Insights into the study abroad experience of social education students at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

The internationalisation of higher education leads to benefits for students and universities. Part of the internationalisation process is student mobility through study abroad programmes such as Erasmus. This paper reflects on the study abroad process and experience for three Czech social pedagogy students from the faculty of education at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. The results of this small-scale study, collected through a questionnaire and a follow-up interview, showed that the study participants had similar motivations and experiences despite the different host institutions and study programmes. Furthermore, care needs to be taken when selecting a host university programme and ensuring that there are straightforward activities instructors can make use of to better prepare outgoing students. These findings lead to suggestions for classroom teachers as to how they can, to some degree, 'internationalise' their lessons, and how universities can encourage more students to take part in study abroad programmes, and to questions for future research.