TRAVELATIONS: TRAVEL AND LEARNING By KAIXIANG LIANG A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standards: _________________________________________ Kellee Caton (Ph.D.), Thesis Supervisor, Assistant Professor, Tourism Management _________________________________________ Ross Cloutier (M.BA.), Associate Professor, Adventure Studies __________________________________________ Toupey Luft (Ph.D.), Assistant Professor __________________________________________ David J. Hill (Ph.D.), Assistant Professor, Geography and Environmental Studies __________________________________________ Mark Rowell Wallin (Ph.D.), Assistant Professor and Co-ordinator, Interdisciplinary Studies Dated this 26th day of March, 2014, in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada ABSTRACT Travel has been historically associated with learning and discovery because it broadens the perspectives of individuals, and they consequently learn from their experiences (Casella, 1997; LaTorre, 2011; Steves, 2009). The relationship between travel and learning has become an area of interest in recent years, as the pursuit of meaningful and memorable experiences becomes increasingly recognized as a central feature of tourism, and also as mainstream motivations for travel increasingly shift from hedonistic escapism to intellectual and cultural growth (Falk, Ballantyne, Packer & Benckendorff, 2011). Tourism organizations in Canada have responded to these currents and have identified a specific market segment of ‚Learning Tourists,‛ who are seeking to stimulate the mind and body and to be intellectually challenged through pleasure travel (Research Resolutions & Consulting Ltd, 2007). Multiple studies in the tourism and study abroad literatures attest to the learning benefits associated with being away from home (Byrnes, 2001; Gmelch, 1997; Hansel, 1998; Hunt, 2000; Kuh, 1995; Stitsworth, 1994). However, an understanding of the deeper reasons why travel promotes learning is lacking (Falk et al., 2011; Minnaert, 2013; Stone & Petrick, 2013; van’t Klooster et al., 2008). This thesis shares the outcomes of a mixed-methods study conducted to explore the relationship between travel and learning among emerging adults. Interviews were undertaken with a diverse group of 22 young adult travellers, hailing from a variety of different countries, and this data was supplemented with over 100 quantitative survey responses and with personal reflections of the author, in keeping with the overall methodological perspective of heuristic inquiry that guided the study. Taken together, the findings point to the importance of travel motivation, departure from one’s comfort zone, reflection, social interaction, and the building of one’s travel biography, all of which unfold over the course of the travel process and function to facilitate learning. The study draws on interdisciplinary literature from experiential education, psychology, and tourism studies to illuminate these issues, and then offers practical advice regarding how the insights derived might be useful for individual travellers, tourism businesses, and educational institutions. Thesis Supervisor: Assistant Professor, Kellee Caton (Ph.D.) Faculty of Adventure, Culinary Arts, and Tourism |Page ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge my thesis supervisor Kellee Caton for her support and commitment to my research. Her work has been an inspiration, and her insights have been important to the completion of this thesis. I would like to acknowledge the following professors at Thompson Rivers University for their guidance and assistance throughout my research process: Mark Wallin, Ross Cloutier, David Hill, Toupey Luft, John Hull, and Rob Hood. I would like to acknowledge Thompson Rivers University’s Undergraduate Research Experience Award Program for recognizing the importance of this research and funding it. DEDICATION I would like to dedicate this work to all the people I have met during my travels who have shaped me into who I am today. And to those who are embarking on their journeys, I wish them peace with their revelations. | P a g e iii Table of Contents ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... III DEDICATION ............................................................................................................... III LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................... VII LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................ VII CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ......................................................................... 7 TRAVEL AND LEARNING ACROSS HISTORY ..................................................................... 7 CURRENT ACADEMIC DISCOURSE ON TRAVEL AND LEARNING .................................. 10 LEARNING ...................................................................................................................... 12 Disjuncture................................................................................................................. 13 LEARNING PROCESS ....................................................................................................... 20 Perception ................................................................................................................... 20 Emotion ...................................................................................................................... 20 Memory ...................................................................................................................... 21 Motivation and Expectation ....................................................................................... 21 Learning Models ......................................................................................................... 22 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ................................................................................. 30 OVERVIEW ...................................................................................................................... 30 RESEARCH QUESTION .................................................................................................... 30 PHILOSOPHICAL WORLDVIEW ....................................................................................... 31 Human Nature ........................................................................................................... 31 Ontology ..................................................................................................................... 32 Epistemology .............................................................................................................. 34 PERSONAL BACKGROUND ............................................................................................... 35 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH ...................................................................................... 36 METHODS ....................................................................................................................... 38 PHASE 1: ACTIVE INTERVIEWS ....................................................................................... 39 PHASE 2: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE ............................................................................... 44 CHAPTER 4: WHAT IS IT ABOUT TRAVEL THAT FACILIATES LEARNING? ................................................................................................................... 52 LEARNING FROM TRAVEL .............................................................................................. 53 | P a g e iv Pre-trip Decision ........................................................................................................ 55 Experiences while Travelling ..................................................................................... 56 Post-trip Processing ................................................................................................... 56 CATEGORIES OF LEARNING ........................................................................................... 58 Personal Learning .................................................................................................... 58 Worldview .................................................................................................................. 58 Life Skills .................................................................................................................... 60 Interpersonal Skills .................................................................................................. 61 Survey Comparison .................................................................................................... 63 CONDITIONS OF TRAVEL RELEVANT FOR LEARNING ................................................... 69 MOTIVATION .................................................................................................................. 69 Types of Motivation.................................................................................................... 70 Experience-related Motivations .................................................................................. 70 Emphasis on Self ......................................................................................................... 71 Wanderlust ................................................................................................................. 72 Seeing It for Real ........................................................................................................ 73 Motivation and Planning to Learn ............................................................................ 73 Expectations................................................................................................................ 75 Survey Comparison .................................................................................................... 77 COMFORT ZONE ............................................................................................................. 82 Types of Situations Outside the Comfort Zone .......................................................... 82 Importance to Learning .............................................................................................. 84 Overcoming the Discomfort ....................................................................................... 85 Mediation.................................................................................................................... 86 Survey Comparison .................................................................................................... 87 REFLECTION ................................................................................................................... 90 Types of Record........................................................................................................... 90 Legacy of the Travel Experience ................................................................................. 92 Putting Things into Perspective ................................................................................ 94 Reflective Learning ..................................................................................................... 95 Survey Comparison .................................................................................................... 96 SOCIAL INTERACTION .................................................................................................... 98 The Interview as Guided Reflection ........................................................................... 99 A Collective Experience ............................................................................................ 100 Survey Comparison .................................................................................................. 103 TRAVEL BIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 107 |Page v Practice Makes Perfect.............................................................................................. 107 Retention of Learning ............................................................................................... 109 Childhood Travel and Parents’ Influence ................................................................. 110 Virgin Experience ..................................................................................................... 111 Survey Comparison .................................................................................................. 112 Conclusion of Findings: Summarizing Overall Trends ........................................... 118 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION ...................................................................................... 121 THE ODYSSEY OF LEARNING: OUTWARD BOUND, INWARD FOUND .......................... 122 LEARNING CIRCLE ....................................................................................................... 131 THE SCHOOL OF LIFE ................................................................................................... 135 CHAPTER 6: PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS .............. 138 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS .......................................................................................... 138 STUDY LIMITATIONS .................................................................................................... 144 CONCLUSIONS .............................................................................................................. 146 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 150 APPENDIX A ................................................................................................................ 162 APPENDIX B................................................................................................................. 164 APPENDIX C ................................................................................................................ 174 APPENDIX D ................................................................................................................ 186 | P a g e vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Comfort Zone Model (Prouty et al., 2007) .................................................. 16 Figure 2. Kolb and Fry’s Learning Cycle (1975) ......................................................... 23 Figure 3. Richards’s Adaptation to the Learning Cycle (1992) ................................. 23 Figure 4. Chinese Tourist Learning Model (Pearce & Lu, 2011) .............................. 25 Figure 5. Outward Bound Model (Walsh & Golins, 1976) ........................................ 26 Figure 6. Revised Outward Bound Model (McKenzie, 2003) ................................... 27 Figures 7 & 8. Jarvis’s Double Learning Model (2006) .............................................. 28 Figure 9. Categories of Learning Identified in this Study ......................................... 58 Figure 10. Learning Circle............................................................................................ 131 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Top 20 Skills Improved through Travel ........................................................ 64 Table 2. Bottom 5 Skills Improved through Travel .................................................... 65 Table 3. Categories of Learning Outcomes.................................................................. 67 Table 4. Top 5 Motivations ............................................................................................ 77 Table 5. Bottom 5 Motivations....................................................................................... 78 Table 6. Top 10 Conditions Outside Comfort Zone ................................................... 83 Table 7. Top 5 Recording Methods ............................................................................... 92 Table 8. Frequency of Interaction with Groups of People during Travelling ...... 