“I Feel Less Beholden to Others”: How Education Abroad Facilitates Movement Toward Self-Authorship Among First-Generation Students

Abstract

Despite exponential growth in education abroad participation, first-generation students continue to be underrepresented in this activity. There is also little known about how first-generation students develop holistically. Using Baxter Magolda’s (2001) theory of self-authorship, this qualitative study explored how the experience of education abroad facilitated holistic development among 15 first-generation college students. The journey toward self-authorship is marked by increasingly complex meaning making, the catalyst for which is cognitive dissonance, as one begins to define beliefs, values, and identity internally. Findings from this study indicated that the experience of education abroad did indeed facilitate movement toward self-authorship among participants, and did so in ways unique to those socioeconomically marginalized and/or racially/ethnically minoritized. For participants of this study, education abroad was an experience that provided (a) the necessary cognitive dissonance to prompt internal meaning-making, (b) a context in which to internally generate values, beliefs, and identity, and (c) an opportunity to reframe one’s racial/ethnic sense of self and self-worth. Participants marginalized in terms of socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity encountered dissonance, adversity, and meaning-making that their White and wealthier first-generation peers did not.