Opening remarks by the conference chairs

How can immigrants become accepted members in their receiving societies? What are the criteria that local populations use in deciding “Who is one of ‘us?’” Social Markers of Acceptance (SMA) give us a clue, as they are socially constructed indicators (for example, language skills, adherence to certain social norms, or racialized appearance) that recipient nationals use in deciding whether a migrant is a part of the host community. SMA collectively reflect the degree of host inclusiveness, as more markers imply increasingly stringent criteria for ingroup membership.

Japan provides fertile ground for examining the relationship between SMA and inclusion: it is ethnically homogenous, yet a greying workforce makes admitting migrants essential to achieve demographic and economic sustainability. This study aimed to identify the SMA considered important by Japanese for immigrants to be accepted in society to the same degree as native Japanese, and to identify how such perceptions vary according to perceived immigrant threat, contributions, and social status, as well as national identity and intergroup boundary permeability.

A nationally representative sample of 2,000 Japanese completed an online survey. Factor analyses revealed a 2-factor solution comprising civic markers (for example, being able to speak conversational Japanese, embracing a positive attitude toward Japanese society, and having Japanese “common sense”), as well as ethnic markers (for instance, having Japanese parents and physically resembling a Japanese) as being important among survey respondents. A three-step hierarchical regression was used to understand how expectations for civic and ethnic markers change depending upon the context: namely, according to Japanese perceptions of the degree of threat, contribution, and social status associated with immigrants, as well as the strength of subjects’ Japanese national identity. During this presentation, implications of the findings will be detailed, as well as recommendations for improving societal inclusiveness toward migrants in Japan.

The Japanese government has launched numerous initiatives to encourage universities to cultivate gurobaru jinzai and “global competence” has become a buzzword in university curricula. Yet there is a lack of consensus as to exactly what gurobaru jinzai need. Policy documents focus on quantifiable foreign language goals and describe other elements of global competence only in vague terms, making them difficult to target and teach. Many researchers and educators adopt models for intercultural competence or global competence found in the literature, but these are overwhelmingly Western-centric and their applicability in the Japanese context is underexplored. This session reports on a research study investigating the specific nature and challenges of global competence in Japan. The researcher conducted a Delphi study involving global professionals, researchers, and university students and teachers. Participants articulated, revised and refined their opinions regarding what it means to be globally competent in Japan, and the challenges that need to be addressed to help university students in Japan to develop global competence. By integrating multiple perspectives this study aimed to map out what a Japan-specific framework for global competence might look like, and shed light on how university educators can effectively cultivate global competence in their students.

The internationalisation of universities in Japan has grown parallel to an increasing need to foster interculturally competent graduates, capable of working effectively across cultures and of successfully addressing local and global challenges (Deardorff & Jones, 2012; Yamamoto, 2018). Previous studies in the fields of internationalisation and intercultural competence have focused mainly on the impact of study abroad programmes (Asaoka & Yano, 2009). Yet, as we face a global pandemic, preceded in Japan by an overall decline in the number of students participating in mid- to long-term study abroad programmes, the need to research the development of intercultural attitudes and knowledge on domestic campuses has become apparent. This presentation will discuss results from a longitudinal study with 223 students of English as a Foreign Language at a Japanese university. Particular attention will be given to the development of core intercultural competence components, namely curiosity, openness, and respect, as well as an awareness of local and global issues. The presenter will discuss results of pre- and post-intervention surveys as well as student reflections, discussions, and presentations collected over one semester. Results will be discussed in light of student thoughts on the factors impacting intercultural competence development and global issues awareness in the classroom. It is hoped that findings will generate discussion among educators and scholars on how to better foster an interculturally competent workforce through foreign language classrooms and beyond.

Decision-making talk is often where power is enacted in professional contexts. Discursive decision-making allows for participants to exert influence over decisions through their discursive performance. However, compared with L1 decision-making talk, participants in intercultural discursive decision-making can feel disempowered, even when they are highly proficient in English. The concept of discursive leadership from management and business communication studies offers a way to understand why this may be so. Discursive leadership (Fairhurst, 2007) views leadership as emerging in discourse through both the leadership and followership acts that people perform. Leadership can be performed in different ways – directively, collaboratively or cooperatively (Aritz & Walker, 2014) – and the extent to which different approaches are accommodated within a group talk allows for the emergence of a distinct discursive style. The presenter hypothesizes that due to different individual and cultural (and perhaps gender) preferences for discursive leadership style, which style emerges has implications for how easy or difficult it is for intercultural participants to exert influence in the decision-making process.

