Stamped with meaning: post-cards as qualitative inquiry in educational travel

Educational travel, such as study abroad programming, offers students transformative experiences, yet capturing the depth of these experiences through research can be challenging. Traditional research methods like interviews and journals often fall short in reflecting the dynamic and fluid nature of students’ journeys. This article introduces post-cards as a novel qualitative approach designed to overcome these limitations. The method leverages the nostalgia, creativity, and immediacy of postcards to encourage brief, meaningful reflections that capture key moments in students’ travels. By inviting students to engage in real-time, in situ reflection, post-cards allows for concise storytelling that conveys emotional, sensory, and cognitive aspects of the travel experience. This article outlines how the post-cards method works, demonstrates its potential to enrich understanding of student learning in study abroad contexts, and proposes it as an accessible, engaging tool for exploring both the places visited and the personal transformations students undergo during their travels. Through this approach, we aim to offer a fresh perspective on the complexities of qualitatively researching learning in educational travel and highlight its potential for capturing authentic, multifaceted student experiences.