TY - GEN
T1 - Immersion in Curriculum: A Study of the Lived Experiences of Counseling Students on an LU Send Trip to Munich, Germany
AU - Millman, Debbie
PY - 2024/4/16
Y1 - 2024/4/16
N2 - CACREP (2016) accreditation standard F.2 requires counselors-in-training to learn about social and cultural diversity as part of their master’s degree program. Students learn about multicultural counseling models and theories, explore their own cultural identities, and begin to see how their cultural identity may affect clients (CACREP, 2016). As the counseling field changes, counselor educators need to know what students must learn to become effective counselors (Beckstein et al., 2022; Harrichand et al., 2021; Singh et al., 2020). Two counselor educators served as trip leaders on the LU Send trip, where they served as mentors and facilitated cultural immersion experiences. Study abroad and experiential learning opportunities take traditional classroom activities, such as reading and synthesizing journal articles and textbooks, a step further by facilitating tangible application of learning. (Tomlinson-Clarke & Clarke, 2010). This may be especially true now, considering the rapid changes in the counseling field (Gold, 2021; Reinert et al., 2022; Singh et al., 2020) and with the internationalization of higher education (Niehaus & Wegener, 2019). The LU Send program offers students a chance to enroll in a course and participate in experiential learning opportunities simultaneously, in this case, a trip to Munich, Germany. The concept of transformative learning helped to inform the planning and effectiveness of the LU Send trip (Davis et al., 2023). This study seeks to learn from each participant’s experience. Students who attended the trip voluntarily participated in this phenomenological qualitative study, which is a form of qualitative inquiry that takes a close look at participants’ subjective experiences as they relate to a phenomenon (Gupta, 2021). The researchers want to know how the cultural immersion experiences impacted the students and how this may support learning for students in the future. Students were interviewed individually after the trip and had the opportunity to attend a focus group, where additional data was collected. Presenters will review qualitative results, recommendations for application, and implications for further research.
AB - CACREP (2016) accreditation standard F.2 requires counselors-in-training to learn about social and cultural diversity as part of their master’s degree program. Students learn about multicultural counseling models and theories, explore their own cultural identities, and begin to see how their cultural identity may affect clients (CACREP, 2016). As the counseling field changes, counselor educators need to know what students must learn to become effective counselors (Beckstein et al., 2022; Harrichand et al., 2021; Singh et al., 2020). Two counselor educators served as trip leaders on the LU Send trip, where they served as mentors and facilitated cultural immersion experiences. Study abroad and experiential learning opportunities take traditional classroom activities, such as reading and synthesizing journal articles and textbooks, a step further by facilitating tangible application of learning. (Tomlinson-Clarke & Clarke, 2010). This may be especially true now, considering the rapid changes in the counseling field (Gold, 2021; Reinert et al., 2022; Singh et al., 2020) and with the internationalization of higher education (Niehaus & Wegener, 2019). The LU Send program offers students a chance to enroll in a course and participate in experiential learning opportunities simultaneously, in this case, a trip to Munich, Germany. The concept of transformative learning helped to inform the planning and effectiveness of the LU Send trip (Davis et al., 2023). This study seeks to learn from each participant’s experience. Students who attended the trip voluntarily participated in this phenomenological qualitative study, which is a form of qualitative inquiry that takes a close look at participants’ subjective experiences as they relate to a phenomenon (Gupta, 2021). The researchers want to know how the cultural immersion experiences impacted the students and how this may support learning for students in the future. Students were interviewed individually after the trip and had the opportunity to attend a focus group, where additional data was collected. Presenters will review qualitative results, recommendations for application, and implications for further research.
M3 - Other contribution
T3 - Liberty University Research Week
ER -