iafor

journal of education
undergraduate education
Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020
Editor: Joseph (José) McClanahan
Editor-in-Chief: Yvonne Masters

ISSN: 2187-0594

iafor
IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education
Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

IAFOR Publications
The International Academic ForumIAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education
Editor
Joseph (José) McClanahan
Creighton University Omaha, Nebraska, USA

Editor-in-Chief
Yvonne Masters, Australia

Published by The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
IAFOR Publications, Sakae 1-16-26-201, Naka-ward, Aichi, Japan 460-0008

Executive Editor: Joseph Haldane
Publications Manager: Nick Potts
IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education
Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020
Published September, 2020
IAFOR Publications © Copyright 2020
ISSN: 2187-0594
ije.iafor.org

Cover Image: ian-stauffer/unsplash

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education
Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020
Edited by Joseph (José) McClanahan
Associate Editor:
Huiyuan Ye

Foreword(Musings from the Editor-in-Chief)
It seems only yesterday that I was writing about Technology in Education as our second issue
for 2020. Suddenly our third issue for the year, Undergraduate Education, has been published,with still one more to come in 2020. The issue’s editorial team have worked hard to bring thisissue to publication despite the continuing worries in the world. Many thanks go to the editor,
José McClanahan, and his Associate Editor, Huiyuan Ye. We also thank those reviewers who
find time to go above and beyond.
In preparing this journal for publication, I kept thinking about whether the popular image of anundergraduate student has changed since my own undergraduate time, more years ago than I
care to dwell on. Are undergraduates still visualized as the “just out of school” secondary
students who headed into their undergraduate study with much the same mentality of educationthat they had at school plus a yearning for the extra freedom to skip classes and no parental
oversight!
This view was definitely not the reality of my undergraduate teaching before my retirement in2016. Most of my undergraduates were mature-aged students, studying online, often careerchangers or parents who were pursuing the dreams that raising families had put on the
backburner. They brought with them a wealth of life experience that I still wonder whether we,
as academics, valued enough. They certainly knew more of the world than I did when I became
an undergraduate.
Knowing something about the world is more important than ever right now. Ernest L Boyer
stated:I am suggesting that quality in undergraduate education means giving students
a perspective that is global.
As COVID-19 continues to ravage the world, this view of undergraduate education becomes
more and more important. With fears of second waves, and even the first wave causing borderclosures both between and within countries, our global village is becoming more and more
fractured. Insularity is replacing internationalization, and at this stage, there is no end in sight.
We will need our undergraduates to develop a global perspective, and develop it quickly, sothat we can avoid looking at other nations as people and places to be feared, so that we cancontinue extending the hand of friendship to migrants and refugees.
To those of you who teach undergraduates, you bear a great responsibility to assist thesestudents to see a light ahead, one that re-connects us globally rather than shattering that
understanding that we are one world, perhaps forever.
On those perhaps gloomy musings, my thanks to the authors, the editor, the associate editor,
the publications manager, Nick Potts, and to all the reviewers for bringing this issue to you, thereaders.
Enjoy,
Yvonne Masters,
Editor-in-Chief
IAFOR Journal of Education

Editorial Advice
Preparing a submission to the IAFOR Journal of Education is more than writing about yourresearch study: it involves paying careful attention to our submission requirements. Different
journals have different requirements in terms of format, structure and referencing style, among
other things. There are also some common expectations between all journals such as the use ofgood academic language and lack of plagiarism. To assist you in reaching the review stage forthis or any other peer-reviewed journal, we provide the following advice which you should
check carefully and ensure that you adhere to.
1. Avoiding Plagiarism
Plagiarism is a practice that is not acceptable in any journal. Avoiding plagiarism is the cardinalrule of academic integrity because plagiarism, whether intentional or unintentional, ispresenting someone else’s work as your own. The IAFOR Journal of Education immediately
rejects any submission with evidence of plagiarism.
There are three common forms of plagiarism, none of which are acceptable:
1. Plagiarism with no referencing. This is copying the words from another source (article,
book, website, etc.) without any form of referencing.
2. Plagiarism with incorrect referencing. This involves using the words from anothersource and only putting the name of the author and/or date as a reference. Whilst not as
grave as the plagiarism just mentioned, it is still not acceptable academic practice.
Direct quoting requires quotation marks and a page number in the reference. This isbest avoided by paraphrasing rather than copying.
3. Self-plagiarism. It is not acceptable academic practice to use material that you havealready had published (which includes in conference proceedings) in a new submission.
You should not use your previously published words and you should not submit about
the same data unless it is used in a completely new way.
2. Meeting the Journal Aims and Scope
Different journals have different aims and scope, and papers submitted should fit the specificjournal. A “scattergun” approach (where you submit anywhere in the hope of being published)
is not sound practice. Like in darts, your article needs to hit the journal’s “bullseye”, it needs
to fit within the journal’s interest area. For example, a submission that is about building bridges,
will not be acceptable in a journal dedicated to education. Ensure that your paper is clearly
about education.
3. Follow the Author Guidelines
Most journals will supply a template to be followed for formatting your paper. Often, there will
also be a list of style requirements on the website (font, word length, title length, page layout,
and referencing style, among other things). There may also be suggestions about the preferred
structure of the paper. For the IAFOR Journal of Education these can all be found here:
https://iafor.org/journal/iafor-journal-of-education/author-guidelines/

4. Use Academic Language
The IAFOR Journal of Education only accepts papers written in correct and fluent English ata high academic standard. Any use of another language (whether in the paper or the referencelist) requires the inclusion of an English translation.
The style of expression must serve to articulate the complex ideas and concepts being presented,
conveying explicit, coherent, unambiguous meaning to scholarly readers. Moreover,manuscripts must have a formal tone and quality, employing third-person rather than firstperson standpoint (when feasible), placing emphasis on the research and not on unsubstantiatedsubjective impressions.
Contributors whose command of English is not at the level outlined above are responsible forhaving their manuscript corrected by a native-level, English-speaking academic prior to
submitting their paper for publication.
5. Literature Reviews
Any paper should have reference to the corpus of scholarly literature on the topic. A review ofthe literature should:
•
•
•
•
•

Predominantly be about contemporary literature (the last 5 years) unless you are
discussing a seminal piece of work.
Make explicit international connections for relevant ideas.
Analyse published papers in the related field rather than describe them.
Outline the gaps in the literature.
Highlight your contribution to the field.

Referencing
Referencing is the main way to avoid allegations of plagiarism. The IAFOR Journal of
Education uses the APA referencing style for both in-text citations and the reference list. If
you are unsure of the correct use of APA please use the Purdue Online Writing Lab (Purdue
OWL), – https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/ – which has excellent examples
of all forms of APA referencing. Please note APA is used for referencing not for the generalformat of the paper. Your reference list should be alphabetical by author surname and include
DOIs whenever possible.
This short guide to getting published should assist you to move beyond the first editorial review.
Failure to follow the guidelines will result in your paper being immediately rejected.
Good luck in your publishing endeavours,
Dr Yvonne Masters
Editor-in-Chief
IAFOR Journal of Education

Table of Contents
From the Editor
Joseph (José) McClanahan

1

Notes on Contributors

3

Service-Learning as Global Citizenship Education: Acting Locally on
Global Challenges and Concerns
Genejane M. Adarlo

7

Social Support for International Students in Foreign Language
Classroom Communities of Practice
Takuya Kojima

25

Social Media and E-Portfolios: Impacting Design Students’
Motivation ThroughProject-Based Learning
Jae-Eun Oh
Yuet Kai Chan
Kyulee Viviane Kim

41

Intercultural Communicative Competence in Teacher Education:
Cultural Simulation Insights from Hawaiʻi
Jennifer Padua
Monica Gonzalez Smith

59

Framing Undergraduate Perspectives on Experiential Learning
Within Soka Education Theory
Paul Sherman
Olivia Boukydis

77

Reviewers

95

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

From the Editor
As we embark on the first issue of Undergraduate Education for the IAFOR Journal of
Education, I am reminded of the changes that we have experienced in our universities andcolleges over the last fifty years; and at the same time, I see what has stayed the same. Our
academic objectives for students have been, and continue to remain, at the forefront of the work
we do. Since the pioneering publication in 1956 of the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives,
Harold S. Bloom, whose name is now synonymous with the hierarchical models used toclassify educational learning objectives, shared with the world the hard work of a committee
of educators who wanted their efforts “to be of general help to all teachers, administrators,
professional specialists, and research workers who deal with curricular and evaluation
problems” (p. 1). Little did he, or the other members of the committee, know that their workfrom the 1950s would still be resonating today, especially with those of us who work inundergraduate education. They helped to plant the seeds of what would blossom into the varied,
fruitful undergraduate curricular landscape that we enjoy today. The repeated reference to his
and the other educators’ work is very relevant. Its imprint is still felt when we design, develop,
and implement – whether it is from a single course or an academic unit’s overall curriculum.
Their work provided a true scaffolded framework for us. Like many great beginnings,
researchers and academics have built, expanded, and extended their ideas to allow for better
execution in our current evolving educational environments. As such, we are tasked with thehard work of creatively building upon what has come before us and innovating in our own
ways. My hope is that with this issue we can continue the dialogue that informs and enlightens
our works as educators.
What has changed since 1956 and Bloom’s Taxonomy is how we meet these educational
objectives. Our students are not the same. We have had several generations pass through ouruniversity doors. The “Baby Boomers” (born 1946-1964), the “Gen X” (born 1965-1980), the“Millennials” (born 1980-1994), and the current ‘Gen Z’ (born between 1995-2015) represent
the diversity of our students and the work we do as educators needs to adapt accordingly. The
educational circumstances change and how we realize our objectives must follow suit. Eachgeneration has characteristics and qualities that make them unique; as such, it is imperative for
us to rethink the ways in which we maintain the same, high academic standards in a new context
that engages our students where they are. Noted generational researcher Neil Howe (2014)
explains that today’s students possess characteristics such as “having extremely protective
parenting, a turn toward traditional parenting, a push for academic achievement, and a renewed
focus on social development” (paras. 4-6). Understanding these new contexts of our students
permits us to refocus our attention on developing different types of learning opportunities,
regardless of the discipline in which we teach. Just as we tell our students that “knowledge ispower”, the same idea applies to us. Knowing more gives us the capacity to educate better.
Therefore, I am pleased to introduce you to several researchers who espouse these ideas bythinking about new ways of connecting with students in undergraduate education. Genejane
Adarlo examines how the teaching and learning roles of service-learning in the context of social
justice can impact students’ assumptions about poverty in different community-based areas,
and ultimately, how they can influence and inform global citizenship. Takuya Kojima explores
how classrooms can reproduce communities of practice to provide social support forinternational students and to what extent teachers can promote social support within theirclassrooms. Jae-Eun Oh, Yuet Kai Chan, and Kyulee Kim analyze the impact that social media
and e-portfolios can have on undergraduates’ motivation when involved in project-basedlearning and to what extend they can be an effective tool in the classroom. Jennifer Padua and1

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Monica Gonzalez Smith assess how cultural simulations help promote and develop culturalcompetence among teacher candidates in a diverse population and how this learning will help
to inform future teachers so that they can integrate this awareness into their classrooms. And
finally, Paul Sherman and Olivia Boukydis bring to light their study of how experiential
learning can produce powerful outcomes that support the concept of Soka, value-creatededucation.
These five articles represent the diversity found in our collective undergraduate education
landscape today. It is my sincere hope that you will find them insightful and useful for you andyour colleagues as we move forward in continual momentum to realize our true academic
objectives: creating a positive, intellectual, and fulfilling undergraduate educational experiencefor our students.
Joseph (José) McClanahan
Editor
IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education
undergrad.editor.joe@iafor.org
References
Bloom, B. S. (Ed.). (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives. The classification of
educational goals. David McKay Company, Inc.
Howe, N. (2014, October 27). “Introducing the homeland generation (Part 1 of 2)”. Forbes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2014/10/27/introducing-the-homelandgeneration-part-1-of-2/#6d1296a92bd6

2

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Notes on Contributors
Article 1: Service-Learning as Global Citizenship Education: Acting Locally on Global
Challenges and Concerns
Dr Genejane M. Adarlo is the Director of the Health Sciences Program at Ateneo de Manila
University in the Philippines. She completed her Doctor of Medicine at the University of theEast Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Center and she obtained her Doctor of Philosophy
from the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include
service-learning, global citizenship, volunteerism, critical pedagogy, and comparativeeducation.
Email: gadarlo@ateneo.edu
Article 2: Social Support for International Students in Foreign Language Classroom
Communities of PracticeDr Takuya Kojima has a PhD in Humanities and Languages specialised in Language
Education from USNW Sydney, Australia. He is currently a contract lecturer at Ca’ Foscari
University of Venice. Prior to the position, he fulfilled the postdoctoral fellowship researching
into critical pedagogy. His primary research interest includes social theory of learning, learnerand teacher identity, learning as participation, critical pedagogy, and creativity in language
education.
Email: takuya.kojima@unive.it
Article 3: Social Media and E-Portfolios: Impacting Design Students’ Motivation
Through Project-Based Learning
Dr Jae-Eun Oh has joined The Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design as afaculty member for BA (Hons) in Digital Media after many years of teaching at higher
educational institutions in South Korea and Singapore. Apart from teaching, she has built her
research path on the animation narrative that has focused on the psychological effect for thetheme parks setting. Besides animation storytelling, her current research interest also
demonstrates how to motivate creative media students in the studio/project-based learningwhere they learn to create their media artifacts.
Email: Jae.oh@polyu.edu.hk
Dr Yuet Kai Chan received her PhD in The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and hermasters degree in Peking University. With years of experience managing digital content designin Beijing, London, and Dubai, she established her research interest in the creative behavior
field, concentrated on motivation management. Recently, she joined the Creativity and Design
Education Lab with a great passion to explore creativity and motivation in education. She iscurrently a faculty member at the School of Design of HK PolyU.
Email: amelie.chan@polyu.edu.hk

3

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Dr Kyulee Viviane Kim has a great optimism in the healthier future. She explores wide arraysof roles designed to realize an ideal world where business innovation integrates with social
innovation without any trade-offs Such a concept is also known as ‘shared value,’ and she has
been facilitating design workshops to promote shared value and to trigger entrepreneurial
motivations to create shared value. Kim was trained as a graphic artist at Carnegie Mellon
University (BFA), and Basel School of Design (MFA). She recently received her doctoral
degree in The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and is working as an independent researcher
and design consultant for the social entrepreneurs in Seoul, Korea.
Email: kyuleevkim@gmail.com
Article 4: Intercultural Communicative Competence in Teacher Education: Cultural
Simulation Insights from Hawaiʻi
Dr Jennifer Padua is an Assistant Professor with the Institute for Teacher Education at the
University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has a Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies with a specialization inliteracy. Dr. Padua teaches literacy methods courses and serves as a cohort coordinator forteacher candidates pursuing an elementary education degree. Her research interests include
language and literacy instruction, new literacies, teacher education, and professional
development.
Email: paduajen@hawaii.edu
Dr Monica Smith is an Assistant Professor in Elementary Education Multilingual Learning at
the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She has a Ph.D. in Elementary Education, Curriculum andInstruction with a specialization in Second Language Teacher Education. Dr. Smith teaches
multilingual methods courses and serves as a cohort field placement coordinator for teacher
candidates who are earning initial teaching licenses and dual-licenses in Teaching English to
Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Her research interests include critical friendship, videoreflection, sheltered instruction, and cultural competence.
Email: monicags@hawaii.edu
Article 5: Framing Undergraduate Perspectives on Experiential Learning Within Soka
Education Theory
Dr Paul Sherman received his undergraduate degree in Psychology from York University,
Canada, his post-graduate diploma in Child Assessment and Counselling from University ofToronto, Canada, and his PhD in Education and Social Justice from Lancaster University, UK.
He is currently Program Head of Family & Community Social Services at the University ofGuelph-Humber (UofGH) and has previously served as Program Head of Early Childhood
Studies at the university. Dr Sherman is also Director of the Soka Education Research Centre
on Global Citizenship at UofGH and Adjunct Professor at the University of Guelph. Prior tojoining UofGH, Dr Sherman worked as a clinician and senior administrator in diverse
community mental health settings for over 30 years. His doctoral research examined global
citizenship education in higher education, with a particular emphasis on the cultivation of
global citizenship identity and engagement. He continues to teach and conduct research in thisarea.
Email: paulsherman@guelphhumber.ca

4

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Ms Olivia Boukydis MSW, RSW, obtained her BASc (Hons.) in Family & Community Social
Services from the University of Guelph, Canada, and her Social Service Worker diploma from
Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, Canada. She received hermaster’s degree in Social Work from the University of New England, USA, and is a registeredsocial worker in Ontario, Canada. Olivia spent nine years working as a social worker in
Ontario’s healthcare system, supporting older adults living with complex and chronic healthconditions. She currently holds a dual position at the University of Guelph-Humber as SeniorResearch Supervisor in the Soka Education Research Centre on Global Citizenship and faculty
member in the Family and Community Social Services program. Olivia is also a PhD student
at Lancaster University, UK, in the Department of Educational Research, Education and Social
Justice program.
Email: olivia.boukydis@guelphhumber.ca

5

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

6

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Service-Learning as Global Citizenship Education: Acting Locally on Global
Challenges and Concerns
Genejane M. Adarlo
Ateneo de Manila University
Philippines

7

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Abstract
Service-learning is a method of teaching that is increasingly used in higher education. Studies
are few though on how local placements in service-learning can bring about global citizenshipand promote social justice. Hence, this study used multi-sited ethnography to examine theteaching-learning process of service-learning to better understand the construction of civic
identity and sense of agency among students when this method of teaching was approachedwithin the larger context of social justice. Study participants included students taking part inservice-learning efforts for literacy and maternal health from Miriam College and Ateneo deManila University, respectively. Data were gathered and analyzed from observation notes
during classroom and field visits, entries from reflection journals of students, and verbatim
transcripts from semi-structured interviews of study participants. Findings suggest an explicit
and deliberate emphasis on social justice is imperative when a critical understanding of global
citizenship is expected out of service-learning. As students were guided to understand thesocio-economic and political realities of those in their respective service-learning communityand examine their previously held assumptions about poverty, these study participants began
to recognize how they continue to benefit from their privilege at the expense of themarginalized and disenfranchised. Furthermore, the relationships formed with those from thecommunity helped the students gain a sense of agency to act on the root causes of social
problems even in simple ways through their chosen discipline. These findings have theoreticaland practical contributions to growing literature on the use of service-learning for global
citizenship education.
Keywords: service-learning, global citizenship, transformative learning