104 | P a g e vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Travel has been proposed as educational because of its tendency to broaden the experience of those who undertake it (Casella, 1997; LaTorre, 2011, Steves, 2009). Learning new things and experiencing personal development have long been identified as important motivators for and benefits derived from travel (Peace & Foster, 2007; Pearce & Lee, 2005). Learning is arguably inherent to travel, as travel displaces us from the familiarity of home into a foreign location. Depending on where we go, we may have to learn phrases of a different language, become aware of the location of new places, adapt to driving on a different side of the road, or learn to recognize and potentially perform customs and gestures of a different culture. We do not usually associate such examples of informal learning with what we tend to think of as ‚real learning,‛ partially because we have been conditioned to think that learning is something more abstract and something we do in a formal setting (Jarvis, 1992). Nevertheless, the work of a number of tourism scholars attests to the fact that travel can indeed be an excellent context for fostering informal learning, which can benefit individuals’ lives (Minnaert, 2012; Morgan, 2010; Pearce & Foster, 2007; Scarinci & Pearce, 2012). In informal settings, our learning mode tends to be through experiences. Experiential learning is a process whereby an individual changes as a result of reflection on a direct experience, which causes new understandings and applications to ensue (Kolb, 1984). Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning model, and adapted versions of it, have been used by a variety of scholars to link travel experiences to learning (Minnaert, 2012; Richards, 1992; Stone & Petrick, 2013), with an emphasis on the stages of separation, encounter, return, and reincorporation as important for the learning process. |Page 1 Historically, the notions of education and travel were strongly linked, dating back to the Grand Tour of the 17th to 19th centuries (Ritchie, 2003), in which young upper-class men would travel around Europe as part of their liberal education, visiting the capital cities of Europe, taking in their works of art and architecture, and interacting with their local scholarly leaders. With the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, however, travelling became more affordable for the masses and was no longer the privilege of only the upper class. As more working class persons went on holidays, travel became increasingly associated with leisure and relaxation. As learning tended to be perceived as more related to labour than to leisure (Werry, 2008), its emphasis within what had by then become the leisure-oriented domain of mass tourism declined, and it has tended to be an overlooked phenomenon in travel ever since. In recent years, however, there has been a surge of interest in travel as a context for learning, as there has been a shift in the discourse on the meaning of tourism, from hedonistic escapism to intellectual and cultural growth opportunity (Falk, Ballantyne, Packer & Benckendorff, 2012). Tourism development and promotion organizations in Canada have even gone so far as to identify a specific market segment of ‚Learning Tourists,‛ who are seeking mental stimulation and intellectual challenge through pleasure travel (Research Resolutions & Consulting Ltd, 2007). Learning-based tourism has also been identified as an area of expansion for the industry as a whole, beyond the Canadian context (Oregon State University, 2012). This rising interest in the educational dimensions of tourism can be contextualized within the broader shift from a service economy to an experience economy, in which people are increasingly directing their free time and disposable income not toward the acquisition of material goods or services but toward the quest for opportunities to live amazing experiences (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). In line with the rising interest in lifelong and life-wide learning, |Page 2 consumers are demanding that these experiences be not merely pleasurable but also geared to promoting personal growth and development (Falk et al., 2012). Academic study of travel and learning, however, has not kept pace with changes in the industry. Most work in this domain has tended to focus on formal educational travel contexts, especially study abroad (Stone & Petrick, 2013). To focus only on formal educational travel opportunities like study abroad, however, is to neglect other, more informal channels through which learning can also occur in travel (Mitchell, 1998). It is also important not to neglect the potentially important informal dimensions of formal educational travel programs; indeed, there have been many calls for further research based on the need to understand what it is about travel that is educational (Minnaert, 2012; Stone & Petrick, 2013; Falk et al., 2011; van’t Klooster et al., 2008), a question partly motivated by the sneaking suspicion that part of the value of educational travel programs may derive simply from their (informal) travel dimension rather than their (formal) educational programming dimension. There is thus a need to start in a more foundational place and to examine the relationship between learning and travel itself, disentangled from the context of formal educational tourism programming. The purpose of this thesis is to attempt to understand the relationship between travel and learning through an empirical interdisciplinary project, informed theoretically by the fields of tourism studies, adventure studies, and education. Grounded in the methodological perspective of heuristic inquiry, a branch of phenomenology that emphasizes integrating the researcher’s own experiences with the studied phenomenon into the gathered data (Patton, 2002), the project employs a mixed methodology that draws on qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys to shed light on the broad research question of how travel promotes learning. Are there particular conditions of travel that appear to be |Page 3 important for facilitating learning, such as a traveller’s motivation, previous travel experiences, social interactions during or after the trip, propensity toward reflection, or practice of stepping outside his or her comfort zone? How is the travel process relevant for facilitating learning? The mixed methodology made it possible to leverage rich quantitative data to gain insight into the emic understandings of travellers (Pearce & Foster, 2007)—a perspective generally under-accessed in the small body of extant literature that addresses questions of travel and learning outside the context of formal educational programming. The data from these qualitative interviews, which numbered 22 and were conducted on various continents with a diverse group of travellers, were then triangulated with over 100 responses to an online survey that was constructed based on ideas expressed in the interviews and on existing work in the literature. Thus, the project was qualitatively led, with the quantitative data used for triangulation purposes, as will be discussed in depth in Chapter 3. The ultimate goals of the research were threefold. The first goal was to advance the literature on travel and learning by providing an interdisciplinary perspective that went beyond the knowledge base of tourism studies to leverage the insights of the experiential education field. Collecting the thoughts and stories of travellers about their experiences, and then triangulating this data with a larger number of survey responses, allowed for a rich field of information where ideas from the experiential education literature could be ‚test-driven‛ in a tourism context, in order to ultimately move understanding of the role of travel in learning forward. Second, the study aimed to produce theoretically and empirically supported insights that could be of practical use to travellers who wish to gain more benefits |Page 4 from travelling as part of a lifelong (La Torre, 2011; Longworth & Davies, 1996) and life-wide (Desjardins, 2003) approach to learning. The insights on travel and informal learning described within this paper are potentially applicable, and thus potentially beneficial, to anyone who travels. Although the focus here is on independent travel, formal educational travel programs can certainly also benefit from these insights, given that there are independent, extracurricular dimensions even to organized study trips. Furthermore, as the travel industry transitions to recognizing itself more overtly as an ‚experience industry,‛ some organizations are slowly differentiating themselves as offering travel products that promote transformation in participants. Essentially, such transformations are manifestations of travellers’ learning. Therefore, this project’s insights can also be of use to the tourism industry beyond the traditional educational travel sector. Knowledge about travel and learning is relevant to governments as well, as the lessons people derive from travelling can sometimes be of broad social use— social tourism initiatives in Europe, for instance, hold this as a central premise of their rationale (EESC, 2006). If mindful travel can be better understood and subsequently better facilitated throughout the population, then subsidies for travel may ultimately become justifiable in other parts of the world, as they currently are in Europe. Finally, the last aim of this project was to satisfy my own curiosity regarding how people learn through traveling. As a self-proclaimed avid traveller, I have met and interacted with many travellers on my journeys, and this process never fails to make me wonder about how travel has made a difference to the lives of these unique individuals. In my opinion, travel has been an indispensable part of human history, as recounted in myths, explorers’ stories, and religious teachings. This research was a fascinating journey where I was able to depart from my initial assumptions of travel, through the passage of interactions with my study |Page 5 participants and the literature, and arrive at my current position of having developed some sound understandings of travel and learning that I can share with others. The journey never finishes, and there are more possibilities to be explored in the road ahead. In the following chapter, I turn to a review of the literature with regard to travel and learning, focused first on work within tourism studies and then transitioning to discuss ideas from education and psychology, to further illustrate the complexity of learning within the tourism context. Next, in Chapter 3, I convey the research philosophy that underlies this study, and then share the details of the study method. In Chapter 4, I summarize the findings of the empirical study, driven by the qualitative data and supported with the quantitative results. Finally, in the last chapter, I analyse the findings to build new, original understandings about travel as a context for the unfolding of meaningful learning experiences that hold a powerful place in the lives of individuals. I conclude by offering some practical implications of the study. |Page 6 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW Travel and Learning across History It has long been recognised that travel contributes to learning and serves as an effective source of knowledge acquisition. This belief is captured succinctly in this ancient Chinese saying ‚It is better to travel 10,000 miles than to read 10,000 books.‛ The theme of travel and the pursuit of knowledge is explored in many mythologies, perhaps the most prominent of which is the Norse story of Odin, who travelled from Asgard to the human world to learn about the customs of humans (Korstanje, 2012). Ancient stories such as Homer’s Odyssey sparked the imagination of the early explorers to sail away to learn of, and from, other civilizations. Nevertheless, such journeys were usually made out of necessity, or in pursuit of religious, political, or economic expansion (Cartwright, 2013). The development of empiricism in the 17th to 19th centuries helped to create a culture of interest in knowledge expansion through direct experience, as observing and learning from physical stimuli in one’s environment was the reigning epistemological mode of the day. It was in this era that upper-class European young men often made an educational rite of passage around continental Europe, known commonly as the Grand Tour, through which they would learn about classical antiquity and the Renaissance through observing art and architecture and interacting with local scholars (Ritchie, 2003). With the rise of the Industrial Revolution and the advent of rail transport, however, travel became affordable for the middle classes. Travel became a form of leisure that allowed the masses to escape from the exhaustion of work to seek recreation. This resulted in the development of seaside resorts and theme parks, which were directed at creating relaxing and passive experiences to please tourists (Falk et al., 2011). |Page 7 Today, the service industry, of which tourism is a part, has permeated all areas of life, fulfilling our desires to have our tasks done by someone else. As mass tourism expanded over the course of the 20th century, the tide began to reverse, regarding people’s desire to be engaged in active travel experiences that engaged them intellectually, emotionally, and socially. The changing leisure patterns were partially the result of increases in wealth and education, and partially the result of a growing need to find meaning in lives characterized by consumerism. The commoditization of services offered by providers is now only differentiated by price (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). With increases in wealth, price is no longer as much of a determining factor, and tourists, in larger numbers, have begun to seek more unique and memorable experiences, as well as experiences that can engage them more fully and actively (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). This engagement goes beyond entertainment and allows for guest participation and connection that creates four mutually coexisting and compatible realms: educational, entertainment, esthetic, and escapist (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). This corresponds to the idea of time deepening (Godbey, 1976), in which people seek to maximize the benefits derived from their leisure time. Godbey (1976) argues that, due to the perceived scarcity of time in the modern lifestyle, we want to do and achieve many things simultaneously, such that we can crowd a greater number of activities and their satisfactions into the 24-hour day. In the tourism literature, the importance of experience can be traced all the way back to the roots of the field, to the works of early writers like Boorstin (1964), MacCannell (1973), and Cohen (1979). In his 1964 critique of modern mass culture, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, Boorstin nostalgically lamented the loss of travel as a challenging and rewarding human pursuit, lambasting mass tourism as having replaced the experience of real travel with a trivial and inauthentic substitute that the dupes of modern mass culture were all |Page 8 too quick to prefer. MacCannell (1973) picked up on Boorstin’s thread but suggested that tourists were in fact not satisfied by explicitly contrived events, and instead were searching for authentic experiences because of the shallowness and inauthenticity of ordinary life in modernity. Cohen (1979) complexified Boorstin and MacCannell’s debate by conceptualizing a spectrum of tourist motivations with regard to authenticity, viewing them as a function of tourists’ degree of alienation from their home society as their spiritual ‚center.