DOI
10.1080/10437797.2015.1046342

Summary
This study involves the assessment of social work students studying abroad from the U.S context. The authors utilise a community-based participatory approach and aim to provide a framework for the process of studying abroad with 6 components.

The methodology for this study includes a review on the typical process of studying abroad and then applies community-based participatory principles to delineate the proposed model. The model is mainly informed by Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) and its function is described in this paper as having ‘emerged in response to important critiques of research approaches in which an “expert” researcher from outside the community “largely determines the questions asked, the tools employed, the interventions developed, and all kinds of results and outcomes documented and valued”’. The issue here being that the lived experiences of community members were not being addressed by traditional research methods to which CBPR aims to achieve.   

Study abroad presents students with the opportunity to increase cultural awareness, cross-cultural competence, professional identity and to develop a better understanding of social justice and ethnocentrism.

Fisher & Grettenberger first describe the process of a short-term study abroad and limitations this presents for experiential learning. They identify that deep engagement in the process is hindered by the short-term stay.




The authors envision a Community-based Participatory Study Abroad (CBPSA) model as compiled approach built of the CBPR model.

They developed 6 components:

(1) Shared power – ensuring community voices are heard and implemented into each stage of the process.

(2) Co-learning – implore Freireian approaches that look to the lived experiences of community members, students and instructors.

(3) Reciprocal benefits – balancing educational outcomes and implementing service-learning derived from the issues identified within the community system of study abroad.

(4) Empowerment – honouring the individual strengths and collective strengths of local people, organisations and student social workers studying abroad to achieve the outcomes identified by the community.

(5) Community grounded processes – building on individual relationships within the community and pushing for change at the individual and community level.

(6) Sustainability – ‘developing long-term collaborative relationships between instructors, institutions and host community members to maintain an ongoing study abroad program’.

The study goes on to report on a case study for Kenya under some of the headings mentioned above including sustainability.

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
This study is relevant to community development systems in the context of studying abroad in a social work context. Like other community development studies it implores the CBPR approach. Here, the authors use the foundations and functions of a typical CBPR and apply them social work and studying abroad to develop a specific model for development.

Sustainability is an important factor for the CBPSA model. Fisher & Grettenberger draw recommendations from Pontbriand’s (2003) regarding sustainable service-learning programs. From this, they suggest that a CBPSA course and it’s activities should include (1) shared ownership, (2) program sequencing that intuitively passes the project tasks to the next relevant group of participants and (3) blending core community values and linking the service project to the participant community and educational institution. They state that sustainability may be the most difficult model to implement.  

Point of Strength
Fisher & Grettenberger state that sustainability may be the most difficult aspect to integrate into the model. This may be a construed as a calling for possible further research on the topic. The Kenya case study contained the least amount of reporting on sustainability in comparison to the other topics reported on, further highlighting the weakness > strong point for further study.

The aim of the study is to produce a modified model of CBPR for a specific field of study. They demonstrate the process by which this has been done. This presents an opportunity for the repetition of their processes in a different context.

The model incorporates service-learning and references Pontriand (2003) as a useful resource. This too may be replicated in a different context to achieve a similar outcome.