Elucidation of the role of language in science instruction through English and Japanese

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16H03068
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Science education
• Research Institution: Waseda University
• Principal Investigator: Kunioshi Nilson 早稲田大学, 理工学術院, 教授 (30254577)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 東條 加寿子 大阪女学院大学, 国際・英語学部, 教授 (20258346) ; 野口 ジュディー津多江 神戸学院大学, グローバル・コミュニケーション学部, 名誉教授 (30351787)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: 教育・言語・文化 / learning styles / teaching styles / Experiential learning

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We built and analyzed a corpus of lectures delivered in Japanese at various Japanese universities. By comparing the results with those obtained using an existing corpus of lectures delivered in English at American universities, we found that some interesting aspects of the cultural backgrounds of Japanese and American societies are reflected in the lectures. For example, lectures delivered in Japanese were more teacher centered, and included personalized transmission of knowledge, while the lectures delivered in English were more interactive and did not include so much personal description of researchers. These findings confirm predictions published in the literature about features of educational systems in countries with lower (US) and higher (Japan) power distance index (PDI).

Free Research Field

科学教育

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

英語を介した高等教育が世界中で広がる中，課題は報告されている．日本においても，大学の国際化が進められ，英語によって教育を提供する大学が増えている．しかし，近年，共通の言語を用いても，学習者および教授者の文化的背景を考慮しなければ，効果的な学習が実現しないとの報告が多くなってきた．そこで，本研究では日本およびアメリカそれぞれの文化的背景を効果的な教授法の開発に活かす方法があるかを探るためにまず文化的背景がどのように講義に反映されているかを特定する．