Learning abroad and graduate employability: challenges articulating international learning outcomes

Growing numbers of Australian undergraduate students are participating in short-term international experiences as part of their degree courses. In addition to any discipline specific knowledge or skills learnt, such international programs provide students with the opportunity to develop graduate attributes such as intercultural communication skills and professional readiness for careers in globalised workplaces. To facilitate their transition to graduate employment, it is important that students are able to articulate the learning outcomes of international programs and apply them to professional contexts. However, this is a complex task for students that has not been adequately addressed in university learning programs. To address this gap, this paper reports on a study of the experiences of 55 undergraduate students from a range of disciplines who had completed a learning abroad program. It analyses interview data on the challenges students faced to connect their international experience with their future professions. Results indicate a complex range of potential challenges for individual students relating to their career management skills, developing professional identity, task-related performance issues, and perceptions of the relevance of international programs for employability. The paper establishes the necessity for universities to maximise the affordances of learning abroad programs by adequately supporting students to realise global graduate career opportunities

Program Components: (Re)considering the Role of Individual Areas of Programming in Education Abroad

Over the past decades, a growing body of scholarship has sought to assess the extent to which education abroad programs deliver on intended outcomes for students. Scholars and practitioners share a common interest in moving beyond the assumption that education abroad is automatically and necessarily a transformational process, to find evidence of the ways that students may (or may not) develop as part of their time abroad (Gozik, 2014). While much has been examined regarding the success of programs in maximizing student learning (see e.g. chapter 3, this volume), this chapter explores an area in the research literature that has received far less attention, namely the role that individual program components have in contributing to student learning. Reviewing the existing literature, this chapter explores five areas of programming often associated with education abroad: modes of instruction, housing, extra- and co-curricular activities, experiential learning, and support services. These align with the categorization of “meeting grounds” for intercultural learning, as developed by Ogden, Streitwieser, and Crawford (2014). “Academic programming” has been further split out into “modes of instruction” and “extra and co-curricular learning”, given the great expansion of both areas. Instead of viewing a particular element or a combination of practices as the “gold standard”, it is argued that scholars and practitioners need to be aware of how all individual program components impact students (Strange & Gibson, 2017; Tarrant, Ruben & Stoner, 2014). A critical stance is essential to ensure the combination of components of any education abroad program is understood for their value in facilitating students’ achievement of desired outcomes

Human Rights Education in the Australian School Curriculum

Australian education systems, at state and federal levels, have been undergoing major reforms to their governance structures and to the nature of their curriculum. At the same time over the last decade there has been a national conversation about our knowledge and understanding of human rights (NHRCC 2009). In this context, it is an opportune time to review the place of education for and about human rights within the school curriculum. The study reported on in this paper outlines and examines the findings of a nationwide investigation into the capacity of each state and territory school education system and their individual curricula to provide opportunities to educate and motivate school students about human rights. It also engages in a discussion of the curriculum reforms being introduced as a result of the national Australian curriculum framework and the extent to which it caters for human rights perspectives. Our data derive from four main sources: a review of the literature; input from roundtable discussions with participants involved in the advocacy for and the delivery of, human rights education in schools; analysis of curriculum and policy documents at the state, territory and national levels; and resources and technologies being used in the teaching of human rights in schools

Human Rights Education in the School Curriculum

Human Rights Education centres; Professional Teachers Associations; Australian Human Rights Commissio