ABSTRACT
This chapter invites readers to pivot back toward the in-country experience to explore how local partners are embedded within education abroad programming, both as teachers and as learners. It introduces an alternative organizational framework, the local partner engagement process model, for seeing community impact in a different way, one that goes beyond local partners perceived outcomes to a process within which local partners exercise agency as both teachers and learners. The overall lack of engagement with the nonstudent side of the education abroad equation has resulted in a proliferation of terms to describe those overseas who contribute in some way to students’ education abroad experiences. The lack of local partner impact research in traditional education abroad contexts was a starting point for a study that resulted in the development of the local partner engagement process model presented.