8

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Global citizenship education has become imperative in the 21st century as the negative
repercussions of globalization have posed challenges and concerns that require collective
action and global solutions (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization[UNESCO], 2014). It aims to empower students through giving them educational opportunities
to understand global and local issues; to recognize our interconnectedness andinterdependency; to gain a sense of belongingness and solidarity; and to respond individuallyand collectively for an inclusive and sustainable world (UNESCO, 2018, 2019). Among theseeducational opportunities are real-life experiences of community involvement, which allow
students to relate with people of different backgrounds and views (UNESCO, 2017). Servicelearning is a pedagogical approach that can offer these real-life experiences of community
involvement. Bringle et al. (2017) define it as:a course or competency-based, credit-bearing educational experience in which
students (a) participate in mutually identified service activities that benefit thecommunity, (b) reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain further
understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and anenhanced sense of personal values and civic responsibility (p. 10).
It is a form of experiential learning and community-embedded academic practice that can(re)connect the university to the community where global challenges and concerns have local
implications (Terry & Bohnenberger, 2007).
Service-learning has gained popularity as a method of teaching in recent decades, but it “hasbeen embraced by the academy to a much greater extent than it has been scrutinized” (Butin,
2006, p. 1). Further research is required to systematically examine what notions of citizenshipare developed and what social commitments are fostered through service-learning (Kahne etal., 2000). Gaps in knowledge also exist on how service-learning can bring about civic
outcomes (Bringle et al., 2017). There is likewise a need for qualitative research, which canprovide an in-depth understanding of the processes and outcomes of service-learning (Kahne
et al., 2000; Jones & Foste, 2017). Hence, this research study used qualitative inquiry to
examine the teaching-learning process of service-learning in order to better understand theconstruction of civic identity and sense of agency among students involved in this type ofuniversity-community engagement.
Literature Review
Not all service-learning programs are the same since this pedagogical approach widely differs
as to how it is designed and implemented. This is why there is a growing need to re-situate
service-learning towards its original intent and purpose of responding to underlying causes ofsocial injustice, rather than merely carrying it out in the context of charity (Kendall, 1990).
Depending on its intent and purpose as a form of community service embedded in students’learning, service-learning can either take on a traditional or a critical approach, which can bringabout competing notions of global citizenship.
The traditional approach to service-learning is primarily concerned with the academic learningof students, undermining the reciprocity that should take place between the university andcommunity (Chupp & Joseph, 2010). As a result, the community gets exploited in the interestof students’ learning (Bringle & Clayton, 2013). The service rendered in the community is
typically viewed as an act of charity, which often does not seek to attend to the root causes of9

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020social problems (Mitchell, 2008; Robinson, 2000). Power and privilege also tend to be
reinforced as students simply do tasks “for” the community (Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2000).
This approach to service-learning is oriented towards a neoliberal understanding of global
citizenship wherein capitalism dominates the global and local policy scene, oppressive
structures in society are maintained, and an us-them dichotomy is perpetuated as part of efforts
for a globalization-from-above (Falk, 1997; Mitchell, 2008). It functions to secure power anddominance (Tully, 2008) given that students are apathetic to their historical reality and are
unable to acknowledge how they continue to benefit from their privilege at the expense of themarginalized and disenfranchised (Thomas & Chandrasekera, 2015). This often goes on when
students are not challenged and disrupted enough to reflect on how unjust practices have led to
the need for their service in the community (Bruce & Brown, 2010). Students, in effect, remain
constrained to take collective action for genuine social change.
In contrast, the critical or transformative approach to service-learning, as Mitchell (2008)
clarifies, seeks genuine social change by attending to structural causes of social injustice. It
aims to form students into engaged citizens by providing them meaningful and relevant
opportunities to work “with” those from the community in responding to their identified needs
and in addressing unjust structures that made them marginalized and disenfranchised(Chambers, 2009; Mitchell, 2008; Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2000).
Such an approach to service-learning can bring about a critical understanding of global
citizenship insofar as initiatives towards a globalization-from-below approach include bottomup participation for social change (Falk, 1997; Mitchell, 2008). Critical global citizenshipentails students disrupting the status quo in society as they get to recognize social relations of
power and build authentic relationships with those from the community (Chambers, 2009;
Mitchell, 2008). This happens when “students”, as Chambers (2009) points out, “are often
challenged not only to step outside their “comfort zones” and confront some of their own
assumptions and beliefs about society and its systems but also to seek for themselves therelevance and meaning of their education and their responsibility as members of a privilegedsocial class” (p. 93). To do so requires allotting a safe space for critical reflection, which
involves examining deep-seated beliefs about diverse others and interrogating how thesecommonly held ideas and practices reinforce inequality in society (Stokamer & Clayton, 2017).
Transformative learning can take place during the teaching-learning process of service-learningwhen “assumptions or premises,” as Mezirow (1991) emphasizes, “are found to be distorting,inauthentic, or otherwise invalid” (p.6). The disorienting dilemma that follows can prompt
students to reflect on their commonly held ideas and practices, explore other possibilities andcourses of actions, and transform their perspectives and habits towards inclusivity (Mezirow,2009). Students, in turn, experience a sense of agency or the capacity to act against issues ofsocial justice (Barker, 2000).
However, most literature on transformative learning and global citizenship in service-learning
have focused on international placements of privileged students in the Global South. However,transformative opportunities for global citizenship in service-learning not only ensue in aninternational setting. Acting locally on global challenges and concerns is as influential asinternational placement in eliciting transformative learning and fostering global citizenshipduring service-learning since “experience in the local level, in particular, is foundational tounderstanding issues affecting the larger global community” (Engbert & Fox, 2011, p. 89).

10

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

This study, therefore, aims to substantiate how local placements in critical service-learning canbring about the necessary transformative learning for critical global citizenship.
Methodology
To look at the teaching-learning process that occurs in service-learning, this study carried out
a multi-sited ethnography because prolonged fieldwork in two or more research sites allows
for educational structures, lives, and processes to be carefully examined (Pierides, 2010).
Multi-sited ethnography is not only apt in “[following] people, connections, associations, andrelationships across space,” (Falzon, 2009, pp. 1–2), but it is also appropriate for making senseof “identities in diffuse time-space” (Pierides, 2010, p. 185). Furthermore, it is suitable when
the social phenomena cannot be fully explained by studying a single site only (Falzon, 2009).
These social phenomena may include globalization-related social issues (Boccagni, 2019),
such as the need for literacy and better maternal health. Understanding these social issues fromone research site may help in gaining insights from another site through imagining how thesesites are connected and related to each other (Marcus, 1999).
After obtaining ethics approval and informed consents, students from the following servicelearning initiatives were recruited as study participants:••

Literacy campaign of Miriam College as part of classes for Moral Development and
Education as well as Theology of Social Justice and Peace for the semester of August
to December 2015;
Maternal health initiative of Ateneo de Manila University as part of classes for The
Health Professional as Administrator and A Theology of Catholic Social Vision for thesemester of May to July 2015 and August to December 2015, respectively.

Eight Early Childhood Education students from the literacy campaign and ten Health Sciences
students from the maternal health initiative were included in this study. They were in theirfourth year of undergraduate degrees at these two educational institutions. Their names were
withheld to safeguard their anonymity and ensure data confidentiality. Pseudonyms wereinstead used in reporting the findings.
The experiences of these students in service-learning were followed using participant
observation of their encounters in the classroom and service-learning placements. The literacy
campaign entailed students to go for a one-day visit at Seedling Community, which is agovernment relocation site for informal settlers from parts of the Philippines’ capital. They
carried out various activities to support the reading and writing skills as well as values
formation of indigent children in the community. The maternal health initiative, on the other
hand, necessitated students to undertake a ten-day immersion at Leyte, which is a province in
the Philippines where the healthcare system was compromised by typhoon Haiyan in 2013.
The immersion involved students assessing the operations of birthing clinics in a rural setting
and proposing recommendations for the improvement of maternal healthcare delivery amongindigents in Leyte.
During participant observation, notes were written in a fieldwork notebook (Creswell, 1994).
To make sense of these written records of events, open coding for the meanings theseobservation notes might represent was done line by line until no new meaning could be
generated. Open codes that were similar in meaning were relabeled to a code that best
characterized them. Patterns were explored and comparisons were sought to better understand11

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

the social phenomena being studied. Unrelated codes were revisited, refined, and relabeled.
Related codes were thereafter organized together to create reduced categories of codes(Emerson et al., 2011; O’Reilly, 2012). Emerging themes were then identified from thesecategories of codes that were recurring (Creswell, 1994).
To gain more insights about the students’ service-learning experiences, their reflection journals
were collected after these journal entries were marked by their teachers. Narratives fromreflection journals underwent discourse analysis, which is not only helpful to understand how
identity in a given context is constructed through the use of language (Paltridge, 2008), but it
is also useful to “explore everyday situations and practices as part of larger processes and social
phenomena” (Taylor, 2013, p. 54). First, initial coding was done to sort out and organize thesenarratives. Second, patterns of language use were analyzed for consistency and differencesamong and within journal entries. Lastly, meanings were drawn based on how language
functions in a social setting such as service-learning (Gill, 2011).
To verify data gathered from participant observation and reflection journals, study participants
went through semi-structured interviews at the end of the semester. Audio-recordings of theseinterviews were transcribed word-for-word and copies of verbatim transcripts were shown to
the study participants for member checking. Narratives from these interviews were thereafter
examined using discourse analysis as specified above.
To ensure the trustworthiness of this study’s findings, prolonged fieldwork and member
checking were done so that the gathered data were closely illustrative of the social reality ofthe study participants. Furthermore, the specific context of this study was described in thisreport to inform other researchers whether the findings of this study can apply to their setting.
The use of multiple sources of data was also detailed in this report so that this audit trail canallow other researchers to replicate the steps by themselves (Maher et al., 2018). Lastly,reflexivity was observed throughout the research process to minimize biases. It involved
maintaining a reflection journal while the fieldwork was carried out, undergoing regulardebriefing from impartial peers, and being self-conscious of doing research with the study
participants instead of researching on them.
Findings
This section describes the civic identity fostered and the sense of agency enacted when social
justice is emphasized in service-learning. It also examines the teaching-learning process
involved in critical service-learning, looking into the role of critical reflection in promoting
transformative learning and bringing about a critical understanding of global citizenship.
Literacy Campaign
Miriam College is a private academic institution that has offered Catholic schooling for womensince 1926. Its higher education unit is dedicated to preparing its students “for productive andrelevant careers that serve the needs and aspirations of the Filipino people and the global
environment” (Miriam College, 2011, p. 7). It seeks to educate its students as socially
responsive individuals, who can contribute to “a just and humane society in the context of achanging global environment” (Miriam College, 2011, p. 7).
Its College of Education aims to form students into teachers, who are “engaged agents andadvocates for social change,” by adopting innovative and relevant approaches to studentcentered learning (Miriam College, 2011, p. 197). Included among these approaches are

12

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

opportunities for service-learning that cater to the needs of underprivileged children, out-ofschool youth, and children with disabilities (Miriam College, 2020).
The literacy campaign is one of several service-learning efforts of the College of Education for
its Early Childhood Education students. In this study, it became an integral part of the classes
in Moral Development and Education as well as Theology of Social Justice and Peace so thatstudents, according to their teachers, not only understand “the role of a teacher in imparting
values to school children as they learn to read and write”, but they can also “make sense of
their immersion in the community in light of Catholic Social Teaching.”
Civic identity. During their interviews, the Early Childhood Education students expressed at
the outset how the literacy campaign, as a form of service-learning, became a practical
approach for them to help indigent children through teaching. They felt “service-learning,” asconveyed by Valerie, “allowed [them] not only to use what [they] have been learning as ateacher but also to make a difference in society”. For instance, this service-learning, asemphasized by Jade and Kayla, provided them meaningful and relevant opportunities toaddress social problems, such as the need for literacy and quality education in the country,
through teaching underprivileged students reading and writing skills as well as values
formation, among others.
This service-learning also taught the Early Childhood Education students, such as Jasmine,
Jade, Rebecca, Gabby, and Melissa how to acknowledge their privileges and, as a result, how
to be considerate of others in need. As they spent a whole day in Seedling Community, theyrealized their privileged lives were in stark contrast to the socio-economic circumstances of
those in a relocation site. So “[their] perspectives”, as stated by Melissa, “about others
changed” and “[they] became more sensitive to the needs of those living in poverty”.
Additionally, their immersion in Seedling Community not only made the Early Childhood
Education students aware of the “way of living” in relocation sites, but it compelled them toconfront the status quo in society, examine their previously held assumptions, and explore how
their privileges have contributed to the prevailing social problems. Gabby, Melissa, andRebecca, for example, found themselves questioning the socio-economic and political realitiesof people displaced in relocation sites, challenging their stereotypes and deep-seated beliefs
about poverty, and evaluating their possible roles in propagating oppressive structures insociety.
Sense of agency. Many of them, including Jasmine, felt encouraged that their brief visit in
Seedling Community was able to “give simple joys to the children there”. Because of thisheartwarming response, Rebecca, among others, realized that “they do not need to dosomething big to have a significant impact on others”. Their “small, simple acts” of teachingthese indigent children gave them a sense of agency that they can contribute to some degree tosociety. For example, teaching values formation through storytelling might seem too basic but,as pointed out by Jade, “[these children] could learn something that can be useful in the future”.
Even though their participation in this literacy campaign was short, their experiences in
Seedling Community reinforced their commitment to contribute to society through teaching.
All the Early Childhood Education students included in this study signified their intentions totake part in volunteer teaching, while Jasmine, Jade, Rebecca, Sandy, and Melissa also
entertained teaching in public schools and remote areas so that they can help improve literacy
in the countryside. Such commitment to make a difference in society, according to Kayla, was13

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

brought about by their understanding that being an agent of social change “should not stopfrom the time their visit to the community ended”.
However, it was not clear whether this capacity to act and make a difference in society throughteaching would be enough to ameliorate the social conditions of marginalized anddisenfranchised as well as transform societal structures that made the residents of indigent
communities, such as Seedling Community, poor. Commitment for social change wasapparent, but there was no certainty if this commitment would be persistent and long-lasting.
Transformative learning. This semblance of critical global citizenship could be partly
attributed to the transformative learning that happened while the Early Childhood Education
students participated in this service-learning. Changes in their perspectives took place as theirexperiences in Seedling Community were different from their impressions of families living inpoverty. For instance, Melissa was taken aback that the children of Seedling Community were
hopeful about their circumstances as opposed to her belief that these children would wallow in
self-pity for being poor. Mia was likewise surprised when these children expressed theiraltruistic intentions to help the Seedling Community when they grow up:
A girl said she wanted to be a lawyer so that she can help those in their community
who get wrongly accused. There is another girl, who wanted to become an engineer
so that she can fix the houses in their community.
These Early Childhood Education students, such as Melissa, Gabby, Sandy, and others also
learned from their involvement in this service-learning on how they should “put [themselves]
first in the situation of others” rather than be quick to judge those in poverty.
To some extent, such perspective transformations came about because of the opportunities forcritical reflection given to these Early Childhood Education students. Although their teachersfor Moral Development and Education as well as Theology of Social Justice and Peace were
not able to accompany them during their one-day visit at Seedling Community due to schedule
constraints, they were guided closely by their teachers as they planned for their servicelearning. In class, they were also instructed to look back and examine their experiences inservice-learning by providing them with general prompts for reflection, which were vital totheir paper submission and class presentation by the end of the semester.
However, these students could have more opportunities to make sense of their service-learning
experiences that were inconsistent with their previously held assumptions and deep-seatedbeliefs if their teachers were present to mentor them when necessary during the literacy
campaign. The broad instructions to reflect on “significant insights to the entire experience inservice-learning” also might not be enough in supporting students to navigate through thedisorienting dilemma they experienced while in service-learning. Nevertheless, their teachers
were available for consultation within and outside the confines of the classroom to attend to
the needs and concerns of the students.
Maternal Health Initiative
Ateneo de Manila University is a private institution of Catholic Higher Education, which caters
to both men and women since it turned co-educational in 1973. Its liberal education aims toform students, who “will devote their lives to the service of others, and through the promotionof justice, serve especially those who are most in need of help, the poor, and the powerless”(Ateneo de Manila University, 2016, p. 5). It aspires to educate individuals into “leaders, who

14

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020are globally attuned but also deeply rooted in local needs and aspirations, especially of the poorand marginalized” (Ateneo de Manila University, 2020, p. 1).
Its Health Sciences Program seeks to “form professionals with a broad and deep understandingof health, from its foundation in sciences to its relevance in development and the effectivenessin its management” (Ateneo de Manila University, 2014, p. 297). Integrated into its curricularofferings are opportunities for service-learning wherein students are expected to becomesocially aware and socially involved as they apply theories into practice in a community setting(Ateneo de Manila University, 2013).
The maternal health initiative is one of the service-learning efforts of the Health Sciences
Program for its students. In this study, it became central to the delivery of classes for The
Health Professional as Administrator and A Theology of Catholic Social Vision so that Health
Sciences students, according to their teachers, can better understand the Philippine health caresystem by “building relationships with a marginalized community, analyzing the issues facedby the community, reflecting on those issues using Scripture and Catholic Social Teaching,and developing an action plan for journeying with the community”.
Civic identity. Similar to the Early Childhood Education students, all the Health Sciences
students included in this study appreciated their chosen discipline more as they came acrossthe many ways a health professional can contribute to society. Mae, for instance, expressed
how her “experience with the marginalized [in their immersion in Leyte] influenced [her] to
become a doctor for a bigger reason”. Rather than confining themselves inside the clinic, suchaspiration to be “a doctor with a sense of purpose,” according to Sophia, would entail them to
get involved in public health issues and concerns, such as the need for better maternal
healthcare in the country.
Ciara, among others, also learned in this service-learning how to acknowledge their privilegesand “be mindful of the people they were interacting with”. However, this would require looking
for similarities instead of emphasizing differences. For example, James pointed out that:… when we first encounter someone that we do not know, sometimes we may havethe tendency to first see what sets us apart from them. We initially see the differences
between each other, which may develop into these boundaries that we accidentallyor inadvertently create between ourselves. These boundaries somewhat distance us
from others and ultimately contributed to the awkwardness or perhaps difficulties
that we feel when we try to interact with them… These boundaries that we set up
between ourselves could actually be the root causes of these social issues.
In fact, they, as Randolph realized, “can always find some common ground [despite thedifferences] – a common ground that [they] can build upon”.
However, these opportunities to build relationships with the marginalized and disenfranchisedcommunity in Leyte did not occur at once. In contrast to the Early Childhood Education
students, who were able to establish rapport early on with the children and residents of Seedling
Community, it took a while for the Health Sciences students to step out of their comfort zone.
Fiona, for example, was initially “shy” and “did not know how to start a conversation” withthose not familiar to her. Nonetheless, they, according to Megan, were able to engage in“genuine dialogue” the longer they spent their immersion in Leyte. As they listened to thestories and became aware of the plight of the marginalized and disenfranchised, the more they

15

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

found themselves examining their pre-conceived notions about poverty, considering how theirprivileges have taken part in perpetuating social problems, and questioning the status quo insociety.
Sense of agency. Similar to the Early Childhood Education students, James and the other
Health Sciences students were able to recognize through this maternal health initiative that they
can “help change certain systems even in the smallest way”. Ciara, for instance, felt this senseof agency or the capacity to act and make a difference by simply “listening to people’s stories”
and “giving voice to the people [at the grassroots], who are not able to voice out their concerns”.
It meant providing those at the grassroots, according to James, with “a certain hope that they
were not fully incapable of changing their situation”.
It was not certain though whether this sense of agency and commitment to social change would
be enough to address the social conditions of marginalized and disenfranchised communities
as well as challenge the oppressive structures in society. Nevertheless, they, as Rachel
observed, “were not alone [in their aspirations] as there are also other people in the healthsector, who seek for a better healthcare system in the country”.
Transformative learning. This display of critical global citizenship could be partly credited
to the transformative learning that the Health Sciences students underwent during their ten-day
immersion in Leyte. There were opportunities for perspective transformation as students
encountered dissonance between their previously held assumptions and their experiences
during service-learning. Ciara and Sophia, for example, caught themselves being “quick tojudge others” and had to remind themselves every now and then “to just be open about
everything, to hold [their] assumptions, or to hold their judgment” as they spent theirimmersion in Leyte.
However, most of their perspective transformations did not happen easily. Their teacher for
The Health Professional as Administrator, who accompanied them during the ten-day
immersion in Leyte, had to prod these students to “check themselves for personal biases”. Thisoccasional prodding to examine their preconceived notions and stereotypes of others was
initially met with resistance because, as Gabriel explained, they “did not like to be provoked
to get out of [their] comfort zone”. They felt ill at ease of being “roused” to put themselves inthe situation of others.
Nevertheless, all the Health Sciences students included in this study eventually began toappreciate the importance of critical reflection during their service-learning. Journal writing
for Erin became an opportunity for her to reflect and examine her points of view and deepseated beliefs. It also helped Sophia “to know [herself] more and to provide [her] with clarity
during moments [she] felt lost, confused, and distracted”. The specific prompts they had torespond in their journal entries also gave Ciara, among others,
the chance to process what [she] had done through the day, to think about what [she]could have done better and what [she could] learn from the experience, and, mostimportantly, to know how [she] was able to relate well with the people [she] had
encountered.
Providing them structured time to share their reflection during their immersion in Leyte also
allowed these students to learn from the insights of their peers and, in turn, enrich their own
experiences in service-learning. The presence of their teacher during the maternal health16

