Assessment of the Impact of the AFS Study Abroad Experience
Recently, Dr. Mitchell Hammer of Hammer Consulting and American University completed a three-year, independent study of the AFS program. According to Dr. Hammer, these findings confirm that international student exchange at the high school level plays a critical role in building bridges across cultural differences. Students return home with improved abilities to navigate across cultural boundaries.
The study findings show that the AFS programs help young people:
- Become more competent in crossing cultures.
- Feel more comfortable with people from other cultures.
- Build more friendships with people from other cultures.
- Become fluent in the foreign language.
- Know more in general about the host culture.
The work completed will help AFS understand the needs of our current students and their families and to find ways to enhance our orientation materials, selection, guidelines and placement recommendations.
We discovered the importance of the timing of orientations, and we now focus our primary efforts on orientations that take place a short while after the participant arrives in the host country, since at this stage, they have the context they need to understand the concepts of intercultural learning.
Intercultural Research Community
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Click on the following documents to read the findings of AFS’s intercultural research studies.
