Online Intercultural Exchanges of Indigenous Psychology Concepts: Reflections on Mutual Transcultural Understanding

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20K00773
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 02100:Foreign language education-related
• Research Institution: Kyoto University
• Principal Investigator: Dalsky David 京都大学, 国際高等教育院, 准教授 (90512020)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: Virtual Online Exchanges / Exploratory Practice / Team Learning / Tranculturality / EFL / TESOL / Emic Cultural Concepts / Folk Psychology

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research project involved several online intercultural exchanges between Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, and Malaysian students. The methodology evolved from my previous 4-year KAKEN project using English as a lingua franca, which involved students 1) posing research questions about indigenous (emic) cultural concepts, 2) attempting to understand the concepts through academic readings and discussion, 3) writing academic papers about them and making animations about them for a website (https://interculturalwordsensei.org/), and 4) reflecting on the intercultural exchanges. Emic cultural concepts are native or indigenous to cultures and are difficult translate and understand in other cultural contexts. For example, in Japanese: wa, honne / tatemae, and amae. Most of the students were able to successfully improve their English research skills by discussing these concepts with their international counterparts and reported some degree of transcultural understanding.

Free Research Field

Intercultural Communication

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

COVID-19の世界的な蔓延により、Zoomなどの仮想コミュニケーションツールの使用が不可欠となった。本プロジェクトでは、このようなコミュニケーションツールの異文化コミュニケーションにおける効果の可能性を探りその検証を行った。その結果、これらのオンラインツールの使用が異文化コミュニケーションにおいて効果的な手段となり得ることが示唆されたとともに、科学研究遂行の方法と理論的枠組みが提案された。