‛ A more recent attempt at conceptualising experience and authenticity was offered by Wang (1999), who sought to move beyond the objectivist and constructivist notions of authenticity drawn upon by Boorstin, MacCannell, and Cohen, to instead posit authenticity in ‚existential‛ terms—a notion derived from continental philosophy and especially the work of Heidegger (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006). In this conceptualization, experience became even more central to understanding the motivations and benefits of tourism, as the activities, feelings, and engagements of tourists while traveling were seen as being more important than toured objects for producing the kind of satisfaction and meaning that people often seek while traveling. Tourists are now recognized as often desiring meaningful and memorable experiences, and the pursuit of such tends to transcend the distinct boundaries of work versus leisure that characterized early mass tourism’s conceptualization of travel as a pleasurable escape from labour. Today’s mainstream tourists are thus more open to experiencing a blend of work, leisure, and learning while traveling than has ever before been the case since tourism’s democratization. In addition to the growth of interest in learning through pleasure travel, participation in study abroad and gap years is on the rise, such that these activities have become a rite of passage for many young adults in the Western world, not unlike that of the Grand Tour in earlier days (Stone & Petrick, 2013). |Page 9 The trend of travel for formal learning purposes is further driven by the market, as businesses send employees to various offices around the world to encourage professional development and the gaining of intercultural competency. Current Academic Discourse on Travel and Learning Within the current academic discourse on travel and learning, we find the majority of the literature within educational tourism. Of prominence is study abroad, which is a significant extension of higher education and has been comprehensively studied and reported on in its own set of annual conferences and scholarly journals. As potentially one of the most important experiences that can be had during an undergraduate education (Paige et al., 2009), study abroad has been extensively studied quantitatively and qualitatively, within the educational field. Because travel and learning is implicit within study abroad, the study abroad literature can serve to inform our understanding of the relationship between travel and learning. The learning outcomes developed by participants of study abroad include independence (Bachner & Zeutschel, 2009), self-confidence (Bachner & Zeutschel, 2009; Chieffo, 2007), change of worldview (Dwyer, 2004), dispelling of stereotypes (Freestone & Geldens, 2008), intercultural development (Ingraham & Peterson, 2004; Rexeisen et al., 2008), and global engagement (Paige et al., 2009). More relevant to the formal academic environment, cognitive learning, such as gaining new information about the history, culture, and political and social issues of another country, has been extensively reported (Chieffo, 2007). Despite the considerable positive outcomes of study abroad that have been documented, however, researchers have not been able to fully pinpoint the aspect of this activity from which benefits specifically derive: Is it travel itself, exposure to | P a g e 10 other cultures, classroom study, inter-personal contact, or a combination of all four (Stone & Petrick, 2013)? Students abroad do not keep within the walls of the foreign institution but live as locals and travel like tourists. As such, it is difficult to isolate the source of learning for study abroad. Apart from study abroad–related programs, there has been some research on the learning outcomes of independent travel. The educative benefits of independent travel, such as gaining cross-cultural skills and building self-confidence, echo the learning outcomes of study abroad and suggest that a formal learning setting may not be necessary in order for one to learn from travelling (Stone & Petrick, 2013). Coetzee and Bester (2009) found evidence for the benefits of personal growth and increased life skills from a ‚gap year‛ experience among the young adults they studied. Pearce and Foster (2007) determined 42 generic skills that were developed as a result of travelling, including adaptability, decision-making, and dealing with change. Through two separate surveys using the same list of generic skills, Pearce and Foster (2007) and Scarinci and Pearce (2012) found that travel helped to develop these kinds of generic skills. Furthermore, in the latter study, they found that the more a person travels, the more they learn from their travels. Minnaert (2012) also found benefits, such as independence, self-esteem, and confidence, in participants of a social tourism program she studied. Despite the extensive benefits that appear to be derived from travelling, there is a gap in our understanding between the act of travelling and the achievement of learning outcomes. We know that learning occurs as a result of travelling, but we don’t know how. What happens during travel that facilitates the kinds of learning outcomes that we know, based on previous findings in the literature? This paper attempts to shed light on this ‚black box‛ of travel to understand the conditions and interactions that bring about such learning outcomes. | P a g e 11 Learning To understand how travel experiences result in learning, we need to understand what learning itself entails. Jarvis (2006, p. 134) gives the following definition of learning: The combination of processes throughout a lifetime, whereby the whole person—body (genetic, physical, and biological) and mind (knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, emotions, beliefs, and senses)— experiences social situations, the perceived content of which is then transformed cognitively, emotively, or practically (or through any combination of these), and integrated into the individual person’s biography, resulting in a continually changing (or more experienced) person. Illeris (2004, p. 43) succinctly explained the significance of learning to humans: ‚the human ability to learn developed together with other characteristics of our species in the struggle for survival of the various species, and this can be understood as one of several tools for the continued struggle.‛ Our actions, and the meaning we give them, define our being in the world. Learning is innate to this ‚process of being in the world‛ (Jarvis, 2006, p. 6). From this perspective, what is learned is less important than who an individual becomes as the result of learning. We learn from doing, thinking, and feeling, as whole persons, as individual selves. But, at the same time, we actually learn to ‚become a self through the social process of existing and interacting with people within our own life-world‛ (Schutz, 1967, cited in Jarvis, 2006, p. 6). Learning is thus a profound phenomenon that underlies our humanity and our society. As can be seen, living entails learning, and it is personalised to each individual. In our lives, we are used to learning within the education system. Education is | P a g e 12 regarded as institutionalised learning, where a framework is present to impart knowledge and skills to an individual. This is otherwise understood as formal and non-formal learning, where curricula and structure direct learning. The boundaries of education make it restrictive to certain settings, whereas informal learning encompasses any time and place. It occurs everyday, during leisure and interactions with others. It is natural and spontaneous, and it happens in everyday settings. It is personalised and is focused on the learner; the responsibility is not on any external agency. Informal learning can be distinguished further by two factors: intentionality and consciousness— awareness at the time of learning (Schugurensky, 2000). Informal learning can be present in any travel situation and includes self-directed learning (intentional and conscious), incidental learning (unintentional and conscious), and tacit learning (unintentional and unconscious) (Schugurensky, 2000). Besides informal learning, the depth of learning is a significant area within work on learning from travel. Jarvis (1992) describes deep-level learning as a search for significance and underlying meaning beyond words and symbols (e.g., a pilgrimage). It is an attempt to identify connections between new ideas and those already held. The opposite would be surface-level learning, where rote memorization concentrates on the externalities of ideas and unrelated information (e.g., interpretation panels found in museums). Disjuncture Travel is, at its root, a departure from home, and so, on some level, a departure from familiarity. It is thus an act that fundamentally implies risk. Risk is defined as a potential for loss or gain (Jackson & Heshka, 2011). It exposes us to new conditions and creates a state of perceived dissonance or disjuncture that can allow us to learn and change. The fundamental unit of learning is the experience: | P a g e 13 the intersection of the person with the life-world. Experience can be understood as having two related meanings: (1) the process of observing or perceiving, sensing, encountering, or undergoing some event, and (2) the knowledge gained from the accumulation of these encounters or perceptions. Jarvis (2006) proposed that the experience depends on how an individual relates to his or her world: either the individual is in harmony with the life-world or a disjuncture is present between the person’s biography and the consciousness of that world. This is similar to Evans and Curtis-Holmes’ (2005) dual-processing model of human reasoning, in which they propose that, depending on the circumstance, humans exhibit either a relatively automatic response style, with limited information processing and reliance on existing behavioural routines, or a response style characterized by an attentive focus on the situation, detailed processing of the information, and the creation of new routines. When we are in harmony with our world, we take it for granted. This is captured in this phrase that ‚when I immerse myself in my stream of consciousness, in my duration, I do not find any differentiated experiences‛ (Schutz, 1967). There is no perceived learning when we are in a state of equilibrium with our life-world. We need not change, as we are in a position of stability. This gives rise to nonlearning, which Jarvis (2006) explains as presumption and non-consideration. Presumption happens when our expectations affect our experience and we believe that the encounter is the same as before and thus not necessary to learn from. This is the familiar that we take for granted; we assume that there is no disjuncture between our knowledge and our experience. Non-learning arises from conditioning to external stimuli. Non-consideration, on the other hand, can be due to a variety of factors, which can be cognitive (not understanding the situation we are in at the moment), emotive (perception and desire clouded by strong emotions), or social (not relevant to our functioning within the social | P a g e 14 environment). This coincides with Carson and Langer’s (2006) notion of ‚mindlessness,‛ which they characterize as ‚a state of rigidity in which one adheres to a single perspective and acts automatically. When one is mindless, one is trapped in a rigid mindset and is oblivious to context or perspective.‛ Under conditions of non-consideration or mindlessness, an individual fails to recognise the disjuncture and misses the opportunity to learn. Non-learning is very common, because we do not want to risk giving up the familiarity of what we have already learned. Our habitual nature prefers stability and security of knowledge, which allows us to function comfortably. The experience an individual has is subjective and exclusive; we fail to consider what is not relevant or interesting to our functioning as an individual. Simply put, non-learning happens when we do not perceive a potential learning situation to be relevant to us in that moment. Nevertheless, preconscious learning (Jarvis, 2006) might occur if the experience gets imprinted in our memories and may serve to act as a catalyst for future learning. A lack of perception suggests that we do not interpret the meaning of the experience to be relevant to us. Thus, preconscious learning is dormant until a certain event or future learning occurs, which allows us to unlock the learning potential or connect the dots. In contrast, disjuncture is where most learning occurs. Even though we recognise the difference, the learning derived depends on how we react to such disjunctures. We can be at ease with the disjuncture and simply observing the situation, through what Urry (2002) describes as the ‚tourist gaze.‛ In such instances, we are mere observers of exotic situations that do not involve us. It may also be the case, in such situations, that we do not consider that there is anything worth learning. There are also situations, especially when tourists are travelling within a group or on a tight schedule, where they simply do not have | P a g e 15 the time and energy to engage in meaningful learning. Travel fatigue can also be an issue in this regard. Figure 1. Comfort Zone Model (Prouty et al., 2007) The idea of disjuncture is captured in the adventure education literature as the Comfort Zone Model (Luckner & Nadler, 1997; Prouty, Panicucci, & Collinson, 2007). According to this framework, when placed outside one’s comfort zone, an individual is forced into stressful situations that are unfamiliar. By overcoming self-imposed perceptions, the person’s preconceived limits are expanded, and he or she learns, and thus becomes a better, more fully developed person (Brown, 2008). It is argued that ‚personal growth does not occur if there is no disequilibrium in a person’s current thinking or feeling‛ (Prouty et al., 2007, p.39). In the learning zone, usual defenses are taken away, and there is an opportunity to experience one’s inner being. People rarely take themselves to this place purposefully because it is uncomfortable (Prouty et al., 2007). | P a g e 16 Nonetheless, there are occasions where the outside world forces us into these uncomfortable situations and puts pressure on us to change, be it in social situations as the result of the group of people we are with, or environmental situations such as those caused by terrain or weather. In such situations, the individual generally imitates behaviour or accepts certain information and knowledge that results in non-reflective learning. For example, when we are in new social settings, such as visiting a country where the norm is to eat with chopsticks, we observe how the locals do it and then attempt to replicate their behaviour. We do not question the information in any way, but rather simply accept it, in order to re-establish a sense of harmony with our external world. When in Rome, we do as the Romans do. This is also the nature of education, where the best knowledge, beliefs, and practices tend, on the whole, to be the ones that are passed down to survive the test of time (Wright, 2000). In a directed learning environment, we are expected to achieve learning objectives predetermined by ‚experts.‛ Therefore, there is a tendency for non-reflective learning to occur in such situations. This is common in interpretive settings where the purpose is to receive knowledge, be it in a museum, in a class on the history of the country, or from a national park information center. Such learning bears resemblance to surface-level learning. Lastly, we think and reflect carefully when we are presented with a different set of knowledge, beliefs, and values. We decide what is useful to us, and may sometimes disagree with or discard information, but the outcomes of all these responses are integrated into our biographies. The choice to think and reflect carefully usually occurs with deeper learning that is directly relevant to our being. This is often the case, for example, when learning a language, the mastery of which will increase our ease of living in the foreign country and our ability to access information. | P a g e 17 The disjunctures discussed thus far have had to do with the changes in the exterior world that push us to learn, but sometimes, as a result of our learning, we change our values and aspirations, and then in turn actively seek further learning. For example, while trekking in the mountains we might learn to appreciate nature, and in doing so, decide to learn more about ways to conserve the environment or understand more about natural history. Langer’s (1989) notion of ‚mindfulness theory‛ captures this process. Mindfulness is defined as ‚a flexible cognitive state that results from drawing novel distinctions about the situation and environment. When one is mindful, one is actively engaged in the present and sensitive to both context and perspective‛ (Carson & Langer, 2006, p. 29–30). Learning is a continuous, emergent process whose outcomes represent only historical record, not knowledge of the future. The emergent knowledge, through the ‚restless inquiry‛ humans pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other (Freire, 1974), ‚is continuously derived from and tested out in the experiences of the learner‛ (Kolb, 1984, p. 27). Dewey (1938, p. 35) summarised this as his principle of continuity, where ‚every experience both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of those which come after.