CIES Secretariat Florida International University 312 ZEB Miami, FL 33199
Number 150
Japan and US Teacher Education Students: A cultural exchange
By
Kensuke Chikamori and Yumiko Ono, Naruto University; Carol Merz Frankel* and Fred Hamel, University of Puget Sound; and Jane Williams, Middle Tennessee State University
How do teacher education students learn to interact with students or adults from different cultures? In what ways do they adapt to unfamiliar cultural expectations? How do they learn to accept others from another culture into their own setting – or come to anticipate the experiences of culturally different students? These questions become more important as new teachers encounter increasingly diverse classrooms in a rapidly globalizing world. A group of Japanese and American teacher educators has been working on an international exchange project for five years to provide cross-cultural experiences for teacher education students and to study how these students adapt to each others’ cultures.
International travel is expensive and beyond the reach of most teacher education programs, but with careful structuring and some external financial support, 50 students have been able to participate in a one week visit over the past five years. Each year a group of Japanese teacher education students visits a university-based teacher education program in the United States and a few months later an American group goes to the Japanese university. During these visits the students participate in cultural activities, attend a university class, teach a lesson in a nearby school, and experience a homestay.
The University of Puget Sound, Middle Tennessee State University, and Naruto University of Education have undertaken this project to understand the specific challenges pre-service teachers encounter in intercultural contacts and to understand how they cope with unsettling situations. Each group writes reflections on their experiences and participates in group discussions. Faculty participate in the exchange, observe students during the visits, and analyze the reflections in order to understand the various kinds of cultural dissonance that pre-service education students experience in their interactions across cultures and the student “responses to disequilibrium” in these experiences.
As might be expected, language causes many unsettling moments for the students, and they have found creative ways of dealing with these problems. One Japanese student stayed very close to an American faculty member in order to listen carefully and try to imitate her language. Another closely observed and mimicked a teacher’s instructions to students when experiencing difficulty in a classroom. As Japanese and American students begin to bond, they work out gestures and mutually understood language and become more at ease. This seems especially true when the homestays are in university student housing situations rather than with families. There appears to be a lack of formality in these situations that furthers confidence and verbal risk-taking.
Food seems to cause more problems for Americans than for Japanese students. Perhaps this is because of the common availability of American food in Japan. Faculty attempt to give American students opportunities to eat Japanese food and develop skill with chopsticks before the trip, but students’ difficulties usually are more deep-seated in those who have encountered a limited range of eating experiences.
"Teaching in a classroom in a foreign country can be a very disorienting experience for students on both sides..."
Teaching in a classroom in a foreign country can be a very disorienting experience for students on both sides. Japanese students are surprised at the regimentation in American elementary classrooms and American students are surprised at the level of activity in Japanese classrooms. The visiting teacher education students usually prepare lessons that are simple, fun, and convey some aspect of their own culture. Nevertheless giving instructions to children and the pacing of the lessons cause some problems. Probably the most difficult problems are those surrounding the ability of the foreign student teachers to feel comfortable enough to exert leadership and teach in the face of insecurity in a foreign culture. A review of video recordings on classroom sessions reveals some student teachers interacting in the classroom in an animated manner, holding the students’ attention despite many language difficulties. Other students can become overwhelmed by anxiety and “freeze.”
From student reflections it appears that coping mechanisms used by students include managing one’s emotions, experimenting/adapting, philosophizing, or reframing the situation. Some students have sudden understandings of their own feelings, which the faculty have called “epiphanies,” as when one student awoke late one morning to find her group had left for a spontaneous walk, was initially fearful and then realized how much her security was dependent on the group. Students also differed in the extent to which they took initiative or behaved in defensive ways. For example, some female students hesitant about a communal bath were able to “talk themselves into” participating. One American student teacher who found her communication with Japanese students wasn’t going well invented a game of “Eigo de…, Nihongo de……” (In English…, in Japanese…). Japanese students are often disappointed in their ability to be understood in English, having studied it for many years. They often have to modify their English quickly.
The project continues and the participants are hoping to develop some techniques that will enable student teachers to develop confidence in adapting to unfamiliar cultural expectations and to understand the disequilibrium their students from other cultures may face.
*cmerz@ups.edu
Impact Assessment of Basic Education in Western Areas Project (BEWAP)
in China
Zhiyong Zhu and Yuhong Du
CIES 2009 and Power Dynamics in International Negotiations
José Cossa
Vachel Miller
E. Moore Quinn
Japan and US Teacher Education Students: A cultural exchange
Kensuke Chikamori, Yumiko Ono, Carol Merz Fankel, Fred Hamel, and Jane Williams
Historical Foundations of International Education
Kwabena D. Ofori-Attah
Understanding Student Conceptions of International Experience
Bernhard Streitwieser and Shyanmei Wang
In Memoriam:
T. Neville Postlethwaite,
1933–2009
SIGs
(Click
here to view the procedures to create or join a SIG
and announcements.)
EDITOR'S CORNER
(under construction):
Space designed for
your suggestions, comments, or questions regarding the CIES Newsletter.
CIES BULLETIN
(Information about
conferences and events, awards, recently-published books, positions available, etc.)