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

initiative was likewise seen valuable (albeit belatedly) as he was available to attend to thestudents as they encountered disorienting dilemmas during service-learning. For example,“being guided [by their teacher] throughout the immersion on how to connect with others” hadbrought Sophia and other Health Sciences students “to think beyond [their] own reality and toacknowledge other people’s reality”.
Discussion
As we confront the negative repercussions of globalization-from-above, institutions of higher
education in the Philippines and elsewhere are increasingly looked upon to educate for social
justice and global citizenship (Pashby & Andreotti, 2015). It is not surprising then that
undergraduate programs, such as the curricula offered by Miriam College and Ateneo deManila University, have taken the responsibility to respond to the needs of the country and thevarious challenges of the 21st century. To do so, these curricula seek to render the educational
experiences of students more meaningful and relevant by making use of service-learning as amethod of teaching that not only can foster professional development but also civic
engagement.
As seen in this study, an explicit and deliberate emphasis on social justice is salient if a criticalunderstanding of global citizenship is expected out of service-learning. Social justice should
not only be affirmed as an institutional thrust, but it should also be evident and intentional in
the delivery of classes that use service-learning as a method of teaching. The Early Childhood
Education students and the Health Sciences students in this study were not only given thenecessary space to understand the socio-economic and political realities of indigent
communities in light of Catholic Social Teaching on social justice, but they were also offeredconcrete and tangible opportunities to intervene and act on root causes of poverty, such as thelack of literacy and the need for better maternal health. Hence, the underlying concern of thesestudents during service-learning was to change social structures and address community
conditions instead of merely focusing on their academic learning. There was an authenticity torespond to social justice issues as a form of solidarity instead of being apathetic to the social
conditions of the marginalized and disenfranchised.
Notably, the experiences of these students in service-learning made them realize that they canbe agents of change and contribute to society even in simple ways through their chosen
discipline: the Early Childhood Education students can advocate for literacy through teaching
indigent children, while the Health Sciences students can promote public health throughattending to the healthcare needs of indigent communities. This civic identity fostered among
these students is characteristically understood in the context of their chosen profession most
likely because it is one aspect “they can readily identify and have an impact upon” (Terry &Bohnenberger, 2007, p. 10). Dvir and Avissar (2014) term this in their study as “criticalprofessional identity” wherein students involved in service-learning can find an ongoing
integration between their civic identity and professional identity.
Their experiences in service-learning also taught these Early Childhood Education students and
Health Sciences students that critical global citizenship entails recognizing how they continue
to benefit from their privilege as well as being considerate of others, particularly themarginalized and disenfranchised. Rather than imposing their own set of values, they learned
to take into consideration the perspectives of those at the grassroots whom they intend to help
(Lapayese, 2003). Similar to the study participants of Jones and Abes (2004), they
demonstrated an “ongoing reflection [of the ‘self’] in relation to the ‘other’… and a focus onothers as an important aspect of their [civic] identity” (p. 153).

17

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Rather than simply doing tasks “for” the community and perpetuating an us-them dichotomy,
these students were able to establish authentic relationships with the community during theirservice-learning. The Early Childhood Education students were able to connect with thechildren they taught in Seedling Community, whereas the Health Sciences students were able
to eventually strike a genuine dialogue with the indigents they came across in Leyte.
Specifically, knowing about the aspirations of children in the Seedling Community andlistening to the personal stories of those in Leyte allowed these students to resonate with theplight of the marginalized and disenfranchised. As a result, they learned how to learn about thecommunity where they had their immersion (Borrero et al., 2012). They became compassionate
too as their experiences in service-learning made them develop, as described by Rashedi et al.
(2015) of compassion as, “(a) an awareness of another’s pain, perception of reality, andpsychological state; (b) a feeling of kindness; (c) a yearning to mitigate the suffering; and (d)doing what is within one’s ability to lessen another’s suffering” (p. 132).
The whole experience of being immersed in the community for their service-learning not only
made them aware of social justice issues as they witnessed and examined the socio-economic
and political realities of the marginalized and disenfranchised, but it also compelled them torespond to pressing issues in society as “an act of necessity and solidarity” (Katsarouet al.,2010, p. 138). Similar to the studies of Crabtree (1998), Jones and Abes (2004), and Mitchell(2015), such social responsiveness and sense of agency most likely stemmed from therelationships that were established between the students and those from their service-learning
community.
The unfamiliar now became familiar as the emotional bonds from these newfound relationships
helped them to eventually step out of their comfort zones, examine their previously held
assumptions about poverty, and seek out similarities instead of differences (Naudé, 2015).
Changes in students’ perspectives happened as they made sense of the discrepancies between
their preconceived notions about others and their experiences in service-learning. Thistransformative learning, according to O’Sullivan et al. (2002), “involves experiencing a deep
structural shift in basic premises of thoughts, feelings, and actions” (p. xvii) by taking part incritical reflection. As shown in this study, structured opportunities for critical reflection not
only included providing specific prompts for journal writing, but these also necessitatedcreating a safe space for students to share their insights with peers, accompanying them as they
participated in service-learning, and guiding them as they navigated through the dissonance ordisorienting dilemma they encountered.
Strikingly, resistance to transformative learning can occur when students are challenged to stepout of their comfort zones, examine their previously held assumptions, and find a common
ground with those unfamiliar to them. Mezirow (1991) calls this as an error in learning wherein
students seem to selectively perceive their reality as part of coping with the anxiety brought
about by the mismatch between their deep-seated beliefs and their experiences in servicelearning. A safe space to articulate their concerns within and outside the confines of theclassroom must, therefore, be guaranteed to students so that changes in problematic
perspectives can eventually be facilitated.
Recommendations
Commitment to social change was evident among the students in this study but whether thiscommitment would be lifelong is still unknown. A longitudinal follow up of these students will
be useful since examining aspects of service-learning in an academic term, as Dvir and Avissar

18

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020(2014) point out, is not enough in investigating the impact of service-learning on civic
development. Several factors can also influence civic outcomes in service-learning. Variedsocial backgrounds, differences in personality, and other situational factors can account forcivic engagement in service-learning (Einfield & Collins, 2008). Being educated according toCatholic Social Teaching can likewise affect civic development in service-learning. Additional
research should be done to explore how these factors are related to civic outcomes in servicelearning. Generalizability of reported findings can also be an issue even if this study used multisited ethnography. More studies are necessary to substantiate the presented findings in thisstudy.
Conclusion
A focus on social justice may not be intuitive in service-learning, but it can be made explicit
and deliberate particularly if a critical understanding of global citizenship is envisioned among
students. As suggested in this study, acting locally on global challenges and concerns throughservice-learning can be as powerful as international placements in educating students about
critical global citizenship. Through structured opportunities for critical reflection and close
supervision from teachers, students not only can recognize how their unearned privileges havecontributed to social problems, but they can also gain a sense of agency to act on pressing
issues in society even in simple ways through their chosen profession. The emotional bonds
formed between the students and those from their service-learning community seem crucial forpreviously held assumptions to be examined and for transformative learning to take place.
Without these authentic relationships that were built in service-learning, solidarity and bottomup participation that characterize critical global citizenship seem unlikely to occur.

19

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

References
Ateneo de Manila University. (2013). Loyola Schools Faculty Manual. Ateneo de Manila
University.
Ateneo de Manila University. (2016). Loyola Schools Undergraduate Student Handbook.
Ateneo de Manila University.
Ateneo de Manila University. (2020). Undergraduate education in the Ateneo de Manila
University Loyola Schools. Ateneo de Manila University.
Barker, C. (2000). Cultural studies: Theory and practice. SAGE Publications Ltd.
Boccagni, P. Multi-sited ethnography. SAGE Publications, Ltd.
Borrero, N., Conner, J. & Mejia, A. (2012). Promoting social justice through service-learningin urban teacher education: The role of student voice. Partnerships: A Journal ofService-Learning and Civic Engagement, 3(1), 1–24.
Bringle, R. G. & Clayton, P. H. (2013). Conceptual frameworks for partnerships in service
learning. In P. H. Clayton, R. G. Bringle, & J. A. Hatcher (Eds.), Research on service
learning: Conceptual frameworks and assessment (pp. 539–571). Stylus Publishing,
LLC.
Bringle, R. G., Hatcher, J. A., & Hahn, T. W. (2017). Introduction to research on service
learning and student civic outcomes. In J.A. Hatcher, R. G. Bringle, & T. W. Hahn
(Eds.), Research on student civic outcomes in service learning (pp. 3–24). Stylus
Publishing, LLC.
Bruce, J., & Brown, S. (2010). Conceptualising service-learning in global times. Retrieved
June 5, 2020, from https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10092/3881/12622162_SLartcileforcritlitjournal2010printedversion.pdf?sequence=1
Butin, D. W. (2006). The limits of service learning in higher education. The Review of Higher
Education, 23(6), 473–498. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2006.0025
Chambers, T. (2009). A continuum of approaches to service learning within Canadianpostsecondary education. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 39(2), 77–100.
Chupp, M. G. & Joseph, M. L. (2010). Getting the most out of service learning: Maximizing
student, university, and community impact. Journal of Community Practice, 18(2-3),
190–212. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705422.2010.487045
Crabtree, R. D. (1998). Mutual empowerment in cross-cultural participatory development andservice learning: Lessons in communication and social justice from projects in El
Salvador and Nicaragua. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 26(2), 182–
209. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909889809365501
Creswell, J.W. (1994). Research design: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. SAGE
Publications, Inc.
Dvir, N., & Avissar, I. (2014). Constructing a critical professional identity among teacher
candidates during service-learning. Professional Development in Education, 40(3),398–415. https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2013.818573
Einfield, A. & Collins, D. (2008). The relationships between service-learning, social justice,multicultural competence, and civic engagement. Journal of College Student
Development, 49(2), 95–109. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2008.0017

20

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (2011). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes.
University of Chicago Press.
Engberg, M. E., & Fox, K. (2011). Exploring the relationship between undergraduate servicelearning experiences and global perspective-taking. Journal of Student Affairs
Research and Practice, 48(1), 85–105. https://doi.org/10.2202/1949-6605.6192
Falk, R. (1997). Resisting ‘globalisation-from-above’ through ‘globalisation-from-below’.
New Political Economy, 2(1), 17–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563469708406281
Falzon, M. A. (2009). Introduction. In M.A. Falzon (Ed.), Multi-sited ethnography: Theory,
praxis, and locality in contemporary research (pp. 1–23). Ashgate Publishing
Company.
Gill, R. (2011). Discourse analysis. In M.W. Bauer & G. Gaskell (Eds.), Qualitative
researching with text, image, and sound (pp. 173–190). SAGE Publishing, Ltd.
Kahne, J., Westheimer, J., & Rogers, B. (2000). Service learning and citizenship in higher
education. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 7(1), 42–51.
Katsarou, E., Picower, B., & Stovall, D. (2010). Acts of solidarity: Developing urban social
justice educators in the struggle for quality public education. Teacher Education
Quarterly, 37(3), 137–153. https://doi.org/ 10.2307/23479502
Kendall, J.C. (1990). Combining service and learning: An introduction. In J.C. Kendall andAssociates (Eds.), Combining service and learning: A resource book for communityand public service (pp. 1–42). National Society for Experiential Education.
Jones, S. R. & Abes, E. S. (2004). Enduring influences of service-learning on college
students’ identity development. Journal of College Student Development, 45(2), 149–
166. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2004.0023
Jones, S. R. & Foste, Z. (2017). Qualitative research on service learning and student civic
outcomes. In J.A. Hatcher, R.G. Bringle, & T.W. Hahn (Eds.), Research on student
civic outcomes in service learning (pp. 241–259). Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Lapayese, Y. V. (2003). Toward a critical global citizenship education. Comparative
Education Review, 47(4), 493–501.
Maher, C., Hadfield, M., Hutchings, M., & de Eyto, A. (2018). Ensuring rigor in qualitative
data analysis: A design research approach to coding combining NVivo withtraditional material methods. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 17(1), 1–
13. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406918786362
Marcus, G. E. (1999). What is at stake -- and is not -- in the idea and practice of multi-sited
ethnography. Canberra Anthropology, 22(2), 6–14.
https://doi.org/10.1080/03149099909508344
Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. Jossey-Bass.
Mezirow, J. (2009). Transformative Learning Theory. In J. Mezirow, E.W. Taylor, andAssociates (Eds.), Transformative learning in practice: Insights from community,
workplace, and higher education (pp. 19–31). Jossey-Bass.
Miriam College. (2011). Bulletin of Information 2011-2012. https://www.mc.edu.ph/Portals/0/HEU/MCBOI_2011-2012.pdf
Miriam College. (2020). Bachelor of early childhood education. http://www.mc.edu.ph/eced

21

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Mitchell, T. (2008). Traditional vs. critical service-learning: Engaging the literature todifferentiate two models. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 14(2),50–65.
Mitchell, T. (2015). Using a critical service-learning approach to facilitate civic identity
development. Theory into Practice, 54(1), 20–28.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2015.977657
Naudé, L. (2015). On (un)common ground: Transforming from dissonance to commitment ina service learning class. Journal of College Student Development, 56(1), 84–102.
https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2015.0002
O’Reilly, K. (2012). Key concepts in ethnography. SAGE Publications, Inc.
O’Sullivan, E., Morrell, A. & O’Connor, M. (2002). Expanding the boundaries oftransformative learning: Essays on theory and praxis. New York, NY: Palgrave.
Paltridge, B. (2008). Discourse analysis: An introduction. Continuum.
Pashby, K. & Andreotti, V.D.O. (2015). Critical global citizenship in theory and practice. In
J. Harshman, T. Augustine, & M.M. Merryfield (Eds.), Research in Global
Citizenship Education (pp. 9–34). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing Inc.
Pierides, D. (2010). Multi-sited ethnography and the field of educational research. Critical
Studies in Education, 51(2), 179–195. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508481003731059
Rashedi, R., Plante, T. G., & Callister, E. S. (2015). Compassion development in higher
education. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 43(2), 131–139.
https://doi.org/10.1177/009164711504300205
Robinson, T. (2000). Dare the school build a new social order? Michigan Journal ofCommunity Service Learning, 7(1), 142–157.
Stokamer, S. T. & Clayton, P. H. (2017). Student civic learning through service learning:
Instructional design and research. In J. A. Hatcher, R.G. Bringle, & T. W. Hahn
(Eds.), Research on student civic outcomes in service learning (pp. 45–65). Stylus
Publishing, LLC.
Taylor, S. (2013). What is discourse analysis? Bloomsbury Publishing.
Terry, A. & Bohnenberger, J. (2007). Service learning…by degrees: How adolescents canmake a difference in the real world. Heinemann.
Thomas, L. & Chandrasekera, U. (2015). Uncovering what lies beneath: An examination of
power, privilege, and racialization in international social work. In R. Tiessen & R.
Huish (Eds.), Globetrotting or Global Citizenship (pp. 90–111). University Toronto
Press.
Tully, J. (2008). Two meaning of global citizenship: Modern and diverse. In M. A. Peters, A.
Britton, & H. Blee (Eds.), Global citizenship education: philosophy, theory, andpedagogy (pp. 15–40). Sense Publishers.
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization [UNESCO]. (2014).
Global citizenship education: Preparing learners for the challenges of the 21st
century. Paris, FR: UNESCO.
UNESCO. (2017). The ABCs of global citizenship education. UNESCO Digital Library.
Retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000248232

22

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

UNESCO. (2018). Global citizenship education and the rise of nationalist perspectives:
Reflections and possible ways forward. UNESCO.
UNESCO. (2019). Addressing global citizenship education in adult learning and education:
Summary report. UNESCO Institute of Lifelong Learning.
Ward, K. & Wolf-Wendel, L. (2000). Community-centered service learning: Moving fromdoing for to doing with. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(5), 767–780.
https://doi.org/10.1177/00027640021955586
Corresponding author: Genejane M. Adarlo
Contact email: gadarlo@ateneo.edu

23

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

24

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Social Support for International Students in Foreign Language Classroom
Communities of Practice
Takuya Kojima
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Italy

25

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Abstract
Drawing on communities of practice, this article considers social support for international
students in Japanese as a foreign language classroom at an Australian university. Social
support, which is a means of promoting well-being, is often set outside international students’
day-to-day routines, especially outside classrooms in that academic support is a primaryconcern. Language education studies concerning student emotional experiences acknowledge
that classrooms are venues for emotional turmoil and thus call for more attention on classrooms
to better understand and support student learning. Yet, in-class social support has been underdiscussed to date. This qualitative case study focused on four international students in an
introductory Japanese course within a Japanese program community of practice and analyzed
the data collected over a 13-week semester using a reflexive thematic analysis to write four
vignettes. The vignettes highlight that the students felt stressed in their daily and academic
lives, and built, gave, received, and benefited from social support in the classroom. The social
support impacted not only their Japanese learning, but also their study for other subjects; thatis, it enhanced their overall well-being as students. Exploring in-class social support using acommunity of practice perspective helped elucidate how educators can promote social support
in foreign language classrooms. Further, it prompted us to reconsider what classrooms are for,and underlined the importance of paying attention to such support to enhance the well-beingof international students who are likely to face challenges frequently.
Keywords: classroom, communities of practice, emotional experiences, foreign language,international students, social support, vignette

26

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Social support has become as important as academic support for international students at
Australian universities. This is because their day-to-day living is challenging. The students not
only have to manage a heavy study workload delivered via unaccustomed teaching methods,
but also contend with everyday life without family support, in a place where encounters withthe unfamiliar are all-too-common (Forbes-Mewett & Sawyer, 2016). Not all, but many ofthem face such challenges using English as their additional language, which is why language
education studies concern them (Page & Chahboun, 2019). Further, international students areoften under the pressure of hefty fees, restricting flexible academic paths. Therefore, they arelikely to have emotional, cultural, and financial issues impacting their mental health and wellbeing (Blum et al., 2012; Rosenthal et al., 2008; Stallman & Scochet, 2009). Social support
refers to connections and resources within a social network that improve mental health andpromote well-being (Pavri & Monda-Amaya, 2001; Shumaker & Hill, 1991). Providing
effective social support is likely to enhance international student well-being and resultant
academic performance.
Today, social support is often seen as an add-on that sits outside international students’ dayto-day living routines. For instance, a cultural mentor program, social clubs, counselingservices, and an international student welcome support desk at an airport are available in thecase of the university where the author conducted this study. These types of social support
expect international students to be proactive and utilize such opportunities and services
voluntarily. Yet, doing so is becoming harder and harder for them due to “greater timepressures, a larger range of courses and accompanying time-tabling complexities, and thegrowth of casual and part-time jobs in the 24/7 economy” (Forbes-Mewett & Sawyer, 2016, p.
672). Thus, exploring alternative means of social support is needed. This article focuses onclassrooms embedded in their day-to-day living routines, yet often assumed to primarily focus
on academic support (Pavri & Monda-Amaya, 2001).
This article aims to explore classrooms as spaces to facilitate social support for international
students, drawing on a case of a Japanese as a Foreign Language (JFL) education classroom at
an Australian university. JFL classrooms are on the focus because Japanese is both the target
and the medium of learning; therefore, such social spaces may not immediately define power
relationships based on the ability to use English as social and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1991;
Razfar, 2005). The theoretical underpinning of this article is communities of practice (E.
Wenger-Trayner & B. Wenger-Trayner, 2015), setting the goal of learning as “community
building” and seeing learning as “belonging, participating and communicating” (Sfard, 1998,
p. 7). Despite the critique that classrooms are unlikely to have all the features of CoP (Haneda,
2006; Wenger, 1998), it is argued that it is possible for classrooms to become closer to CoP
when CoP informs the educational practice (Nagao, 2018). The JFL course design this article
examines is informed by the concepts of CoP (Thomson, 2017). Focusing on such CoP-likeclassrooms is best suited for consideration of in-class social support. However, such studies
have been scarce to date.
In the following sections, studies concerning student well-being in the field of language
education are overviewed, CoP is explained, and the literature drawing on CoP is reviewed toclarify the needs of the current study. Then, this article presents the methodology: the cases,
data sources, and analysis method employed to achieve this study’s aim. After describing theJapanese course as the background of the findings, four vignettes of focal participants areprovided. The discussion considers the effect of in-class social support for the students, how
the JFL classrooms come to offer social support and emotional experiences with social support

