The Impact of Immersion Trips on Development of Compassion among College Students

Enhancing Critical Consciousness Through a Cross‐Cultural Immersion Experience in South Africa

“…Cultural immersion experiences stress a great engagement with a culture accompanied by investing time, energy, and concentration (Cordero & Rodriguez, 2009). In helping-profession disciplines, cultural immersion experiences have been addressed as a pedagogical approach to multicultural learning (e.g., Canfield, Low, & Hovestadt, 2009;Cordero & Rodriguez, 2009;Crampton, Dowell, Parkin, & Thompson, 2003;Fawcett, Briggs, Maycock, & Stine, 2010;Plante, Lackey, & Hwang, 2009;Ponterotto, 1997;Pope-Davis, Breaux, & Liu, 1997;Tomlinson-Clarke & Clarke, 2010). Counselor educators have become interested in experiential modalities (e.g., cross-cultural immersion trips, community service activities, other hands-on cross-cultural experiences) to enhance students' multicultural development (Burnett, Hamel, & Long, 2004;Cordero & Rodriguez, 2009;Fawcett et al, 2010;Plante et al, 2009;Ridley, Mendoza, & Kanitz, 1994).…”

“…In helping-profession disciplines, cultural immersion experiences have been addressed as a pedagogical approach to multicultural learning (e.g., Canfield, Low, & Hovestadt, 2009;Cordero & Rodriguez, 2009;Crampton, Dowell, Parkin, & Thompson, 2003;Fawcett, Briggs, Maycock, & Stine, 2010;Plante, Lackey, & Hwang, 2009;Ponterotto, 1997;Pope-Davis, Breaux, & Liu, 1997;Tomlinson-Clarke & Clarke, 2010). Counselor educators have become interested in experiential modalities (e.g., cross-cultural immersion trips, community service activities, other hands-on cross-cultural experiences) to enhance students' multicultural development (Burnett, Hamel, & Long, 2004;Cordero & Rodriguez, 2009;Fawcett et al, 2010;Plante et al, 2009;Ridley, Mendoza, & Kanitz, 1994). Positive outcomes of experiential training modalities, including enhancing cultural awareness, self-awareness of one's own culture, cultural empathy, critical consciousness, commitment to change, and social justice advocacy, have been identified (Arthur & Achenbach, 2002;DeRicco & Sciarra, 2005;Ishii, Gilbride, & Stensrud, 2009).…”

Immersive Practices: Dilemmas of Power and Privilege in Community Engagement with Students in a Rural South African Village

“…They have the potential of being sites of "transformational learning" for students (Kiely, 2005). Plante, Lackey and Hwang (2009) find that students who participated in service learning immersion experiences scored higher on compassion and empathy scales after their immersion trips compared to students who did not take part. There are other studies that have found a correlation between these types of programs and improved student academic performance as well as higher levels of civic engagement (Gutstein, Smith, & Manahan, 2006;Metzger & McEwen, 1999).…”

Alternative Breaks: The impact of student-to-student connections in non-classroom service-learning experiences

“…At the broadest level alternative break experiences lead to increased understanding of issues examined through service on the trip (Garbuio, 1999;Jones et al, 2012;McElhaney, 1998). In line with findings related to other service experiences, alternative break experience participants report new perceptions of service recipients (Bowen, 2011;Gumpert & Kraybill-Greggo, 2005) including increased levels of compassion and empathy (Plante et al, 2009). Alternative break experiences can also affect student perceptions of social justice, civic engagement, cultural sensitivity, and citizenship (Bowen, 2011;Boyle-Baise & Langford, 2004;Garbuio, 1999).…”

“…By defining alternative break experiences as such a clear distinction is made from course based service learning, course-based-short-term immersion programs, and volunteering. This is an important distinction to make as findings have found differing outcomes can be attributed to course and non-course based programs (McElhaney, 1998;Plante et al, 2009).…”