Can You Go Home Again? A Phenomenological Investigation of Cypriot Students Returning Home After Studying Abroad

Experiences of Asian psychologists and counselors trained in the USA: an exploratory study

“…Domain 3: Reentry Reentry experiences described by our participants echoed findings from a Thompson and Christofi (2006) study, in which participants frequently contrasted their home country and the USA. As has been mentioned in Rasichio's (1987) study, it seemed that having had cross-cultural experiences allowed our participants to view their own culture from an outsider's perspective.…”

“…Returning students may also encounter reentry challenges due to unexpected difficulties, internal personal changes that result from their experiences, changes in the home country, others' lack of interest in their international stories, dissonance between expectations of family and friends (Sussman 1986), differences in professional environments (Gama and Pedersen 1977), and differences in professionalism and expectations in their home society (Butcher 2002; Thompson and Christofi 2006). Unlike international students in the engineering or scientific fields, whose skills can be easily translated across cultures, the international student in counseling psychology often faces the particular challenges of a new and unrecognized field filled with foreign concepts that may antagonize cultural traditions and indigenous helping systems (Marsella and Pedersen 2004).…”

Effectiveness and Relevance of Training for International Counseling Graduates: A Qualitative Inquiry

“…The experience of being unprepared for the work environment and local expectations reflects existing findings related to re-entry challenges facing international students and the relevance of overseas education (e.g., Arthur 2003;Campbell 2010;Chur-Hansen 2004;Cuthbert et al 2008;Kracen et al 2008;Thompson and Christofi 2006). It further illustrates U.S. counseling and related programs' apparent inattention to internationalization in general (AEgisdóttir and Gerstein 2010) and the training and supervisory needs of international students in particular (Nilsson and Anderson 2004;Smith and Ng 2009).…”

“…Their feelings of isolation and marginalization in the United States echo those reported by other international students (cf., Chen 1999;Mittal and Wieling 2006;Smith and Ng 2009). Their re-entry experiences corroborate the re-entry adjustment difficulties reported in the literature (cf., Brabant et al 1990;Thompson and Christofi 2006).…”

“…Findings have revealed that female returnees tend to face more problems than male returnees (Brabant et al 1990). Authors suggest that such gender difference in experience is likely to be due to the cultural expectations in the home country being more conservative compared to those in the host country (Brabant et al 1990; Thompson and Christofi 2006). Perhaps, women change their values and feelings regarding interpersonal relationships and sexuality while abroad and become more liberal (Brabant et al 1990).…”