Campus Diversity and Global Education: A Case Study of a Japanese Program

Abstract

The recent influx of international students from Asia to the United States has drastically changed the demographics of students studying languages, including languages other than English, in many large universities. For some languages, it is not uncommon for international students from Asia to constitute more than 50% of current enrollments in a language class. This new reality poses a number of questions, including how to meet students' diverse needs and goals for language study and how to mobilize increasing student diversity to enhance the development of global competence among all students, regardless of country of origin. Using semi‐structured exploratory interviews conducted with domestic and international students of Japanese as a foreign language at an American university, this study investigated the challenges and opportunities presented in the globalized language classroom.

Translanguaging: Definitions, Implications, and Further Needs in Burgeoning Inquiry

“…Coupled with the simultaneous neoliberal impulse to promote English as a world language of commerce and scholarship (Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 1996, coopting discourses that praise bilinguals, while undermining the transformative potential of bilingual education in politically monolingual societies, can actually reinforce the marginalization of linguistic minority communities. These policies and practices work at odds by placing them in more globalized competition (Mori & DiBello Takeuchi, 2016) while simultaneously continuing to undervalue their particular communicative practices. The concern with the dilution of translanguaging's more critical theoretical tenets must therefore be considered in light of this context, whereby the inequalities and injustices of current economic regimes will simply be perpetuated rather than interrogated for their complicity in language hierarchies.…”

Private and Public Resources Impacts on the Development of Global Perspective in China

“…Household income is more readily available and accessible, and is therefore the more likely to foster a child's educational attainment of a global perspective [18]. For instance, a child's global perspective is enhanced by proficiency in other languages and by study abroad programs [19] [30]. Hence, particular attention should be paid to the ways in which they interact with each other to produce positive effects, such as minimizing inequalities and providing opportunities [31].…”

Examining the Self-Perceived Development of Cultural Intelligence (CQ) in a Blended Learning Environment

“…These forces were previously noticeable particularly in the proliferation of socalled 'outbound programs': foreign study-abroad, exchange and immersion programs (1) . In Japan, it has also recently become recognizable in the increasing numbers of an 'inbound' student cohort (4) . Internationalization programs typically include two streams of activities: one type that includes internationalization activities which occur on the home/local campus, and the other type which refers to activities that happen abroad or across borders (2) .…”

“…Although outbound programs continue to be maintained, Japanese universities are also increasingly accommodating inbound, or foreign students, on local campuses. This latter trend is having a diversifying effect on the student populations of Japan's formerly largely mono-cultural university campuses (4) . Although a few universities have embraced this trend fully, the true benefits of this development for the larger Japanese society remains yet to be seen.…”