The purpose of this study was to provide ideas for the psychosocial support of ethnic minorities in Japan. For this purpose, the author created a practical idea that plays a vital role in encouraging dialogue between Korean- Japanese and Japanese people. This study applied qualitative research methods to group interviews and documentary investigation of a peer-support group that uses "Tojisha-Kenkyu". An analysis according to the Modified-Grounded Theory Approach found three aspects of the dialogue: The first was the integration process of the "big" (socio-historical) and "small" (individual) stories of members in the Korean-Japanese minority group. The second was the process of change in the Japanese members, and the third involved the group’s characteristics that led them to such changes. The results also indicated three core elements that played an important role in their dialogue: 1) racial self-awareness, 2) respect for the life of struggling people, and 3) dialogue in responsive relationships. In the discussion, a new trial concept containing these three elements is proposed, which is designated as "Respectful Racial Dialogue".

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This study aimed to clarify how children create "Aima" while they improvise their practices of expected formal activities in a kindergarten setting. We observed a kindergarten class of three-year-olds and recorded observation data for a year. This study was conducted based on Wenger’s theoretical framework of "communities of practice". This observation revealed that, while children engaged in practices of formal activities, they interacted with the activities and settings in their own improvised practices. When the children shared improvised practices, "Aima" was produced, revealing that "Aima" is indeed a product of the interactions between expected formal activities and informal activities of children in kindergarten. All experiences in which "Aima" was seen shared the common aspect of playfulness. Formerly, when children did not meet the desired expectations of formal activities, this was seen as a negative moment for the child who failed to meet the expectations. However, when we consider the "Aima" produced by children, it creates a more vivid experience for the children in kindergarten.

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This study explored aspects of boundary crossing and boundary transformation through ethnography in a company facing financial difficulties. A long–established Japanese company was purchased by one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturing services companies and placed under strict control. That led to many changes in the management, strategy, and organizational structure of the company, as well as its personnel. They decided to start traditional ATOM activities to improve performance and invited non–salespeople from poorly performing departments to participate in promotional activities that included harsh selling practices. However, they engaged in some practices, with an implied meaning, that sometimes seemed to have no clear purpose. The study revealed how visible and invisible boundaries were organized among the members of the boundary–crossing team and how such boundaries changed and transformed their boundary–crossing practices.

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The use of automatic music-composition systems enables musicians to create new music more easily. This study analyzes the relationship between collaborative composition between professional musicians and an automatic music-composition system based on an ethnographic case study. Human-machine-based composition represents a new wave in music culture. First, we frame this work as an effort considering creation based on the concept of boundary crossing. We then introduce an overview of automatic music-composition systems. We group our findings into three different categories: (1) artificial intelligence as a tool for reflection in action, (2) "bricolage" and "scaffolding" through participation in collaborative composition, and (3) restriction thorough collaboration with artificial intelligence.

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This paper elucidates the dynamics of self–help organizations among South Sudanese refugees in Uganda and examines how refugees cope with multiple problems rooted in multiple borders. These borders are defined by the political system and occur at transnational, national, ethnic, and local levels. This paper focused on organizations organized by the Nuer, an ethnic group of South Sudan. The organization of the Nuer addresses various problems in the refugee settlement by manipulating their traditional Nuer leadership, the social structure, and the modern administrative system. In addition, they utilize rhetoric and strategies to address various borders that affect their lives as refugees in Uganda, allowing them to avoid conflict and recreate cohesion. Conversely, a drama group, consisting of refugees of different ethnicities and backgrounds just "performs" problems comically, without accusing specific individuals or parties who allegedly caused them. By exploring two types of refugee organizations, I will describe how refugee status constitutes new realms of living with multiple others and borders.

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The objective of this paper is to identify theoretical problems inherent in situated?leadership studies, and to examine whether a leadership approach that employs Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) can effectively solve these problems. First, the author reviewed the evolution of theoretical leadership studies, and identified theoretical problems in those situated approaches. These problems include 1) situated approaches have not provided sufficient methodological rigor to capture social processes, and 2) methodological rigor need to be made based on the topology in which society and individuals are situated. Second, the author examined the reflexive approach, which focuses on reflexive relations between individuals and society, and studied the analysis of Butler, Kemmis and McTaggart. Third, the author employed one of the situated cognition approaches, Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) that provides a reflexive analytical framework, and analyzed leadership formation by employing this LPP approach. The results effectively demonstrated that there is potential for development in situated approaches. The present paper also discusses how we define our "individual" phase situated in the "network."

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From a macro–economic viewpoint, the relationship between the customer and the restaurant is regarded as the co–existence of two communities to mutually prosper. However, from a micro–economic viewpoint of restaurant management, their advantages and purposes differ: one is the proposing side; the other, the selecting side. In this study, with a French restaurant setting, particular occurrences of customers’ deviant behavior were analyzed through participant observation. Through the results, it can be inferred that the customers’ deviant behavior resulted from being asked to conform to norms unheard of in a traditional French restaurant, by the restaurant concerned. Moreover, the restaurant was unaware of their stance on certain norms until a customer displayed an unusual behavior. Customers and the restaurant interacted depending on the situation. Consequently, the restaurant’s norms fluctuated. Thus, new norms were generated; this can be considered a learning scene, where the customers and the staffs—two communities with different purposes—negotiate in a boundary crossing space, the restaurant, thereby rebuilding existing norms.

