Though Aichi records the top in Filipino population among Japan (Aichi Prefecture, 2020), children with Filipino background are often found not enrolling in public education. Even among those enrolled, the prefecture reports that around 1,600 Filipino students require Japanese language support. In addition, the number of children who do not go to school in Aichi is expected to be 1,846 (Nikkei.com, 2019). Realizing multi-culture in school is still on the way. What can we do to have all children receive equal rights to join quality education? Since 1998, Ecumenical Learning Center for Children: ELCC has educated more than 400 children who were at home due to vulnerable status or language barriers. Since staff members and teachers became aware that the barriers of enrolling were not only from language but also from culture, programs such as serving miso-soup and holding Tagalog lessons are now in the curriculum. This report shows how an ethnic school in Aichi has accepted unenrolled children with Filipino background, and prepared them to enter public schools. The research aims to know the current support ELCC provides, and to further seek for improvement in the educational environment to secure equal education for all. The study first reports the activities of the school, and then analyzes the interview and survey results from the staff members, volunteer teachers, the former students and their parents. The data revealed that language and cultures are the major issues in transfer to a local school. Moreover, successful attempts made by ELCC to reduce these burdens in enrolling public education are acknowledged. Furthermore, necessary improvement to lessen the barriers in public schools are proposed in terms of their language, intercultural communication, culture and identity in order to reduce the cases of withdrawal.

Although there are a significant number of multinational corporations (MNCs) in Japan as local entities or subsidiaries, limited research has been done regarding language and style changes by Japanese managers working at MNCs’ subsidiaries. The Japanese managers normally communicate with Westerners (mostly Americans in this research) at or from headquarters (HQs) in English, while they need to communicate with their local superiors in Japanese. The Japanese managers need to switch not only languages, but also discourse styles, because styles of communication between Westerners and Japanese are different. Nevertheless, limited research has been done regarding how and to what extent the Japanese managers working at MNCs’ subsidiaries switch languages and discourse styles, and the implications of the switching for communication with their interlocutors. Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) explains various aspects of discourse between people and groups, which can be useful for understanding and explaining the language and discourse style switching by the Japanese managers working at MNCs. Clear differences of communication styles of MNCs’ subsidiary managers were identified through questionnaires to them. Further analysis of data and interview results revealed linguistic and cultural accommodation trends by the Japanese managers working at MNCs.

With Japan's low recognition rate of refugees, it is easy to conclude the natives' overall indifference to this topic. However, once people learn the background stories of asylum seekers in direct, structured, face to face interactions, a different picture emerges. It is one of low awareness and confusion that evolves into curiosity, connection and inspiration that springs to collaborative civic action.

In this presentation I will introduce my 2-year activities delivering asylum seeker stories to the Japanese public (schools, businesses), the audience reactions, and case studies of audience members that lead action with initiative thereafter, share the insights on successful and unsuccessful aspects, key points for preparation, and considerations for future directions.

I will argue that open, authentic and confident autobiographical presentation is an effective way of changing the perception of asylum seekers and making a complex, biased, little-known topic accessible and easy for engagement. Finally, I will discuss the implications for applying it to other minority groups, and engaging the audience to one’s cause.

More and more German students spend time at a foreign partner university in order to acquire linguistic and intercultural competences. Achieving these objectives cannot be taken for granted, however, as results from study abroad research and voices from higher education indicate (cf. Deardoff 2015, Finell 2015). Political decisions and recommendations consider quality assur-ance issues for study periods abroad mostly from a formal and regulative perspective, but ap-parently, they do not sufficiently consider the actual outcome. The contribution presents results from a document analysis of strategic documents, such as mission statements, target agreements and development plans (cf. Hoffmann 2018, Prior 2003), which is part of an on-going cooperative doctoral project at TU Darmstadt and TH Aschaffenburg in Germany. Based on a qualitative approach, the doctoral project explores the quality assurance of linguistic and intercultural competences in study abroad contexts with a special focus on German Technical Universities and Technical Universities of Applied Sciences, 36 institutions in 2020. These organisations form varieties of their respective type of higher ed-ucation institution. They are characterised by a strong STEM affiliation in both teaching and research. (Foreign) Languages as well as intercultural competences are rather considered as profile-enhancing soft skills. The first part of the study consisted of a qualitative content analy-sis of strategic documents of 33 German Technical HEIs, using MAXQDA software (cf. Mayring 2015, Rädiker & Kuckartz 2019). The analysis focuses on the strategic aims in these central policy documents, which present prospects for any further quality assurance of study abroad contexts.

Sources: Deardorff, Darla. K. (2015). Demystifying outcomes assessment for international educators: A practical approach. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Finell, Peter (2015). “Developing Global Competences through Learner Mobility: A Discussions of the Host Institution’s Role.” In: Erbe, Nancy D./Normore, Anthony H. (eds.) Cross-Cultural Collab-oration and Leadership in Modern Organizations. Hershey: IGI Global. 273 – 283. Graf, Pedro/Spengler, Maria (2013). Leitbild- und Konzeptentwicklung. 6. Aufl. Regensburg: Wal-halla Fachverlag. Hoffmann, Nicole (2018). Dokumentenanalyse in der Bildungs- und Sozialforschung. Überblick und Einführung. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz/Juventa. Mayring, Philipp (2015). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Grundlagen und Techniken. 10. Aufl. Wein-heim/Basel: Beltz. Prior, Lindsay (2003). Using Documents in Social Research. London: Sage. Rädiker, Stefan/Kuckartz, Udo (2019). Analyzing Qualitative Data with MAXQDA. Text, Audio, and Video. Wiesbaden: Springer.

As the pandemic continues, most university students are still unable to study or even travel abroad. As a result, the importance of collaborative online international learning (COIL) with foreign HEIs has increased. A joint Asian-European COIL project by a Japanese, Taiwanese and a German university was enhanced in 2021 to allow students to interact with international peers. The accompanying COIL research began in spring 2020 during the first two COILs and has continued since the third COIL in May 2021.

Prior to the live online COIL 2.0 session in spring 2021, students were put in teams and asked for self-introductions across universities on an asynchronous whiteboard (https://padlet.com/). Using English as a lingua franca, students were assigned two preparatory tasks: the first one was to introduce an idiom, saying or proverb describing their culture-specific communication style, and the second one was to present and illustrate a frequently used emoji or sticker not common in the other two countries. All findings were documented on shared padlets as well.

The students were given a pre- and post-COIL-survey on what they learned from their international fellows. One learning outcome showed that there are various culture-bound idioms and phrases that describe a "good" communication style. Furthermore, students were able to identify similar values related to communication styles in all three countries. The responses also indicate that students realised that the same emoji can be associated with totally different meanings in other cultures. To gather more data, additional COIL sessions with students from different nationalities across the globe, also in the framework of hybrid short intensive periods, will be organised.

How the material on emblems collected during the COIL e-meeting and the results from the pre- and post-survey can serve as a pilot for developing a card game (e.g. for Diversophy), will be outlined in this presentation.