Transforming students into global citizens: International service learning and PRME

Abstract

How can we encourage business students to become global citizens and responsible leaders as is advocated in the PRME Initiative? In this paper, we argue that one pedagogical approach is to give them an opportunity to collaborate with people from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds in a developing country through a faculty-led international service learning (ISL) course. The example ISL program summarized here provides students an opportunity to collaborate with others in developing countries as partners in applying both their own area of disciplinary study (e.g. business, health care, education) and other areas as well. Results show that faculty learn more about how to make the PRME principles more actionable as students view their role as global citizens much more deeply, broadly and personally after taking our international service learning course.