Standards of Good Practice

The Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad support the complex responsibilities inherent in offering education abroad opportunities to students. They act as a means to develop, manage, assess and improve education abroad programming. As a commonly-developed and accepted set of standards, they provide a framework for accountability.

Each Standard is structured by:

• Statements: the broad principles of the Standard, detailed in bullet points. These define the baseline best practices that should be observed by any entity operating within the field of education abroad, according to their type of education abroad activity.
• a set of Queries following the Statement: prompts for evaluation, designed to elicit a response that demonstrates how the Standard is being met and encourages discussion rather than a yes or no response.

Supporting each Standard are:

• Fundamental elements: a dynamic feature defining essential expectations of implementing the Standards;
• Member Resources: a resource featuring best practices, keyed to the Standards. These examples are vetted by The Forum’s Standards Committee, and are made available exclusively to Forum members,
• Standards Guidelines: guidance that contextualizes various specific areas of education abroad practices, particularly where these practices may differ from the same practice in the home campus context.