The purpose of this study was to investigate the intercultural conflicts between Japanese language teachers and foreign students through examining 43 cases, and to make clear the solution processes of the conflicts. There were 84 respondents from colleges, universities and Japanese language education institutions. The content analysis of the responses yielded the following results. (1) The difficulties which Japanese teachers recognized could be divided into 8 categories: student assertions and demands, lack of class attendance, indifference to classroom rules, learning difficulties, lack of motivation, acts of violence, cheatings, and other problems outside the classroom. (2) Regarding the causal attribution, teachers tended to blame the problems on foreign students’ actions, culture backgrounds or other situational factors. (3) Concerning solution processes, teachers were using various strategies such as bilateral strategies (dialogue or persuasion), direct unilateral strategies (confrontation or submission), and third person intervention, etc. (4) As for teachers emotions, they felt negative feelings towards students and themselves. Because crisis of teachers in the conflict situation corresponded to the crisis of foreign students, it is necessary to make support not only for teachers but also for foreign students. In order to resolve the conflict between teachers and students, a model based on the community psychological approach is presented.

Recently, increasing number of overseas students enter into graduate schools in Japan to earn higher degree. Because they are in nature newcomers to Japanese culture and community, they must indispensably achieve tasks of socialization to attain their goal, especially in graduate school community. In this study, I focused on overseas graduate students’ social support and human networks gained in a certain Graduate School of Engineering in Japan to estimate their overall and discrete impacts on recent depression (CES-D) and neurotic states (GHQ-12) based on buffering and direct models. Data were obtained through a cross-sectional questionnaire survey with a sample of 126 overseas graduate students who major in engineering at a Japanese university. Results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that the buffering model better explained CES-D scores, consistent with past research, and that the direct model better explained GHQ-12 ones. Additional results obtained by ANOVAs yielded overseas graduate students, who rely exclusively upon social support gained from human network composed of the students from the same country, were less socialized to experimentation and lectures at the graduate school and had poorer human relations with their advisory professor and Japanese classmates. Implications for future study were discussed.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between received social support from various helpers and adjustments in psychological, health, academic, interpersonal and career adjustment. A questionnaire survey on received support from friends, parents, teachers, health teachers and school counselors in these five adjustment areas was administered to junior high school students and a total of 477 responses were obtained. The results showed that support from parents in career adjustment and support from friends in interpersonal adjustment were positively related to adjustments. However support from parent, friends and health teachers in psychological adjustment and support from parents, friends, teachers and health teachers in health adjustment were negatively related to adjustments. The reasons for the results that social supports in psychological and health areas showed negative effects on adjustments were discussed from school and community psychology.

The paper presents a brief outline of the history of the concept of human diversity in the United States. In this context, diversity refers to those differences among people that have social implications for how they are treated by others, how important institutions such as schools deal with them, and how policies and laws differentially support some while discriminating against others. While diversity initially focused on issues of oppression of ethnic groups such as African-Americans, it later was broadened to emphasize the role of indigenous culture and the affirmation of diversity as a positive social value. Community psychology has contributed to diversity through its dual emphasis on empowerment as a social value and ecology as a perspective on people in social and cultural context. The role of collaboration in community research and action is portrayed as a significant contributor to understanding diversity in community context. These issues are highlighted by experiences of the author over a period of years in research with diverse communities.