Due to accelerated development of science and technology, globalized and knowledge-based society has immerged and intercultural contacts and exchanges have become daily events in our lives. How to develop intercultural competence has increasingly become a crucial question to live and interact with diverse people and cultures in this ever changing global and multicultural environments. Based on the discussion of last year’s research theme, “Exploring Intercultural Competence: From Diverse Perspectives,” the focus of this year has turned to the application of intercultural competence toward the practices of intercultural education. The purpose of this paper is to review applied research on intercultural competence for intercultural education and to report on the symposium entitled “Applying Intercultural Competence: Toward the Practices of Intercultural Education” of the 38th Annual Conference of the Intercultural Education Society of Japan.

First, research on applications of intercultural competence are reviewed and outlined. Second, issues and problems of applying intercultural competence are discussed. Third, the symposium of the 38th Annual Conference of the Intercultural Education Society of Japan is reported on. Lastly, based on the previous discussion, the needs for further research applying the concept of intercultural competence are suggested.

The research question engaged here is how to develop intercultural competence in a classroom style practice. The purpose of this study is to reveal to how to recompose relationships between a educator (teacher) and a learner (student) through analyzing a process of developing intercultural competence. In this study case, narrative approach is the method to analyze interaction between dominant stories by the educator, such as suggestions of performance task and rubric (performance assessment) and alternative stories by the learner, such as the response to educator’s suggestions.

In addition, this study attempts to define intercultural competence by categorizing the evaluation criteria of Humanities in MYP (Middle Years Programme in International Baccalaureate (IB)) and the point of view from social studies with knowledge, skills and attitudes.

The subject in this study is geography based on IB. In particular, the unit to learn about the Kinki region is taken up in this study. The class in this unit dealt with Korean oldcomers by the educator in order to promote transformation of majority.

The learner in this study is a Korean newcomer. This learner narrated alternative stories in three performance tasks after this unit.

In conclusion, this study indicates that the educator can recognize various aspects of students and enable unexpected effects to be realized by him or herself. On the other hand, there are two future tasks. First, it is necessary to focus not only to interaction among educators and learners but also on interaction among learners. Second, future research requires that educators learn how to review the classes themselves through the transformation of students.

This paper examines intercultural competence of university students who participated in SEND Program, a study abroad program in which they were sent to sister universities abroad and served as Japanese language assistants, through the concept of Japaneseness. There has been little research that focuses on awareness or perceptions of privilege of Japanese students who participated in study abroad programs in a different culture settings. Inspired by whiteness studies, Japaneseness studies explores that how invisible social norms and privilege have been constructed in Japanese society. Since SEND Program is a study abroad program which students interact with people from different cultural backgrounds as Japanese language assistants in Japanese, most students’ mother tongue, it is significant to investigate students’ intercultural competence through the concept of Japaneseness.

In this study, the author developed five phases of awareness of privilege: 1) Unaware of or uninterested in differences, 2) denial or avoidance of differences, 3) adaptation of differences and reference shift, 4) rethinking social structure and realization of privilege, and 5) taking action towards reconstruction of social structure and privilege. By analyzing 14 narratives of participant reports written after they came back from their study abroad experience, their narratives were categorized into phases 2), 3), and 4).

Findings showed that students have acquired intercultural competence such as ethnographic views, critical cultural awareness, and privilege awareness. This study also showed that different phases of awareness were found in students’ narratives, even if they participated in the same program. Moreover, these phases are fluid and contiguous. For future research, the phases should be examined through more different programs and changed if necessary. Acquiring intercultural competence and raising awareness of their privilege would help build better relationships with people from different cultural backgrounds.

Community-based Japanese language education is generally understood as Japanese language support for foreign residents provided in a Japanese language classrooms by local volunteers. It is not, however, limited to classroom activity, and can be used in a broader sense of the term. It is also considered as an integrated activity that aims at the social engagement of foreign residents and community formation through language learning activities.

This article discusses how intercultural competence can be developed in the field of community-based Japanese language education. It considers a case study of one volunteer supporting foreign residents based on an interview, and the obtained data are analyzed using the Steps for Coding and Theorization method.

The analysis shows that the skills used by the volunteer included relating, interpreting, discovering, awareness, involvement of environments and reflection, as well as attitudinal components such as curiosity, changing the frame of reference and conflict management style. Of these, reflection seems to be the most important. Discussing the educational practices and activities used, based on the intercultural competence concept, enables the interviewee to reflect on intercultural encounters and experiences and become aware of specific skills. These skills were first used by the interviewee unconsciously and self-reflection provided an opportunity to recognize their importance. The tacit knowledge is thereby translated into explicit knowledge and takes the form of a generic competence which can be applied in other contexts.

