Assessing the Impact of a Strategies-Based Curriculum on Language and Culture Learning Abroad.

During the past 20 years, the internationalization of higher education has become a major feature of educational reform throughout the world and study abroad has been identified as a major component of internationalization. Today, over one million tertiary level students are studying in countries other than their passport nations; over 160,000 students from the U.S. were studying abroad in 2002-2003 (International Institute of Education, 2004). Study abroad is clearly a global educational phenomenon, a “growth industry” in higher education, and contributes to broader internationalization efforts in colleges and universities. In an era of ever-greater accountability and cost-benefit analysis, hard evidence is being demanded to demonstrate that investments in various forms of education, including study abroad, are worthy ones that are realizing their learning objectives. In the case of study abroad, the learning objectives most commonly mentioned are intercultural competence, second language acquisition, and learning in the disciplines. Yet, the research evidence is incomplete and, in the case of second language learning, somewhat contradictory (Freed, 1995).

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