“Life in a year”: Intercultural exchange experiences of secondary school exchange students and volunteer host families
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2023
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University of Hawaii at Manoa
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Youth exchanges have been an important part of the international education landscape in the United States (US). The US government invests in exchanges as a public diplomacy tool to support its foreign policy objectives. This case study examined two government-funded youth exchange programs, Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) and the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) programs that were created to promote mutual understanding between Americans and international youth. Through educational and cultural exchange, youth aged 15–19 from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, live with volunteer host families, attend high school, learn about American values, leadership, and civic education, and share about their countries with Americans. Drawing upon soft power, geopolitics, biopolitics, cosmopolitanism, and culture learning theory as theoretical perspectives, I examine various layers of the intercultural exchange: (1) geopolitical dynamics and official government rhetoric on a national level, (2) the ways these programs attempt to instill the norms and values on an organizational/programmatic level, and (3) the experiences of exchange participants on an individual level. To this end, my dissertation aims to answer the following research questions: (1) In what ways do the FLEX and YES exchange programs attempt to instill the official norms and values of the program? (2) How do participants experience each aspect of the program and its processes, and to what extent do these experiences reflect program objectives? (3) How do participants experience intercultural exchange within a homestay, and what kinds of interactions characterize their experiences? This qualitative study is informed by the data collected from 2017–2020 through semi-structured interviews with 23 FLEX and YES exchange students from 19 countries, 19 host families, and two local coordinators across four Hawai‘i islands, participant observations, and document review. The findings illustrate the two programs’ explicit efforts to instill the norms and values of American society through well-structured and well-supported programming that allows for the vertical dynamics that shape the enactment of the program objectives. However, there are tensions surrounding the public diplomacy role for both students and host families. The findings also offer a nuanced understanding of the exchange participants’ experiences of culture sharing, relationship building, and personal growth within a homestay, and highlight the tensions that emerged related to hosting in Hawai‘i. While this study demonstrated several positive outcomes of the exchange programs recognized by program participants, it also identified gaps that call for programmatic changes in policy and practice.
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Student exchange programs, Intercultural communication in education, High school students--Attitudes, Host families of foreign students
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