interdisciplinary programs instilled the belief that intellectual growth is not about seeking simple solutions to complex sustainability problems, but rather, it is about learning to ask better questions. It is a straight line between those experiences and my current work building and leading teams of students and faculty drawn from different colleges (business, health, engineering, etc.) to collaborate on teaching and research focused on vexing problems in Florida and beyond. Through authentic field-based learning, students and faculty can explore questions that situate their home community in connection to the shared drivers and impacts of sustainability across international borders. Questions become more informed, more complex, and more apt to provoke action in the individual at home. International programs can build rich institutional partnerships for affiliated programs, exchanges, and opportunities to reach the larger university community. One case study in this book demonstrates how virtual exchanges are used to provide the home campus access to voices and perspectives from around the world. Another chapter highlights how campus sustainability operations were improved through carbon sequestration and offsetting. These and other lessons demonstrate education abroad can increase sustainability at home.

While some may argue air travel inherent to many international programs is a contributor to global climate change, we will not build a more sustainable world simply by staying home. Our shared future is one of more connectedness, not less, and this book provides inspiration and ideas for sustainability in education abroad to serve as a powerful solution.

Jennifer Jones

Director, Center for Environment & Society

Florida Gulf Coast University

Foreword

Scott Blair

The unprecedented global crisis before us—climate disruption and collapsing nature—compels us to rethink the very purpose of international education. In turn, the modern university—premised on overcoming obscurantism since the Middle Ages, achieving citizens’ political and social rights since the French Revolution, and building peace in the minds of men since the end of World War II—struggles to embrace the next great challenge in the history of ideas—educating for sustainable, ecocentric development. Mobility education—premised on providing opportunities in perspective-taking, diversity learning, and cultural humility not easily experienced at home—is a critical part of this agenda. Recognizing the reality of carbon pollution, habitat destruction, declining biodiversity, human overpopulation—and finding urgent corrective political, economic, social, and educational responses—this is the central moral and ethical challenge of our time.

If we continue sending students overseas to meditate only upon the civilizational achievements of but another cultural subset of Homo sapiens, we fail to open student eyes, hearts, and minds to the majesty of nature, its perilous state, our responsibility in degrading it, and our vital interest in healing and sustaining it. What we need is an altogether new educational direction—a new vision, ethos, and ecopedagogy that somehow teaches 8 billion Homo sapiens—and the mobility students among them—the truth that we are an interdependent part of Nature—not outside it, not above it, not master over it—but yes (and much to our post-modern surprise) responsible for it.

Seized of this truth, the authors of this unique collection of chapters suggest alternative ways of designing, delivering, and assessing education programs overseas that do not degrade the natural world, ignore climate injustice, perennialize colonializing mindsets, diminish human empathy and kindness, or impoverish the spirit. Instead of continuing to articulate the student experience abroad around traditional anthropocentric values and attitudes (e.g., power-knowledge acquisition, cultural consumption, habitat expropriation, extractive productivism, business-as-usual employability, intercultural competence, narrow self-exploration, etc.), these writers show us what it means to think imaginatively about how the different ecologies, floras, faunas, habitats, and natural resources abroad might suggest an altogether different set of possible student learning and developmental outcomes in line with biodiversity, planetary health, long-term sustainability, and—why not, while we’re at it—the physiological and psychological well-being of the Homo sapiens involved—both students and host communities.

The natural world and our place within it—this is the new teaching and learning agenda of international education, of global learning, of mobility programs, and of education abroad. A deep behavioral change in the way we Homo sapiens interact with the physical and natural world around us—this is the new learning outcome that we international educators must now set out to achieve. And we have to do this urgently and with courage, while there still remains a critical mass of biodiversity to preserve, and a climate that accommodates our human cultures and material needs.

Antonio Gramsci noted that every crisis is also a moment of reconstruction in which the normal functioning of the old economic, social, cultural order, provides the opportunity to reorganize it in new ways. At this decisive moment in history, the perspectives, insights, and research findings shared by this remarkable band of sister/brother-authors reinforce my hope that reconstruction and new ways of thinking in education abroad are taking root, giving leaf, and bearing fruit. This is a fate of the Earth to believe in.

Scott Blair

Content Development Editor, TASK – The Assessment of Sustainability Knowledge, Sulitest Impact

Director of Accreditation and Quality Assurance, International Higher Education

American International Accreditation Association of Schools and Colleges (AIAASC)

1

The Age of Sustainable

Education Abroad:

Key Questions and Trends

Pii-Tuulia Nikula and Karen McBride

Objectives of the Book

Sustainable Education Abroad: Striving for Change is a timely and important book. Humanity is facing major global crises that require fast and decisive action. We have failed to adequately address a number of social issues (Raworth, 2017; Rockström et al., 2009). This is why all sectors need to rethink their modus operandi and introduce changes to better protect our human and ecological well-being. Education abroad is no exception. We need to reduce our sector’s negative impacts while amplifying the positive local and global impacts of education abroad. This book will help toward that goal by improving key stakeholders’ understanding of sustainability issues and available solutions. Hence, this edited collection is an essential reading for education abroad and sustainability professionals within educational institutions, researchers, and policymakers.

