Impact of the CAMPUS Asia initiative for developing Japanese students’ attitude toward mutual understanding: A case study of the Japan–China–Korea trilateral exchange program

Abstract

This article discusses the impacts of the East Asian Leaders Program (EALP) organized as a trilateral collaborative educational program participated by students from Japanese, Chinese, and Korean universities. The East Asian Leaders Program has been operated under the CAMPUS Asia initiative led by the governments of the three countries, aiming at cultivating talents who contribute to promoting mutual understanding between the three countries. The empirical analysis of this study was designed by a mixed method approach collected from 16 Japanese students. The results showed that the East Asian Leaders Program has cultivated students’ attitudes and skills for mutual understanding, including acceptance/willingness to understand, ability to consider different perspectives, self-expression and assertion, and initiative and resilience. As this study indicates that the East Asian Leaders Program is effective for fostering students’ attitudes toward mutual understanding, further policy development should consider encouraging universities to develop such practices to increase intra-Asian student mobility as an alternative strategy for the internationalization of higher education.

‘It’s a few weeks I’ll cherish forever’: Transformative curriculum-specific learning, language awareness and cultural literacy development for Australian students in Vietnam through New Colombo Plan mobility programs

“…It has also been argued that the discourse around international student mobility from countries in Africa to China mirrors the relative positions of the two nations within the global political economy (Mulvey, 2021). Another development in existing scholarship about international students mobilities is the emergence of research on intra-Asian mobility (Hanada and Horie, 2021; Lipura, 2020; Kumpoh et al, 2021) and ‘periphery’ to ‘semi-periphery’ student mobility like from Africa to China (Mulvey, 2021). This body of the literature has provided significant evidence about how government positioning and agendas on international and regional relations impact on student mobility trends and programs.…”

Editorial

“…Hence, we decided to break the SI into two parts, and our decision was well received and supported by the Journal’s Editor, Professor Hubert Erlt. The first part of the SI, with an editorial, five research papers, and a commentary, was published in September 2021 (Hanada & Horie, 2021; Kheir, 2021; Kumpoh et al, 2021; Leve, 2021; Lipura, 2021; Oleksiyenko et al, 2021b; Phan and Fry, 2021).…”

“…On the one hand, the SI highlights many important factors contributing to the rise of Asia as a new dynamic hub for study abroad, as clearly documented and discussed in most of the individual articles included in the 2021 and 2023 Parts (e.g., Gu et al, 2023; Hanada and Horie, 2021; Kheir, 2021; Kumpoh et al, 2021; Lipura, 2021; Mai and Chau, 2023; Oleksiyenko et al, 2021b; Pongsin et al, 2023; Tran and Bui, 2023). In what follows let us pay closer attention to several HE contexts covered in our SI to give readers more concrete understandings of the factors shaping inter-Asian and toward-Asian student mobilities.…”

“…What’s more, the SI as a whole also collectively points out and investigates new phenomena of inter-Asian student mobilities as well as their associated key trends. Student mobilities take place between emerging and somewhat peripheral HE destinations (i.e., between Brunei and Vietnam — see Kumpoh et al, 2021, and between some Southeast Asian countries and Taiwan — see Kheir, 2021), between a prominent destination and a rather off-the-radar HE setting (i.e., between South Korea and India — see Lipura, 2021, and between South Korea and Vietnam — see Mai and Chau, 2023), as well as among well-established HE destinations (such as those among China–Japan–South Korea — see Hanada and Horie, 2021). Part 2 of the SI also brings another dimension of student mobility to the landscape of internationalization, which is toward-Asia mobility as in the case of Australian students going to Vietnam for their study abroad experience (Tran and Bui, 2023).…”

Research on cross-cultural adaptation and educational management of international students in China: Case of African students at Zhejiang Normal University

“…Communicating with people with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds can lead to misattribution and hurt feelings due to limited social term awareness and intercultural competence ( Jackson and Oguro, 2017 ). In addition, international students may develop “proficiency in self-expression and meeting their various social needs” in the host culture ( Hanada and Horie, 2021 ), while continuing to experience a sense of boundary or “otherness” in the face of conflicting values and beliefs.” sense ( Gu et al, 2010 ).…”