‛ The individual’s learning from one situation becomes an instrument of understanding and dealing effectively with the situations which follow, and the process goes on as long as life continues. Usually, we take comfort in the predictability of our knowledge, and move through our daily routine with a good sense of what is happening and what actions to take. However, we get upended by circumstances we cannot predict, and this can result in a change in our mental representation of the world. This is most obvious when we travel, an activity choice which is often overtly driven by | P a g e 18 the quest for novelty—to experience something new and different (Pearce & Lee, 2005). When a person learns, he or she can be changed in at least three ways (Jarvis, 2006). First, the person’s self can be changed by the acquisition of identity, confidence, esteem, emotions, and changed worldview. There may also be incidental learning or latent learning occurring (Polanyi, 1962). Second, a person can acquire a combination of new knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, and beliefs and can be changed through purposeful learning. Third, the changed person is more experienced, and so is better able to cope with similar situations in the future. This is similar to Cattell’s (1963) distinction between fluid and crystallised intelligence. Cattell argued that a good portion of our intelligence is not biologically based and can be gained through learning experiences. The more experienced self might wish to learn more, and is also then able to process the learning better. This continuous process of learning across the lifespan of a person is known as lifelong learning. Lifelong learning is the development of human potential through a ‚continuously supportive process which stimulates and empowers individuals to acquire all the knowledge, values, skills and understanding they will require throughout their lifetimes and apply them with confidence, creativity and enjoyment in all roles, circumstances and environments‛ (Longworth and Davies, 1996, p. 22). A similar concept of life-wide learning is understood as the use of all the various settings and situations that occur within the course of a person’s lifetime as opportunities for learning (Desjardins, 2003). This ongoing pursuit of knowledge beyond formal education and throughout life is part of every individual’s striving towards self-actualization (Maslow, 1943), a notion also explored in Confucianism, which holds that what we would today call lifelong and life-wide learning is the path to the perfection of self (Lee, 1996). | P a g e 19 Learning Process The process of learning is fundamentally influenced by how an individual receives and interprets his or her surroundings. ‚Tourists are not passive recipients of destination experiences, but are involved in the production of meaning‛ (Quinlan Cutler & Carmichael, 2010, p. 18, citing Selstad, 2007). Perception, emotion, memory, motivation, and expectation shape an individual’s ability to make sense of an experience. They are related and interconnected along the whole duration of an experience. Prior to departure, the images and preconceived ideas of a destination work to shape perception, expectation, and motivation. This process influences one’s emotions while travelling, further influencing his or her perceptions. Eventually, the memory of the experience is remembered and reflected upon. Collectively, the various factors act and interact along the space-time interval of the experience. Perception Perception is how sensory inputs are processed, organised, and interpreted (Larsen, 2007). It is at the core of experience, interacting with our evaluation and memory of an event (Larsen, 2007; Selstad, 2007). The evaluation of experiences is a result of the similarities and differences between expectations and perceptions (Reisinger & Turner, 2004). The tourist carries with him or her ‚pre-set ideas, values, and knowledge which colour the interpretation of experiences‛ (Quinlan Cutler & Carmichael, 2010, p. 19, citing Selstad, 2007). Emotion Within the tourism literature, emotions have been argued to influence the evaluation of experiences (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982; Nettleton & Dickinson, 1993; Vittersø et al, 2000; Chang, 2008; de Rojas & Camarero, 2008). The emotions affect the perceptions and memories of the experiences (Trauer & Ryan, 2005; Chang, 2008). The emotions can be derived from the activity (Arnould & Price, | P a g e 20 1993), personal relationships (Trauer & Ryan, 2005), or place (White, 2005). These complex emotions related to tourism (Noy, 2007) create an attachment to the destination, affecting the propensity of a tourist to learn from the situation. Memory An important element in the tourist experience is memory (Larsen, 2007; Pine & Gilmore, 1999; Selstad, 2007; Cary, 2004; Fridgen, 1984). Positive events are usually recalled better with more accuracy, as compared to negative events that tend to fade (Fridgen, 1984). Memories filter the actual experience and the eventual emotional and perceptual outcomes that the individual remembers (Oh et al., 2007). Memory has an active role in interpreting and transforming the experience after the event, especially through the narration of it. The narration might change the experience, indicating that the experience is continually being formed even after the trip (Selstad, 2007). There are differences between an actual experience and the memories we have of it. This makes an experience different for different individuals, not only because of the difference in perception but also the difference in memory. From a cognitive point of view, the memory is the only thing that remains after the experience has ended (Larsen, 2007). Therefore, it can be argued that memory and how it is captured is one of the most influential aspects of learning. Motivation and Expectation Ryan (2002) defined motivation as the personal factors that influence the overall assessment of travel. As such, they affect the choices made and the experiences sought while travelling (Quinlan Cutler, & Carmichael, 2010). Tourist motivation is better understood as why people travel. Crompton (1979) divides motivations into push and pull factors. Push factors are what motivate a person to leave home, such as the desire for relaxation or escape from everyday routine. The destination or the trip provides the pull factors that attract the person because of | P a g e 21 the activities, the scenery offered, or the possible benefits available that satisfy the push motives. Motivation may be the reason why people travel, but it does not fully explain the tourist experience (Cohen, 1979). Motivation leads to expectations which in turn mediates the evaluation of the tourist experience (Pearce, 2005; Ryan, 2003a; Vittersø et al., 2000). Larsen (2007) defined expectations as formed beliefs and predictions related to future events. Expectations are also affected by past experiences, media, and preconceived ideas, which lead an individual to particular assumption about what he or she will experience (Urry, 2002). As a result, expectations colour the lens through which we perceive, and therefore the learning ultimately derived from the experience. Since learning happens in the interplay between expectation and experience, all learning can thus be said to be relearning. We are not blank pieces of paper that can be freshly printed every time, but a journal that has been underlined, omitted, highlighted, and constantly written on again with each encounter. Piaget (1929) identified two mechanisms where new concepts are learned. First, integration modifies old concepts that are rather stable parts of our conception of the world. Substitution, however, disposes of old concepts that are inconsistent with how we see our worlds. However, with substitution, there is always the possibility of reversion to the earlier level of understanding as the previous theories-in-use (Kolb, 1984) are more integrated with the individual’s worldview. Learning Models The association of experience and learning has naturally suggested the use of experiential learning to explain how people learn by travelling (Stone & Petrick, 2013; Minnaert, 2012). Boydell (1976) defined experiential learning as meaningful discovery (p. 19), which occurs when learners uncover knowledge through | P a g e 22 assessment and interpretation of a personal experience based on the individual’s goals and expectations. Dewey (1938), a pioneer in experiential learning, posited two fundamental tenets of experience: continuity (that all experiences are carried forward and influence future experiences) (p. 35) and interaction (both the objective and internal conditions of an experience) (p. 42). He suggested that some experiences might not serve to assist in future learning experiences, and hence could be considered ‚miseducative.‛ Figure 2. Kolb and Fry’s Learning Cycle (1975) Figure 3. Richards’s Adaptation to the Learning Cycle (1992) Kolb and Fry (1975) created the experiential learning cycle model. This four-step cycle explains how the learner experiences a new situation, reflects on the experience, makes a generalization and tests the generalization, and then transforms experiential knowledge into propositional knowledge. Even though experiential learning was developed for formal education settings, it can also be | P a g e 23 applied to informal learning. In contrast to traditional classroom learning, experiential learning engages more than just the cognitive learner; it involves a cognitive element (increased awareness), an emotional element (changed attitudes), and a behavioural element (changed interpersonal competence) (Boydell, 1976, p. 19). Richards (1992) adapted Kolb’s learning cycle of Experience-ReflectionGeneralization-Testing into Separation-Encounter-Return-Reincorporation. The phase of separation is applicable to the case of travel, as there is a geographical separation from home, and therefore a departure from the obligations of everyday roles and responsibilities as well as a familiar environment. Encounter describes the problems and differences that put an individual into a state of disequilibrium. An individual may or may not be able to adapt to these differences. These will be the challenges a traveller faces when in a foreign setting. In the return stage, the individual reflects and consolidates the experience and makes connections with everyday life. Reincorporation is where the individual prepares for the next challenge ahead, using his or her previous experiences. Underlying both learning cycles is reflection, the active engagement with the experience that leads to learning, implying that experience may be the foundation but does not necessarily lead to learning in and of itself (Boud, Cohen, & Walker, 1993). This is very relevant to tourist experiences, as some tourism scholars have already noted (see, for example, Minnaert’s 2012 analysis about learning and reflection/reminisce on social tourism holidays, as well as on the importance of emotional involvement in the trip). This can be displayed in the form of recounting experiences to family and friends, and enjoying and sharing photos and travel accounts. | P a g e 24 As can be seen, as the tourist experience and the learning process are complex. They can hardly be explained using only the learning cycles as a model. Pearce and Lu (2011) built an integrative model of tourist learning for Chinese outbound group tourists. This framework was built upon existing studies by Falk and Storksdieck (2005) on factors influencing museum learning experiences; a variety of studies on Chinese cultural differences (Li, 2008; Ward, 2000; Li, 2007, etc.); and Pearce and Foster’s (2007) study on generic skill development among backpackers. Figure 4. Chinese Tourist Learning Model (Pearce & Lu, 2011) | P a g e 25 One point of emphasis with regard to the Chinese travellers who are the subject of this model is the accessibility of interpretation, highlighting a limitation of most current literature, which is based on the assumption that visitors are fluent in the language being used in the communication processes. Furthermore, the Chinese context sets limitations on the generalization of the cultural backgrounds and expressed learning expressed in this model. Looking beyond the tourism literature, there are other models that can be borrowed to enhance our understanding of travel and learning. Walsh and Golins (1976) created a thorough model of the process through which Outward Bound students learn. This has much relevance to this paper, as travel is implicit within the Outward Bound process, regardless of whether it is set in a natural or urban environment. Learning through Outward Bound is a linear process, where ‚the learner is placed into [a] unique physical environment and into [a] unique social environment, then given a characteristic set of problem solving tasks [creating a] state of adaptive dissonance to which [the learner] adapts by mastery, which reorganizes the meaning and direction of the learner’s experience‛ (Walsh & Golins, 1976, p. 16). Figure 5. Outward Bound Model (Walsh & Golins, 1976) | P a g e 26 However, after almost three decades of use, an alternative model of student learning, building upon the existing model was suggested by McKenzie (2003). The main difference is that, rather than being a linear process, different conditions interact with one another and may be involved in singular or in combination to result in learning. This is also the reason why McKenzie decided to link all components directly with reflection and learning. The alternative model recognizes the influence the instructors have on the students’ learning as well as the service component which reflects the core value of compassion of Outward Bound. Figure 6. Revised Outward Bound Model (McKenzie, 2003) | P a g e 27 Figures 7 & 8. Jarvis’s Double Learning Model (2006) On a different note, Jarvis (2006) consolidated his previous models of learning into a double model which seeks to portray the process of transforming episodic | P a g e 28 experience and internalising it. The essence of learning is in the transformation of the person, who comes to feel that is important to recognize both mind and matter in the experience. The two models depict the same process but from different perspectives (Jarvis, 2006, p. 22). Having now considered the existing literature in experiential education and tourism studies, we must turn to the study’s central questions: How does travel lead an individual to learn? What is it about travel that promotes learning? How are conditions of travel that facilitate learning related to each other, and how do they unfold throughout the travel process? This paper hopes to provide a broader understanding to the phenomenon of travel and learning. By doing so, it may provide guidance for tourists, such that they can more actively shape their travel experiences to enhance learning and can undertake travel as part of a lifelong education process. On the other hand, travel brokers may find the answers to these questions useful in understanding how learning occurs from a tourist’s perspective, in order to create programs that encourage the kinds of enriching experiences and transformations that tourists are increasingly seeking. | P a g e 29 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY Overview In this chapter, I will explain my worldview and my philosophical position with regards to human nature, ontology, epistemology, and methodology. The basis of my research and the way in which I have approached it is fundamentally affected by my worldview, which I feel is important to articulate in order to convey the context in which this study is situated. I will also discuss the mechanics of this study, to provide an overall understanding of the data collection and analysis processes used. The mixed methodology will be presented in two phases: Phase 1—Active Interviews and Phase 2—Survey Questionnaire. Research Question The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of how people learn from travel experiences. It was an attempt to go beyond what is known in the current literature by breaking down the various elements of a trip to consider their role in facilitating learning and by contextualizing this learning within the broader flow of the travel process. Thus, the overarching research question of this study was as follows: What is it about travel that promotes learning? To explore this question empirically, it became necessary over the course of the project to focus in on two specific sub-questions: 1. What conditions of travel appear to be relevant for learning and how do these conditions help to facilitate various kinds of learning outcomes among travellers? 