The importance of human resources in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is increasingly recognized in Japan and other countries worldwide. This study considers the STEM human resources community as a cultural sphere and examines the factors that influence STEM competency elements in a sample of Japanese university students as…

Learning strategies are important factors for students' academic success. Motivation and self-efficacy influence the choice and the use of specific learning strategies (Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983). In this study, we want to assess how these three factors and their interaction are determined by the cultural setting (eastern vs. western culture).…

This paper reports an attempt to enhance Japanese learners' Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) through an undergraduate English class in 2022. The students read essays on an American writer's experience living in Japan, exchanged thoughts, and gave individual presentations. They also learned and practiced discussion skills in the first…

This article examines the experiences of a group of Japanese study abroad students in response to the purposeful replication of a Japanese environment by the New Zealand-based institution where they studied. Data were collected from 12 students via interviews spread over approximately 20 months, and revealed that management provided specifically…

The current study is located among the body of language teacher identity research by focusing on the identities of pre-service language teachers in Japan. This study looks at how pre-service language teacher identities are situated among Japanese values and belief systems and investigates how participants are coping with disrupted language teacher…

This study explores Japanese students' perceptions of and experiences with peer review in English writing classes. While the benefits of peer review for second language (L2) students are generally acknowledged, some studies have claimed that students from Asian cultures are predisposed to not benefit fully from this process because they tend to…

This study presents an international collaboration in the Students Meet Internationally through Language Education (SMILE) project and investigates how the SMILE project impacts Thai EFL students. This program provides students with opportunities to use English as an Authentic Communication Tool (E-ACT) by sharing their experiences and culture…

This article describes the evaluation of a teaching programme in Japanese secondary science classes, which introduces the perspective of deep ecology, reflecting the traditional Japanese view of nature. The study found that meditative activities in nature promoted students' sense of identifying with nature, with an underpinning factor of…

Given the criticism of the institutional practices of Japan's higher education institutions on international students' learning experiences, the study attempts to investigate why international students still chose to study at Japanese universities and whether they benefited from this experience. It also explores whether they benefit from this…

The Japanese higher education system has struggled with a demographic decline of the university-age population since the 1990s. The expected shrinkage of the overall consumer market due to ageing also significantly pressures Japanese enterprises to expand business in the global market outside Japan. Under these conditions, Japanese universities,…

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a counseling modality that features values clarification interventions. However, a well-established ACT-consistent measure of values for practitioners and researchers is lacking. The present study, therefore, examined an exploratory measure called the Valued Time and Difficulty Questionnaire (VTDQ; Wilson…

Our research examined whether adolescents in the United States, China, and Japan differed in their conceptions of a creative person. Participants were American (n = 321), Chinese (n = 235), and Japanese (n = 393) adolescents in 7th and 8th grades who completed surveys at 3 time points. Using an open-ended questionnaire, adolescents were asked to…

This study aims to understand Japanese university students' perceptions of foreign English teachers (FETs) through a two-phased exploratory sequential mixed-methods design. During the initial phase, a quantitative survey was performed with first and second-year Japanese university students (n=377). Despite a lack of precision and a high dispersion…

This paper attempts to establish that there is a correlation between the sociolinguistic identities of high school students and their productive English-speaking abilities. The paper initially explains the basic concept of sociolinguistic identity and refers to various aspects of research into Japanese national identity to analyse how these may…

This article explores Japanese EFL learners' perceptions of face-to-face vs. anonymous peer review in a writing classroom. Albeit few in number, some studies claim that Asian students exhibit difficulty in providing negative feedback because they tend to be hesitant for cultural reasons to criticize others' work. To verify and extend such…