Integrating Research and Practice to Enhance Experiences and Outcomes of Study Abroad of Underrepresented Students: An Introduction

A team of practitioners, researchers, and scholar-practitioners collaborated to spotlight successes and to enhance areas for improvement in study abroad practices through interaction with research. The joint effort focused on study abroad students from five identity groups for which the research base was large enough to permit generation of research-to-practice briefs. Researchers first reviewed studies from the Academic Research on Education Abroad (AREA) Database and summarized research on these students’ study abroad experiences and outcomes. Practitioners—most of them with lived experience as a member of the identity group—drew on their expertise in interpreting the relevance to practice of summarized research findings and in recommending better study abroad practices. The resulting five research-to-practice briefs focus on the experiences and outcomes of five student identity groups: African American and Black students, Asian and Asian American students, first-generation students, Hispanic and Latinx students, and LGBTQ+ students. Altogether, these briefs signify working in teams of both researchers and practitioners, and they highlight some of the outstanding gaps in study abroad research and practice concerning the student groups in focus