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The field of education abroad has been growing for years. The number of participating students, the number of sponsoring institutions, the variety of destinations and program offerings, and the complexity of the field have all grown rapidly. Thanks to such organizations as NAFSA: Association of International Educators, the Council on International Educational Exchange, and the Forum on Education Abroad, the amount of support for the increasing numbers of professionals in the field has also grown rapidly.
Naturally, gaps remain. Among them is a degree of semantic ambiguity at times bordering on anarchy Several different terms may be used for the same concept, or the same term may have several different meanings. Education abroad professionals have had no agreed-upon set of definitions to which to turn. This glossary attempts to begin filling that gap.
To illustrate, is "short-term program" a useful term? If so, what exactly does it mean? (Is it defined by time of year? If so, are all summer programs short-term by definition? Or is it defined by length alone? If so, how many days or weeks constitute the cutoff point?) What do we call a study abroad program that places students in regular classes, alongside host-country students, in a foreign university? (Direct enrollment? Integrated study? University study? Integrated university study?) Can we agree on a term for a program run by an external provider but with which an institution has special ties? (An affiliated program? A cosponsored program? An approved program? An endorsed program? A highlighted program? A featured program?) When we group programs geographically, what countries do we consider to constitute, say, Western Europe, Southern Africa, or the Middle East?
Some of this confusion is inevitable. Different institutions organize their education abroad efforts differently, and a definition that makes sense for one institution may not for another. Moreover, many terms are used widely outside education abroad as well as within, and education abroad professionals are in no position to impose definitions unilaterally. Yet our profession does potentially have the power to reduce semantic ambiguity significantly.
The need for conventions may be mild or acute depending on the uses to which terms are to be put. For our everyday professional lives the lack of precision may be only a minor inconvenience. On the other hand, clarity is essential when terms are to be used for, say, data collection--or, more to the immediate point, for effective outcomes assessment.
For more than a year now a Forum task force has been working to develop this glossary of education abroad terms. Entries in the glossary will attempt whenever feasible to standardize meanings, and when not, at least to identify competing usages explicitly.
In developing the glossary, several decisions needed to be taken concerning scope and audience:
- The focus is on education abroad for US college and university students. No attempt has been made to define terms concerned mainly with students from other countries who study in the US or elsewhere, or with education abroad for primary or secondary school students or for adult learners who are not students.
- The primary audience is education abroad professionals and faculty, both in the US and in destination countries, who work with such students.
- The glossary covers not only what has been traditionally been defined as study abroad but also other forms of education abroad, including work, internships, volunteering, service-learning, and educational travel.
- Some entries attempt to distill for the education abroad profession current usage, especially when the term comes from outside the field. Others propose conventions for use in the field.
Definitions reflect (or in some cases recommend) US usages. A similar glossary for the UK or another Anglophone country would contain many differences. Here and there for the sake of clarity there is some information on contrasting usages in other Anglophone countries, but no attempt has been made at comprehensiveness.
Enter the Glossary
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