Today, global interconnectedness is not simply a dream of the future, but is a present fact of our lives. With the increasing complexity of a global society, there is a good reason for schools to take an active role in developing students’ competence to be effective players in the increasingly pluralistic, interdependent, and changing world in which they live (Kniep, 1986; Case, 1993; Merryfield, 2001).
Respected scholars generally agree that the primary purpose of global education is to prepare young people to live effectively and responsibly in a global society (Anderson, 1990; Lamy, 1991, Selby & Pike, 2000). In order to maximize the potential of global education and to fulfill its purpose, there is a need to branch out from the trend of global education research that investigates how teachers infuse global perspectives in K-12 classroom subject teaching or how higher education’s use of single destination or short term study abroad programs as a way to assist students in gaining a better understanding about the world, and investigate the process of students’ learning about it as well as development of world-mindedness beyond the classroom especially through international cross-cultural experiential learning (Barnett, 1998; Taylor, 2000).
I conducted a qualitative study to investigate the ways in which students retrospectively understand their transformation toward world-mindedness during their participation in an educational global voyage program. The purpose of this study is to gain better insights and understanding about the changing perspectives students have about the world and their relationship to it as a result of international cross-cultural experiential learning. For the purposes of this study, world-mindedness is defined as the ability to perceive the world as a whole and to see one’s own position on a continuum of time and interconnected spaces (Alger & Harf, 1986; Case, 1993).
I used a qualitative inquiry method mainly for its naturalistic approach, attention to process and changes in informants’ experiences, and descriptive nature (Somken & Lewin, 2005). Furthermore, I employed purposeful sampling that used a pre-set criteria and snowball strategy to determine a program to study participants from whom I could gain the most useful information. In order to gain in-depth personal stories, data were mainly collected through three rounds of semi-structured, open-ended interviews with participants using videoconference (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).
The findings from the study revealed that the international cross-cultural experiential learning through a global voyage academic program, The Friend Ship, helped the study participants to learn through firsthand experience and enrich their world-mindedness in the following ways: a) Building strategies to deal with difference by encouraging open mindedness and critical self-reflection; b) Heightening the importance of intercultural friendships and relationships in bringing the world alive; c) Combining theoretical knowledge and experiential knowledge to better understand the culturally diverse world; d) Complicating the way people interpret the world and envision its future through international cross-cultural experiential knowledge; and e) Life after the voyage: Practicing world-mindedness in everyday life by giving back and initiating change.