The Erasmus Learning Journey : Students’ Experiences from a Mobility Period Abroad

The aim of this thesis is to gain knowledge and understanding of students’ learning through a mobility period abroad. Student mobility is a topic that attracts great scholarly attention internationally and has also gained increased attention in Sweden lately, both in terms of policy aims related to student mobility as well as attracting scholarly interest. Whilst there is a vast body of knowledge in relation to student mobility, it has largely focused on identifying and measuring different learning outcomes as regards specific skills and competencies acquired from participation in study abroad programs (Streightwieser & Light, 2018). Less research has focused on what students themselves experience and learn from participation in a mobility period abroad and if and how they personally develop and undergo change from the study abroad experience. This thesis takes the students’ perspective in order to increase knowledge about student learning from a mobility period abroad. The study presents a cross-sectional study that explored students’ motives, experiences and self-reported outcomes of participation in the Erasmus program. The data are based on semi-structured interviews with 45 Erasmus alumni from Stockholm University and the interviews were conducted as reflective conversations. The following research questions were formulated to achieve the aim of the thesis; why do students in higher education seek the study abroad experience? What experiences do students describe in relation to their learning and personal development? What learning processes can be identified in these experiences? The theoretical framework is grounded in theories of adult learning and development, which aims to understand how students learn from their experiences. Jarvis’ concepts of ‘harmony’ and ’disjuncture’ and Mezirow’s concept of ‘perspective transformation’ is used to identify the different learning journeys in relation to different motives, experiences and outcomes. The results show that students learn new knowledge and skills as well as questioning assumptions and changing assumptions following the Erasmus stay. From the results, five different learning journeys are identified including a positive learning journey, a neutral learning journey, a highly reflective learning journey and two transformative learning journeys as being either a reactive or a pro-active process. A positive learning journey involves an outcome of learning of different skills and gaining new or deepened academic and cultural knowledge; a neutral learning journey involves an outcome of “a sense being the same” following the Erasmus stay; a highly reflective learning journey involves an outcome of increased self-awareness and cultural awareness; a reactive transformative learning journey involves an outcome of having changed view of oneself and/or others; and a proactive transformative learning journey involves a changed view of oneself, or towards others and/or life. These different learning journeys show that the study abroad experience is not a “one size fits all” experience as students who decide to study abroad during their time in higher education come from different backgrounds and have different experiences during the mobility period abroad and thus have different learning journeys, i.e. engaging in different processes of learning. The identification of a pro-active transformative learning journey contributes to the elaboration of the theory of transformative learning by employing Jarvis’ concept of ‘disjuncture’ as being both reactive in relation to a social experience (external) that causes internal ‘disjuncture’ (either cognitively or emotively) as well as being pro-active by internal ’disjuncture’ in wanting to change and challenge one’s assumptions in different areas