The key focus of this book is on education abroad, which The Forum on Education Abroad (2020) defines in clause 3.11 of the Terms and Definitions section of the Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad as enrollment in courses, experiential learning, internships, service learning, and other learning activities, which occurs outside the participant’s home country, the country in which they are enrolled as a student, or the country in which they are employed as personnel.

A significant number of students participate in education abroad programs each year. Pre-COVID-19 (in the 2018–2019 academic year), 347,099 American students were enrolled in credit-bearing study abroad and around 38,000 students participated in non-credit-bearing programs (Open Doors, 2021). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, these numbers declined significantly in 2019/2020, but 162,633 Americans were still able to study abroad for academic credit (Open Doors, 2021). In Europe, more than 300,000 students participated in the Erasmus+ mobility scheme (European Commission & Directorate-General for Education, 2021) and around 50,000 Australian university students were involved in study abroad in 2019 (Department of Education, Skills and Employment, 2021). The sheer number of students engaged in these and other education abroad opportunities globally means that sustainability questions associated with this mobility warrant careful investigation. Many of the issues and solutions are shared with other forms and modes of international education, such as degree-seeking mobility. Hence, many of the insights from this book are likely to be applicable to wider international education contexts.

This edited volume is an outcome of a collaborative effort made possible by the authors who are all passionate experts in the field of education abroad, sharing their knowledge, experiences, and research. By emphasizing and presenting solutions, the contributors offer a positive response to the sustainability issue. The findings are of interest to the global audience, with chapters exploring learnings from North and Central Americas, Europe, Africa, and Oceania. The chapters in this book present both new primary data and insightful evaluations of existing programs and practices, enhancing our awareness of the underlying complexities. Hence, the collection offers a multitude of ideas for practitioners and researchers across the globe.

Sustainability in Education Abroad

How much focus are academics placing on sustainability within the study abroad context? In the past couple of years, a number of academic journal articles have been published that have examined this intersection using both qualitative and quantitative study designs. For instance, Zhang and Gibson (2021) conducted qualitative interviews with 31 former short-term study abroad students (from the U.S. to the South Pacific) to explore whether participation in a sustainability-themed study abroad program resulted in changes in participants’ long-term sustainability attitudes and behaviors. Their findings indicated that a sustainable mindset was retained by many participants after the program, with specific changes in many participants’ everyday lives, career paths, and travel styles. Other examples include the study by Hane and Korfmacher (2020) highlighting how the exposure to a new culture can have an impact on the way students think about environmental problems, and the contribution by Thomas (2020) discussing ways in which educators can deepen university students’ sustainability understanding with examples from a semester-long study abroad program in Italy.

The impact of studying abroad has also been explored using quasi-experimental designs. Tarrant et al. (2021) evaluated the influence of different pedagogical models, including study abroad and sustainability topics, on student engagement using quantitative pre- and post-survey results. The self-reported data from 3096 undergraduate students in the United States demonstrated that the positive impact on deep learning was associated with both sustainability courses and study abroad participation. However, the study could not confirm whether learning about sustainability while studying abroad enhanced deep learning more compared to studying non-sustainability-related subjects abroad. In another paper employing a similar design with a dataset including 1703 undergraduate students from the United States, the authors argue that studying abroad, regardless of the topic, can be an effective way to improve sustainability literacy (Ling et al., 2021).

Researchers have also provided estimates/calculations of greenhouse gas emissions related to education abroad-related travel (c.f., Arsenault et al., 2019; Hale, 2019; Shield, 2019). These insights are important so that we can better understand the environmental costs related to student mobility. Furthermore, considering the travel disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, institutions and educators have been prompted to consider alternative ways to provide international experiences, including virtual exchanges/collaborative international learning (COIL) opportunities. For instance, a survey of 216 members of The Forum on Education Abroad reported 60% growth in virtual offerings in 2021 (The Forum on Education Abroad, 2021a). This highlights the importance of further exploring the intersection of virtual exchanges/COIL and sustainability (e.g., Bowen et al., 2021; King et al., 2021). Moreover, the topic of reciprocity, including equitable and sustainable partnerships between low-, medium-, and high-income countries, has attracted scholarly attention. For instance, Jotia, Biraimah, and Kurtz (2020) discuss the way in which short-term study abroad programs organized in the Global South could be made more beneficial to host institutions/communities, while also simultaneously improving student experiences. There seems to be less research focusing on the study abroad experiences of students from low-income countries. Bell et al. (2021) highlight this issue and discuss the experiences of Indian short-term study abroad students in Australia as well as the ways in which Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) could further increase the level of reciprocity in study abroad programming.

