Across time and context : a comparative case study of pre-service teachers' intercultural and professional development in a teach-abroad program in Greece

Abstract

This qualitative comparative case study examines how participation in the Athens Teach-Abroad Program -- a University initiative placing pre-service teachers in direct teaching roles with refugee and migrant students in Athens, Greece -- shapes intercultural and pedagogical development across two program iterations (2023 and 2025) and in what ways that development is observable and sustained in participants' professional practice over time. I situate this study within Mezirow's (1991) transformative learning theory, Bronfenbrenner's (1994) ecological systems model, Bandura's (1997) self-efficacy theory extended by Siwatu's (2007) Culturally Responsive Teaching Self-Efficacy framework, and Paris and Alim's (2014) culturally sustaining pedagogy. I examine five primary data sources: pre-, mid-, and post-program questionnaires from eighteen participants across both cohorts; researcher field observations at two program sites; semistructured interviews with four Greek host educators; and follow-up interviews conducted in February 2026 with five participants from the 2023 cohort, two and a half years after program completion. My findings, presented in Chapters Four and Five, include five consistent developmental outcomes: disorientation that reorganizes professional self-concept rather than merely producing discomfort; the discovery of relationship as the foundational condition of effective teaching; increased professional confidence through inhabiting the teacher role under authentic stakes without formal evaluative oversight; the development of specific adaptive teaching strategies unavailable through domestic practicum; and a reorganization of how participants understand culturally diverse students--from abstract categories to named individuals. These outcomes are confirmed through host educator professional assessments, triangulated against researcher observation, and documented as behaviorally enacted in participants' professional practice two and a half years postprogram. This study makes three methodological contributions to the teach-abroad literature. It is the first to incorporate structured host-country educator interviews as primary analytical data for evaluating U.S. pre-service teacher development abroad. It provides follow-up behavioral evidence of sustained transformation: specific classroom practices, credential decisions, and career directions that participants trace to their Athens experience. The comparative case design across two program iterations establishes which developmental outcomes are structurally produced and which are cohort-specific, a distinction single-cohort designs cannot make. Implications for teacher education program design and for the methodology of teach-abroad research are discussed.