27

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020in the classrooms. The article concludes by discussing the limitations of this study andsuggesting future studies.
Literature Review
Learners’ mental health and well-being have been one of the major concerns for studies on
emotions, “conscious feelings that evoke reactions in individuals” such as enjoyment,
happiness, hope, surprise, anger, fear, shame, or boredom (Ross, 2015, p. 12), in the field of
language education. As often reported (López & Aguilar, 2013; Macintyre et al., 2009; Oxford,1990), “intense emotional experiences … direct interactions, affect learning and performanceand influence personal growth” of students (Pekrun et al., 2007, p. 13). For instance, anxiety
over examinations, evaluations, and grading (judgment) has been found to affect student
performance negatively (Zheng, 2008). Such studies are often in the cognitive paradigm andisolate and detect variables as static features of individuals (for example gender, ethnicity, andcultural background) that might affect one’s emotions and performance (Harzem, 2004; Ross,
2015). Thus, what matters has been what is inside each individual. Dörnyei (2009) argued thatclassrooms have been seen as “venues for a great deal of emotional turmoil, yet affect has beenan almost completely neglected topic” (p. 219, emphasis added by the author). This suggeststhat paying greater attention to classrooms may help better understand emotional experiences
and support language learners.
Since a social turn (Block, 2003), the field of language education has expanded its focus toward
how environments affect learning. Studies in the field began examining social aspects of thelanguage learner’s emotions through more qualitative-oriented approaches (Garett & Young,2009). In such studies, language learners are seen as “whole persons with hearts, bodies, andminds, with memories, fantasies, loyalties, [and] identities” (Kramsch, 2006, p. 251). A
sociocultural view understands that their language learning “is grounded in social interaction
and conditioned by social, cultural and historical contexts” (Benson & Cocker, 2013, p. 1).
From this viewpoint, the learning of such learners can be enhanced when an effective learning
environment is designed.
The current study draws on CoP to discuss such a learning environment design. CoP is a social
theory of learning that sheds light on relationships between learning and the learning
environment. It is defined as “group[s] of people who share a concern or a passion forsomething they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (E. Wenger-Trayner& B. Wenger-Trayner, 2015, p. 1). There are three foundational elements of CoP: domain, ashared passion or concern; practice, regular interactions with each other in a certain way; andcommunity, a social platform where members trust each other and feel a sense of belonging.
When these three develop, a community as a CoP enables and enhances learning as
participation. Learning as participation occurs as newcomers continuously build theirrelationships with the other members, concepts, and tools in a CoP. In doing so, they come tosee themselves, and others come to see them, as competent, contributing, and indispensable
members. With such mutually established membership, the members grow collective
responsibility and engage with collective learning (E. Wenger-Trayner & B. Wenger-Trayner,2015). Studies have so far employed CoP to investigate, understand, and design effective
communities for such collective learning. Yet, these studies caution us to explore classrooms
carefully.
Studies drawing on CoP have indicated that facing challenges is more common than assumed
for students in classrooms. For instance, Jang (2017) demonstrated how a classroom where

28

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020prescriptive correctness stands as an overt standard for judgment can be a stressful space, as it
creates unequal power relationships among class members with different types of social status
and positions. Specifically, Jang’s study revealed the power of high English proficiency in acontext where English is the primary language of communication for learning content. In her
study, the hierarchical relationships between a native teacher and students and then Englishnative students and non-English-native students are established. Yet, she also illustrated thatsuch relationships are still subject to negotiation and change. Jang argued that a certain levelof language proficiency is usually expected for each type of class, which shapes the student
experience in classrooms. Lantolf and Genung (2002) reported the case of a struggling student
in a Chinese language classroom due to the unnegotiable power relationship between the classteacher with a particular learning belief and the student with an opposing belief. In short,classrooms are often considered as “site[s] of struggle” (Darvin & Norton, 2015, p. 36).
Such struggles may arise in the studies employing CoP because the classrooms in the studies
are unlikely to function as CoP in its original sense. This is due to misalignments between
classroom realities and CoP as a theoretical construct. While a full discussion on themisalignments is given on other occasions, the following are a few instances relevant to thecurrent article. First, learning is at the center of attention in classrooms, while the practice iscentral in CoP (Wenger, 1998). Members in CoP participate to practice their knowledge andskills to satisfy a shared interest or solve a shared issue (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Learning
occurs as an integral part of the practice. Second, membership makeups differ. CoP expects tohave members with varying lengths of experience, from newcomers to members with sufficientexperience and master practitioners. In contrast, classrooms usually have a teacher and students
beginning to participate at the same time.
Despite the misalignments, adjusting foreign language (FL) classroom realities to CoP maylead to turning classrooms into CoP-like communities (Nagao, 2018; Thomson, 2017). Yet,learning in classrooms where CoP informs educational design is still underexplored. In
particular, how CoP-like classrooms impact on students with a focus on classrooms as spaces
for social support has not yet been thoroughly discussed.
Methodology
The current study is part of a larger study conducted to theorize a special CoP for FL classrooms
drawing on introductory JFL classrooms in a Japanese program CoP connecting all courses in
the program and surrounding communities (Thomson & Mori, 2015). In the program, students
can find various peers, purposes, and settings, which are often scarce in FL learning settings,
for their learning to be interactional, motivational, and authentic. The classrooms in this study
are considered as special CoP-like classrooms (Kojima, 2019).
This qualitative study focuses on four students’ experiences, Claire, Susie, Roy, and Raymond,as the focal cases of international students undertaking a FL course at an Australian university.
These names are pseudonyms to protect the privacy of the students. They were the onlyinternational students among 13 student-participants of the larger study and, thus, were chosen.
This study had two tiers. First, it aims to explore the complexity and uniqueness of a particular
entity in a real-life setting using multiple data sources. Second, it compares collective cases toachieve a well-rounded understanding of and insight into the interest of the study (Thomas,
2011).
The data came from observation notes, semi-structured interviews, and journals collected overa 13-week semester and was approved by the university ethics committee where the data was29

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

collected. Each week, the author observed four seminars (explained later), from Week 4, when
all potential participants in each class gave permission, to Week 13. From these four, the author
focuses on two seminars: Claire and Susie attended the same seminar, and Roy and Raymondattended the same seminar. The observation notes contain the student seating, teacher
instructions, activities, notable conversations among class members, and the author’s
afterthoughts. In three one-hour interviews, conducted in Week 7, 10 and 13, the studentparticipants reflected on and described their learning experiences, focusing on their
participation, relationship with others, and identity in the course. Three 200-word journals,
collected before each interview session, report first impressions of the course, experiences
regarding the interaction test (explained later), and what helped or hindered their active
participation.
A reflexive thematic analysis of this study aims to interpret, construct, develop, and tellcontext-situated stories through thoughtful, reflective, active, and prolonged immersion in data
(Braun & Clarke, 2019). It was guided by the purpose of this study while allowing for emergent
themes, e.g. socialization. The analysis of individual cases identified how the participants
increasingly received social support as the semester progressed. Meanwhile, the analysis foundhow such social support enhanced their learning experience. A cross-case analysis (Schwandt,
2001) at a later stage looked for commonalities and differences among the four cases to
elucidate salient experiences of the four focal students.
This article presents findings as four vignettes; short scenarios of reflexive interpretive
accounts illustrating complex research findings and their theoretical embedding narratively(Langer, 2016). The emotions of the researchers are often shared in vignettes. The author, who
had been an international student at an Australian university in the past, could better present
the emotions of Claire, Susie, Roy, and Raymond through vignettes.
Research Context
The first-semester introductory Japanese course at an Australian university was designed for
those with little learning experience of Japanese. The objectives were for students to become
capable of talking about themselves and familiar topics, e.g., university life and daily routines,
as well as writing in the three writing systems; namely, Hiragana, Katakana, and a small setof elementary Kanji. The course had five assessment tasks. Seminars had an oral assessment
called an interaction test, which was worth 25% of the total mark. It involved pairs of students
preparing outside class time and presenting a five- to seven-minute performance. They peerevaluated each other in the form of voting for the top three pairs who received bonus points,
together with the mark from their teacher. The rest were two dictation tests, a mid-term
examination, and a final examination. More than 80% of attendance was required to take thefinal examination.
The course was expected to be challenging as is evident in the average failure rate of the course
in previous years being approximately 15%, higher than the university average of 8%, despite
years of high satisfaction rates and large numbers of positive feedbacks in student evaluations.
The pace of the learning was considered approximately twice as fast as learning at secondary
schools.
The course in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences is primarily for first-year students
majoring in arts. In reality, it consisted of students from all years (from first to near graduating)and all nine faculties (including fine art, business, engineering, and science). This was due to30

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

the course being one of the general education or free elective subjects. Full-time students took
up the Japanese course as one of four courses in the semester, whichever degree program they
undertook. Nearly 400 students were enrolled in the course.
Every week, students attended two-hour lectures with about 200 students, one-hour tutorials
with about 25 students, and then two-hour seminars with about 25 students. Lectures
introduced new topics followed by short activities with neighboring students, tutorials asked
students to engage with middle-length interactive activities, and seminars provided longer andmore complex activities. All types of classes employed a social and interactive mode oflearning as its underlying educational approach. Students were expected to prepare beforehand
to participate in interactions using Japanese in classes.
In the seminars, the students engaged with varieties of interactive pair and group activities suchas homework checks, forming short sentences, interviewing each other, reading dialogues
aloud, and role-plays comprising almost 90% of class time; . Seminar teachers monitored andsupported their students when needed after providing brief instructions about activities andquickly clarifying grammar points. One to a few support members, called Senpais (senior
students), came from the university’s advanced Japanese courses to facilitate the student
interactive mode of learning with the seminar teachers and add variety to class interactions
such as presenting a model role-play with the teacher (Thomson, 1998). The author in the focal
seminars acted as one of the Senpais while conducting observations.
To facilitate pair and group interactions, seminar members arranged desks and seats so thestudents could form groups of four to six and face each other. The students often discussed
issues with each other as the teacher and Senpais could not attend to all students at the sametime. During the activities, including role-plays, students were encouraged to use not only the
information in the textbook but also to include their own information. Such interactions aimed
to allow students to show who they were and get to know each other. To know each other as
people with names, they created a paper name card when the semester started. A few studentsbrought them out when each class started and displayed it on a desk until the class ended.
Findings
Clair’s Vignette
Claire was an Indonesian, second-year student majoring in marketing and finance. She came
to Australia after graduating from a secondary school in Singapore. Initially, her pleasant visit
to Japan just before the semester began and desire to befriend students from different faculties,
as her sibling did, motivated Claire to take up the course as her general education subject.
Another reason for taking the course was her intention to create a breathing space in her
intensive and, more importantly, stressful university studies. Her marketing and financecourses focused on “self-learning … you sit down, look through the textbook, [and] do yourhomework” (third interview). Students were expected to say correct answers, and she felt
“dumb” when failing to do so (first interview). Their participation was not voluntary but only
accounted for “five percent of [their] mark” (third interview). In such courses, Claire felt there
was no room for “self-expression,” which she thought was essential to knowing andbefriending each other (second interview).
Unlike in the marketing and finance courses, Claire expressed herself in the “lively,” “openminded,” “amicable,” “conducive,” “cheerful,” “light-hearted,” and “enjoyable” learning
environment of her seminar (first interview, first journal). Claire emphasized that she was31

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

“never afraid to make mistakes or ask questions” in the seminar where she would not be judged
based on what she said (first journal). Her participation was voluntary and genuine in theseminar. Such an atmosphere emerged due to the interactive learning and assessment activities,
which were consistent over the semester. While the regular interactive tasks built the firm
foundation of her positive experience, the highlight was when Claire and her partner were peervoted as the top pair in the interaction test. She explained they “successfully pushed[themselves] out of comfort zones, developed [their] creative thinking and strengthened [their]friendship” (second journal). After the test, she felt not only “a surge of relief” but also
“reward[ed]” (second journal).
The Japanese course was indeed “challenging” for Claire (first interview). Yet, the social
networks encouraged her to complete homework, attend classes, and participate fully in theactivities. Claire explained that her motivation to complete homework partly came from “peerpressure” (third interview). However, she also associated completing homework withenjoyably checking it with her classmates and thus used Japanese homework to reduce thestress she felt from the finance and marketing subjects.
Claire summarized what she experienced as “cohesive learning,” in which the students
simultaneously “socialized” and learned Japanese from one another (third interview). She
befriended her group members and was acquainted with many classmates from different
faculties as she looked forward. To her, the seminar was a “very supportive learning
environment where [they could] collectively learn from everyone” (third journal). She
pleasantly completed the “challenging” course and continued onto the second-semester
introductory course.
Susie’s Vignette
Susie was a Chinese, first-year student majoring in psychological science. She moved toAustralia when she joined the second-last year of an Australian high school. With an activeand ‘outdoorsy’ personality, she enjoyed the culture of Sydney, for example going to beaches
and hiking. However, she lived with a host-family who had specific dietary rules due toreligious reasons. She often felt stressed as she could not eat some of her favorite Chinese
cuisines at home.
Since she was young, Susie had longed to study Japanese due to her keen interest in“charming” and “attractive” Japanese pop-culture (JPC) such as Japanese animation (firstinterview). She could finally start studying Japanese at the university as Japanese courses were
not offered at her high school. She looked forward to meeting classmates with similar interests,
and planned to continue learning Japanese through to an advanced level so she could watch
anime without subtitles, communicate fluently with other speakers of Japanese, and live inJapan
When her very first semester at the university commenced, Susie “always th[ought] that others[were] doing better than [her]” in all courses (second interview). She identified “English[being] their first language” as one of the primary reasons for feeling inferior (second
interview). Yet, the Japanese course soon became the one she could enjoy. This was because
frequent pair and group interactions focusing on tone, pitch, attentive feedback, and bodylanguage allowed her to feel like a Japanese speaker, which differed from her usual self.
Further, such interactions helped her befriend classmates from different academic and cultural
backgrounds but with shared interests in JPC. Susie said, she made “close friends” with a“strong link [and] strong connection” in the seminar (third interview).

32

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Susie underwent further delightful experiences. She realized that the students, including
herself, often laughed when they made mistakes. However, it was not “playful” but a “friendly
laugh” (first interview). They often made similar mistakes and therefore laughed together toshare and reduce the feeling of embarrassment and face the challenge of learning Japanese
together. Moreover, the teachers quickly remembered student names, including hers, unlike theteachers in other courses, which pleasantly surprised her (first interview). Susie found theinteraction test challenging and felt “super nervous” (second interview). Yet, she felt lessnervous and remained focused as her classmates continued looking and smiling at her nicely
during her performance.
In the seminar, many students were senior to her so Susie could learn not only Japanese but
also “how to survive” at the university (first journal). As the semester progressed, managing
the study workload of four courses became increasingly difficult. However, she could “always
complain [about her] work,” “share [her] problems,” and receive both practical and affective
support from her seminar classmates (third interview).
Despite all the positive experiences, Susie did not pass the course. She could not spend enoughtime studying for the final examination of Japanese due to the excessive workload of her othersubjects. Nevertheless, she told the author how content she was about the entire experience in
the Japanese course when we happened to come across each other on campus after the semester
ended.
Roy’s Vignette
Roy was a Chinese (Cantonese speaker), third-year student majoring in computer engineering.
Since his first year, he had struggled to manage the study for the engineering courses, which
often included several projects, presentations, and written assignments within one semester.
Further, the engineering courses were stressful, as the students often “show[ed] off” their skills
and knowledge without considering “other’s feeling[s]” (second interview). Roy took up theJapanese course as his general education subject. He was interested in music composition using
Japanese-origin artificial voice, Japanese artisans, and traveling to Japan one day. His Japanesestudy was to equip himself with Japanese skills sufficient for daily basics and future travel. He
came to the course with his friend, Raymond (whose vignette appears below), and they attended
lectures and seminars together.
The first impression Roy had about the course was “welcom[ing]” (first interview). Despite
there being students already ahead - like Raymond, who self-studied Japanese beforehand Roy did not feel left behind as his classmates, teachers, and Senpais were kind, patient, andsupportive. Yet, the fast-paced course was not easy for Roy, who started from the point
expected by the course and who was still preoccupied with the heavy workload of othersubjects. Over the interaction test period, he felt further stress due to his partner Raymond’s
seriousness, much higher proficiency level, and expectation. However, Roy coped with the testby negotiating to change the original script written by Raymond into a manageable andentertaining one. On the test day, he heard his classmates saying, “Come on, Roy! It’s yourtime!” which he highly appreciated (second interview). He felt that his pair’s successfulinteraction test performance, supported by his classmates and peer-voted as the top pair, opened
up his “potential” and personality, unlike the “really stressful” “on-your-own” presentations
in his engineering courses (second interview). Both his pair and his group members performed
well. After the test, Roy, Raymond, and their group members had a celebration dinner together.

