THE EFFECTS OF A STUDY-ABROAD EXPERIENCE ON PRE-SERVICE FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHERS’ TEACHING PHILOSOPHIES

Abstract

With the globalization of the world and the ease to travel to different parts of the globe, the popularity of exchange programs for students has increased. Many students around the world apply such programs in order to have international learning experiences in which they can, besides educational purposes, meet new social and cultural values while introducing their native cultures. As study-abroad experiences have attracted attention regarding their various effects on the participants, research focusing on students participating in such programs may provide useful insight on their contributions to pre-service teachers’ teaching philosophies. Therefore, this study is intended to investigate the effects of a study-abroad experience on the way three pre-service teachers perceived the teaching profession and whether it modified their teaching philosophy. The data were collected through reflection reports and semi-structured interviews with three Turkish pre-service teachers who spent a semester in Hungary on a study-abroad experience. Content analysis was adopted for data analysis. The results revealed that the participants developed in terms of their linguistic, personal, social, cultural and educational understanding, which in turn contributed to their perceptions and conceptions of the teaching profession and caused them to adjust their teaching philosophies. In the light of these results, some suggestions are provided.