It was investigated why Southeast Asian recipients of engineering or related fields studied at Japanese private universities. Scholarships were the most popular reason. The reasons that they liked Japan and that the research or education level at Japanese universities was high were less popular. About a half of questionnaire respondents had been…

Increased reliance on student loans to finance higher education (HE) raises concerns about unequal access and repayment burdens. However, who borrows and what motivates students and parents to borrow remain unclear. A longitudinal survey tracked parents and students from high school into their early career to explore the effects of socioeconomic…

English education in Japan has traditionally focused on grammar over communication, and the country has struggled to compete internationally in terms of English proficiency scores. As the country works toward the internationalization of higher education, improving English education is an important issue. One potential solution is the use of topics…

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…

The study reported in this article investigated the use of quest-based learning (QBL) in a gamified English as a foreign language (EFL) course at a Japanese university. A mixed methods research design was utilised to explore the effect purposely designed quests can have on EFL students' foreign language (FL) motivation. The study was conducted…

This paper presents a midterm review of a 4-year factor analysis project aimed at validating an outcome-based assessment of study-abroad programs attended by Japanese students. This paper outlines how the results from the initial two years captured changes in perceptions and reasons for studying abroad. It found that students have become…

Researchers and intercultural educators have put forward various theoretical principles and pedagogical ideas related to the design and implementation of intercultural communication (IC) courses. Recently, researchers have called for curriculum development to include students' voices about their intercultural communication education (ICE). This…

Student activism plays an important role in student development, so understanding student activists' thoughts, identifying challenges they have encountered, and figuring out ways to support their activities are critical for higher education institutions. A group of college students in Korea has established a student organization actively engaging…

This research examines student teachers' thinking about teaching gifted students in an inclusive classroom context. Grounded in a narrative paradigm, we analyzed narratives from student teachers in Finland, Austria, Turkey, the Philippines, and Japan to identify solutions that they imagined in response to gifted students' needs in an inclusive…

Recent spread of the COVID-19 forces governments around the world to temporarily close educational institutions. In this paper, we evaluated learning engagement, level of satisfaction and anxiety of e-book based remote teaching strategy on an online learning platform. The research involves 358 students at an urban junior-high school in Japan.…

This book is the first volume devoted to mindset theory and practice in language education, offering interdisciplinary investigations into the motivation, competencies, emotions and wellbeing of language learners and teachers. Presenting studies from a vast array of language learning environments, the chapters explore topics such as students'…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the education sector worldwide, prompting a swift transition to technology-driven learning solutions. One notable response to this challenge has been the introduction of online versions of study-abroad and international exchange programs. Considering the limited existing research on how English as…

The present study explored different types of task value and their associations with the use of self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies across various English as a foreign language (EFL) learning scenarios. The application of SRL strategies is supported by motivational beliefs, including task value. Although prior research has demonstrated the…

This study investigates the role of emotions in second language learning, in particular, that of anxiety. Research has shown that positive and negative emotions are interrelated and that negative emotions are negatively correlated with motivation. It is, therefore, important to investigate how learners regulate their emotions. In this case study,…

In second or foreign language (L2) extensive reading (ER) studies, learners have been encouraged to read easy books despite the lack of consensus concerning how to define book difficulty. In light of previous studies reporting that book difficulty can play an important role in learners' affect in ER (e.g., Bahmani & Farvardin, 2017; Chiang,…