Student exchange - Education without borders

Project description

In an increasingly globalized and culturally diverse world, spending time abroad during school is a key opportunity to develop personal skills, motivational beliefs, and intercultural attitudes, as well as to improve foreign language skills. So far, this learning opportunity has been taken up mainly by high school students and young people from socially privileged families, while disadvantaged young people are much less likely to choose to spend time abroad during their school years due to financial reasons and a lack of parental support. This can lead to existing inequalities in the acquisition of labor market-relevant skills and abilities becoming even more pronounced.

The model project "Student Exchange - Education Without Borders" aims to reduce such inequalities and increase the educational opportunities of disadvantaged young people by enabling a total of 60 students from low-income households to spend twelve months abroad in a quality-oriented program over a period of three years. The effectiveness of the pilot project will be evaluated using quantitative longitudinal surveys and qualitative interviews. The focus will be on the following questions:

• What individual and structural barriers to spending time abroad can be identified?
• How does spending time abroad influence the development of personal and socio-emotional characteristics as well as intercultural attitudes?
• How much does the target group of socially disadvantaged young people benefit?
• How does spending time abroad influence young people's educational and career aspirations?
• To what extent does the project contribute to reducing social inequalities in education?

Overview