33

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Roy used to judge courses by his performance compared to the other students, which gave him
more psychological “burdens” and occasionally resulted in a sort of “depression” (thirdinterview). However, he stopped doing this in the Japanese course after the interaction test. For
him, the Japanese classes became “relaxing” and “refreshing,” which took away some of his“burdens” (third interview).
Feeling relaxed did not mean that Roy stopped doing his best in Japanese. He further increased
his “curiosity” in his study of Japanese and started to attend the lecture twice (in the morningand afternoon) toward the end of the semester (third interview). He even surprised himself by
not missing any Japanese classes, unlike the engineering classes, which he skipped as often as
he could. While his overall grade was not high, he enjoyably completed the course.
Raymond’s Vignette
Raymond was a Chinese, third-year student majoring in mechanical engineering. As a student
near graduation with a sound understanding of university study, he did not express any concern
regarding his study. However, he mentioned the gap between his way of spending leisure time,such as cooking at home with friends, and the typical Australian ways of spending time atcafés, beaches, mountains, and pubs. He called this his culture shock.
Raymond took up the Japanese course as a general education subject to fulfill his degree
requirements. He was partly motivated by his interest in JPC but was also considering enteringa master’s degree program in Japan, which he felt had a strong mechanical engineering
industry, which pushed Raymond to study Japanese. He had already self-studied Japanese,learning Hiragana, Katakana, and some expressions, and he had even considered taking theintermediate Japanese course. However, Roy was not able to do the same, so Raymond chosethe introductory course, which was rather for “leisure [and] joy or [a] WAM-booster” (firstjournal). WAM is weighted average mark.
In reality, Raymond occasionally experienced frustration and struggle, instead of “joy,”regardless of his high academic performance. During interactive activities, he often could notreach his full potential as the content was “too easy” for him, but not for the others (thirdinterview). While preparing for the interaction test, he also expressed his dissatisfaction at
having to make a “performance reduction” to accommodate Roy, despite it resulting in thebest performance in their seminar (second journal).
Even under such circumstances, Raymond maintained high motivation. He found andeffectively drew on opportunities to communicate with Senpais. He challenged himself in suchopportunities and satisfied his curiosity by asking Senpais questions beyond the course content.
During the interaction test, he observed his classmates supporting each other through clapping,making eye contact, and saying good luck. To him, it was “a model of the society” where
everyone encouraged each other to feel “less stressful” (second interview). He started
engaging in frequent interactions with his classmates about not only Japanese learning but also
university studies, such as engineering, and personal interests. Raymond described theexperience in the seminar as “the simulation of real making friend[s]” (third journal). It was asimulation because everyone was different from who they were outside the seminar whenplaying Japanese-speaking-selves. Yet, the friends they made were “real” (third journal).
Over the semester, Roy observed Raymond spending a greater amount of time on studying
Japanese than his engineering subjects. Yet, Roy said, Raymond performed in the engineeringcourses better than previous semesters. Roy thought that Japanese learning brought Raymond34

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

“confidence” and “good motivation,” which affected Raymond’s overall academic
performance (third interview).
Discussion
Effect of In-Class Social Support
This article has illustrated that Claire, Susie, Roy, and Raymond gained social support in theseminars. As international students, they felt stressed in their academic and daily living as
anticipated (Blum et al., 2012). The stress was certainly a burden for them, yet not to the extent
that they needed to seek external support like counselling (Forbes-Mewett & Sawyer, 2016).
International students like them may be quite common. The current study found that they copedwith or even reduced such moderate stress and enhanced well-being, which appeared to affecttheir academic performance positively. Notably, the effect went beyond the seminars. Claire
reduced her stress from her business course using Japanese homework, Susie learned “how tosurvive” at the university, Roy lifted the “burdens” of his engineering courses, and Raymondgained “confidence” and “good motivation” to do well in his engineering courses. Thissuggests how impactful social support just in one classroom can become. Classrooms are seen
as venues primarily for academic support (Pavri & Monda-Amaya, 2001). Social support isoften provided outside classrooms, which international students are expected to accessvoluntarily. Social support could also be promoted and effective in JFL classrooms embeddedin their day-to-day living.
How Social Support Arises
The emergence of social support in the seminars was not coincidental. Using the educational
devices informed by CoP, students, teachers, and Senpais were able to pursue “community
building” and engage in learning as “belonging, participating and communicating” (Sfard,
1998, p. 7). The result of community building and “cohesive learning” was “real”
relationships that promoted social support for one another. Socialization played a pivotal rolein the seminars. Learning Japanese became not their exclusive focus, but an integral part ofsocializing with each other, unlike typical classrooms (Wenger, 1998). Knowing each other as
people with names enhanced the community building process and sense of membership, as
Susie noted. One entire seminar may not have become CoP as the students did not know allother members well, as Claire befriended her group members but only acquainted with theother classmates. Yet, the seminars were turning toward being CoP-like classrooms containing
several sub-CoPs, which enabled social support to arise, develop, and function.
The membership makeup was as crucial as socialization to ensure social support in theseminars. For instance, Raymond had a head start, but his knowledge and skills were initially
not recognized as the social and cultural capital in the seminar (Bourdieu, 1991). Yet, Raymond
approached Senpais, who could recognize his resources as the capital. He first built
relationships with Senpais, and then with his classmates. He could have been isolated and thus
received little social support if there was only a teacher and students as exists in typicalclassrooms. Power relationships exist in classrooms, and they are unequal (Jang, 2017).
Particular students are disadvantaged when a hierarchical relationship is established andmaintained (Lantolf & Genung, 2002). Intriguingly, even students with more resources like
Raymond could be disadvantaged. His experience alerts us to the importance of enrichingmembership makeups to avoid the stagnation of particular students in classrooms as students
who prepare in advance for upcoming courses may not be rare.

35

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

The unique features of the Japanese course seemed to facilitate social support in the seminars.
Notably, including students from all years and all faculties stimulated the students’ curiositywith one another. Students with a wide variety of academic backgrounds may be common inany courses open as general education and free elective subjects. Yet, this appeared lesscommon in the classes for only the students majoring in the same degree. Thus, for students tobecome aware of the feature, it is better brought to their attention unless they know it
beforehand, like Claire. It was also notable that the focal students entered the Japanese coursewith expectations of it providing breathing space, opportunities to meet students with sharedinterests in JPC, and even a course for “leisure.” Feeling “light-hearted” rather than stressed
may have helped them get to know their classmates willingly. English proficiency was not at
the forefront of the concern, as Susie’s experience implies (Jang, 2017). However, this was not
the concern for the others. The near-graduating students who had established strategies forcoping with their university study, like Raymond, and the students with competent academic
English, like Claire, who studied long enough in Singapore, may not have been very concerned
about English.
Emotional Experiences in Classrooms with Social Support
The focal students did not experience only “joy” in the seminars, even with social support. As
Claire noted, the Japanese course was “challenging,” even for Raymond, as discussed above.
This was especially evident around the interaction test, as preparation was “stressful,” students
were “nervous” on the test day and felt "a surge of relief” after the test. Yet, mutual support
may have been highlighted because the test was “challenging.” Besides, they could feel“rewarded” after the test as Claire went beyond her “comfort zone” and Roy opened up his“potential” in learning Japanese. This suggests that emotions like anxiety, fear, shame, andfrustration may not always negatively impact a student’s growth; rather, such feelings may be
crucial for student growth. Conversely, emotions like enjoyment and happiness alone may notnecessarily result in student growth, as demonstrated by Raymond, who first sought “leisure[and] joy” but ended up voluntarily seeking challenges to learn more and more. This study has
affirmed that emotional experiences impact student growth (Pekrun et al., 2007). More
importantly, it suggests that satisfying study experiences may not be filled with only “leisure[and] joy” but ups and downs accompanied by a wide range of emotional experiences, whichfunctions positively with social support.
Seeing such learning with a wide range of emotional experiences as positive makes us revisit
the purpose of classrooms. Students were often expected to know correct answers before
coming to classes, as Claire and Roy explained. In such classrooms, students spoke up to provethat they knew the answers, gain points toward the overall grade, and even “show off” theirsuperiority to the other students. Those who failed to say the correct answers and were seen as“dumb” would have seldom tried again. It is understandable that students, like Roy, experiencea sort of “depression” (López & Aguilar, 2013). Indeed, the Japanese course expected thestudents to prepare before each class. Yet, failing was nothing wrong. They instead welcomedmaking mistakes with a “friendly laugh,” raised concerns without hesitation, and encouraged
one another when facing challenging tasks. By one definition, classrooms exist for students tolearn; that is, become able to do something they were previously unable to do. This process
should include both failures arousing fear, shame and frustration and successes arousing
enjoyment and happiness. If this is allowed, encouraged, and supported, students can come toclassrooms to learn further and further, like Roy, who attended repeated lectures twice on thesame day.

36

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

How the students in the seminars perceived their learning experiences was not necessarily
determined by their academic grades. The introductory Japanese course set learning objectives
that applied to all students. Roy and Susie missed some objectives. They could have felt
dissatisfied and lost motivation midway. Yet, both reached the end of the course and departed
the course full of pleasant experiences. This could be because the learning outcomes Roy andSusie uniquely achieved within the course duration were not necessarily fewer than otherstudents, especially students like Raymond, who already knew the content covered in thecourse. It appeared normal that those course objectives did not capture all individual learning
outcomes of nearly 400 students who stood at different start lines, underwent different
pathways, and crossed different goal lines (Kramsch, 2006). Yet, their unique learning
experiences were not dismissed but recognized and valued by not only themselves but also
their classmates, teacher and Senpais since their successes were results of not an individual but
a collective endeavor. Student learning experiences in such classrooms may turn into theirpersonal growth in a wider and longer-term sense and might be more meaningful andempowering than just accumulating knowledge regarding Japanese especially for thosestudying it not as part of their major.
Conclusion
This article posited that CoP-like JFL classrooms could function as spaces where international
students built, provided, gained, and benefited from social support without voluntarily
accessing services outside their day-to-day lives. The positive outcomes of in-class social
support went beyond the walls of the classrooms. Further, considering social support in JFL
classrooms in this article has highlighted the need to reevaluate the purpose of classrooms. This
article has brought to light the significance of paying attention to and facilitating social supportin university JFL classrooms.
However, studies reporting and examining similar attempts remain scarce. Further studies
focusing on similar aspects of FL education practice and student learning would reveal moretypes of outcomes, as well as challenges, for effectively implementing CoP-informed
educational practice to promote in-class social support. Notably, this study only focused oninternational students in one classroom; yet classrooms are always situated in a broader
sociopolitical context (Holland & Lave, 2001). Future studies could consider relationships
among experiences in multiple contexts and communities to achieve a more well-rounded
understanding of international student experience. Further, student university lives extend
beyond one semester, continuing over three or four years; thus, a longer-term perspective
would be important for future studies.

37

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

References
Benson, P., & Cooker, L. (2013). The social and the individual in applied linguistics research.
In P. Benson & L. Cooker (Eds.), The applied linguistic individual: Sociocultural
approaches to identity, agency and autonomy (pp. 1–16). Equinox Publishing.
Block, D. (2003). The social turn in second language acquisition. Georgetown University
Press.
Blum, R. W., Bastos, F. I. P. M., Kabiru, C. W., & Le, L. C. (2012). Adolescent health in the
21st century. The Lancet, 379(9826), 1567–1568.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60407-3
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Harvard University Press.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2019). Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis. Qualitative
Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(4), 589–597.
https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2019.1628806
Darvin, R., & Norton, B. (2015). Identity and a model of investment in applied linguistics.
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 36–56.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190514000191
Dörnyei, Z. (2009). The psychology of second language acquisition. Oxford University Press.
Forbes-Mewett, H., & Sawyer, A. M. (2016). International students and mental health.
Journal of International Students, 6(3), 661–677.
https://www.ojed.org/index.php/jis/article/view/348
Garrett, P., & Young, R. F. (2009). Theorizing affect in foreign language learning: An
analysis of one learner's responses to a communicative Portuguese course. The
Modern Language Journal, 93(2), 209–226.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00857.x
Haneda, M. (2006). Classrooms as communities of practice: A reevaluation. Tesol Quarterly,
40(4), 807–817. https://doi.org/10.2307/40264309
Harzem, P. (2004). Behaviorism for new psychology: What was wrong with behaviorism andwhat is wrong with it now? Behavior and Philosophy, 32, 5–12.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/27759468
Holland, D. & Lave, J. (Eds.). (2001). History in person: Enduring struggles, contentious
practice, intimate identities. School of American Research Press.
Jang, E. (2017). “We got rid of her sentences for revenge”: re-viewing second- language
learner strategies considering multiple tensions in the ESL classroom.” Mind, Culture,
and Activity, 24(1): 32–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2016.1191518
Kojima, T. (2019). Foreign language classroom communities of practices: An extendedsocial learning theory for classroom foreign language education (Unpublisheddoctoral dissertation), University of New South Wales, Sydney.
Kramsch, C. (2006). From communicative competence to symbolic competence. The Modern
Language Journal, 90(2), 249–252.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2006.00395_3.x
Langer, P. C. (2016). The research vignette: Reflexive writing as interpretative representationof qualitative inquiry - A methodological proposition. Qualitative Inquiry, 22(9),735–744. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800416658066

38

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Lantolf, J. P., & Genung, P. (2002). “I’d rather switch than fight”: An activity-theoretic studyof power, success, and failure in a foreign language classroom. In C. Kramsch (Ed.),
Language acquisition and language socialization: Ecological perspectives (pp. 175–
196). Continuum.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation.
Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511815355
López, M. G. M., & Aguilar, A. P. (2013). Emotions as learning enhancers of foreign
language learning motivation. Profile, 15(1), 109–124.
MacIntyre, P. D., MacKinnon, S. P., & Clément, R. (2009). The baby, the bathwater, and thefuture of language learning motivation research. In Z. Dörnyei & E. Ushioda (Eds.),
Motivation, language identity and the L2 self (pp. 43–65). Multilingual Matters.
Nagao, A. (2018). Can the EFL classroom be considered a community of practice? IAFOR
Journal of Language Learning, 4(1), 93–108. https://doi.org/10.22492/ijll.4.1.06
Oxford, R. (1999). Anxiety and the language learner: New insights. In J. Arnold (Ed.), Affectin language learning (pp. 58–67). Cambridge University Press.
Page, A. G., & Chahboun, S. (2019). Emerging empowerment of international students: howinternational student literature has shifted to include the students’ voices. Higher
Education, 78(5), 871–885. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00375-7
Pavri, S., & Monda-Amaya, L. (2001). Social support in inclusive schools: Student andteacher perspectives. Exceptional Children, 67(3), 391–411.
https://doi.org/10.1177/001440290106700307
Pekrun, R., Frenzel, A. C., Goetz, T., & Perry, R. P. (2007). The control-value theory ofachievement emotions: An integrative approach to emotions in education. In P. A.
Schultz & R. Pekrun (Eds.), Emotion in education (pp. 13–36). Elsevier Academic
Press.
Razfar, A. (2005). Language ideologies in practice: Repair and classroom discourse.
Linguistics and Education, 16, 404–424. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2006.04.001
Rosenthal, D., Russell, J., & Thomson, G. (2008). The health and wellbeing of international
students at an Australian university. Higher Education, 55, 51– 67.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-006-9037-1
Ross, A. S. (2015). From motivation to emotion: A new chapter in applied linguistics
research. University of Sydney Papers in TESOL, 10, 1–27
Schwandt, T. A. (2001). Dictionary of qualitative inquiry (2nd ed.). SAGE.
Sfard, A. (1998). On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one.
Educational Researcher, 27(2), 4–13. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X027002004
Shumaker, S. A., & Hill, D. R. (1991). Gender differences in social support and physicalhealth. Health Psychology, 10(2), 102–111.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.10.2.102
Stallman, H., & Shochet, I. A. N. (2009). Prevalence of mental health problems in Australian
university health services. Australian Psychologist, 44(2), 122–127.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00050060902733727

39

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Thomas, G. (2011). A typology for the case study in social science following a review ofdefinition, discourse, and structure. Qualitative Inquiry, 17(6), 511–521.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800411409884
Thomson, C. K. (1998). Junior teacher internship: Promoting cooperative interaction andlearner autonomy in foreign language classrooms. Foreign Language Annals, 31(4):569–583. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1998.tb00600.x
Thomson, C. K. (Ed.). (2017). Foreign language learning communities of practice:
Mechanisms for participatory learning. Coco Publishing.
Thomson, C. K., & Mori, T. (2015). Japanese communities of practice: Creating
opportunities for out-of-class learning. In D. Nunan & J. C. Richards (Eds.),
Language learning beyond the classroom (pp. 272–281). Routledge.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge
University Press.
Wenger-Trayner, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Communities of Practice: A Brief
Introduction.
http://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/07-Brief-introduction-tocommunities-of-practice.pdf.
Zheng, Y. (2008). Anxiety and second/foreign language learning revisited. Canadian Journal
for New Scholars in Education, 1(1).
Corresponding author: Takuya Kojima
Contact email: takuya.kojima@unive.it

40

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Social Media and E-Portfolios: Impacting Design Students’ Motivation ThroughProject-Based Learning
Jae-Eun Oh
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong SAR, China
Yuet Kai Chan
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong SAR, China
Kyulee Viviane Kim
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong SAR, China

41

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Abstract
University-level classrooms have seen a massive transformation from instructor-led to studentcentered education, with many courses adopting project-based learning as an effective learning
approach. As students become key actors in leading their courses, it is necessary to have highlevel intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In the search to enhance student motivation using
project-based learning, this article proposes a framework based on self-determination theory,
including various indicators of the level of students’ motivation for learning. In particular, theframework was applied to explore the effectiveness of employing social media, such as
Facebook, to increase student motivation. The results of this study demonstrate the usefulnessof employing social media to amplify students’ will to learn. This article reports on the resultsof action research in creative media design courses where students were required to develop
an e-portfolio through Facebook. Eleven indicators (autonomy, confidence, eagerness to learn,high performance, independence, enjoyment, self-efficacy, sense of achievement, sense of
belonging, sense of engagement, and sympathy) were used to measure motivation. As a result,
this study argues for the conditional use of social media in project-based learning classes.
Keywords: creative media design course, e-portfolio, project-based learning, selfdetermination theory, student motivation, social media

42

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

With the rapid onset of technological advancement, higher educational institutions havebecome more willing to adopt social media to create a diverse learning experience for students.
As teaching turns to focus more on student-centered pedagogy (Dunn, 2013), educational
sectors are exploring different platforms to engage and motivate students in their learning (Ohet al., 2018). Among these education platforms, social media, especially Facebook, has become
one of the most effective pedagogical tools, hosting blended learning platforms (McCarthy,
2010) to supplement traditional lectures. Employing social media in higher education canenhance the level of motivation for learning in students, who already utilize these platforms
every day. Social media also helps students easily find information, enabling them to solve
problems they encounter while doing their assignments, while the accessibility of using smart
devices transcends the space and time of a physical classroom.
Social networking sites can assist students in interactive discussions that determine thepotential for independent learning (Rasiah, 2014). They empower a transformation in students
from passive listeners to active, intentional learners, which is the key to independent, studentcentered learning (Ziegler, 2007). This approach is being applied across different disciplines,
including subjects under project-based learning.
Project-Based Learning (PBL) is an essential learning process, especially in design-related
disciplines like creative media design. Here students learn by doing, constructing their own
knowledge and experience (Dewey, 1897). Through PBL, students fully engage in theirlearning, applying the skills and knowledge they attain in their classes to projects for solving
authentic problems. PBL’s philosophy is that learning can be more engaging when students
initiate it through what they want to know rather than instructed by teachers (Lenz et al., 2015).
According to Blumenfeld et al. (1991), providing students with challenging, authentic
problems widens their interpersonal, experiential, and multidisciplinary skills. Most
importantly, PBL motivates students to engage with the project, which in turn promotes interestin learning and enhances their level of understanding. Kolb (1984) argued that by observing
and participating in PBL, students build experiences, constructs, and abstract concepts. They
also partake in experiential learning cycles that help them generalize, internalize, andconceptualize their understandings. Through this progression, students may acquire and apply
knowledge, increase engagement, attain achievements, and gain confidence, until eventually
their level of motivation remains high (Blumenfeld et al., 1991).
As traditional PBL consists of face-to-face methods such as tutorials, and critique sessions,many teachers and students do not find it conducive to use PBL with standard eLearning
systems in the classroom. PBL is rarely used in conjunction with online platforms in creative
media or design (Park, 2011). However, with the active development of social media, daily
communication and the dynamics of the classroom have changed. Heikkinen (2012) argued
that an overall integration of social media could attract students’ attention through its
simplicity, flexibility, and freedom of speech. Using social media as an eLearning platform
means that teachers can use existing models to infiltrate these established platforms for PBL
and integrate learning into students’ lives without them realizing it. Supplementing projectbased learning with social media also allows students to experience self-learning and provides
a sense of achievement.
Furthermore, social media might provide a means for students to stay intrinsically motivatedthroughout a project. Since technology breaks the barriers of the physical classroom, students,
classmates, and educators can connect in cyberspace, which is impossible in traditional PBL.
They are able to use functions like online discussion forums, bulletin boards, and instant43

