With internationalisation continuing at an ever-increasing pace, Japan incentivises student mobility via study abroad (SA) programmes in the hope of cultivating the global human resources necessary for future economic growth. Against this background, proficiency in English emerges as a dominant linguistic and epistemic model, increasingly viewed…

Recent discussions around education for global citizenship continues to retrace notions of cosmopolitanism first laid out in Europe. Ostensibly seeking global inclusivity, much of this work ultimately returns to a rather narrow set of ontological and epistemic themes, primarily Stoicism and Pauline Christianity. The Kyoto School offers a…

Unlearning is a recurrent theme in Japan. To further understanding of what this entails, we focus on the view of learning laid out by a revered 13th century Zen-inspired playwright. For Zeami, learning involved a movement from the acquisition to unlearning of skills, punctuated by an experience of "mushin," followed by creative…

This case study examines how preservice teachers make meaning of "American culture" while being cognizant of personal bonding between a Japanese ex-inmate and the community he connected with in prison--whom he refers to affectionately as his Chicano homies--in the college course "Culture and Languages of the United States." The…

The rapid development of international education has occurred alongside a growing demand for higher education institutions to educate globally competent graduates. Yet, mobility remains a distant opportunity for most students, and Japanese undergraduate students often cite financial, safety, and job-hunting concerns as obstacles to studying…

This study asked the participants of place-based educational programs in Micronesia and the Philippines between 1992 and 2017 how past learning experiences impact them now and how the learning changed over time. The responses of 128 program participants, mostly Japanese, were examined using a mixed-methods approach with an emphasis on qualitative…

As part of the globalization effort, study abroad has been researched in the fields of education, business, language, etc. However, what is not well-discussed is how foreign sites in study abroad programs can function as learning contexts to promote in-depth learning in various subject areas, which was the purpose of this study. Twelve…

Lesson Study is a Japanese approach to teacher development borrowed by American researchers in the late 1990s seeking to break from top-down, "best practice" approaches. Two decades later, Lesson Study has gained a strong foothold in American policy circles. Seeking to contribute to the growing research base, this article looks deeper…

Understanding of other cultures and countries is widely regarded as an important aspect of world citizenship and geography is argued to make a valid contribution to the development of this. The aim of this study is to explore the understandings of Japanese and Irish students of other areas of the world, both nearby and more distant. Students at…

Purpose: Amidst ongoing attempts to think beyond Western frameworks for education, there is a tendency to overlook Japan, perhaps because it appears highly modern. This is striking given that some prominent strands of Japanese philosophy have formulated an explicit and exacting challenge to the core onto-epistemic premises of modern Western…

This paper examines how fleeting experiences exert a disproportionately powerful effect on the language learning motivation and behavior of university students. A thematic analysis of interview data is used to show how "significant incidents" have two principal consequences. The first, "anagnorisis," is an immediate, revelatory…

This article revisits the newly "discovered" island that world culture theorists have repeatedly utilised to explain their theoretical stance, conceptual preferences and methodological approach. Yet, it seeks to (re)connect world culture with the real world by replacing their imagined atoll with a real one--the island-nation of Japan. In…

Energy literacy is a minimum required capacity for developing a sustainable society that participates in and discusses on energy and environmental (EE) issues. Understanding the energy literacy structure is of significant importance for providing effective energy education to promote people's awareness of EE issues. In this article, an energy…

This study explored how sharing past and future life events among late adolescents and their parents influenced the quality of their own time perspectives. Triads (N =104) of female students and their parents described three important life events from their past and future. The results showed that adolescents who shared past and future life events…

Bias is communicated via the "hidden curriculum"--the vehicle for the unspoken academic, social, and cultural messages that are communicated to students while they are in school. Revealing the hidden curriculum in English language textbooks (ELTs) entails an analytical and holistic approach to the content of the text and images appearing…