Internationalizing Pre-Service Student Teachers through the SEA-Teacher Program: Narratives of Development and Challenges

Background: One way to develop the quality of pre-service student teachers is by joining a student exchange overseas. So, the Indonesian Ministry of Education includes student mobility as a core component of tertiary education accreditation. Objectives: This study aims (1) to elaborate the SEA-Teacher participants' experiences and narrate their educational and personal development through the program and (2) to find out the challenges encountered during the program. Methods: This study employed a narrative inquiry approach to examine the experiences of pre-service student teachers participating in the SEA-Teacher Program. The researchers collected data through various methods, including student-written blogs and field observations. A step-by-step approach was used to analyze the data, involving a thorough review of the narratives and contextual information. Findings: This study highlights the positive outcomes, lessons learned, and future directions for internationalizing university students through participation in the SEA-Teacher Program. SEA-Teacher provides an international learning context in which pre-service teachers encounter unfamiliar linguistic, pedagogical, cultural, and social environments. Through this program, students can strengthen their personal, pedagogical, linguistic, and regional/global dimensions, though the process also presents challenges, including language barriers and curricular differences. Conclusion: The contribution of this study lies not in identifying entirely new individual benefits of SEA-Teacher, but in demonstrating how personal, pedagogical, linguistic, and regional-global development are interconnected within pre-service teachers lived international teaching experiences.