2020 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Examining the Academic Impact of an Active Learning-Based Study-Abroad Program
| Project/Area Number |
20K00871
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| Research Institution | Nanzan University |
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Principal Investigator |
DEACON Bradley 南山大学, 国際教養学部, 准教授 (10454406)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
MILES Richard 南山大学, 国際教養学部, 講師 (90751602)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2020-04-01 – 2024-03-31
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| Keywords | Intercultural competence / intercultural attitudes / students’ perceptions / study abroad |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The 2020-21 academic year was especially difficult on study-abroad program research due to the outbreak of COVID-19. This made it impossible to conduct intercultural research abroad. However, through this KAKEN project my collaborator and I began research domestically and gathered data that we are aiming to publish in the 2021 year. In addition, we presented preliminary research findings at the 17th Annual CamTESOL Conference. These research outputs are summarized accordingly:
1) Students’ self-perceived attitudes on intercultural competence: Towards bridging the domestic and overseas academic divide (manuscript in progress). To begin bridging the domestic and overseas academic divide, an exploratory study is being conducted, that seeks to uncover the attitudinal factors impacting a group of Japanese university students’ self-perceived intercultural competence (IC), prior to embarking on an online 6-week US-based study-abroad program. This study aims to explore a need in the home context for more intentional curricular balancing of linguistic and intercultural content towards fostering IC attitudes that may better prepare university students for studying abroad.
2) Students’ self-perceived attitudes towards intercultural competence: Bridging the domestic and overseas academic divide (presentation on February 6, 2020 at 17th Annual CamTESOL Conference). This presentation is being drafted into the manuscript above that will be published in 2021.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
As we know, the 2020-21 academic year was especially difficult on study-abroad program research due to the outbreak of COVID-19 as it was impossible to conduct intercultural research abroad. In fact, our study-abroad at our university were canceled. However, we were still able to collect pre-study abroad data and this was used to explore student attitudes prior to study abroad.
The 2021-22 academic year study-abroad programs at our university will be conducted online. We will be able to gather data in a pre/post-study abroad design this year as we had anticipated in our KAKEN application. We will also be able to publish results from our pre-study abroad data collected during the 2020-21 academic year.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
As mentioned, we plan to publish the manuscript entitled: "Students’ self-perceived attitudes on intercultural competence: Towards bridging the domestic and overseas academic divide" this year.
We have also sent an abstract proposal to present at the JALT (Japan Association for Language Teachers) 2021 46th Annual International Conference.
We will collect pre/post-study abroad data and will begin writing a new manuscript based on the online study-abroad program that is being offered by our university. This research will be a natural extension of the research that has been conducted thus far for this KAKEN project. Specifically, to measure the quantitative differences in participants’ global-mindedness worldview development, a questionnaire which includes a combination of items from the Global-Mindedness Scale (GMS) (Hett, 1993), Personal Growth Initiative Scale-II (PGIS-II) (Robitschek, 2008), and the International Posture Scale (IPS) (Yashima, 2002; 2009) will be used for pre-test/post-test measurements. Quantitative data will also be collected through distribution of a pre-study-abroad survey on intercultural competence that will be used to set a baseline. Qualitative data will be taken mostly from surveys and semi-structured interviews. Qualitative data will also be gathered from student reflection entries based on their program experience.
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| Causes of Carryover |
The budget was adjusted because of the COVID-19 outbreak. This meant that it was not possible to attend academic conferences and there was not a study-abroad program. Thus, some research funds were not used for those purposes in the 2020-21 academic year.
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Research Products
(1 results)