The presenter will consider the case of professional-context communication using English as a lingua franca. From a discourse analysis of data collected from simulated group decision-making meetings between multinational groups of government officials with high English proficiency, he will show how different styles emerge, how accommodation with emerging styles is made and not made, and how influence on decision-making is achieved and not achieved. Future applications for the research will be to develop communication and behavioural strategies to help ELF professionals become more competent at adapting to different discursive leadership environments and thereby maximizing their potential to contribute to decision-making.

The benefits of guest speakers in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes have been established by scholars such as Leor (2015) to be an effective way to provide specific knowledge to students while at the same time encouraging them to make a personal connection between the material and their life. Yet there are fewer studies that look at the benefits of guest speakers through the lens of fostering intercultural communication competence or intercultural collaborative dialogue in the classroom. Yet guest speakers can be crucial to intercultural competence in that they offer new perspectives, ideas, and language usage. This presentation builds on existing research into the efficacy of guest speakers to foster intercultural communication in any curricula through the introduction of case studies of global-issue oriented guest speakers, both in-person and online, with students of mixed English levels. We introduce student responses to guest speakers on diverse subjects such as Japanese colonialism, gender and sexuality, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and Japanese comfort women, among other topics, ultimately demonstrating the benefits of classroom collaboration with guest speakers. By discussing both online and in-person lectures, we demonstrate the efficacy of both and demonstrate ways guest speakers can be utilized in mixed-level English courses in Japanese universities.

Understanding what ESL students bring culturally to the learning experience is extremely important to designing any aspect of a language course. Moreover, learning to write effectively in English can be quite a challenge for the ESL leaner who may carry over many cultural approaches that conflict with learning to write in English. A well designed course will need to consider how these personal skills, habits, and motivations affect learning how to write a clear and coherent research paper. This session looks at quantitative data collected from 180 ESL students from diverse countries who have participated in learning academic writing while attending the Graduate School of Law at Nagoya University between 2012 and 2021. In addition to general language skill levels, the data indicates that personal writing skills in one's own language, deference to writing (motivation), as well as writing script (habit) can all play a significant role in just how well a student may adjust to and acquire an understanding of what is expected in academic writing. Such a study helps the writing instructor to design lessons based on a diverse understanding of the needs of the ESL student.

In this presentation, a telecollaborative exchange experience involving pre-service teachers of English in Japan and Germany will be discussed. The participants are 26 pre-service teachers at Tokyo Gakugei University in Japan (including one international student in Korea) and 9 students from Karlsruhe University of Education in Germany. The data is collected through AIE (Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters) to investigate the students’ reflection on the telecollaboration along with RFCDC (Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture) to further analyze each participants’ background. Furthermore, the recording of the session itself is employed for data analysis. The exchange was held on-line on July 5th in 2021 for 75 minutes. The group discussion was set as breakout rooms with 4 to 6 students followed by a whole group reflection session. The topics discussed in the break-out sessions include education systems, English learning, university life, etc. The result shows that the experience was positively perceived by almost all the students and for the Japanese students stimulating for their further English learning. The German students experienced English as a lingua franca and both groups noticed the differences in communication style as well as in education systems across Japan, Germany and Korea. Some students mentioned that it made them aware of new perspectives on their own culture. This may indicate that the mere one-time intercultural experience might have promoted their critical awareness of their own culture (Byram, 2021). The case of the student who participated from Korea stands out. By being multilingual (proficient in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean) and having attended an international school in China, she clearly functioned as a mediator (suggested in CEFR Companion Volume, 2020) to facilitate communication among the members in her group. Further case-studies will be discussed based on the results of the RFCDC descriptor analysis.

