Reflect on Your Experiences Abroad

“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” ― John Dewey, American philosopher, psychologist, and educator (1859 – 1952)

The Global Engagement Office encourages students to build reflective activities into their study away experience. Immersing oneself in a new culture usually means that you have unfamiliar experiences on a daily basis – some fun and exciting, others awkward and confusing. This is the perfect opportunity for reflection, and you’ll end up feeling more comfortable and capable in your new surroundings.

Why?

Reflection plays a pivotal role in the learning curve and serves as a powerful tool for personal and academic growth.

Taking the time to pause and critically analyze one’s experiences helps us gain valuable insights into our strengths, weaknesses, and the effectiveness of our behavior and strategies. This introspective process enables us to identify patterns, understand the root causes of challenges, and make informed decisions on how to improve. It is easy to see why immersion in a new culture – combined, possibly, with immersion in a foreign language – is a natural time to want to gain insights and test strategies!

Reflection also fosters a deeper understanding of the subject matter, as it encourages learners to connect new information with prior knowledge and experiences. It also enhances metacognition, allowing individuals to develop a heightened awareness of their own thought processes and learning styles. The importance of reflection lies in its ability to transform experiences into meaningful lessons, facilitating continuous improvement and contributing to a more effective and efficient learning journey.

How?

One of the most familiar reflective exercises is referred to as the DAE Exercise:

  1. Describe what happened in an objective way – Ask: What is going on?
  2. Analyze why it might have happened, being open to the realization that there might be many plausible reasons Ask: Why is it happening?
  3. Evaluate your judgments or reactions to the stimulus/situation – Ask: How do I feel about it?

The goal of the exercise is to help one understand how quickly we may jump to conclusions about a stimulus or situation without taking time for objective description or analysis. The DAE Exercise helps one:

  • Become more aware of the personal and cultural assumptions,
  • Gain an appreciation of cultural and cognitive complexity,
  • Understand the importance of “frameshifting” when encountering the unfamiliar, all leading to,
  • New or different – and hopefully better – strategizes for adapting and integrating into new situations.

Reflective activities might include…

  • Journaling
  • Keeping a gratitude journal
  • Taking quiet walks
  • Asking locals about cultural norms, values
  • Reading about the culture and discussing what you read

Try it, you’ll like it!

*To learn more about the evolution of the earlier DIE model to the DAE model, which has been suggested to deal with the ambiguity between interpretation and evaluation  in the original model, see: “The DIE is cast: The continuing evolution of intercultural communication’s favorite classroom exercise” by Kyoung-Ah Nam and John Condon. This article appears in the International Journal of Intercultural Relations Vol. 34 (2010) pp. 81–87.