Purpose: This comparative study sought to identify best practices concerning symbolic mathematical communication between primary school teachers and students in Japanese, Laotian, and Thai classrooms. Method: The target groups were 18 teachers and 671 students in Grade 1 to Grade 6 mathematics classrooms in Japan, Lao PDR, and Thailand. A total of…

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 purpose of this study is to describe the politeness approach of the Japanese-Balinese family realm language. The study explores how the use of language politeness strategies is affected by the cultural background of both spouses in intercultural marriages. The study also examines the various factors that influence language politeness…

The aims of the present study are two-fold. The first aim is to reveal the cultural and linguistic issues that need to be considered in the development of curricular content and sequencing for teaching mathematical proof in secondary schools in Japan. The second aim is to elaborate an epistemological perspective that may allow us to understand…

This study discusses the disparity in numbers between Japanese children and their Brazilian immigrant peers concerning placement in Japanese special education classes. In-depth interviews were conducted with 21 stakeholders including Japanese nationals and Brazilian immigrants to see if there were any ways to explain the larger numbers of…

How children understand the psychology of a story (i.e., the intentions and experiences of its characters) is pivotal to comprehending its point. In this study we investigate empirically how 5-year-old children in a Japanese kindergarten manage mental state verbs and adjectives when collaboratively retelling a tale heard. The tale, an example of a…

This chapter describes an inquiry into how Japanese university students who have participated in study-abroad negotiate their identity on Social Networking Sites (SNSs) when interacting informally in English with non-Japanese interlocutors. SNSs provide a unique opportunity for English language learners to practise their skills in an informal…

The author investigates what challenges four international students (Vietnamese, Filipino, Brazilian, and Chinese) faced and how they coped with these dilemmas in a Japanese language program during the first semester in 2014. Multiple apparatuses (e.g., field notes, face-to-face oral interviews, focal group conversations, and semi-structured…

This paper examines the Japanese word "kawaii" "cute". Teachers frequently use "kawaii" to show positive feelings toward objects in the classroom. Female children also are primary users of the word, which suggests that they are acquiring "kawaii" as an index of female gender identity. From a linguistic…

This volume includes three sections of the 2021 NORDSCI international conference proceedings: (1) Education and Educational Research; (2) Language and Linguistics; and (3) Sociology and Healthcare. Education and Educational Research includes 15 papers covering the full spectrum of education, including history, sociology and economy of education,…

The purpose of this paper is to problematize that which has been taken for granted about the notion of multiculturalism in Japan. Multiculturalism is a "hot" issue in Japan. As the Japanese government started to promote "internationalization" since 1980s, slogans such as "international exchange," "cultural…

The aim of the 2018 International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA) conference was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There have been advances in both cognitive…

Describes the results of a subjective reaction test of over 700 Japanese college students' and office workers' attitudes toward honorifics (keigo) in Japanese. It found that subjects from higher socioeconomic classes were more outspoken and ready to judge incompetent or insufficient keigo more negatively than individuals from lower socioeconomic…

Discusses the use of English loanwords in Japanese discourse from a cognitive perspective and reveals how the world knowledge of English loanwords is applied to a text and constitutes an integral component of the discourse production process both within and beyond the sentence level. (40 references) (MDM)

Based on the premise that the most important activity of socialization is the construction of meaning systems in a person's mind, this paper describes a study of U.S. children and adolescents who reside in Japan and Japanese children and adolescents who reside in the United States. The study attempted to isolate specific developmental processes…