2022 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Investigating the intercultural development of Japanese undergraduates attributable to study tours abroad
| Project/Area Number |
21H00554
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Institution | Osaka Jogakuin Junior College |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
KABIR RUSSELLSARWAR 広島大学, 人間社会科学研究科(教), 助教 (00881260)
Mclean Stuart 桃山学院大学, 経営学部, 准教授 (10624794)
Kramer Brandon 関西学院大学, 教育学部, 准教授 (50780483)
ヒックス ディロンウェストブルック 大阪国際大学, 公私立大学の部局等, 講師 (50898062)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2021-04-01 – 2026-03-31
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| Keywords | study abroad / intercultural / applied linguistics / personality / psychology / cross-cultural / self efficacy / linguistic proficiency |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
This year our team made three significant advances.
First, we published an impact factor paper "Modeling personality antecedents and second language self-efficacy constructs with emerging adults in Japan: Domain-specific matching for assessing global competence in applied contexts." This paper is a step forward due to its "implications for cultural influences on self-efficacy and applied educational practices in language and intercultural learning..."
Second, the PI (Sponseller) is now certified in Cultural Intelligence (CQ). He can deliver debriefing sessions with students and is also certified to train others in doing so. This is a critical step as our team has decided to move away from our previous dependent measure (the Intercultural Effectiveness Scale) due to poor reliability, user interface issues, and a lack of empirical support from the broader literature.
Third, our team has been active in building out tools and teaching materials useful for cross-cultural training sessions. We've assembled and/or created materials we can now use as pre-post test activities that will allow us to see what our study abroad student DO, not just what they SAY. This is critical as it should allow us to better triangulate student development attributable to study abroad than in previous years in which we were wholly reliant on survey data as our pre-post.
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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
The project is advancing largely as anticipated, with a couple of key changes that have slowed progress.
First, our move away from the IES (Intercultural Effectiveness Scale) has necessarily delayed some of our work. We needed to get certified in our new dependent measure, CQ (Cultural Intelligence), and have to build up our knowledge and familiarity with the literature on CQ specifically. Long term this is a good development and we should be more productive because of it, but shifting this direction took time.
Second, we realized our reliance on survey data alone presented a weakness in our study(ies). As such we have spent considerable time building a library of activitie - some purchased and some created by our team - that will allow us to measure study abroad students' intercultural abilities in an observable manner and not leave us to merely rely on student self-report.
Finally, our team has faced practical challenges related to career shifts and other academic developments. PI (Sponseller) just completed his PhD. One Co-I is almost finished with his but it has delayed his contributions somewhat. Another Co-I has left academia entirely.
Overall we feel confident about the status of our project despite some slight delays.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
We are moving forward in the following areas this year.
First, we have an exploratory dataset from 2021-2022 that we are ready to analyze.
Second, we are moving to CQ (Cultural Intelligence) and are planning to gather at least one large sample via Qualtrics this year. We are also hoping to collect a retrospective sample using either a Qualtrics panel or outsourcing the survey delivery to a third party such as Lancers. We will follow all necessary ethical protocols if/when we do so, but this should alleviate the amount of administrative burden placed on us when we attempt to collect data from students on campus.
Third, we are very ready to collect qualitative data and data from simulations/training activities. A primary qualitative data tool is called LENS3, which has been under piloting at the PIs campus for 18 months. We believe this narrative-frame based approach to reflective journaling is going to be published this year, and we expect language teachers in Japan who are stakeholders in study abroad will be highly interested in these outcomes and the tool itself.
Fourth, we always put Japanese students first, but we also feel it necessary to attempt cross-cultural validation and to develop multilingual versions of materials when possible. This allows us to compare/contrast what tools are working, or not, and to understand the contexts in which those tools work, or not.
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