From INERTIA to BEYOND: achieving cognitive engagement through international mobility or how we developed our students’ talent by sending them away and bringing them back again. A Working Paper

This working paper outlines a 4-year action research study into student engagement with international experience from Europe to Korea. It describes how students’ engagement was developed and exploited through structured cycles of action research intervention and analyses short-term results for students and institutions. Experiencing ‘inertia’ in students’ behavioral engagement towards international opportunities, emotional engagement was employed to help students invest in their learning, go beyond expectations and relish the challenge of studying and working abroad. Using the ‘scaffolding’ L&T approach and other best practice, a series of ‘support points’ required by a student in the process of application / preparation were pinpointed. The importance of guidance from a teacher or more competent peer were important as students entered their ‘zones of proximal development’ to consider and manage living abroad. The results show rapidly increasing participation in specific international experience opportunities and enduring staff collaboration. A developed theory of student engagement is proposed.