2. How do these conditions interact and unfold across the travel process— during pre-trip planning, travel experience, and post-trip processing? | P a g e 30 Having established the questions driving the research, I now turn to the discussion of my philosophical position and how this outlook shaped the research project through the influence it exerted on my data collection and analysis process. Philosophical Worldview My worldview as a researcher includes my position on four important aspects of research philosophy: human nature, ontology, epistemology, and methodology in the context of this study. Human Nature I believe the nature of the human self is to seek enlightenment and to strive to be happy. This involves having the autonomy to pursue activities that bring about personal fulfillment—activities that include interacting with others, undertaking physical pursuits, acquiring knowledge and skills, and essentially becoming a meaningful self within the universe at large. It also involves a reconciliation of the fundamental paradox of human living, where in life, there is death; in joy, there is sorrow; and in freedom, there is constraint. As such, learning can be either conforming or creative in its effects (Jarvis, 1992). Individuals can learn from the experience of life or learn to take life’s experiences for granted. As Moore (1973, p. 28) explained, It is in man’s restless nature to probe the mysteries and confusions of his world and to quench his insatiable thirst for understanding and for knowledge about his world. Within some part of my life space exists an area of confusion and as I go about bringing order to that confusion, I am engaged in the process of learning. | P a g e 31 Therefore, once a challenging circumstance is resolved and harmony is attained, there is no more incentive to go on learning, unless confusion appears again. Our beliefs, attitudes, values, and perceptions are learned behaviour, acquired after birth. This is similar to Locke’s notion of tabula rasa (‚blank slate‛). Learning is derived from experiences (Dewey, 1938; Kolb, 1984). As such, whatever has been learned can be replaced by a different learning. It is often taken for granted that our beliefs and values are integral to ourselves, but I believe that under particular circumstances—especially extraordinary ones like travel—an individual is capable of changing his or her beliefs and values. As House and Howe (1999) argue, values are not beyond the pale of deliberation and reflection—and travel, with its propensity to subject humans to new perspectives, may be an important domain in which such change can occur. I believe that both travel and learning are essential to our humanity and, in fact, are part of the same existential process in which the self dialogues with that which lies outside of it. Learning is a fundamental element of life itself, without which human beings could never function effectively in the wider world. Nevertheless, the individual learns to become within his or her own life world. The complexity and holistic nature of the human experience of learning, with its many dimensions, when considered in the context of travel, necessitates an interdisciplinary approach to begin to understand it comprehensively. Ontology It is my perspective that the social world is subjectively constructed through individual perceptions, based on the external forces with which they interact. In this sense, every single experience that an individual perceives is unique, as each person has his or her own biography and worldview, comprised of personal | P a g e 32 cognitive, emotional, and social experiences, as well as personal competencies. This extends to one’s experiences learning or travelling. Every individual is a continual self in the making, with previous experiences interacting and influencing present and future experiences. An individual biography is built and extends through time, and with every experience, it changes ever so slightly (see Schwandt, 2000, on Gadamer, for an in-depth philosophical discussion). However, this worldview and biography is limited by social and cultural constructions that color the individual’s perspective (Habermas, 1990). An example is the meanings we assign to objects based on linguistics. The languages we speak influence our ability to make meaning and accommodate the information gained through our experiences into our biographies—while indeed some experiences are beyond words. Also core to my ontological position is that the self, through which an image of the social world is constructed, is a combination of both the body and the mind. It is not possible to separate our rational selves from our emotional, embodied selves, such that we are always, to some degree, thinking, feeling, and acting simultaneously. The research implication of this ontology is that I, as a researcher, cannot expect to peer into a phenomenon as complex as travel and learning and emerge with perfect theories or tidy understandings about what this process looks like for humanity as a whole—or even for a particular subset of humanity, such as the emerging adult demographic with the basic resources to travel emphasized here. Each person’s journey will always be, to some degree, unique. I can attempt to understand patterns that may be shared across particular segments of humanity—in this case, young adult travellers who are a part of contemporary mobile global culture—but no two stories will be exactly the same. | P a g e 33 Epistemology I believe that knowledge is constructed empirically. In line with the hermeneutic perspective (Baronov, 2004), an individual’s knowledge is based on his or her experiences and how he or she makes meaning of those experiences. The research implication of taking this position is the recognition that the research encounter involves two mutually interpreting creatures, the researcher and the participant, who work together to co-create intersubjective understandings (Schwandt, 2000). The researcher and participant are each influenced by their historical, social, and cultural backgrounds. Furthermore, the research process, for both the researcher and the study participants, is but one piece in the larger journey of each’s individual epistemological pursuits. Research is thus a process more than it is an outcome, and it is temporal and located within a specific context (Schwandt, 2001). To study an experiential phenomenon like learning through travel is to systematically observe and reflect upon the properties and structures of the experience and thereby be able to explain broadly what is happening. But it is by no means an attempt to reduce it to a straightforward and all-encompassing theory. Instead, I hope simply to construct a conceptual framework—itself only one way of looking at the phenomenon in question—which might help us to think about the connections between travel and learning more deeply and in new ways. The findings are not exclusive or final, but instead provide one potentially fruitful perspective for looking at this phenomenon, and one which can hopefully catalyze future research (Seale, 1999) and spur practical ideas for the enhancement of individual and social happiness and well-being. | P a g e 34 Personal Background As the primary interpreter of the data gathered, I acknowledge that my own worldview frames and influences the interpretations I offer in this thesis, to a very great extent. Therefore, it is important for me to provide a context for readers regarding my own personal experiences with the studied phenomenon, in addition to sharing the philosophical positions just discussed. Growing up in Singapore, international travel has long been an important part of my life. Due to the miniature size of the country, the whole island is somewhat homogeneous, and to travel naturally means going overseas. Within Southeast Asia, there are stark differences in terms of development, culture, and geography between different neighbouring countries. It has thus always been fascinating for me to travel to different countries and see other ways of life. Over the years, as I became more independent in my travelling, I realized its significance to my personal development. Without consciously seeking it, I feet that I have become more accepting of differences, a better communicator without the use of spoken language, a better observer of diversity, and most importantly someone who can adapt to whatever conditions I find myself in—all largely because of my travel experiences. International experiences have been, in my opinion, the most influential shaper of my worldview and personal values. So far, I have navigated through everything from the tropical rainforests of Borneo to the ‚urban jungle‛ of New York, marvelled at the world wonders like the Great Wall and Machu Picchu, and experienced nature’s beauty and power paddling in Canadian lakes and guiding on glaciers in New Zealand. It has been very common for me to hear from other travellers and friends how much travel has changed them and how much they have learned from travelling. Usually, however, they cannot quantify or understand how and why their self| P a g e 35 change happened. Interestingly, not every individual I have encountered who has travelled has learned and changed equally. From the conversations I have had, it seems to me that people appreciate and seek such development but cannot seem to identify how to help bring about such changes. Furthermore, having experienced and seen the utility of travel experiences, I want to be able to maximize more of the benefits of travel for myself and those around me, as well as to share with others, who may be unaware, the educative nature of travel. As one woman my research supervisor interviewed in the course of her own work on study abroad once remarked, there is something about having deep and lifechanging experiences while on the move that makes people want to ‚spread the gospel of travel.‛ For me, this desire to ‚share the good news‛ was not something that found its natural conclusion in simply conveying to others my own personal fervour for travel. Instead, it has come with an intellectual drive to understand how travel facilitates learning, such that I can share my convictions about the value of travel for personal development in a more informed and substantive way, and therefore hopefully offer more value to the lives of others. Within my undergraduate studies, I was rather surprised by the lack of literature in this area, since I perceive travel and learning to be a very relevant aspect of modern life. Therefore, I was inspired to conduct this research and to be able to contribute to this area of knowledge by being able to provide others with ideas for possible actions to enhance their own learning through travel. Methodological Approach In this study, I drew on heuristic inquiry, a form of phenomenological inquiry, as a methodological approach. Heuristic inquiry is a branch of phenomenology that emphasizes the researcher bringing his or her own personal experience–based | P a g e 36 insights to the fore (Patton, 2002; Caton and Santos, 2007). This research perspective made sense to me both because I am looking for common structures in infinitely unique experiences—a strength of phenomenology—and because I have such close personal experience with the phenomenon of travel and learning that it would not be possible for me to remove my experiences and perspective from the study (nor do I believe it would aid my understanding, even if it were possible for me to do this). Moustakas (1990, p. 43) summarises the idea of heuristic inquiry as follows: The heuristic researcher is not only intimately and autobiographically related to the question but learns to love the question. It becomes a kind of song into which the researcher breathes life not< because the question leads to an answer, but < because the question itself is infused in the researcher’s being. It creates a thirst to discover, to clarify, and to understand crucial dimensions of knowledge. Dupuis (1999) concurs that someone who has experience with a particular phenomenon may be able to have a more honest and authentic understanding and interpretation of that phenomenon, as opposed to someone who has never experienced it—a classic hermeneutic perspective (Baronov, 2004). As such, I felt my personal experiences of travel and learning, as well as my interaction with the participants, could facilitate an authentic interpretation and understanding of this phenomenon. This thesis is also informed by the so-called ‚postmodernist‛ turn within tourism social science and beyond. Uriely (2005, p. 199) summarizes tourism studies’ postmodern turn with reference to four dimensions: ‚de-differentiation of everyday life and touristic experiences; a shift from generalizing to pluralizing | P a g e 37 conceptualizations; a transformed focus from objects to the tourist’s subjective negotiations of meaning; and a movement from contradictory and decisive statements to relative and complementary interpretations.‛ For me, in the context of this study, the idea of de-differentiation of everyday life and tourist experience provides a framework for understanding how travel can play a role in a person’s larger biography of learning and self-development; the notion of moving from generalizing to pluralizing conceptualizations captures the necessarily multifaceted nature of learning through travel; the focus on tourism’s subjective meanings is relevant for understanding learning as an inherently personal and self-perceptually driven process; and the desire to move from decisive, either/or statements to relative, both/and interpretations helps to express the complex, and sometimes contradictory, ways that learning plays out in the lives of unique individual travellers. Essentially, every individual has their own story of travel and learning, and although the goal of this analysis is to aggregate them together, such that we can say something broadly about the whole phenomenon, I recognize and appreciate the plurality of meanings each individual brings with their experiences and want to highlight and respect the uniqueness of every individual. Methods The study proceeded using a mixed-methods approach and unfolded in two phases, as described below. The first phase employed personal reflection and active interviewing to understand how people make meaning of their learning from travelling. The second phase used quantitative surveying to triangulate the qualitative findings, and thus to strengthen the study’s conclusions. The use of both qualitative and quantitative research methods was undertaken in order to leverage rich insights based in participants’ emic understandings (Pearce & | P a g e 38 Foster, 2007), and then supplement this depth with the breadth that a larger sample, accessed through a quantitative survey, could provide. I experienced no sense of epistemological inconsistency in the sequential use of these two research styles, and appreciated that this two-pronged approach led to the gain of a more holistic understanding of travel and learning. Phase 1: Active Interviews In order to better understand how others experience their learning through travelling, a series of active interviews were conducted. Active interviewing is a technique that holds the interview to be a dynamic conversational encounter in which meanings are co-produced by the interlocutors. It places less stress on structure and consistency (e.g., reading exactly the same set of questions in the exact same order in each interview situation), and more emphasis on facilitating the narrative activity of interviewees (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995). Active interviews were undertaken in order to gain an emic perspective on how other travellers make sense of their experiences and their derived learning. The complexity and highly personal nature of such experiences required a somewhat open-ended qualitative approach in order to understand and appreciate the depth and differences that characterized individual and his or her experiences. The data from the interview was also important, as was the existing literature, in providing a basis for the construction of the survey questionnaire for phase 2 of the study. Furthermore, the qualitative data was pursued in order to provide richer insights to people’s