This presentation will deal with a best-practice example of the successful large-scale application of this year’s conference motto “collaboration and leadership in intercultural contexts” in higher education with a special focus and Asia and Europe. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), student teams from a German university were asked to design and pilot COIL (collaborative online international learning) activities with altogether seven Asian partner countries (including Japan) and eleven participating Asian universities (three of these being Japanese ones), targeting students and teaching staff from both regions (Asia and Europe). The COIL’s topic needed to be in line with the master course’s learning outcomes relating to intercultural communication and collaboration such as virtual team work and leadership across cultures in challenging times etc. Regarding the collaborative live online session, student teams were free to choose an approach they considered suitable and which allowed the integration of online collaborative tools encountered in class or beyond thanks also to their peers in Asia (e.g. video, quizzes, games etc.). The students’ seminar papers also built on this practical contribution by drawing on a suitable theoretical body of cultural approaches and frameworks encountered throughout the term. How such a major COIL project can be conducted successfully and to what extent it can serve as a direct contribution to promoting mutual understanding in the area of education and training between Asia and Europa in challenging times will be discussed in this presentation. Project success factors and pitfalls will be outlined and the results of a comprehensive post-COIL survey on the project’s impact on students’ cross-cultural skills in their role of future co-workers and company leaders will be presented.

When executives lead teams in a different cultural context than their own, the phenomenon of “leadership” becomes cross-cultural. A cross-cultural setting makes the already multi-layered leadership situation even more complex (Gasteiger 2016). International leadership research, including the GLOBE study, has shown that concepts of “leadership” are significantly influenced by the cultural context (House 1997; House / Javidan 2004). What is characteristic of a manager and which leadership styles are favoured, varies depending on the cultural context. The cultural scientist, Phillippe D’Iribarne, addresses this cultural fit: “If a manager wants to spark enthusiasm in the people who work for him and avoid shocking them, then he has to understand what excites and shocks them. This is of course about the big principles: legitimate / illegitimate, conceivable / unthinkable, good / bad."(2001: 262). This cultural understanding comes into play in all social interactions between the leader and his team and becomes even more relevant when personal development practices are applied. Numerous experts from cross-cultural science (et al Tüzüner 2014, Aycan 2001) and practice point out that, especially in an international context, some personnel development practices, like the 360° Feedback, should be used wisely, as some “imported” practices, which were developed in a different cultural context, can disturb local values and the wellbeing of the employees. Taking the example of German MNEs operating in Turkey the study confirms that using human resource development methods in Turkey which were created in western cultures can cause cross-cultural conflicts within the team. Elaborating on the findings of this study, the need for recontextualisation of human resource practices and the important role of bicultural employees in the process of cultural adaptation is underlined.

Remote teaching and learning is not a new way to educate and teach. With the occurrence of COVID-19, more teaching and training have turned to online methods for delivering and educating students and trainees. This has brought about a number of challenges but also presented opportunities. This presentation will share reflections on how a blended learning PhD programme became fully online and embraced a collaborative leadership (CL) approach to help engage students and ensure the highest standard of education delivery. CL can be defined as a “leaderful practice” where anyone can become an initiator and contribute to the group success (Raelin, 2011). It involves shared, inclusive, and transformational tenets of leadership and allows the most informed and capable members to lead the charge in different circumstances. By engaging and encouraging CL with students, several beneficial outcomes were observed including strong group cohesion, student support for one another, student engagement and progress in the modules, as well as final assignment outcomes. Furthermore, ways to enhance these activities in the future have also been identified based on feedback and discussion with students. Several other opportunities have also been considered in light of discussions with my copresenter who is an expert in CL. In this joint presentation, the presenters aim to shed light on this alternative approach to teaching by sharing this example with SIETAR conference delegates and opening up discussions for how others may be able to adopt this approach themselves.

瀬戸内を「かわいい」という視点から探し・伝え・育むコミュニティ「瀬戸内かわいい部」（以下、「せとかわ」）には、年齢も職業も住む場所も異なるメンバーが集い、交流を深めている。2019年にはデニムのB反を活用した商品開発プロジェクトを通じて、メンバーとともにその企画・販売を行い、地域からの情報発信に取り組んだ。現在、「せとかわ」の活動は地元の自治体にも認められ、イベントにゲストとして招かれるまでに成長している。たった1人の声から始まった活動がここまでどのように広まってきたのか？運営上何を大事にしてきたのか？「せとかわ」におけるリーダーシップとは何か？商品開発プロジェクト中のエピソードを中心に、メンバーによる座談会形式で考えていく。

懇親会（Welcome / おもてなし)