Besides academic research, a number of industry presentations and initiatives have highlighted the importance of sustainability within the education abroad and wider international education community. The Forum on Education Abroad has developed guidelines aiming to enhance sustainability awareness and action within the sector. These guidelines align with U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (hereafter SDGs) with specific education abroad activities (The Forum on Education Abroad, 2021b). SDGs are also the starting point for many chapters in this book, providing a useful framework when addressing a variety of social and ecological concerns. Other examples of recent North American initiatives include NAFSA’s decision to use sustainability expertise to appoint its 2020–2021 Senior Fellows leading to a special edition issue highlighting trends and insights (NAFSA, 2021).

A number of initiatives focused on sector-wide sustainability engagements outside North America are also available. Examples of these include, for instance, the European Green Erasmus project (https://greenerasmus.org/) aiming to enhance awareness about the importance of sustainable internationalization, the European Association for International Education (EAIE) forest initiative offsetting emissions related to their annual conference (https://www.eaie.org/blog/eaie-starts-education-forest-offset-co2.html), and sustainability articles/contributions featured in industry magazines/other industry platforms (see for instance; EAIE, 2022; McDonald, 2015; Nikula, 2019). Many international education conferences across the globe have also increasingly included presentations related to environmental and social sustainability issues. At the same time, sustainability-related bottom-up initiatives around specific sub-topics have emerged. For instance, the Climate Action Network for International Educators (www.canie.org) advocates for climate action (CANIE, 2022). A number of other networks/associations contribute to sustainability work alongside individual higher education institutions and other education abroad providers, who have acted to align their institutional objectives and strategies with the U.N. SDGs or taken other action to address some of the existing issues. For instance, a growing number of institutions have started to measure their greenhouse gas emissions, while some have also made a commitment to reduce and offset their education abroad-related emissions (Redden, 2019).

Despite all these laudable initiatives, the implementation of sustainability principles is still in its infancy. For instance, a sector-wide sustainability awareness and performance survey conducted by Bound International and Earth Deeds which captured 77 higher education institutions and study abroad provider organizations from 13 countries, showed that sustainability performance is neither consistent nor particularly high within the field (Bound International, 2021). While not a representative sample of the more than the estimated 20,000 HEIs in the world, the data were retrieved from a good cross-section of institutional and organizational types, including public universities, private universities, private study abroad organizations, and community colleges. Some notable statistics from the survey included the fact that only 22% of survey respondents indicated that environmental sustainability was explicitly embedded into organizational mission, goals, and objectives and only 17% explicitly embedded it into their organizational policies. Furthermore, 68% of respondents do not track Scope 3 emissions from student, faculty, or staff travel abroad and most institutions and organizations do not include the terms Sustainable Development Goals, Climate Change, Environmental Sustainability, or Social Sustainability into any education abroad program titles or descriptions. The drivers for action are clear, but we need a radical change in the way we think about and design education abroad opportunities. At the same time, the complexities and trade-offs need to be considered carefully before implementation (Nikula and van Gaalen, 2022). Examples from programs/courses, such as those shared in this book, are valuable resources for institutions considering similar initiatives.

In this book, we do not rely on a single sustainability definition. Rather, each author details their own sustainability lens whether they are referencing environmental and/or social sustainability questions. This is done, in part, due to a lack of formalization and consistency regarding sustainability within the international higher education context to date. However, formalization and consistency should be considered important endeavors with strategic planning within higher education institutions and other study abroad organizations henceforth. In particular, HEIs and affiliated partners should likely consider how they are positioned to make an impact on the climate crisis and what they want student learning and research-oriented outcomes to be before creating a working definition.

Two main approaches are used throughout this book. First, some of the chapters are exploring the ways in which the negative impacts (i.e., the footprint) related to education abroad could be minimized. Second, a number of chapters are exploring the ways in which education abroad can have a positive influence (i.e., the handprint). The former approach includes different ways of reducing education abroad sector’s negative impact on the planet and/or on our communities. For instance, the carbon emissions related to international education mobility are considerable, and hence highly problematic, when considering the urgent need to decarbonize our economies (Shields, 2019). The latter approach focuses on how to maximize the positive handprint of the education abroad sector by influencing stakeholders, such as students and local partners involved in education abroad programs. These two approaches are not exclusive, but, on the contrary, the successful transitions toward a sustainable education abroad era requires that both are addressed simultaneously.