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

messaging programs to communicate and share their thoughts and feedback with each other ona daily basis from outside the physical classroom space.
Greenhow and Lewin (2015) claimed that the function of social media is to promote individual
users through profile pages. For students in design, it is crucial to have a channel to show theirwork to the world. Social media, with its accessibility and convenience, has the potential to bea very effective platform to store and promote an individual’s portfolio. As in many fields, themajority of today’s design students use social media daily for various purposes, of which a
certain proportion includes dealing with their studies. Clearly understanding the pros and consof blending social media with design education would be beneficial to the future of pedagogicaldevelopment. However, there is limited research related to the influence of social media on
design students’ learning processes and outcomes under project-based learning.
This paper investigates the topic of design student motivation when incorporating social media
into the project-based learning process. Considering that e-portfolios are closely related to
students’ lifelong, independent learning, this study uses e-portfolios as a device to explore theinfluence of social media on students’ intrinsic motivation under project-based learning. It aids
current efforts to motivate students and help faculty members in the field who aim to foster
student motivation using blended learning methods. To achieve this, the research addresses thefollowing questions:
1. What are the factors that enhance student motivation in creative media courses?
2. How does the usage of social media benefit the learning of creative media students?
3. What impact does an e-portfolio have on the motivation of students engaged in projectbased learning?
Literature Review
Project-Based Learning in Creative Media Courses
In creative media courses, education faces the key challenge of continuously motivating
students in order to prevent them from losing interest in creative pursuits. Project-basedlearning allows students to challenge themselves through the independent learning process interms of seeking solutions. Filmmaking projects, for example, including live-action andanimation, provide students with creative freedom. These works represent students’ solutions
to problems and reflect knowledge developed in real-world situations, as the films they produce
must be concrete and explicit (Blumenfeld et al., 1991). The final films ignite a sharing session
among the learners, where students reflect on the steps that they have taken to build solutions
to authentic problems, as well as what they have learned from the experiences and how they
can improve their situation for the next round.
PBL is “a model that organizes learning around projects” (Thomas, 2000, p. 1) and involves
integrating project assignments into the curriculum. PBL has become a common practice forpromoting independent learning in students. Kolb (1984) argued that project-based learning
provides students with a completely experiential learning cycle and gives students aperspective of experience, perception, cognition, and behavior along with their learning.
Students in PBL courses develop concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract
conceptualization, and active experimentation (Ma, 2016). This cycle helps enhance student
motivations by using real-life, authentic problems and giving students ownership of theirprojects. They deal with real-world situations where they learn to build practical solutions
beyond their domain knowledge and learn by constructing their own experiences. Additionally,

44

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Blumenfeld et al. (1991) stated that these projects promote deep understanding, as students
acquire knowledge and application of layers of information to improve their competence inthinking. With improved cognitive skills, students have the freedom to construct and direct
their education as independent learners, meaning no more step-by-step commands by teachers(Lenschow, 1998).
Student Perception of Social Media in the Learning Experience
Researchers have found that the use of social media in higher education provides acollaborative setting for learning, permitting increased peer collaboration as well as interaction
between educators and students (Collins & Halverson, 2010; Wodzickiet al., 2012). Unlike theprevious generation, most college students are Generation Z who were born between 1995 and2012. They are technologically savvy, and utilize social media daily (Singh, 2014). Palfrey and
Gasser (2013) argued that those digital native students from the generation born into the digitalage perceive the world differently from prior generations. Their perceptions are rooted in looser
concepts of privacy, self, friendship, information ownership, communication styles, creativity,
threat, and productivity than previous generations. They perceive social media as part of theirlives and feel no reluctance in accepting it in their coursework. They see social media as apositive phenomenon that brings active dialogue and engagement with teachers and peers, andit can foster a positive relationship with faculty members, breaking down the characteristic
barriers between teachers and students in a traditional classroom.
To these students, teachers appear more approachable and interactive on the social media, as
they can engage in communication without physical boundaries. Mazer et al. (2007) suggested
that cultivating a rapport between student and teacher can ultimately create a positive learning
experience for both parties, as educators have been acknowledged as an influencer on student
learning and the academic achievement at the interpersonal level (Rodriguez-Keyes et al.,2013). Shen et al. (2006) claimed that teacher presence influences student motivation, course
engagement, learning achievements, and intention to use social media. Social media can not
only help spark active dialogue sessions between teachers and students, but also foster a peerto-peer learning environment. Sharing of ideas and exchanging feedback are other motivating
factors for students.
Student Motivation with the Aid of Social Media Platforms in PBL
Facilitating an exchange of ideas and knowledge among participants in a learning community
increases the intrinsic motivation to learn (Koh et al., 2010; Rasiah, 2014). Blumenfeld et al.
(1991) posited simply including high-level projects that are interesting and meaningful tostudents is not a guarantee that students will be motivated to acquire the knowledge anddevelop the skills to complete them. Researchers have discovered that social media can play
an essential role in increasing student motivation and enhancing the learning environment.
These innovative means can alter the nature of learning boundaries and lead to the developmentof student teaching (Celik et al., 2014).
Creative media courses provide students with artistic goals. Supplementary external effects,
such as seeing their peers’ artwork receive attention online, may accelerate students’ intrinsic
motivation and create long-lasting effects. Receiving online peer comments and reviews canhelp students become more engaged. Student engagement consists of students demonstrating
their interest and involvement in learning, and their connectedness to their school, and eachother (Axelson & Flick, 2010). By using social networking sites, students can foster a sense of
belonging in a virtual community where they showcase their work. In this space, two things
happen: people see the students’ work, and students see their classmates’ work. The online

45

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

space becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of feedback through the standard of quality
continually improves through active dialogue sessions with peers and teachers. Social media
can offer opportunities for teachers and students to cultivate their interactions, which caneventually generate a positive learning experience for both parties (Mazer et al., 2007). PBL
also promotes sharing sessions among learners to help students construct individual solutions
and create knowledge through experience. The purpose of social media coincides with PBL
when it comes to creating social interactions among the learner groups. With the aid of social
media platforms, PBL could provide many more opportunities to spark student motivation
especially with its essential characteristics of interactivity and direct engagement.
Research Methodology
Recognizing its effectiveness in blending real-life problems with education, PBL has been
accepted by a wide array of disciplines, especially in the applied sciences, such as engineering(Lehmann et al., 2008), and business and management (Hogue et al., 2011). Design as an
academic discipline often requires project-based pedagogy to help students apply theiranalytical skills, recognize problems, and build contextual knowledge in order to derive
optimal solutions. Design education often adopts PBL, especially in studio settings, wherestudents ponder “complex and open-ended problems,” and experiment with various solutions(Kuhn, 2001, p. 351).
This study employed action research in an undergraduate digital media design course for twosemesters at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Action research is appropriate here
because it allows interaction between researchers and informants. It also balances problemsolving actions implemented in a collaborative context with data-driven collaborative analysis
or research to understand the underlying causes, enabling future predictions about personal andorganizational change (Reason & Bradbury, 2001). With the ethics approval from theuniversity research office, a total of 60 students comprised the participants. They were asked
to create an e-portfolio using social media. A total of 60 students participated, and they wereasked to create an e-portfolio using social media. Researchers, in their role as instructors of thecourse, were able to actively be involved in “reflective thought, discussion, decision andaction” (Adelman, 1993, p. 8) during the development of the e-portfolio. Given thecharacteristics of this study, action research is able to affect both instructors and students
through an improved understanding of the process.
Two sets of qualitative data were collected from the 60 students’ self-reflective journals andfocus group interviews (Lederman, 1990). The results of the study aimed to identify theeffectiveness of social media on students’ motivation. The research was conducted in a period
longer than 16 months, which allows participants to experience the entire process of theparticular projects with the integration of social media. Social media was used as a learning
tool for two consecutive semesters, including an animation-based assignment and the final
project of the academic year. Participants were required to use designated social media
platforms to showcase their works on a weekly basis and submit a self-reflective journal at theend of the two semesters. This became a formative process for constructing their own eportfolio.
Focus group interviews were conducted after the completion of each semester in order tocollect data from fresh memories.

46

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Figure 1: Action research process
Conceptual Framework
To further explore the motivation of students using social media in project-based learning
courses, this study adopted self-determination theory (SDT) and the motivational attributes of
PBL (Blumenfeld et al., 1991) as the basis for action research. Self-determination theory (SDT)
was developed by Deci and Ryan in 1985. It is a theory of motivation that concerns innate
psychological needs as well as the external conditions that form the foundation of a person’s
self-motivation and individual personality (Cooper, 2014). This view has since evolved toinclude intrinsic motivation, by which researchers refer to an individual’s internal interest andsatisfaction. According to Ryan and Deci (2000), the more a person’s needs for competence,
relatedness, and autonomy are satisfied, the more intrinsically motivated that person will be inany given situation.
Under SDT, Deci and Ryan (2002) define as “feeling effective in one’s interactions with thesocial environment and experiencing opportunities to exercise and express one’s capacities”(p. 7), and relatedness as “caring for and being cared for by others, having a sense of
belongingness both with other individuals and one’s community” (p. 7). Autonomy ischaracterized by “choice, acknowledgment of feelings and opportunities for self-direction,”and “a sense that one’s actions are self-determined or self-authored” (Deci & Ryan, 2002, p.
8). Regarding motivation in project-based learning, Blumenfeld et al. (1991) proposed several
factors to help students maintain motivation across an entire project. These motivating factors
include a) interest and value, b) perceived and achieved competence, and c) task focus.
Researchers have suggested that these factors should be considered when designing a project
to create motivation from the students’ perspective (Hilvonen & Ovaska, 2010). For interestand value, students are more motivated when:
•
•
•
•
•
•

tasks are varied and novel;
problems are valuable and authentic;
projects are challenging;projects have a defined ending;choices can be made by students; andcollaboration opportunities are available (Blumenfeld et al., 1991).

In the case of perceived and achieved competence, students require access to information andexamples that can help them understand the project in its entirety. Students are more motivatedin the following situations: their knowledge is sufficient and they have a specific skill to carryout the project; they are proficient in using relevant tools or skills; they are proficient in using
the cognitive and metacognitive skills required to plan, make and test predictions, as well asinterpret evidence and determine solutions; and they perceive the role of errors.

47

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

For task focus, researchers emphasize that the learning environment affects student motivation.
If teachers make performance orientation the class focus, for example, students may not engage
with the topic in a manner that promotes in-depth understanding as much as when they are in
student-centered classroom. When enhancing student motivation and engagement, teachers’role place critically.
The conceptual framework for this research was developed using the primary motivators within
SDT (Competence, Autonomy, and Relatedness) and the motivational attributes of PBL in
Blumenfeld et al. (1991). It also provides the basis for designing questions for the semistructured interview.
In Table 1, the right-hand column, ‘Possible motivational indicators for PBL when using social
media’ presents a conceptual framework adapted from SDT and Blumenfeld. This column
shows the motivational indicators for the situation specific to our research.
Table 1: Conceptual framework

Competence:- Learners feel
effective in theirinteractions with thesocial environment- Learners experience
opportunities toexercise and express
their capabilities

Autonomy:- Choice- Acknowledgment of
personal feelings- Opportunities for
self-direction- Sense that learners’
actions are selfdetermined or selfauthoredMotivational attributes of PBL(Blumenfeld et al., 1991)
Perceived and achieved
competence:- Sufficient knowledge- Skill with tools- Problem-solving skills- Understanding of the role oferrorsInterest and value:- Various novel projects- Challenging projects- Authentic problems
Interest and value:- Freedom over project
performance
Task focus:- Classroom setting- Role of educators- Encouragement from teachers- Supportive learning environment

48

Possible motivational indicators for
PBL when using social media
Knowledge and understanding:- Students know how to use
domain-specific knowledge
through interactions with teachersand peers- Students use different social
media platforms to learn various
skills- Students communicate throughsocial media, increasing
competence and understanding
Independence and control:- Students feel empowered to maketheir own choices when it comesto selecting preferred online
learning platforms- Students use social media
platforms for their own selfdirected learning- Students gain confidence byhaving control over their PBL
subject through active interaction
with teachers on social media

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Relatedness:- Learners become
caring and cared forby others- Sense of belonging,both with otherindividuals andwithin thecommunity oflearners

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Interest and value:- Opportunities for collaboration

Interconnectedness:- Students share their understanding
each other and learn from each other- Students feel a connection to eachother in cyberspace- Students improve this connection
by receiving feedback and sharing
opinions- Improvement of student-student
and student-teacher relations- Students feel a sense of belonging
to their social media groups andlearning community

By carrying out the action research, participants experience the process of integrating social
media in their study. At the end of the semester, self-reflective journals from 60 participants
were collected with their consent. These self-reflective journals provided information about
participants’ journey and thought in the process of creating e-portfolio. The information thatreflects the benefits and disadvantages of using social media is extracted for data analysis.
Participants were then divided for the focus groups interviews. A semi-structured questionnaire
is formulated with reference to the conceptual framework (Table 1) for identifying
motivational indicators for PBL when using social media.
Data collected from the self-reflective journals and focus group interviews were combined fora qualitative analysis. Researchers analyze the data through a coding process. The first code
identified a common pattern and constructed the first set of motivational indicators. The second
code incorporated motivational attributes in the conceptual framework and codified the first
set of motivational indicators to describe the results of this study.
Results and Findings
The Willingness to Use Social Media
According to the results, the majority of participants claim that they often use social media intheir daily lives. The social media they often use is Facebook or Instagram. They found thatdifferent functions on social media platforms do, to a certain extent, help them finish theirtasks. The most helpful functions are discussed here.
•
•
•
•
•
•

Posting functions. This helps in collecting fresh opinions or asking for resources likecasting actors for content design projects. Some students mentioned that they use a“time dynamic” function, which only allows others to view their posts within 24 hours.
Saving posts. Students always save interesting posts for references.
Post forwarding. Students may forward information to others or share relevant material
to group mates.
Following pages or people. This is used to receive and review up-to-date information.
This information includes both local and overseas works, which provide students achance to learn by comparing works from different regions.
Leaving comments. Participants will often leave their opinions on others’ posts or readthe comments on their posts from others.
Group chats. Students can use the group chat function to communicate with their groupmates.

49

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

The results show that all participants use social media in their daily lives. The majority ofparticipants have experience and a high level of familiarity with social media. They have clear
ideas about using the functions of the platforms, which indicates that they do not have technicalbarriers in operating them. Interestingly, however, they have various opinions about utilizing
social media in their study, especially creating e-portfolios.
Barriers to Using Social Media for e-Portfolios
Most of the participants replied that they would not use social media for their e-portfolio if theteacher did not require it. The reasons for the low willingness to prepare an e-portfolio can besummarized into three points. The first is task priority. Some students found the e-portfolio
useful and believe it did help them to finish their task. These students also answered
affirmatively when asked whether they would use social media if their teacher did not requirethem to do so. However, when comparing actual rewards, such as grades, even these students
put their school assignments as the first priority. They believe building an e-portfolio lacks
formal instruction and a detailed marking scheme, making it more flexible than othercoursework like the final year project (FYP). They would rather put their effort on the FYP orother coursework, than sacrifice the time on preparing content to post to social media andupdate their e-portfolio frequently.
The second point is the issue of privacy. Some students place high value on privacy and feelthat exposing their work, especially when unfinished, is a breach of this belief. They prefer tokeep their projects in high secrecy until it is complete. Even in this study, where they are
required to upload their ongoing work frequently, students often treated the project as an
assignment to be completed and would not post much detail about their work’s progress.
The third relates to the students’ discipline. Video-streamed students indicated that an eportfolio is not really useful for their career development due to their belief that the filmmaking
industry only considers final works. It is difficult to show pre-production or production
processes online like animation students do. By contrast, a few students stated that they would
use social media and e-portfolios even if they were not required to. These participants
comprised animation or photography students. They believe they need a platform to share theirworks with the public and contact potential employers.
Benefits to Using Social Media in Education
Despite some hesitation in building their online portfolio, all participants agree that posting
their works and communicating through social media does, to a large extent, bring them certain
benefits. They believe that when they put more effort into the works they post, they can geteven better feedback than expected. The benefits of using social media in this study aresummarized as follows:•••

A feeling of accomplishment. Self-accomplishment is the major benefit that students
found from using social media. They are motivated when they receive comments(primarily positive) from others. This triggers them to put in more effort and do betterin their creation.
Selective and autonomous. Social media allows students to choose freely what theywant to learn according to their own preferences. They can find related learningmaterials by themselves, instead of relying only on teachers. In addition, students are
given the flexibility to adjust the learning pace according to their own needs.
Facilitate communication. Compared with face-to-face teaching or tutorials, social
media creates another convenient channel for communication between students and50

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education•

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

teachers. Other students found it very useful in actor recruitment exercises. Still others
believe it is useful for career promotion, as it is a very direct way to meet people meet.
Students found that many companies would contact them through social media forfurther collaboration.
No limitation on time, distance, or access. With social media, students can learn
anytime and anywhere. They can repeatedly access online materials, while traditional
teaching can only provide the lesson once at a particular time and venue. Participantsalso appreciate that social media allows them to reach up-to-date global information.

Motivational Factors Enhanced by Building e-Portfolios through Social Media
Participants recognized that creating an e-portfolio on social media enhances their motivationin various perspectives. The most commonly mentioned motivation factor comes fromfeedback they receive from peers, teachers, or the public. Receiving positive comments fromothers created a sense of accomplishment. This brings satisfaction; while at the same time, it
drives them to improve and produce increasingly better works. It fosters positive competition
and facilitates peer encouragement.
Another motivating factor relates to the communication advantages brought about by social
media. Since social media connects people in the virtual space without limitations of time or
distance, participants claim to feel more connected with the world. They feel as though otherpeople are able to understand them well, and also come to better understand themselves throughthis communication. In turn, this motivates them to put more effort into updating theirportfolios frequently.
Many participants enjoyed the freedom they experienced in this study. While required byteachers to update their e-portfolio frequently, all the content was their own design and they
had absolute control in deciding what content to post. Therefore, they felt a strong sense ofownership. Thanks to this self-determination, they were more willing to contribute to their eportfolio. Some participants mentioned that using social media enhanced their interest in theirdiscipline by allowing them to reach more relevant information and up-to-date trends withfewer barriers. This provided students with varied inspiration when generating ideas.
Discussion
The Use of Social Media and Motivation in Creative Media Students
In analyzing the conceptual framework and the study results, social media does produce a
positive effect on the motivation of students in project-based learning programs. The
motivation facilitates an internalization of extrinsic factors into intrinsic motivation. These
intrinsic motivations, all favorable to creativity, can be consolidated into four motivation
factors: competence, autonomy, relatedness, and interest.
For competence, when students gain self-accomplishment by receiving comments or
encouragement on social media, they understand their own capabilities better. This enhances
their understanding of their perceived knowledge and skills and gradually develops their selfefficacy. Bandura (1997) described self-efficacy as “belief in one’s capabilities to organize andexecute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (p. 3). It is one of thedriving forces for creativity, as it reinforces the motivation of people to attempt creative
outcomes (Tierney & Farmer, 2002). Therefore, the use of social media is beneficial to creative
media students, not only for their learning motivation but also for enhancing their creativity.

