Our study investigated the role of creativity in second language (L2) speech production using a picture narrative and an open-ended argumentative task administered to 60 Japanese-speaking learners of English. Following recent findings in the field of psychology, the participants' creativity was assessed in terms of cognitive dimensions (divergent…

Educational recommender systems have been supporting personalized learning in various ways. However, less discussion is conducted about whether and how to personalize the strategies to generate recommendations based on student differences. In this study, we aim at investigating how students judge recommendations based on different strategies, and…

While mainstream psychology has made significant advances into the understanding of personality, applied linguistics research has offered a more muted response (Dörnyei and Ryan 2015) despite Bandura (2001:10) declaring that self-efficacy beliefs represent 'the foundation of human agency'. The study documented within this article therefore…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality and resilience. The HEXACO personality model was employed; it includes six personality factors: honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. The Bidimensional Resilience Scale, which measures innate and…

The present study examined whether young children demonstrated consistencies in their allocation patterns across distributions of positive and negative resources. Preschool children from younger (age 4-5) and elder (age 5-6) classrooms were asked to allocate rewards when one person contributed more than the other and to allocate the responsibility…

In recent decades, English taught programmes have rapidly increased in number throughout Europe and East Asia as universities aim to internationalise their curriculum, which has given rise to an increase in English-medium instruction (EMI). This study aims to compare the teaching experiences at three EMI programmes in The Netherlands, China, and…

Some researchers indicate that the transition to high school deflects adolescent developmental trajectories. Others assert that it provides a new possibility for the promotion of adolescents' socioemotional well-being. One critical view missing in such claims is that individual variabilities interact with environmental influences. We employed the…

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 identify the major characteristics and motivations of foreign faculty at Japanese universities. The study begins with a brief introduction to the literature, research framework and method. In the second section, the study deals with the background and changes in foreign faculty at Japanese universities since 1980. In the third…

In this globalization-focused era, the demand for globalized engineers in the creation of borderless societies is increasing. Despite the initiatives by the Japanese government to promote internalization through increasing the intake of foreign students, the exposures gained by the Japanese students from these programs are minimal. For years,…

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…

'Grit' has been identified as an important predictor of success in a number of academic and non-academic domains (Duckworth, A. L., C. Peterson, M. D. Matthews, and D. R. Kelly. 2007. "Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals." "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology" 92: 1087-1101.…

Language is one of the most critical factors in the formation and maintenance of national identities. Situated within the national context of Japan and drawing data from a population of 292 Japanese university students, this study departs with three objectives. First, the study assesses the contribution of Japanese national identity to criterion…

Conventional folk wisdom insists study abroad is an inherently valuable educational experience for young people. While traditional study abroad programs were typically a semester or a full year in duration, short-term study abroad programs of only a couple weeks are now the most common type of sojourn abroad. Problematically, evidence is mounting…

We examined the factorial structure and validity of a Japanese version of the Parental Burnout Assessment, the PBA-J, with 1,500 Japanese parents. The Parental Burnout Assessment measures burnout using four dimensions: exhaustion in one's parental role, contrast in parental self, feelings of being fed up, and emotional distancing. Confirmatory…