learning experiences that might ultimately help to explain the ‚whys‛ behind some of the results of the quantitative study. The active interviews were semi-structured, guided by a list of questions prepared through personal reflection and literature review. For the detailed list | P a g e 39 of questions in the interview guide, please refer to Appendix A. The guided format was such that the same general topics were explored, but maximum latitude was given within topic areas (Patton, 2002). Smith and Eatough (2007) describe such interviews as the investigator having an idea of some questions to pursue, yet wanting to try to enter the psychological and social world of the interviewee as far as possible. I was aware that the pre-selected topics would constrain the information I would receive, so I did actively seek to allow interviewees to freely explain or narrate their experiences in detail, such that they might bring to my attention to the presence of other conditions of learning or aspects of the travel learning experience that I had yet to consider. I did not rely heavily on the interview questions in the guide, nor did I seek to adhere to any particular order. As I was very familiar with the areas of inquiry, I could direct and discuss narratives that interviewees gave regardless of the length of their response. Almost every interview had a natural flow from question to question, and on some occasions, the interviewee unknowingly mentioned and explained an issue that related to a later question independently, without any probing from me. This served to provide encouragement that the ideas I had in the construction of the interview guide were not only relevant to me but to other travellers as well. My ultimate objective was an informal conversation, where the interviewee would feel at ease in sharing his or her personal stories, as if to a friend, rather than to a formal researcher in an interviewer–interviewee relationship. Furthermore, one of the conditions of learning ultimately highlighted in this study was the act of reflection, which included recounting experiences with fellow travellers after a trip. The interview, in essence, was an instance of this recounting and constituted a form of guided discussion and reflection about the interviewee’s experience. This meant that the study process itself had an impact | P a g e 40 on participants’ learning—an outcome which highlights the emergent and ongoing nature of learning through travel, as discussed in the next chapter. The subjective nature of heuristic inquiry necessitates personal reflection on my own travel experiences in an attempt to answer the research questions I have posed. My reflection included recalling the aspects of my travel experiences that were significant to me, as well as exploring the shared experiences of fellow travellers and friends, who have mentioned things that were significant to them from travel in informal conversations with me in the past. I was a guide for two years and had many interactions with clients, which also helped to provide another layer of insights into travel and learning. During this period of reflection, I was exposed to outdoor and adventure learning theories through the courses I was taking. To me, there was a natural connection between travel and outdoor adventure. Hence, I adopted certain concepts used within outdoor education, such as goal setting, comfort zone, and reflection. Collectively, my multi-layered biography helped to frame and creates the basis of my approach in designing the study’s interview guide. Ethics approval was obtained from Thompson Rivers University (TRU) for the use of human subjects in the research process (see Appendix D). The target population for the study was not specific and originally extended to any persons who had travelled away from home. The age of majority in British Columbia, Canada, is nineteen, and so I drew this age as my lower bound for participants (although certainly there is much that can and should be learned about the experiences of children and adolescents during travel). The language used to conduct the interview was English, although I was able to speak other languages as well. I assessed potential participants’ levels of fluency through initial conversations. Hence, the only two conditions I imposed for selecting willing interviewees were that they be a minimum of 19 years of age and that they have a | P a g e 41 basic level of communication ability in spoken English. Interviewees were given an information letter and consent form prior to commencement of the interview to obtain their informed consent. The information letter included a brief description of the research, what the interview entailed (including a statement that the interviewee had the right to withdraw at any time), and the contact details of myself, my supervisor, and TRU’s research ethics board. Phase 1 of the study was conducted in multiple locations during the summer of 2013 (June to September). These locations included Argentina, Peru, and Bolivia in South America; Singapore and Malaysia in Asia; and the TRU campus in Kamloops, Canada. The inclusion of travellers met all over the world was meant to widen the scope of the study, in order to achieve more qualitative depth. It was convenient that I was travelling during the summer, which provided me with many opportunities to interact with fellow travellers I met along the way. This added depth helped to provide a wider perspective of the phenomenon beyond what I could have accessed if I had kept the study to within the geographical bounds of the TRU campus. The travellers, however, were not seen as separate groups that could be compared, simply because of each individual’s mobility; indeed, it was very possible to meet someone from Kamloops while traveling on another continent. The interviewees in South America and Asia were a convenience sample of the travellers I met or friends I knew from before the study. They were recruited through informal conversations. The interviewees on campus were recruited through advertisements run on TRU’s online content management platform Moodle, as well as through e-mail lists of courses whose professors were willing to promote the study. Interviewees were interviewed individually by me in a public area of the interviewee’s choice. The interviews lasted from 21 minutes to | P a g e 42 70 minutes. The interviews were audio recorded, and I took certain notes to facilitate the flow of the interview process. All interviews begin with a building of rapport with the interviewees by sharing about our travel experiences. This conversation was followed with questions to further understand the relevance of certain conditions of travel (such as goal setting, comfort zone, and others) in the individual’s travel experience, and their possible influence on interviewees’ learning outcomes, as well as to understand the way the experience of learning was lived through travel and reflected on after travel had ended. The interviewees who were interested in continuing the study were asked for their contact information, which was kept confidential. Due to constraints of time to complete the interview, six interviewees had follow up interviews over e-mail. There were many instances during my travels in South America and Asia where informal conversations with regards to travel and learning were had but were not able to be recorded, due to the lack of consent of the interviewee or the unsuitable nature of where the conversations took place (e.g., conversations had while trekking). This information was not used within the study but helped to inform and further my personal understanding of travel and learning, and thus contributed in an indirect way. A total of 22 interviewees were recorded, with 10 interviews being conducted in South America and Asia, and 12 on the TRU campus. There were 13 male and 9 female interviewees. One third of the interviewees were North American and another third were from Singapore. The last third had a mixture of nationalities, from Russia, Malaysia, India, and Ecuador. The youngest interviewee was 21 years old, and the oldest was 45; most, however, fell within the demographic of 21 to 40. Of the interviewees, 67% were students, with the remainder being working adults in various professions. In general, the interviewees had extensive travel-related experiences, including travelling and/or living abroad in both | P a g e 43 developed and developing countries, travelling for up to 2 years at a time, and exploring countries not often visited by mainstream tourists, such as Tajikistan and Uganda. All the students interviewed have had some form of tourismrelated education, such as in tourism management, sociology, or adventure tourism. The recorded interviews were uploaded onto my personal computer. Both the recording device and the personal computer were kept in my possession at all times. From the audiotapes, I created an overall summary of the profile of the interviewees and their general responses given. Thereafter, a coding framework was devised, partially based on the literature and partially inductively, in order to identify the travel conditions that characterized interviewees’ trips. I listen to the tapes again and extracted data to address the headings that had emerged. I chose not to transcribe the complete set of interviews because analyzing the text apart from the person speaking might introduce a loss in meaning that was conveyed in the emotions of the interviewee, rather than simply in the words used. Thus, I allowed the interviewees’ voices to continue to speak with me as I iteratively dug for further meaning in the data. By first creating a framework of salient travel conditions, I was able to render the data into a form that allowed me to analyze it more effectively—in other words to get a foothold—and therefore to achieve an organized way to go about understanding the relationship of the travel conditions to learning. Phase 2: Survey Questionnaire With the detailed emic understandings provided from the interviews, the survey questionnaire was constructed to elicit a more comprehensive view of the phenomenon of travel and learning. The purpose of the survey was to determine | P a g e 44 how representative the data gathered from the interview was for providing an understanding of the phenomenon of travel and learning. Thus, the quantitative approach was designed to complement the depth of the qualitative results with statistically substantiated generalizability. The survey instrument is provided in Appendix B. The survey questionnaire was distributed via the Web-enabled Verint survey software platform,1 the online survey program to which TRU subscribes. The online nature of the survey facilitated the use of snowball sampling and the reach of the survey instrument to a broad geographical area. A separate ethics approval was obtained for this study, and this approval is provided in Appendix D. The survey respondents were restricted to the ages of 19 to 40, to match the age range of the participants in the in-depth interviews. This age range corresponds with the emerging adult phase of human development noted in the literature (Jensen & Arnett, 2012), a phase of life (variously defined in terms of its exact age bounds) that is the product of social changes which are, in many parts of the world, giving young people the opportunity for a longer period of exploration and freedom from roles that carry heavy and constraining adult responsibilities. The phase of emerging adulthood is characterized by change and discovery, as emerging adults examine the life possibilities open to them and gradually arrive at more enduring choices in their worldviews. The emerging adults are mobile and seek new experiences (Arnett, 2000), and travelling offers them opportunities to achieve these goals. Furthermore, these adults are more exposed to globalization, and thus are more open to diverse beliefs and behaviors and are more willing to change their own behaviors based on what they learn (Jensen & 1 http://www.tru.ca/ipa/survey/vovici.html | P a g e 45 Arnett, 2012). Focusing on emerging adults was not my original intention with this thesis, but rather an outcome that was the product of the demographic characteristics of the people who accepted my invitation to be interviewed, which I then carried forward, for consistency, in the design of my survey. Benefits and limitations associated with focusing on this age group are discussed in the thesis’s concluding chapter. The target group for phase 2 of the study was recruited through purposeful convenience sampling, using a similar method as the interview recruitment, through TRU’s Moodle platform, as well as certain classes’ email lists, and also social media groups belonging to various groups at TRU (such as the international student group TRU World) as well as my personal Facebook network. To expand the range and increase the number of respondents, snowball sampling was employed for the survey, with respondents being encouraged to circulate the questionnaire link to their own friends and associates. An explanatory introduction was included so that respondents could understand the purpose and the description of the survey before giving their consent to participate. Respondents completed the survey anonymously. A total of 129 respondents submitted the survey within the period of December 29, 2013, to February 4, 2014, with one respondent’s survey not being used due to being outside the age range. Furthermore, respondents did not answer every question within the questionnaire, leaving the effective sample different for each question. In the text that follows, the total sample size will be indicated next to every description in square brackets, for example [total = 128], unless otherwise stated. Of the 114 respondents who answered the gender demographic question on the survey instrument, 65 (57%) identified as male and 49 (43%) identified as female. Two thirds of the respondents were 30 years old or younger [total = 106]. The | P a g e 46 mode for the ages of the respondents was 25, the mean was 26, and the median was 25. The respondents resided in 19 different countries, which were grouped into three regions: (1) Asia, which included Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, India, Japan, and Taiwan; (2) North America, which included Canada and the United States of America; and (3) Other, which included Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Norway, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Russia, Mauritius, Ecuador, and Colombia. Slightly less than half of the respondents were from Asia, one third were from North America, and the remainder came from the ‚Other‛ region *total = 118+. Regarding formal education, 64% (n = 74) of the respondents had a bachelor’s degree or above *total = 116+. The respondents came from a variety of professions: one third were students, another third were working in either the education or the tourism field, and the last third were from a variety of different occupations. Three quarters of the respondents were single without children, and of those who were partnered, about one third had children [total = 116]. Comparing the two samples, the gender ratio between the interviewees and the survey respondents was similar, at 59%/41% versus 57%/43%. There was a good mix of countries within both samples, and the representation of Asians and North Americans was similar, at 50%/32% versus 53%/35%. The median age for both samples was 25 years old. Although, there were more students in the sample of the interview than the survey, it seemed that whether the person was a student did not affect the age range and the travel experiences had, so this discrepancy may be immaterial. The survey responses collected through Verint were analysed using SPSS software version 20.0.1. The survey data findings were used to triangulate with the major themes observed from the interview findings. Broadly speaking, I wanted to find out if the narratives given by the interviewees were generalizable | P a g e 47 to a larger population. The two main areas examined were the types of learning derived from travel and the relationship between learning outcomes and the travel conditions identified as important in the interview: motivation, comfort zone, reflection, social interaction, and travel biography. Statistically significant trends identified in the survey data were then used to potentially support the trends seen within the interviewees’ responses. The main body of the questionnaire asked respondents to rate their change in terms of degrees of improvement on a list of learning outcomes. The list of learning outcomes was drawn from Peace and Foster’s (2007) quantitative study on travel as a potential context for the building of ‚generic skills,‛ meaning essentially learning outcomes that are not specialized and are applicable across contexts. Additionally the questionnaire asked respondents to select one or more motivations for travel from a list, which was adapted from a related study (Pearce and Lee, 2005), and hence, like the learning outcomes list, had been previously validated. The travel motivation questions asked respondents to rate for importance the 19 travel motives previously used by Pearce and Lee (2005), as well as three additions derived from the interviews: ‚to spend time with family and friends,‛ ‚to satisfy a feeling of a need to travel,‛ and ‚to challenge myself to experience something different.