Journal writing as a way to know culture: insights from a travel study abroad program

Abstract

In this work, we explore journal writing as a way to come to know culture, particularly cultural phenomenon, vastly different from one’s own firmly held and enacted beliefs. In this research, we accept the premise that writing is a way of knowing and adopt journal writing as a tool through which students can explore the knowledge they have developed as a result of their academic travel study experiences, all being participants in the China Study Abroad Program. Narrative threads from numerous graduate students’ journals are seamed together through the use of narrative inquiry’s analytical tools. The narrative exemplars that were created reinforce the personal, social, and professional importance of creating a reflective writing space through which many expressions of culture and students’ reflective responses to them can be channeled in productive and potentially transformative ways.