Personal Growth and Educational Development through Working and Studying Abroad.

We conclude by summarizing the main lines of the argument advanced in this essay. programs of cross-cultural education are concerned with promoting diverse and multiple valued outcomes which may be broadly classified under the following headings: international understanding, technical and specialty training, personal growth and general educational development. Certain theoretical and methodological implications follow if we adopt the value-position (that is avowed by most students of Exchange programs and endorsed by the issue editor) that cross-cultural education, in a democratic and open society, is committed to facilitate the process of education of the whole person as an international student and as an individual. The studies by Selltiz and Cook and by Bjerstedt suggest, on the basis of their survey and experimental data, several useful hypotheses regarding the relationship between personality-social variables and conditions of intergroup contact that favor the reduction of nationality stereotypes and an increase of differentiated perspectives on American life, especially a deepened appreciation of American friendship and family patterns. We proposed that a naturalistic documentation of preparatory experiences of the student sojourner before his arrival in the new cultural situation will help us improve our conceptual understanding of the various conditions under which cognitive organizations of new social experiences (images and stereotypes, for example) and affective attitudes (involving beliefs and values) become shaped and organized over time into relatively stable developmental attainments. We have sketched some outlines for a conceptual clarification of the terms attitudes, images, and stereotypes. The two other studies, which have a stronger theoretical orientation, identify certain patterns of coping behavior responses to the initial demands of new cultural situations under conditions which favor self-image maintenance or self-image modification (Bailyn and Kehnan), and differential effectiveness in learning behavior-norms prescribed by the host culture (Schild). To improve our theoretical insights into personal styles in various coping strategies and their functions in psychosocial development, we proposed comparative short-term as well as long-term longitudinal studies. This type of research strategy would specify in advance the valued outcome-one of several possible effective patterns of coping behavior or valued developmental attainments-and then seek to clarify, through naturalistic studies of these various types of successful cases of cross-cultural education, the following question: What preparatory functions are served by such coping behavior patterns in stimulating the student's psychosocial development during the sojourn experience or after return home? The systematic search for ways and means of identifying a certain developmental attainment or adaptive competency makes one aware of the value-problem. Social scientists are not immune from becoming aware of and perhaps excessively embarrassed by value-problems in this research area. Sound precedents in social science exist to demonstrate the validity of possible resolutions of the value-issue. In conclusion, the vague concept of international understanding can be reformulated into useful operational questions through a research focus on personality growth and educational development of overseas students at home and broad. These are questions that social psychologists have clear and unique opportunities today to answer in collaboration with psychiatrists, sociologists, and cultural anthropologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]