Abstract
International school trips are increasingly featured in the offerings by schools and the justification for them is generally framed within national curriculum intentions. Utilizing research from secondary school-led trips to international locations from the South Island, New Zealand, this chapter argues that differing mobilities within this type of travel allows for the young people involved to engage in (different) everyday activities that can lead to self-discovery and personal development. Through experiencing different everyday activities, including home-stay visits, traveling through highly populated transport nodes, and dealing with different languages and cultures, this chapter suggests that learning is undertaken in a complex mixture of structured and less structured environments. The chapter highlights the "soft skills" young people gain through the mobility and participation inherent in these trips and considers this skill development in relation to the formal learning objectives, such as foreign language acquisition or enrichment of academic learning, that are often used as justification for international school trips. The chapter reflects on how it is through the different mobile everyday experiences and increased levels of autonomy over the duration of these trips that young people develop the "soft skills" that are increasingly highlighted in curriculum documents as key competencies or capacities for living well. Despite this, these factors remain minor reasons for undertaking such trips. Drawing on qualitative data, the chapter uses perspectives from young people, their parents, and school leaders to highlight that it is necessary to hear all of these interrelated and overlapping voices to fully understand the depth and types of learning achieved on international school trips. In doing so, the chapter concludes by emphasizing the need to understand the layers of learning opportunities in young people's everyday mobilities on international school-led trips.