51

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Next, the results of this study show that students received opportunities for self-determinationand independent choice throughout the entire experience of using social media and creating eportfolios. Unlike other assignments, this experience perfectly matched the project-basedlearning approach. Students achieved a high level of freedom and control over their project
performance, resulting in a sense of ownership. Deci and Ryan (1985) identified this as
autonomy. The generation of creative ideas, as well as the design process, requires boundlessspace to explore and take risks. The more the students are free from regulation, the morecreative they can be (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Shalley & Gilson, 2004).
Regarding relatedness, the purpose of social media is often to intensify the connections
between people. Our findings indicate that the use of social media lowers the barrier ofcommunication between peers, between students and teachers, and students and the public. In
addition to receiving feedback, students are able to build connections with communities
relevant to their preferences. Social media provides students with a clear sense of belonging,which can then enhance their motivation. The need for relatedness may change depending on
age or culture, however. When Hasan and Hynds (2014) investigated the relationship between
relatedness and motivation, the results showed that young people value their relationship withparents and teachers. This communication positively affects their motivation. Students may
also feel more secure in expressing their ideas in a familiar community.
The use of social media provides a greater opportunity for students to reach content relevant totheir interests. This enhances student interest and enjoyment in learning. Izard (2013) statedthat interest forms the basis of intrinsic motivation. At the same time, interest also plays acrucial role in creative studies. By leveraging interest and enjoyment, students are more willingto explore novel ideas and exert their creative potential (Moneta, 2004). In summary,integrating social media into creative media programs enhances students’ motivation in various
perspectives: competence, autonomy, relatedness, and interest. This can influence theircreativity, and the creativity of students largely affects their overall learning outcomes.
Motivation Indicators for Students in PBL Programs Using Social Media
Previous studies and theories agree that PBL has a favorable effect on student motivation. The
results of this study are consistent with this line of thought and propose that social media canstrengthen the influence of PBL on motivation.
As shown in the diagram below, PBL and social media work as attributes to motivate students,
and together can induce 11 different motivational indicators when students perform well.
Figure 2 below illustrates the theories and the results of this study.

52

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Figure 2: Eleven motivators and motivational indicators through PBL and social media
Social Media: Pros and Cons for Creative Media Students
The results of this study confirm that social media has its own advantages in increasing student
intrinsic motivation, which is beneficial to design students like those in our program. It is alsosignificant in the autonomy it provides to students during the process. However, not all students
enjoy this type of freedom; in fact, student’s own self-regulation mostly matters. If students
are active learners, the freedom inherent to using social media can foster their motivation tolearn and create better works; in contrast, if they are passive learners, the excessive information
available on social media may confuse them. They often need more extrinsic motivation to
encourage them for learning, so traditional face-to-face learning may work better with thesestudents.
Moreover, formally incorporating social media into certain subjects and asking students tocreate an e-portfolio for assessment purposes can sometimes hinder student motivation. Whenposting on social media becomes compulsory, students may treat it as part of the coursework
exercise. This can easily create resistance and pressure in students, as it violates theirperception of social media as separate from study. It may discourage students’ creativity while
creative media programs in particular encourage creativity as a core teaching philosophy.
Therefore, integrating social media into studies may be the pros and cons that need to beconsidered.
Conclusion
This study was designed to explore how social media can benefit the learning of creative media
students, as well as the impact of project-based learning on student engagement and motivation
when adopting SDT. As a result, researchers learned that using social media to create eportfolios enhances students’ intrinsic motivation. Specifically, students were motivated tomaximize independent learning outcomes by obtaining seamless communication with peers,
instructors, and public viewers outside of the classroom. Furthermore, the framework identified
eleven indicators of students’ motivational status for teachers to assess during a course.

53

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

This research yields a significant discussion of two leading trends in undergraduate education
today. One trend is the rapid technological development of various educational tools andteaching materials. The other trend is the growing appreciation of student-centered learningmodes. When face-to-face learning is limited, for example, during the COVID-19 outbreak,multiple technologies were adopted to develop distanced, online, virtual, and independent
learning approaches (Chick et al., 2020). Aside from developing innovative solutions forvirtual interaction between students and lecturers, it is also important to inquire into how we
can effectively motivate independent learners at home. This research demonstrates that theaccessible nature of social media makes it a relevant starting point to investigate this matter.
While this study does not cover creative media design classrooms in general, the action
research and focus group interviews with learners found here can provide a deeper
understanding and insight into the various approaches used to motivate students. Future
researchers should attempt to validate these findings and develop the variety of demographicsof the participants. Further studies could discuss different types of schools for comparison. A
comparative study would be a logical and meaningful way to cover a wide range of respondents
and verify the findings. To meet the new trend to engage in digital technology daily, theeducational device also needs to transform. Building this study for future research enhances
student-led independent learning mode for the sake of their fruitful future. Motivating students
is always a critical factor in education, hence, encouraging them with different opportunities
will be the key element to maintain to be motivated.
Acknowledgments
The work described in this article was fully supported by a grant from The Polytechnic
University Hong Kong (Project No. 1-ZE8M). We also express our sincere thanks to Dr. Henry
Ma from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design for his input on thedevelopment of the research. We also appreciate our research team and participating students
for their efforts and passions toward a future student-oriented education.

54

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

References
Adelman, C. (1993). Kurt Lewin and the origins of action research. Educational Action
Research, 1(1), 7–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965079930010102
Axelson, R., & Flick, A. (2010). Defining student engagement. Change: The Magazine ofHigher Learning, 43(1), 38–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/00091383.2011.533096
Badge, J. L., Saunders, N. F. W., & Cann, A. J. (2012). Beyond marks: New tools tovisualize student engagement via social networks. Research in Learning Technology,
20(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v20i0.16283
Bandura, A. (1997). Self‐efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W. H. Freeman.
Barrows, H. S. (1985). How to design a problem-based curriculum for the preclinical years(Vol. 8). Springer Publishing Company.
Basilaia, G., & Kvavadze, D. (2020). Transition to online education in schools during a
SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Georgia. PedagogicalResearch, 5(4), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.29333/pr/7937
Blumenfeld, P., Soloway, E., Marx, R., Krajcik J., Guzdial, M., & Palincsar, A. (1991).
Motivating project-based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting the learning.
Educational Psychologist, 26(3/4), 369–398.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.1991.9653139
Broadfoot, O., & Bennett, R. (2003). Design studios online? Comparing traditional face-toface design studio education with modern internet-based design studios [online].
Apple University Consortium.
<http://auc.uow.edu.au/conf/conf03/papers/AUC_DV2003_Broadfoot.pdf>
Celik, I., Goknur K. A., & Tayfun C. O. (2014). Social media for academics: Motivation
killer or booster? Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), IEEE 14th
International Conference.
Chick, R. C., Clifton, G. T., Peace, K. M., Propper, B. W., Hale, D. F., Alseidi, A. A., &Vreeland, T. J. (2020). Using technology to maintain the education of residents during
the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Surgical Education, 77(4), 729–732.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2020.03.018
Collins, A., & Halverson, R. (2010). The second educational revolution: Rethinking
education in the age of technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(1),
18–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2009.00339.x
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in humanbehavior. New York: Plenum.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2002). Overview of self-determination theory: An organismic
dialectical perspective. In E. L. Deci & R. M. Ryan (Eds.), Handbook of selfdetermination research, pp. 3–33. The University of Rochester Press.
Dewey, J. (1938). Education and experience (1997 ed.). New York: Touchstone.
Dunn, L. (2013, Apr. 19) Teaching in higher education: Can social media enhance thelearning experience? 6th Annual University of Glasgow Learning and Teaching
Conference, Glasgow, UK.

55

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Efstratia, D. (2014). Experiential education through project based learning. Procedia - Social
and Behavioral Sciences, 152, 1256–1260.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.09.362
Greenhow, C. & Lewin, C. (2016). Social media and education: Reconceptualizing theboundaries of formal and informal learning. Learning, Media and Technology, 41(1),
6–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2015.1064954
Gülbahar, Y., & Tinmaz, H. (2014). Implementing project-based learning and e-portfolio
assessment in an undergraduate course. Journal of Research on Technology in
Education, 38(3), 309–327. https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2006.10782462
Hasan, A. R., & Hynds, A. (2014). Cultural influence on teacher motivation–A country studyof Maldives. International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, 4(1), 19–28.
https://doi.org/10.7763/IJSSH.2014.V4.312
Heikkinen, S. (2012). Impact of motivation, language and social network on learning process.
In A. Avdelas (Ed.), SEFI 40th Annual Conference, Thessaloniki, Greece, September
23-26, 2012 Brussels, Belgium: SEFI.
Hilvonen, J., and Ovaska, P. (2010, Sep. 2). Student motivation in project-based learning.
International Conference on Engaging Pedagogy 2010 (ICEP10), National Universityof Ireland Maynooth.
Hogue, A., Kapralos, B., & Desjardins, F. (2011). The role of project-based learning in IT: A
case study in a game development and entrepreneurship program. Interactive
Technology and Smart Education, 8(2), 120–134.
https://doi.org/10.1108/17415651111141830
Huang, R. H., Liu, D. J., Tlili, A., Yang, J. F., & Wang, H. H. (2020). Handbook on
facilitating flexible learning during educational disruption: The Chinese experience inmaintaining undisrupted learning in COVID-19 Outbreak. Beijing: Smart Learning
Institute of Beijing Normal University.
Izard, C. E. (1977). Human emotions. New York: Springer Science & Business Media.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning anddevelopment. Prentice Hall.
Kuhn, S. (2001). Learning from the architecture studio: Implications for project-based
pedagogy. International Journal of Engineering Education, 17(4/5), 349–352.
Lederman, L. C. (1990). Assessing educational effectiveness: The focus group interview as atechnique for data collection. Communication Education, 39(2), 117–127.
https://doi.org/10.1080/03634529009378794
Lehmann, M., Christensen, P., Du, X., & Thrane, M. (2008). Problem-oriented and projectbased learning (POPBL) as an innovative learning strategy for sustainable
development in engineering education. European Journal of Engineering
Education, 33(3), 283–295. https://doi.org/10.1080/03043790802088566
Lenschow, R.J. (1998). From teaching to learning: A paradigm shift in engineering educationand lifelong learning. European Journal of Engineering Education, 23(2), 155–161.
https://doi.org/10.1080/03043799808923494
Lenz, B., Wells, J., & Kingstone, S. (2015). Transforming Schools Using Project Based
Learning, Performance Assessment and Common Core Standards. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.

56

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Liu, W. L., Wang, C. K. J., Tan, S. T., Coh, C., and Ee, J. (2009). A self-determination
approach to understanding students’ motivation in project work. Learning andIndividual Differences, 19(1), 139–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2008.07.002
Ma, H. (2016). A study of blended learning strategies for project-based studies. Asia Pacific
Journal of Contemporary Education and Communication Technology, 2(1), 50–57.
Markham, T. (2011). Project-based learning. Teacher Librarian, 39(2), 38–42.
Mason, R. (2006). Learning technologies for adult continuing education. Studies inContinuing Education, 28(2), 121–133. https://doi.org/10.1080/01580370600751039
Mazer, J. P., Murphy, R. E., & Simonds, C. J. (2007). “I’ll see you on “Facebook”: The
effect of computer mediated teacher self-disclosure on student motivation, affective
learning and classroom climate. Communication Education, 56(1), 1–17.
https://doi.org/10.1080/03634520601009710
McCarthy, J. (2010). Blended learning environments: Using social networking sites toenhance the first-year experience. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology,
26(6), 729–740. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.1039
McNaught, C. (2011). The best of both worlds: Effective hybrid learning designs in higher
education in Hong Kong. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Hybrid
Learning, ICHL 2011, 1–9.
McNaught, C., Lam, P., & Lee, J. (2011). Digital literacies: Hong Kong teachers’ andstudents’ perspectives on learning in the 21st century [Keynote address]. Digital
literacy: Opportunities and challenges in higher education and lifelong learning.
Proceedings of CODE@OUJ International Symposium 2011, Chiba, Japan, 61–65.
Melles, G. (2007). Visually mediating knowledge construction in project-based doctoraldesign research. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, 6(2), 99–112.
https://doi.org/10.1386/adch.6.2.99_1
Moneta, G. B. (2004). The flow model of intrinsic motivation in Chinese: Cultural andpersonal moderators. Journal of Happiness Studies, 5(2), 181–217.
https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JOHS.0000035916.27782.e4
Oh, J. E., Ho, J. C. F., Shaw, C., & Chan, J. (2018). Engaging creative media students’motivation: The influence of autonomy, peer relationships, and opportunities in theindustry. World Journal of Education, 8(6), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.5430/wje.v8n6p1
Palfrey, J., & Gasser, U., (2013). Born digital: Understanding the first generation of digital
natives. Basic Books.
Park, J. Y. (2011). Design education online: Learning delivery and evaluation. International
Journal of Art & Education, 30, 176–187. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14768070.2011.01689.x
Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods. 3rd Sage Publications.
Rasiah, R. (2013). Transformative higher education teaching and learning: Using social
media in a team-based learning environment. Procedia - Social and Behavioral
Sciences, 123, 369–379. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.1435
Rodriguez-Keyes, E., Schneider, D. A., & Keenan, E. K. (2013). Being known in
undergraduate social work education: The role of instructors in fostering student
engagement and motivation. Social Work Education, 32(6), 785–799.
https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2013.765841

57

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic
motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–
78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68
Shalley, C. E., & Gilson, L. L. (2004). What leaders need to know: A review of social andcontextual factors that can foster or hinder creativity. The leadership quarterly, 15(1),33–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2003.12.004
Singh, A. (2014). Challenges and issues of generation Z. IOSR Journal of Business andManagement, 16(7), 59–63. https://doi.org/10.9790/487X-16715963
Smith, B., & Dodds, R. (1997). Developing managers through project-based learning.
Gower.
Swann, C. (2002). Action research and the practice of design. Design Issues, 18(1), 49–61.
https://doi.org/10.1162/07479360252756287
Tarantino, K., & McDonough, J. (2014). Effects of student engagement with social media on
student learning. A Review of Literature. http://student affairs.com/ejournal/Summer(Retrieved 15 June 2014).
Tierney, P., & Farmer, S. M. (2002). Creative self-efficacy: Its potential antecedents andrelationship to creative performance. Academy of Management journal, 45(6), 1137–
1148. https://doi.org/10.2307/3069429
Thomas, J. W. (2000). A review of research on project-based learning.
http://www.autodesk.com/foundation.
Viner, R. M., Russell, S. J., Croker, H., Packer, J., Ward, J., Stansfield, C., & Booy, R.
(2020). School closure and management practices during coronavirus outbreaks
including COVID-19: A rapid systematic review. The Lancet Child & Adolescent
Health. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2352-4642(20)30095-X
Wodzicki, K., Schwämmlein, E., & Moskaliuk, J. (2012). “Actually, I wanted to learn”:
Study-related knowledge exchange on social networking sites. Internet and Higher
Education, 15(1), 9–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2011.05.008
Wolk, S. (1994). Project-based learning: Pursuits with a purpose. Educational Leadership,
52(3), 42.
Corresponding author: Yuet Kai Chan
Contact email: amelie.chan@polyu.edu.hk

58

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Intercultural Communicative Competence in Teacher Education:
Cultural Simulation Insights from Hawaiʻi
Jennifer Padua
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
USA
Monica Gonzalez Smith
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
USA59

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Abstract
This article discusses how cultural simulations promote teacher candidate cultural competence.
The case study uses intercultural communicative competence to examine written reflections
and focus group interviews of 21 undergraduate teacher candidates in Hawaiʻi who engaged incultural simulation visits on the island of Oʻahu. Findings reveal that cultural simulations
allowed teacher candidates to develop intercultural competency in knowledge, know-how, andbeing. Implications include how cultural simulations may promote teacher candidates’intercultural competence and offer recommendations on how teacher educators may consist ofcultural simulations in multicultural teacher education.
Keywords: cultural simulation, intercultural communicative
multicultural teacher education, teacher preparation program

60

competence,

Hawaiʻi,

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Multicultural teacher education (MTE) is a critical component of teacher preparation. The
National Association for Multicultural Education (2019), states that teacher candidates (TCs)need to be “culturally competent... to the greatest extent possible racially, culturally, andlinguistically diverse...multiculturally literate and capable of including and embracing families
and communities to create an environment that is supportive of multiple perspectives,
experiences, and democracy” (para. 5). Additionally, the Teaching English to Speakers of
Other Languages (TESOL) standards 2a (2019), explains that teachers need to demonstrate
knowledge of how dynamic academic, personal, familial, cultural, and social contexts,
including sociopolitical factors, impact the education of students. A large corpus of literaturedetails the criticality of MTE in teacher preparation years (Banks 2019; Banks & Banks 2016;
Gay, 2018; Gorski, 2009; 2016). MTE literature recommends TCs be exposed to a plethora ofdiverse classroom-based field experiences coupled with extensive opportunities to design andenact instruction for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. While the benefits ofclinically-rich, diverse, classroom-based, field experiences are well documented, descriptionsof the strategies teacher educators should use to teach TCs about multiculturalism are lacking,or, as explained by Gorski (2016), strategies for engaging TCs in multicultural education topics
are “a never-ending process” (p. 142). More often than not, MTE is introduced to TCs in ‘oneshot’ courses even though research reveals that one-shot courses do little to equip TC with
cultural competence.
The success of MTE depends on teacher educators’ knowledge of culture and diversity, andwhether or not teacher educators embed cultural activities into lessons provided to TCs(Keengwe, 2010). “Conservative” approaches on MTE are used to prepare TCs for “teaching
to the Other”, or to show TCs how to support marginalized students in the classroom. The moredesirable “liberal” and “critical” approach on MTE equips TCs with the knowledge and skills
they need to be multicultural “agents of change” to counter hegemonic teaching in their schools(Gorski, 2012). Despite the large body of research supporting liberal, critical approaches on
MTE, empirical research has yet to describe strategies and assignments teacher educators may
use in MTE to prepare TCs for working with CLD students. Our research aims to fill a gap in
the literature and will offer a description of cultural simulations, a practical strategy, teacher
educators may use for MTE.
Literature Review
Cultural competence is the ability a teacher has to successfully teach to students from a culture
or cultures that differ from their own (National Educational Association, 2019). Culturalcompetence does not occur in a single day, by reading a textbook, or taking a course; it occurs
over time. Researchers examine teachers’ cultural competence by looking for characteristics
of culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2018). Culturally responsive teaching occurs when ateacher uses the cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of CLD students as aconduit for teaching them more effectively. Some culturally responsive teaching characteristics
include student-centered instruction, communicating high expectations, and having positive
perspectives and interactions with parents and families. To enact culturally responsive
teaching, TCs need more than surface-level knowledge about cultural diversity beyond
awareness and respect for different ethnic groups.
Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Students
Culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students come from a home environment where alanguage other than English is spoken, whose cultural values or backgrounds differ from the61