This report summarizes the symposium held during the 38^th Annual Conference on Internalization of Curriculum (IoC), more specifically, in the context of Internationalization at Home. Presenters from England and Australia with expertise in IoC discussed the concept and key elements of the IoC by focusing on the process of teaching and learning of internationalization. Intercultural co-learning was then introduced by two presenters from Japanese universities. Intercultural Co-learning provides both international and Japanese students with opportunities to learn from each other through meaningful interactions. Thematic discussions and collaborative projects by students with diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds are built into the learner-centered lessons where different ways of thinking, values, and working-styles are respected. The presenters discussed the benefits as well as the challenges of intercultural co-learning in Japanese higher education.

As people increasingly make diverse choices regarding education, the phenomenon of Japanese students attending gaikokujin-gakkou—non-Japanese schools—has emerged recently. This study aims to reveal the reasons for these choices and the difficulties children face because of these decisions. Specifically, this paper examines the case of nine Japanese students attending a new Korean school—“T-school.”

Students who have difficulty in public schools select T-school as a place that enables them to pursue “international” subjects and make a fresh start. In addition, students choose this school based on its accessibility to all regardless of ethnic or socioeconomic background and community factors such as commuting distance or favorable relationships between T-school and the local community. These results show that gaikokujin-gakkou can play important roles which have not been fully grasped in previous research: providing more diverse students who have had difficulties in public schools with a new place, guaranteeing their right to an education and meeting their diverse educational needs.

Conversely, this study also clarifies the difficult experiences experienced due to such educational choices such as strained relations with Japanese public schools wherein students must be enrolled to obtain an official junior high school equivalent diploma (T-school and most other gaikokujin-gakkous are not officially recognized in Japan)，restricted high school options, and struggle over students’ sense of belonging. To solve these problems, it is necessary to elucidate and promote an understanding of the reality of various students who have been excluded in previous research. Research such as this will contribute to the accumulation of evidence to legitimately evaluate the role of gaikokujin-gakkou and critically highlight the rigidity and exclusivity of the current Japanese public education system.

Recently, Japanese universities have been actively pursuing intercultural exchanges and collaborative learning involving local and international students. However, not many systematic studies have been conducted to verify the effects of such educational undertakings, although verification needs to precede application. For universities to achieve internationalization, the development of teaching methods of intercultural collaborative learning is a pressing issue, and for this it is necessary to collect empirical data based on established theories. The contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954) and the common ingroup identity model (Gaertner, Dovidio, Anastasio, Bachman & Rust, 1993) were considered as theoretical frameworks for this study. We designed an international co-learning course in which international students and Japanese students study together in a collaborative manner based on the contact hypothesis, and we investigated its educational effects on intercultural competence. Questionnaires were administered to 133 participants to measure their intercultural competence before and after the course. Through factor analyses of the responses, three factors were derived: “skills to recognize cultural differences,” “intercultural sensitivity and adaptation,” and “proactive attitude toward intercultural contact.” Subsequently repeated measure analyses of variance were conducted to examine if there were significant differences in scores of each factor between pretest and posttest. The results revealed significant changes in these scores, confirming that participants’ intercultural competence in these three aspects were enhanced after the course work. This suggested that applying the contact hypothesis and the common ingroup identity model as frameworks for designing intercultural collaborative learning may be useful.

This article will analyse an activity titled ‘As a Stone in a Puddle’, practised in an Italian preschool, as a way to formulate a meaningful structure as a role model for inter-cultural educators. This activity consists of first creating a map in concentric circles and then decorating it with paper crafts as buildings, historical monuments, parks and other forms of land uses. This map could be interpreted as the context in which, as the American cultural psychologist M. Cole asserts, the children elaborate their cultural practice or artefacts in Cole’s scientific terminology, through their work.

The stated aim of this activity according to the practitioner is ‘to achieve the identity in time and space’, and especially important for this is the creation of casa, or home, as one’s own intimate space as well as of people all over the world. Every child may be encouraged to recognise him/herself not merely as I am intimately connected to the world, through the representation of their own casa on the map, but also as a part of us, through the same casa and the others’, located together and connected with each other in the common world, despite their variety and diversity.

The role of the educator as re-presenter of the context is indispensable for an educator, according to the German education philosopher K. Mollenhauer. More precisely, the educator’s role as a proposer, as the very practitioner of the activity D. Vallario says, is more importantly significative. This is counter to the quite common assumption in which the teacher’s role would be simply ‘mediator’ between the child and the world as it exists a-priori.