‛ Next, questions were asked regarding the frequency with which respondents felt that they stepped out of their comfort zones during travel, and also regarding the types of situations they defined as being outside of their comfort zones. Following that, questions were asked about the type of records respondents used to remember their trips and whether they agreed with the statement that reflection enhanced their learning. This was followed by questions on whether respondents shared their experience with others and if they agreed with the statement that recounting their travel experience to others helped them to gain | P a g e 48 new perspectives. Respondents then were asked to select how frequently they interacted with various groups of people, including locals (within the tourism industry and outside the tourism industry), other travellers (from the same culture or a different culture), and people they were travelling with. Subsequent questions dealt mainly with respondents’ past travel history, such as whether they had lived abroad, where they had spent most of their time travelling, and the countries they had visited. Overall, the questions included in the survey instrument were built from the foundation of the qualitative findings, while also drawing on relevant pre-existing measures where possible. The survey concluded with demographic questions on respondents’ country of origin, profession, education level, marital status, age, and gender. For more details, please refer to the survey questionnaire, which is included as Appendix B. Understanding the learning derived from travel is central to this study, as it serves to determine the effects of the various types and conditions of travel. Descriptive statistics were used to discover general trends of the reported learning of the respondents. The level of improvement used to describe the learning was reported on a scale from ‚no change‛ to ‚greatly improved‛ (0 = no change, 1 = improved a little, 2 = moderately improved, 3 = greatly improved). As responses to these questions are the subjective opinion of the respondents, these responses were treated as ordinal variables, which restricted our analysis to nonparametric statistics and tests. To aggregate the overall learning of individual respondents, the mode response to the questions probing learning in each of the 42 outcome areas was computed from the raw survey data. The main statistical analysis was performed to determine if the presence of certain travel conditions resulted in increases/decreases in learning. This analysis was performed using the Mann-Whitney U test, a non-parametric statistical hypothesis test that is used to test a null hypothesis that two populations are the | P a g e 49 same against an alternative hypothesis that the populations are different. A nonparametric statistical test was selected because the sample distributions were non-normally distributed, and because the variable being tested was a variable indicating the respondent’s attitude on an ordinal scale (Veal, 2006). The main hypotheses tested were whether the conditions of travel (indicated by one of the 19 motivations for travel or one of 22 other conditions) were associated with a positive or negative change in learning in any of the 42 individual outcome areas or the overall learning (indicated by the mode response of the 42 outcome areas). For example, a null hypothesis would be ‚there is no difference between and and their rating on improvements in the learning outcome area of . The dependent variables of the tests were the 42 learning outcomes, which can be substituted into the angle brackets above (e.g., in place of above). The independent variables were the conditions of travel and the demographics of the respondents, as described above. Thus, for each independent variable, 42 Mann-Whitney tests were run to determine which travel conditions were related to a statistically significant difference in which learning outcomes. The 95% confidence level (p = 0.05) was used as the threshold of statistical significance, to rule out the likelihood of the result happening due to chance. For each condition of travel, an additional Mann-Whitney test was then performed, in which the dependent variable was the overall mode of the responses regarding the degree of learning in each of the 42 learning outcome areas. This last test was used to judge whether a travel condition was associated with the overall learning experienced by the traveller. | P a g e 50 The Mann-Whitney test indicates whether two samples are likely to have been drawn from the same distribution of values. Acceptance of a null hypothesis indicates that not only do the samples have similar central tendencies, but also similar dispersion and higher-order behaviours. Thus, the Mann-Whitney test may reject a null hypothesis that two samples are drawn from the same distribution even though the two samples have the same median value. This result would be caused by the distributions being differently dispersed, skewed, etc. Because the goal of the present study is to identify factors that are associated with increases/decreases in the learning occurring from a travel experience, only differences between samples that exhibit a difference in median value (i.e., the central tendency of the distribution) were taken as results of practical significance. The results of the tests conducted for the quantitative analysis portion of this study are reported in the next chapter, with each discussion following the related presentation of the qualitative analysis for the respective issue being considered. | P a g e 51 CHAPTER 4: WHAT IS IT ABOUT TRAVEL THAT FACILIATES LEARNING? Travel, as a human experience, is complex and unique to each individual. It comprises a continuous process that can be divided into three stages: pre-trip decision-making, experiences had during travelling, and post-trip processing. The findings from this thesis, in concert with existing literature, demonstrate that many lessons can be learned through travelling, on personal, interpersonal, and intellectual levels. This project sought to understand whether there are common significant elements or features of travelling that tend to promote learning, as perceived by travellers themselves. After analysing the data gathered and giving consideration to my own observations and experiences, as well as to the interdisciplinary literature, I have identified five conditions that appear particularly relevant for the process of learning through travel: motivation, comfort zone, reflection, social interaction, and travel biography. Before turning to this set of conditions to explore the role they play in facilitating learning through travel, however, it is helpful to consider some context, in terms of the way that learning tends to unfold across the travel process, and also in terms of the broad categories of learning outcomes that study participants perceived themselves to have achieved. Once this context has been provided, I then move to a more detailed discussion of the relationship between the five considered travel conditions and the learning outcomes to which they appear to be relevant. In sharing the research outcomes, I offer my interpretations of the conversations I had with the interviewees, and then follow this qualitative analysis with the statistical results of the survey questionnaire, to offer additional support for my findings (or in some cases to complexify them). | P a g e 52 Learning from Travel Erin summarised the benefits of traveling as follows: Travel is < one of the best ways of learning, in my opinion. Maybe that’s why I like travelling so much, because I like to learn< Travelling helps people become more open-minded, more appreciative of what they have and what there is in the world and that’s like, you become that by learning, because you learn when you travel. You learn about other people, you learn about other places, and you learn about yourself. So I think there is good correlation, good connection< I think the world is such a big place, you might as well go see what you can, /. One of the top five most important motivations, ‚to escape familiar things (home life/work),‛ had no statistically significant differences among the 42 learning outcomes, suggesting that there is no difference in learning change between respondents who rated ‚to escape familiar things‛ as important and those who rated it as not important. The five least important motivations, as well as ‚to find thrills/excitement/adventure,‛ ‚to pursue special interests,‛ and ‚to visit famous sites and environments,‛ made little difference for learning (four or fewer learning outcomes exhibited both a statistically and a practically significant difference for those motivations). These motivations were also seldom mentioned by interviewees, and they are not oriented towards learning, but rather towards | P a g e 79 entertainment and escape. This seems to suggest that motivations that are not specifically learning oriented may have less of an association with learning improvement, as compared to other motivations that were associated with learning (discussed below). One of the top five most important motivations, ‚to challenge myself to experience something different‛ had both a statistically and practically significant difference for 36 of the learning outcomes, as well as for the mode of learning. The median value ranged between no change (0) and greatly improved (3). The biggest difference was observed for the learning objective regarding the management of financial resources, where the medians of learning improvement, for the unmotivated group and the motivated group, were no change (0) and moderately improved (2), respectively. The fact that ‚to challenge myself to experience something different‛ had such a high number of skills associated with it seems to support the importance of experiencing difference, which almost every interviewee mentioned. The majority of the learning outcomes, however, showed a difference in improvement between improved a little (1) and moderately improved (2) between the unmotivated group and the motivated group. Some other motivations that showed both a statistically and practically significant difference over many skills (the number of skills that showed a statistically and practically significant difference are indicated by the brackets) were ‚to learn about/experience another country‛ [19 skills], ‚to learn about/experience another culture‛ [16 skills], and ‚to interact with people of the host country‛ [16 skills]. In summary, the survey data suggests that travel motivation is an important condition associated with learning derived from travelling. Motivation influences behaviour and expectations, as well as perception, all of which affect the potential for learning. Having a learning-oriented motivation perhaps helps the | P a g e 80 individual to filter the travel experience with learning as a desired outcome. Conversely, the motivation to play and have fun has an inverse relationship with learning. If such a motivation is the primary goal of a trip, it is perhaps less likely that an individual will bother seeking new experiences or learning opportunities. Travel motivation arises from an individual’s personal biography, and many other factors, such as one’s life stage and outlook, may trigger different travel motivations as well. Additionally, on the same trip, a traveller may have multiple motivations, which may come into play at different stages of the trip. Motivations fundamentally shape expectations, and since learning happens in the interplay between expectation and experience, motivation bears a strong influence over learning itself. | P a g e 81 Comfort Zone Stepping out of one’s comfort zone is an important condition of travel for learning. ‚Comfort zone‛ is basically a pop cultural term that expresses the notion of disjuncture. It also implies a perceived difference in comfort levels between what happens to an individual while travelling, as compared to what he or she is used to at home. Travel is no longer a foreign concept for many people in our increasingly mobile world, and this is especially so for emerging adults who tend to be on the move a lot. To explore the potential relevance of stepping out of one’s comfort zone, an idea drawn from the adventure studies literature, for learning during travel, interviewees were asked directly whether they felt they had to step out of their comfort zone during travelling. This was followed by asking them to qualify what they deemed to constitute ‚being out of their comfort zones.‛ They were also asked to explain why they thought stepping out of their comfort zones helped them to learn. Types of Situations Outside the Comfort Zone All interviewees acknowledge that travel required them to step out of their comfort zones and into their learning zones. The growth/learning zone (Prouty et al., 2007) is the area immediately outside one’s comfort zone. Half of the interviewees (n = 11) were not able to explicitly state what they deemed to be their learning zone. The sense that I got from them was that their learning zone was a place in which they could develop confidence in their abilities to overcome discomfort, and from their responses it seems that their histories of travelling indeed proved to them that they had done this successfully. Of the remainder, the most often cited explanation of learning zone was language barrier. This is logical, as language barriers make basic communication a problem, as well as | P a g e 82 making it difficult to seek assistance when one is in need, and hence feels vulnerable. Other learning zone explanations cited constituted more isolated instances expressed only by one or a handful of interviewees. These included the challenge of travelling in cities, the lack of accessibility to communicate with people at home, the political instability of destinations, self-perceived introversion, and the challenges of being alone while travelling. In the survey, respondents were asked how often they felt they had to step outside of their comfort zones during travelling. This was followed by a list of conditions and situations derived from what interviewees had mentioned as being situations that were out of their comfort zones. Respondents could choose all that applied and could also include other conditions if desired. Table 6 shows the top 10 conditions or situations that respondents felt were outside their comfort zone. The most common was language barrier at 73% [total = 128]. As noted, this was also the most often-cited condition in the interviews. The bottom three conditions, not shown in the table, were duration of trip, urban environment, and travelling in a group. Other conditions suggested by respondents that were not given as survey options included having to ask for favours while traveling and challenges to one’s physical ability. Table 6. Top 10 Conditions Outside Comfort Zone Condition/Situation Frequency Percentage Language barrier 94 73% Different cultural norms 82 64% Lack of physical comforts 67 52% Interacting with strangers 65 51% Travelling alone 60 47% | P a g e 83 Lack of familiar food 52 40% Remote environment 50 39% Lack of technology 41 32% Absence of friends and family 40 31% Climate and distinct seasons 40 31% Importance to Learning In general, interviewees found stepping out of their comfort zone to be uncomfortable, and therefore not necessarily something done out of preference, but they recognized that doing so ultimately had a positive influence on their learning. Travelling seems to be an effective way of pushing people willingly outside their comfort zones because the discomfort is overcome by the motivation to visit a location or to gain an experience, and so people are willing to give up their comfort to achieve this. This was certainly the case with the interviewees in this study. One interviewee, Gavin, expressed this feeling as follows: ‚travelling pushes your boundaries, makes you take more chances. I was unsure [at] first but overcame it. You will not be able to fully learn if you don’t get out of [your] comfort zone.