The Transformative Power of Travel? Four Social Studies Teachers Reflect on Their International Professional Development

Abstract

Common sense thinking on international professional development suggests that the rewards for teachers are automatic. One of the most frequently advertised gains teachers are expected to see from participation includes the likelihood that they will have a transformative experience, whereby aspects of their personal or professional attributes are fundamentally modified in some productive way. This qualitative inquiry is an examination of the stories four teachers told after participating in one international professional development program. Employing interviews and observations while drawing on postcolonial theory, it investigates if and to what degree travel to and study in China constituted a transformative experience. Specifically, this study is concerned with the influence of 1 study tour on the perceptual understandings of 4 in-service social studies teachers, and if their travel alters the way they interpret often underrepresented and misrepresented content of their curricula.