Abstract
This study examined eight Japanese university students serving as leaders during international educational activities to determine their relationship recognitions in actual situations of collaborative problem-solving. They participated in oneto two-hour semi-structured interviews from 2017 to 2019, reflecting on their leadership and the activities they were involved in, and analyzing the causes of any problems they had. A modified version of the grounded theory approach (M-GTA, Kinoshita, 2003) was used for data analysis. As a result of the analysis, ten concepts and four categories were extracted. The Japanese university students used distinct ways of forming interpersonal relationships in “Japanese to Japanese” and “Japanese to foreigner” situations. Indeed, they were conscious of only Japanese people in terms of leadership. It became apparent that practical education in leadership and group activities for multicultural groups, not limited to members of the same culture, would be a future challenge.