‛ Another interviewee, Erin, said: I’ve heard someone said to step out of your comfort zone is the only way to learn. It’s ‘cause if you’re in your comfort zone, you won’t pay as much attention to what’s around you, ‘cause you would be more relaxed, and you won’t be as aware. Whereas you’re in, like, a situation where you don’t know what’s going on, you’re in a new place, you really, you’re more aware and appreciative of what’s going on around you, so you learn. I think you learn more stuff, ‘cause you’re thrown into the deep end, and the only way to | P a g e 84 survive is to actually learn something and adapt, or you’re just more open to stuff. Henry suggested that the element of risk is what results in the learning. This is aptly captured by Ken: If you want to learn what life is about, you cannot sit in your own world. You must go further, widen your boundaries, broaden your mind, and open you heart. Travel is the best way to get out of your comfort zone. On the flip side, some interviewees were probed to offer thoughts, based on their own experiences, about whether they believed that not stepping out of one’s comfort zone could still result in learning. The responses were that it might take longer, and also that the ultimate learning outcomes would likely not be the same without leaving the comfort zone. It seems that most of the concrete examples of learning described by interviewees was a result of stepping out of the comfort zone. It helped the interviewees to overcome perceived limits and forced them to expand their boundaries and proactively challenge themselves at doing things they were unsure of. They thereby were able to gain confidence. With confidence and experience, not only is one’s comfort zone broadened, but its boundary becomes more elastic and is able to stretch further. This elasticity seems to be a feature that can be built once the initial threshold of the comfort zone has been successfully breached, and positive outcomes have ensued. Overcoming the Discomfort Expanding this invisible boundary of comfort involved interviewees being willing to try new things and to give themselves time to adjust. The interviewees | P a g e 85 recognised that they would have to struggle initially and that it would feel uncomfortable, but as Kong described, sharing his own experience, ‚after a period of adjustment, it becomes comfortable.‛ This expansion of comfort zone allowed interviewees to be more willing to take risks in the future and to intentionally seek out-of-comfort-zone experiences. The perception of overcoming such a personal limit also allowed the interviewees to see change in themselves. James went even further, saying that every time he is travelling, he has to move on if he feels that he has ‚settled down‛ (become too comfortable). Some interviewees were probed further about the limits of the learning zone. Prouty et al. (2007) describe an area known as the danger/panic zone, which lies beyond the growth/learning zone. This region is where the risks may be too high, such that the costs of stepping out outweigh the benefits derived. Certain interviewees mentioned situations that they have experienced before that they are not willing to try again, possibly because of the feeling of not being able to overcome the situation successfully or the obvious danger involved. Some danger zones described were travelling to places that had strong gender discrimination and living for an extended period in a developing country that speaks a very different language. However, other interviewees seemed to have better success at overcoming all of their types of discomfort and felt that there were no limits, or if there were, that they had not reached them or become aware of them. This attitude made them more willing to seek out-of-comfort-zone experiences in the future, in order to explore their limits. Mediation From some of the more detailed descriptions of interviewees regarding how they overcome their discomfort, it seems that as long as there is some basal level of comfort, the person will be able to proceed successfully. As Valerie puts it: | P a g e 86 I think that from traveling, my comfort zone has kinda opened a lot more. I could pretty much probably go anywhere now and feel comfortable, because I know that everybody, we’re all people and there really isn’t any differences, everywhere you go and that you can find something small to make you feel good, even if it’s just like a tea or a coffee or a beer to make you feel more comfortable in an environment. Or exploring it a little bit more. I think when you first get anywhere, you kinda feel, you kinda feel a little bit uncomfortable at first, but if you push yourself to explore it, I think it gradually makes you feel a bit more settled in an area. The presence of others from home, and being able to connect with home, created a support system that allowed interviewees to take a leap of faith, while feeling that they had a safety bungy cord attached. Sometimes part of the trip involved a challenge, which was then mediated by a more comfortable and relaxationoriented component, such as a trekking expedition that involved luxury accommodations before and after the trek, and this kind of balance was helpful in aiding travellers to manage the stretching of their comfort zone. What all this suggests is that the overall perception of the risk of the trip by the traveller is important: if the whole trip seems beyond the person’s tolerance level, then it will not be undertaken; if part of the trip seems to be well within the comfort zone, and only a perceived manageable portion falls outside it, then the trip is more likely to happen. Survey Comparison On the question of how often respondents felt they had had to step out of their comfort zone, survey participants had to rate between almost never and almost always (scale points = almost never, seldom, sometimes, often, almost always). | P a g e 87 Most of the respondents rated often (48%, n = 60), followed by sometimes (39%, n = 49) [total = 126]. Only one respondent chose almost never. This reflected the majority feeling of interviewees that travel is perceived to involve stepping out of one’s comfort zone. The survey was not able to go into such depth as the interview to explore how the perception of stepping out of the comfort zone aided with learning. Nevertheless, the same tests that were done with motivations were used to determine if the frequency of stepping out of the comfort zone had any significant association with learning improvement. Respondents were grouped into two groups, those who stepped out frequently (those who responded often and almost always) and those who stepped out infrequently (those who responded almost never, seldom, and sometimes). There were three learning outcomes that registered both a statistically and a practically significant difference between respondents who frequently stepped out of their comfort zone and those who stepped out infrequently. They are effective communication and being open-minded (which increased from moderately improved to greatly improved), and language skills (which increased from improved a little to moderately improved). It is interesting that language skills had a practical significance as this implies an improvement and overcoming of the language barrier. This might have also improved the effectiveness of communication. It was important that frequently stepping out of the comfort zone made a person more open-minded, as this could be related to the openness of one’s perception to new and unknown experiences and also to the increased acceptance of uncertain situations. In summary, the perception of stepping out of the comfort zone seems to influence the pursuit of activities and behaviours that one would not do at home or within their daily routine. In doing so, the self has to adapt, change, and | P a g e 88 overcome this discomfort—and essentially to learn. Regardless of the different learning zones that are subjective to individuals, the departure from familiarity forces an individual to confront the disjuncture and resolve the dissonance. Interviewees perceived the resultant growth and found themselves to be changed individual. | P a g e 89 Reflection Reflection was considered a relevant condition to consider for travel because it is an important step in many learning models in the education literature. Reflection seems to be the ingredient that unites an experience with the eventual learning derived from it. Recording the experience has a learning value because it can be reflected on afterward (Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985). Self-reflection is the main form of reflection emphasized here, but reflection can also be guided or can otherwise proceed with the involvement of others. Interviewees were asked how they record or remember their trips. Based on their answers, more questions were asked, with regard to how often this was done during travelling itself, and how often the records were reviewed after the trip. Further questions then followed specific to how interviewees felt reflection had an impact on their learning. Types of Record The recording of an experience played a significant role in shaping interviewees’ experiences, as well as in influencing how they learned from those experiences. Trip records were generally made in the form of a travel journal, photos and videos, written letters or postcards, a memorabilia and artefact collection, or various combinations of the above. The physical record was able to serve as a trigger and a representation of the trip, such that the trip could be recalled and re-experienced in the mind. Many interviewees seemed not to be able to remember in detail the majority of their travel experiences unless they were able to read their journals or look at their photos. It also seemed, in the case where a long trip had been taken, that there were just too many experiences for the interviewees to easily retrieve to individual memory without aid. | P a g e 90 The most common medium that interviewees used to record their trips were digitally recorded photos. For some interviewees, taking digital photos was coupled with the recording of their thoughts and feelings in a journal. Two of the interviewees only used their memories and rarely used any external medium to help them remember their trips. The majority of the interviewees were in consensus that writing helps them to articulate their thoughts, as well as to reflect on their emotions. Mary mentioned that her journals, more than her pictures, reminded her of how she felt and who she was at the time she was traveling. Henry commented that writing down his thoughts helped him to learn better, and that as he wrote for an audience, it also helped him to funnel his thoughts more effectively. Interestingly, Henry used food stains in his journals to capture a more multi-sensory effect. Kong highlighted the importance of reflection to him, and also of the need for immediacy with writing: There were certain moments where I was too tired, and I didn’t write it down. Then I realised, after a few days, that I couldn’t actually say how I felt at that point in time. Because I was in a new place, there was so [much] new information. If I fail[ed] to write it down, as each day I see new things, I would tend to forget. If I don’t write it down today, if you asked me this particular time on this day how did I feel when I see something, when I eat something, I tend to forget it. To me, reflection is the most important. Two interviewees strongly emphasized the importance of being in the moment, rather than capturing it as a photo. Jane said, ‚I prefer a direct experience, with nothing between me and the experience.‛ Regardless of how people approached | P a g e 91 the experience, as Wong aptly puts it, ‚no form of documenting can replicate the experience.‛ In the survey, respondents were asked to select the medium/s they used to record or remember their trips. They could choose all that applied from a list that was derived from the responses of interviewees, and they could also include others forms of reflection if desired. The other question asked inquired as to what degree respondents agreed that reflection enhanced their learning. From the survey, Table 7 shows the top 5 methods used to record and remember trips. As can be seen, the most common recording method (93%) [total = 128] is the use of photos and videos, which has become very convenient with smartphones and cheap digital cameras. A method not listed on the survey that was suggested by one respondent was friendships. Table 7. Top 5 Recording Methods Recording Method Frequency Percentage Photos/videos 119 93% Souvenirs/memorabilia 52 40% Social media 50 39% Travel journal 45 35% Postcards 36 28% Legacy of the Travel Experience Interviewees’ reflections are a significant part of their travel experiences. Reflection can happen at different phases in a trip: immediately after an experience (resting while visiting a thousand-year-old ruin), at the end of the day (while writing a diary entry), after returning home (recounting experiences to friends), and many years down the road (looking at photographs). Reflection is | P a g e 92 the most effective way of prolonging the experience gained from travelling and allows the experience to continually have an impact on the individual. The memory of the experience in our mind is constantly being evoked and reshaped during reflection. Neither the medium used to record a trip nor the frequency of recording seemed to affect the importance of reflecting on the trip. Reflection helped many of the interviewees to see how they had changed and were different from their ‚old‛ selves. They noticed changes in self-confidence, outlook on life, and appreciation for the perspectives of others and self. At least three interviewees specifically mentioned that a trip changed their lives, and many others implied that a trip had significantly impacted them. Valerie provided the following thoughts: I think that if I look back on it, I realise how much it did help me grow, and at that time, I might not have been embracing it as much, but now I look back and think that wow, that’s because of this, the whole thing that I met my husband there, too, because I did this and learned this, and I learned to be more open, and all of those things led to a new kind of life, and it continues to be like that: the choices you make while you are travelling lead to different decisions. I decided to come back to school after one of my most recent trips, because I realised I was completely unhappy and I needed to come back to school to change what I was going to do, so I think that’s another thing. I don’t think you really have a sense of how you are changing when you’re there, I think you only realise it once you look back onto it. I mean ‘cause you are making decisions and doing stuff all the time, and you come home and you settle back to your everyday life and you change something, you maybe | P a g e 93 change your job, you do all of these things, but you might not realise the effect it’s gonna have till later down the road. Jane mentioned, ‚it was such a profound experience in my life in a way that I didn’t know at that time. I keep learning from it.‛ The fact that their perception of themselves is different now as compared to before was attributed to all that they have experienced during their travels. Putting Things into Perspective The effect of hindsight allowed interviewees to put their experience into perspective. The reason for this, according to Tom, which was reflected in many others’ responses, was that ‚during the experience, everything is happening so fast. There are a lot of new things happening, just not able to take everything in.‛ Erin expressed it similarly: Sometimes when you’re travelling through a place, you don’t have the time to actually see some stuff, appreciate what’s around, what your impact on that place might be or the impact on you. It’s not until