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Action research on 10 years of disaster revitalization indicated that metaphors facilitated crossing the boundaries of dialogues between survivors and outside supporters. Based on linguistic theories, we have discussed the effectiveness of metaphors for changing modes of practice and research as a boundary crossing. In this action research, the metaphor of sowing contributed to developing relationships between residents that had decided to rebuild their homes in their hometown and those that had decided not to do so. Moreover, the metaphor of schools contributed to building relationships between residents that rebuilt their homes in their hometown and outside supporters. We treated metaphors from the perspective of interpreters and confirmed the following pattern of boundary crossing dialogues. A metaphor first brings a civilization of activities to the field, then formulations, and finally the community becomes full of living words, ready for continuous boundary crossing dialogues. After these discussions, we suggested that the researchers seek and introduce "polyphonic words" rather than "catchy words" to enhance the possibility of developing relationships in the community.

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This study investigated how persons with gender dysphoria, a gender identity that is not explicitly female or male (i.e., X–gender) live with their gender identities. Two participants were interviewed, and the transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis, focusing on the following two points: 1) the lives of persons with gender dysphoria, and 2) how the concept of an X–gender is viewed. Findings provide new insights on gender identity studies and highlight the diversity among X–genders in coming to terms and living with their gender identities. Consequently, both the possibilities and limitations of the concept of the X–gender are elucidated.

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In recent years, the importance of having dialogues between experts and citizens over science and technology has increased. This research examined how a guest speaker, an expert in the field of science, deals with laypersons "questions that the expert cannot answer or has difficulty answering" during one such dialogue at a science cafe. The examination revealed that the guest speaker responded to the questions that fall under a "scientific knowledge frame" using knowledge in the corresponding scientific knowledge frame, and shifted to a "social discussion frame" for the questions that he could not answer or had difficulty answering. However, when that shift to the "social discussion frame" invoked a conflict with the participants' views, he turned to a "personal opinion frame" upon the facilitator's intervention. This frame shift appeared to be the guest speaker's strategy to avoid conflict with participants and maintain communication with them. What this suggests is that the guest speaker potentially changed his status as a "guest speaker" to a "mere participant" by maneuvering through these three frame shifts.

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Shy and reserved individuals confront challenges in modern society, which incorporates and emphasizes social interactions. Critical narrative phenomenology, designed on the basis of Langdridge's "Critical Narrative Analysis", was used to analyze four cases in which extremely shy individuals directly sought online support. Collectively, the advice offered in these four cases emphasized the adoption of an "indifferent attitude toward sociability" over "consciously improving social skills". The author found that these suggestions corresponded to his own life experiences. The phenomenological concepts of "fusion of horizons" and "seeing an essence" were used to analyze and interpret the data. This revealed interpersonal hypersensitivity to be a core problem in these individuals. The analysis also revealed that the socially inhibitory and avoidant behaviors described online differed from those associated with autism spectrum disorder, which is frequently discussed in medicine, education and the mass media. Application of a critical theory approach opposed to medicalization of shyness is discussed.

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In this study, I investigated how Japanese high school students’ self-efficacy and metacognition can be improved by instructions and written feedback from their teachers. Teachers often try to improve students’ writing by focusing exclusively on errors. However, students will become more competent at English by improving their psychological and cognitive processes, in addition to fixing grammatical errors. In this report, we model student's abilities to complete writing tasks in terms of three factors-self-efficacy, metacognition, and writing strategies- with the aid of feedback from teachers. Upon completion of each written task, students were instructed to submit a written reflection on their feelings throughout the writing process in a "learning journal". These journals provided qualitative data necessary to allow an analysis of these three factors based on the Grounded Theory Approach. In their feedback, the teachers provided codes to notify the students of errors in their sentences. This meant that the students were required to use their metacognition to fix errors by themselves. Moreover, encouraging comments were included to increase the students’ self-efficacy.

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With the dramatically increasing long–term survival rate of children following chronic pediatric illness, psychosocial issues among survivors who reach adulthood have become evident. Given this background, the present study focused on the potential long–term effects of illness uncertainty (IU) and aimed to reveal the possible relationship between prior IU and future time perspective in early adulthood among people who had experienced severe pediatric illness. Five participants who had experienced severe pediatric illness and are currently aged in their 20s were interviewed about their illness experiences, present lives, and future time perspectives. Qualitative analysis of the narratives revealed new aspects of IU, such as the influence of information on increased IU. Due to these new findings, this study was inconclusive; however, the results indicated potential effects from IUs on prospects for illness and treatment, social meanings of illness, and eventual future time perspectives.

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Autoethnography is a personal, lived experience, which includes a person’s thoughts, emotions, and inner conflict, and incorporates theories and culture to help interpretation. The experience of the author, who had been working as an editor and changed jobs to a printing company is analyzed. In the process, the author faced the difference between two types of qualitative time. Namely, the principle of man–hour cost, and the creativity of an editor. A struggle occurred between the two senses to decide if configuration of the self could be maintained or allowed to collapse. Ricoeur analyzed the process of the act of configuration, which is called the semantic space that makes sense in a story. In an autoethnography, it will appear in the process of self–configuration. When the self– narrative is placed in politics in which mutual meanings are exchanged, it experiences a return of the collapse and the recovery of the self–configuration. The process of creating the drama of autoethnography as the context of meaning is analyzed.

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Some interviewees can express themselves elaborately although others say as little as possible. Famous qualitative research involves the informants who not only know the field well, but also can discuss many points that the researcher wants to excerpt in his/her paper. To clarify the kind of information important for qualitative research, we analyzed four prized qualitative studies. We labeled almost all excerptions. As a result, six categories were identified: concrete explanation of their experiences, explanation of the meaning of their experiences, handling methods to combat the obstacles they face, panoramic explanation of their and others' view, explanation of future and counterfactual past, and the storytelling that conflicts with reality. We discussed characteristics of the "better interviewee" and structure of evidence in qualitative research.

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