Chapters

The chapters in this book were written by a group of international education professionals and researchers from a number of organizations and countries. All authors contribute by providing their unique knowledge about their chosen topic discussing different intersections of sustainability and education abroad. This book is structured as follows: Sustainability in the Curriculum; Sustainability and the Student Perspective; Sustainability in Administration; Sustainability and Program Design; and Travel and Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Many of the authors discuss and explore issues, solutions, and perspectives that cover more than just one of the themes mentioned above.

Sustainability in the Curriculum

Chapter 2 by Tammy Shannon, Ketja Lingenfelter, and Robert Shannon explains how sustainable practices have been built into the Penn State university’s study abroad curriculum in Costa Rica. The authors present feedback from alumni, students, and faculty to discuss best practices and how the education abroad experience has impacted students and graduates. In Chapter 3, Linda Beck and Mark Pires examine a faculty-led travel course in Tanzania focused on responsible tourism. This chapter provides an overview of the 2-week experiential learning excursion encouraging students to develop informed understanding of the impact tourism has on the natural environment, livelihoods, and economic development. Chapter 4 by Derek Martin and Molly Roe discusses how institutions can incorporate the U.N. SDGs to short-term faculty-led education abroad programs. The authors provide examples from a faculty-led program Greek Culture: Ancient and Modern offered by Susquehanna University.

Sustainability and the Student Perspective

In Chapter 5, Shayle Havemann and Cynthia Arochi-Zendejas share their insights into how virtual programs, when carefully planned, can be used to promote equality in North–South partnerships. Their chapter includes small scale survey and test data from students who have completed a Global Sustainable Development virtual exchange program and the students themselves were based in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres. Chapter 6 is co-authored by Rebecca L Farnum and her students Kahsenniiostha Jacobs, Courtney Jiggetts, Annabel Lassally, and Elias Mittelstadt. This chapter provides an insightful reflection on the value and potential pitfalls of experiential sustainability-focused learning abroad, based on the example of a 10-day field seminar organized in Northern Europe.

Sustainability in Administration

Chapter 7 is based on a case study of University of Auckland in New Zealand. The authors, Ainslie Moore and Brett Berquist, examine how a university’s international education office can collaborate to influence and develop a sustainability agenda. They present a number of ways international offices can take sustainability action both within and beyond the university. In Chapter 8, Anne C. Campbell and Thi Nguyen investigate the topic of climate change by analyzing the practices and aspirations of those working in the field of international education. The authors discuss the different types of action international education professionals engage in both their professional and personal lives, and the type of organizational and sector-wide leadership that is called for. In Chapter 9, Julie Ficarra and Melissa Topacio Long challenge some common education abroad practices. The authors discuss the value of using a decolonial lens to analyze education abroad programs based on their learnings from case studies in Costa Rica and in Morocco.

Sustainability and Program Design

Chapter 10 by James M. Lucas, Amy Butler Kennaugh, and Opal Bartiz presents the case study of Michigan State University. The authors discuss the university-level approach to sustainability as well as unit-level structures and the delivery of a specific program. The authors use SDGs to explore these different levels, highlighting the ways in which carefully designed education abroad programs can be valuable learning activities with potential long-term benefits. In Chapter 11, Miguel Karian presents a Sustainable Global Stewardship framework to guide the design and implementation of transformative education abroad. The author presents primary data from education abroad participants in Costa Rica to indicate how the offered learning opportunities can improve student learning and encourage sustainable behaviors.

Travel and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

In Chapter 12, Stephen Robinson, Christina Erickson, and Tony Langan discuss the climate impact of U.S. education abroad. The authors calculate the carbon footprint associated with education abroad-related overseas travel before discussing potential solutions. Chapter 13 further explores education abroad-related emissions. Daniel Greenberg discusses the ways in which these emissions ought to be measured, reduced, and priced. Then, a new carbon tax scheme is discussed, including how it would eliminate some of the challenges related to more commonly used offsetting practices.

Finally, Chapter 14 by the editors explores how, collectively, the chapters in this book fill a clear void by exploring a diversity of issues and solutions pertinent to the intersection of study abroad and sustainability.

Final Thoughts

This volume compiles in-depth knowledge about the intersection of sustainability and education abroad in a book format. Readers are offered valuable insights into different levels, including sector-wide, institutional, program, and curriculum, that they can use to reflect on practices in their own international education contexts. We believe this book will become an important resource for practitioners, researchers, and policymakers and helps the field to transform the way in which we design and conduct our education abroad activities across the globe.

References

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Bell, K., Cash, B., Boetto, H., & Thampi, K. (2021). International study abroad programmes: Exploring global south student perspectives, reciprocity and sustainability. Social Work Education, 40(4), 492–504. https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2020.1711881

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