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

mainstream, majoritarian culture (Lucas & Villegas, 2013). Learning how to work with andteach CLD students is an integral component of teacher preparation. Teacher education
scholars recommend that TCs receive opportunities to observe, design, and enact instruction
for CLD students while working in diverse, clinically-rich, classroom field experiences (Banks,
2019; Banks & Banks, 2016), albeit most teacher candidates in the United States complete
classroom field experiences in English-only classrooms. Other empirical research reveals thatclinically-rich, diverse, classroom field experiences are not enough to equip TCs with thecultural competence needed to work effectively with CLD students (Lucas, 2011; Lucas &Villegas 2013; Gay 2018). More empirical research is necessary to describe practicalapplications on how TCs work with CLD students to develop cultural competence.
Culture, Multiculturalism, and Cultural Competence
Culture is the set of concepts, identities, representations, attitudes, values, symbols, styles,
rules, patterns, and power relations found in the praxis of particular social communities(Deardorff, 2009). One of the challenges related to the application of culture in MTE is thatthe notion of “culture” is often only associated with ethnic origin issues. For example, MTE
literature defines “culture” alongside “multiculturalism”, and “cultural competence”, as terms
that are different but synonymous (Holm & Zilliacus, 2009). Thus, culture is extremely
difficult to define because it includes the individual, society, action, communications, andinteractions.
Multiculturalism refers to a group’s features, such as ethnic, linguistic, socioeconomic,
religious backgrounds, and positions (Deardorff, 2009). Multiculturalism is often
conceptualized as an all-inclusive term in the literature. Wyatt (2017) explained “multiculturalliterature tends to send the message that ‘we are all the same/ we are all different’ with the aimof convincing teachers of our similarities, while this may be promoting the colorblindness thatteacher education programs try so hard to undo” (p.105). Consequently, teacher preparation
programs (TPPs) struggle to find ways to instruct and sensitize TCs about the present
challenges in our multicultural society. To compensate, many TPPs incorporate stand-alone
MTE courses (Gorski, 2009). MTE centers on raising teachers’ awareness about individual
differences and how they enhance or hinder the ways teachers and students interact (Keengwe,2010). A challenge with MTE is that courses across TPPs are not uniform and depend onteacher educators’ multicultural knowledge.
Cultural competence is defined as a teacher’s cultural awareness. It includes teachers’ cultural
identities, views about differences, and the ability a teacher has to learn and build on thevarying cultural and community norms of their students and their families (National Education
Association, 2019). TCs need to develop cultural competence to communicate effectively withstudent cultures that differ from their own (Banks, 2019). Teachers who build the capacity tocommunicate effectively with students and their families can successfully work with the races,
cultures, and languages represented in their classrooms (Keengwe, 2010). Teachers with a highlevel of cultural competence have an ability to integrate and translate knowledge about
students’ cultures into attitudes, practices, and standards to increase the quality of classroom
instruction and improve student outcomes.
The difference between multiculturalism and cultural competence is highlighted in MTE
literature with the “culture iceberg” (Lázár et al., 2007). The culture iceberg makes a distinction
between “Big C” (multiculturalism) and “little c” (cultural competence) culture. Big C culture
includes visible components such as holidays, foods, art, and popular culture. Whenexperiencing or learning about a new culture for the first time, Big C culture is what one

62

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

discovers first as it is the most overt. In sharp contrast, little c culture is more covert because it
is associated with a specific region, group of people, or language. Examples of little c culture
include cultural norms, behaviors, and communication styles. Little c culture cannot be seen
with the naked eye. TCs need to be led and prompted in discussions of little c culture to become
more aware of and practice how little c culture has implications on CLD curriculum,
instruction, and the school community.
Cultural Simulations
A cultural simulation “is an instructional technique that attempts to recreate certain aspects ofreality for the purpose of gaining information, clarity, values, understanding other cultures, ordeveloping a skill (Cruz & Patterson, 2005, p. 43). Cultural simulations utilize kinesthetic andaffective modes of learning to sensitize teachers to diversity issues through analysis andreflecting on experiential learning. Cultural simulations may include one or more of thefollowing: cross-cultural community-based learning experience in another cultural context;
explicit teaching about explorations and reflections on a specific culture while observing, or
working in that particular setting; and structured field experience in a formal or informal
educational setting (Cruz & Patterson, 2005, Ference, 2006; Smolcic & Katunich, 2017). Most
importantly, a cultural simulation should culminate with opportunities for TC to reflect upon
and analyze their experience. A reflective debrief should take place after the cultural simulation
to provide teachers with opportunities to make conceptual understandings of culture in a safeand friendly environment. The debrief is also space where teacher educators may sort out any
conceptual misunderstandings and encourage critical thinking using a “Pedagogy of
Discomfor” (Zembylas & Papamichael, 2017) to ask TCs reflective questions about race,
gender, class, and sexual orientation to reflect on personally-held ideological values andbeliefs. Reflection is a powerful tool to analyze a teacher’s understanding of culture and theirexperiences working with CLD students (Hahl & Löfström, 2016). Reflective practice provides
a mechanism for teachers to address, reconsider, or change negatively held assumptions or
attitudes about working with CLD students (Wyatt, 2017).
Teacher educators who wish to use cultural simulations as an MTE strategy must engage intime-consuming preparations before, during, and after cultural visits. Before the cultural
simulation, TCs should participate in a pre-trip to learn essential concepts to understand andfully- immerse themselves in the experience. (Cruz & Patterson, 2005). A pre-trip seminar may
use multimodal methods (e.g., readings, videos, guest speakers) when introducing a target
culture. During the simulation, TCs may receive guided questions to engage in activities,
interact with the docent or with each other. After the simulation, teachers may reflect orally or
write about their experience, feelings, and how the simulation provided any new understanding.
In addition to careful planning, teacher educators should participate in the cultural simulation
before introducing the experience to teachers (Cruz & Patterson, 2005). Teacher educatorsneed to be readily available to support a teacher who may exhibit strong emotional feelings
resulting from participating in a cultural simulation.
Hawaiʻi: The “Super-Diverse”
Hawaiʻi has a “super-diverse” culture (Wyatt, 2017) that differs from the United States (US)mainland, where the majority of teachers are White, middle-class females. The US Census
Bureau (2018) indicates that Hawaiʻi’s population is comprised of Asian (37.8%), Whites(25.7%), individuals who identify as being of two or more races (23.8%), Native Hawaiian(10.2%) and Hispanic (10.5%). Hawaii’s unique cultural makeup is evident in the publicschool system, where most, if not all, classrooms include CLD students. A prospective teacher
enrolled in a TPP in Hawaiʻi will have exposure to the classroom field experiences needed to63

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

develop a keen understanding of Big C culture. Due to varying levels of comfort andexperiences teaching MTE, not all Hawaiʻi teacher educators will teach TC about
multiculturalism in the same way. In addition, high levels of diversity are considered
commonplace in Hawaiʻi. Therefore, most may perceive Hawaiian culture as a normal part ofsocial life and not as something unique that TCs need explicit instruction on to develop little ccultural competence (Wyatt, 2017). As a result, there is growing pressure for Hawaiʻi teacher
educators to provide TCs with ongoing exposure to authentic, real-life, cultural experiencesthat mimic everyday societal occurrences (Hawaiʻi Department of Education, 2019). To date,the majority of empirical research on the use of culture for teacher education in Hawaiʻi comesfrom work with in-service teachers. Very little is known about how teacher educators should
work to develop TCs’ cultural competence in TPP.
Conceptual Framework and Research Question
Byram’s (1997) model of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) was initiallydeveloped to serve foreign language education contexts. ICC is described as an “umbrellaterm” that includes cognitive, affective and behavioral components, and is often used to
examine a teacher’s cultural awareness (Brunsmier, 2017), or how one’s appreciation ofcultural norms influence one’s thoughts and behaviors (Munezane, 2015). ICC centers on the“development of the learner” to focus on three factors of intercultural communication:knowledge, know-how, and being. Knowledge includes one’s knowledge about their own andother cultures. Know-how is divided into skills of interpreting and relating to examine how one
makes sense of written or spoken text, or skills of discovery or interpretation to study how
individuals interact with other people or sources to increase their understanding of othercultures. Being centers on attitudes, beliefs, motivations, values, cognitive styles, andpersonalities contributing to one’s identity.
Due to an increase in cultural globalization, researchers often use Byram’s model to examine
culturally diverse contexts or strategies in a TPP. Xu et al. (2017) used ICC to investigate theintercultural competence a multicultural graduate-level special education course. Durham(2018) used ICC to examine how one teacher socially and academically assisted elementary
students. Leh et al. (2015) used ICC to examine how teachers in two different countries
communicated via an online intercultural exchange (OIE). Byram’s (1997) ICC model is usefulto study how MTE is disseminated to TCs in a TPP course because teachers are mediators andfacilitators of their students’ intercultural learning processes. Generally, it is up to the teacher
to put ICC into practice (Brunsmeier, 2017; Leh et al., 2015).
While ICC is a potential conceptual framework to examine culturally diverse contexts and
TPPs, in a recent critical discussion of Byram’s work, Hoff (2014) notes that the ICC modelemphasizes harmony and mutual understanding, while underplaying the potential benefits thatfeelings of conflict and disagreement may have for promoting profound discourses between
the “Self” and “Other.” More empirical research is needed to shed light on how teacher
educators may use ICC to develop TCs’ cultural competence, or as Brunsmeier (2017) notes,“hardly any practical suggestions for initiating ICC exist” (p. 144). This study examines theimpact cultural simulations had in facilitating ICC development amongst a group of TCs in
Hawaiʻi. The research question is, in what ways did cultural simulations promote ICC in
undergraduate TCs in Hawaiʻi?

64

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Methodology
This research was designed as an intrinsic case study (Stake, 2008). The authors are TPP
faculty members interested in learning how cultural simulations influence TCs’ ICC. Stake(2008) posited case studies “pull attention to both the ordinary experience and also to thedisciplines of knowledge” (p. 448). Since the authors had direct contact with participants, thisqualitative approach offered opportunities to collect multiple sources of data in a natural setting(Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Stake 2006) and to apply an inductive and deductive analysis
leading to descriptive results (Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Stake, 2008). Moreover, Creswell
and Creswell (2018) justified reflexivity values on how the researchers’ background “mayshape the direction of the study” (p. 182). With these attributes in mind, the researchers studied
the phenomenon for 16-weeks.
Participants
Twenty-one TCs in the second semester of the TPP were participants. Thirteen TCs were bornand raised in Hawai’i, and eight were born and raised on the U.S. mainland. Unlike other TPPs
where White-Caucasian students are the majority (Sleeter, 2001), the TCs in this study
represented various cultural backgrounds as shown in Figure 1. Nineteen participants werefemale, and two were male. At the time, study participants were pursuing a Bachelor of
Education (B.Ed.) degree, and six were earning a dual license in multilingual learning.
Approval to conduct this study was provided by the Institutional Review Board, and all study
participants gave informed consent.
Mix of two or more races

25%

Vietnamese

5%

Korean5%

Japanese15%

HawaiianGerman10%5%Filipino

15%

Ethiopian10%

Caucasian

10%

Bangladeshi

5%

Figure 1. The ethnic diversity of the 21 participants.
Procedure
Three cultural simulations were scheduled to teach little c. To select cultural immersion venues,
we turned to MTE literature (Sharmaet al., 2012) where cultural immersion activities aredescribed as informal contexts that “disorient” TCs and provide opportunities for TCs toengage in discussions on race, class, and gender issues. We used three local cultural simulationsites as informal learning contexts to develop TCs’ understandings of cultural differences. The
venues were selected based on the ethnic makeup of Hawaii’s public-school students,
participants (TCs), and venue availability within the academic semester. We also selected sites
highlighting various cultural components, such as rituals, ancestral history, and religious

65

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

practices. The authors also requested the venue host to replicate activities as if the participants
were elementary students. The venue host provided a guided tour, shared in-depth historicalknowledge, and led activities. The simulations occurred at the Japanese Tea House, HawaiʻiPlantation Village, and Byodo-In Temple.
1. The Japanese Tea House is located in Honolulu, on the same university campus where
the authors work. The tea house is a part of the Center for Japanese Studies (CJS),
where faculty deliver instruction and conduct traditional Japanese tea ceremonies inJapanese with English translations. During the cultural simulation, TCs engaged in a
traditional Japanese tea ceremony, drank ceremonial grade matcha tea, and ate“higashi”, dry Japanese sweets. They also learned cultural protocols such as entering
the tea house, bowing, showing appreciation for the tea ceremony host, understanding
the purpose for different tea utensils, and replicating tea-drinking motions such as
turning, admiring, drinking from the tea bowl.
2. The Hawaiʻi Plantation Village (HPV) is located in Waipahu, a suburban town outsideof Honolulu. The Hawaiʻi Plantation Village is an outdoor museum consisting ofrestored buildings and replicas of life on the sugar plantation during the 1900s in
Hawaiʻi. At HPV, TCs learned how immigrants from Portugal, Japan, Puerto Rico,
China, Korea, Japan, Philippines, Polynesia, and Okinawa adjusted to life in Hawaiʻiduring the sugar plantation era. They visited replicas of homes, touched artifacts,
learned about clothing, and understood how immigrants utilize natural and commercial
resources to survive financially. In addition, TCs engaged in cultural simulations suchas playing the Japanese taiko drums, learning the Chinese ribbon dance, challenging
each other in the Filipino game of “sungka” (mancala), and making spinning tops using
bottle caps and kukui nuts.
3. The Byodo-In Temple is located in Kaneohe, a suburban town outside of Honolulu.
The Byodo-In Temple is a non-denominational site with no monastic community or
active congregation. Recently, the temple commemorated the 100th anniversary of thefirst Japanese immigrants in Hawaiʻi. TCs visited the temple and walked through amortuary to see how Buddhists revere the dead and the after-life, learned about andpracticed meditation, gained information about the large 18-foot statue of the Lotus
Buddha, and engaged in watercolor activities.
Data Collection
Data methods included written reflection and focus group interviews. Each method was rooted
in a cultural simulation allowing data to be collected before, during, or after the trip, a similar
approach used by Cruz & Patterson (2005). Written reflections were submitted electronicallyon a virtual class discussion board. According to Merriam (2009), written accounts serve as
reliable data sources as each individual determines what is important. The researchers designed
prompts related to cultural topics, terminology, or social norms, specifically for eachsimulation.
Focus groups were conducted at the end of each cultural simulation in a quiet location. Eachgroup included 6-7 members and lasted about 45 minutes. Literature supports the use of focus
groups as a method in discussing specific topics from different points of view (Merriam, 2009).
The researchers designed prompts to facilitate TC reflection of their experience at the cultural
simulation site. All focus group interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed as they werecollected.

66

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Data Analysis
Two phases of data analysis were conducted to examine written reflections and focus groupinterview transcripts. An in-depth analysis using inductive and deductive processes wereapplied (Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Merriam, 2009; Stake, 2008). In the first round, data werechunked using structural codes (Saldaña, 2013), reflecting the three sub-dimensions of ICC(knowledge, know-how, and being). The researchers read through the reflections and focus
group interviews independently and applied descriptive codes (Saldaña, 2013) to identify mainideas. Then, descriptive codes and definitions were shared, and a codebook was created. The
codebook assisted with achieving intercoder reliability (Campbell et al., 2013). The first roundof data analysis resulted in 58 combined descriptive codes and aggregated according to one of
the three sub-dimensions of ICC: knowledge, know-how, or being.
In the second round, the researchers independently (re)read and (re)coded the data using thecodebook as a guide. Coding discrepancies were discussed and resolved until 95% intercoder
reliability was reached (Campbell et al., 2013; Creswell & Creswell, 2018). Next, each
descriptive code was tallied, and the two frequently used codes in each ICC dimension werelabeled as “dominant” to the study findings. Those less frequently used were identified as
outliers and reexamined to determine if any new insights could be combined with a dominant
descriptive code. For example, when analyzing the descriptive codes of “ignorance” (lack ofknowledge or training) and “bias” (the act of being unfair, hurtful or discriminatory), bothcodes appeared in the “knowledge” and “being” sub-dimensions of ICC. The code “bias” waskept because the data revealed an intentional act, and all “ignorance” codes were moved to theknowledge sub-dimension. Lastly, axial coding (Saldaña, 2013) was utilized to form ataxonomy where each ICC sub-dimension is linked to dominant sub-themes (Table 1).
Table 1. Axial coding allowed themes to emerge in each ICC domain.
Knowledge

Know-how

Being

Awareness
Cultural PracticeClassroom Strategy
Language AwarenessValuesBias

Findings
Study findings are rooted in Byram’s (1997) ICC framework, whereby knowledge, know-how,and being are used as themes to discuss new understandings gleaned from the data. The data
revealed that cultural simulations allowed TCs to develop ICC.
Knowledge
Knowledge refers to a prospective teacher’s intercultural awareness. TCs developed keenawareness about the different cultural practices inherent to Hawaiʻi as they began to noticecultural similarities and differences between the different ethnic groups in their target
communities (e.g., Japanese versus Filipino culture). The knowledge sub-dimension included
instances where TC shared a more in-depth or new awareness of culture or personallyexperienced cultural practice (Table 1).

67

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Awareness. Awareness brought on new meaning or clarity to TCs’ understandings of thevarious ethnic groups in Hawaiʻi. One teacher candidate explained,
The Hawaiian Plantation Village taught me that people of different backgrounds
could live coherently together.
Another candidate made a connection between Hawaiʻi and her Ethiopian (target community),
noticing similar storytelling traditions:
I remember one of the videos that we had to watch for the Hawaiian Plantation
Village stated that so much of history is storytelling, especially in the Hawaiian
culture. I think storytelling is important. My Ethiopian parents tell me stories
about my culture, and I want to do the same for the next generation.
Cultural simulations provide a way for TCs to explore how different ethnic groups in Hawaiʻi
compared or contrasted with the cultures they were familiar with or exposed to when working
in their field experience classrooms.
Cultural practices. Cultural simulations created a safe space where TCs discussed the cultural
practices they engaged in with others. For some TCs, discussions on cultural practices centeredon food traditions.
One type of food that we eat in my Japanese culture is a New Year’s food called“mochi.” Mochi is eaten to promote “stickiness,” or familial bonds, within thefamily.
Traditionally, my mom prepares vegetarian food for the Lunar New Year. It isthought to be good luck in my Chinese culture if you can eat vegetarian dishes
for 24 to 48 hours.
In Ethiopia, our traditional dish is called “injera,” which is a round spongy likebread, and on top of that goes the different sauces. You eat injera with yourhands and scoop the food onto the injera. It is almost like curry. This food isusually prepared by the oldest woman in the household, so if you are the eldest,
it is your responsibility to cook and take care of everyone.
Cultural simulations led TCs to become more aware of various cultural practices to understandhow others’ family traditions compared or differed from their own.
Know-How
Know-how included instances where TCs shared experiences where they were able to function
linguistically across different cultural contexts. As TCs learned how to function linguisticallyin different cultural contexts, they began to consider ideas for new classroom strategies andways to use CLD students’ native languages for instructional purposes.
Classroom strategy. TCs reflected on classroom strategies that they wanted to implement andexpressed the importance of incorporating their knowledge of students’ cultures for instruction.
One candidate explained,68

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

you can be accepting of other cultures but sometimes in the classroom if you
actually know [students’ cultures] ...it builds that much more connection withthe student and those cultural connections are what make student instruction
meaningful and successful.
Another candidate critically recalled a conversation she had with her mom and an educator,
about how she neglected to infuse her knowledge of students’ cultures in her lesson:
I told my mom about my lesson and the story I used to teach the students about
conflict and resolution, and she [my mom] asked me why did you choose Greek
mythology when you could have used Hawaiian legends? I was wrong inchoosing to use legends that provided no cultural connections to my students.
Cultural simulations made TCs more cognizant about how students’ cultures were being used
or not being used in their instruction.
Language awareness. The language awareness sub-theme encompassed instances where TCs
shared new understandings or clarity on how students’ native languages may be used for
instructional purposes. One TC described how her intentions to support CLD students resulted
in insensitivity:
I had confused the language of Japanese and Korean and misused them. I wasinsensitive to assume that I could use the language appropriately and mistook
them for being the same. In my teaching, I improved by learning more about thelanguages and learning more about the proper context of certain phrases andmore nuances and differences between the two languages.
Another TC shared how important she felt it was to allow students to use their native languages
for instructional purposes:...she [student] was like, “I can’t remember the word that everyone’s using, I
can’t remember it…” I said, oh, you can just say it in Tagalog, and I willtranslate it for you. She [the student] told me the word in Tagalog, and it cameup on “Google Translate.” That was a really good experience for me. I know I
code switch a lot. For instance, I might be thinking about something in Japanese,and it’s not coming out in English, so I’m struggling, trying to verbalize what I
want to say in English even though it’s in my head in Japanese.
In another example, a TC reflected on how her knowledge of students’ native languages
allowed her to understand students’ and their families better:
I would hear them [my students] lingering around the classroom door andtalking to each other in different languages, and I thought that was really cool.
They come from the classroom all day talking English, but once they saw theirparents, they reverted back to the language their parents knew. It made me think
how I could use their native language for instruction.
The know-how sub-dimension of ICC included TC practical applications of culturally
responsive pedagogy. Overall findings revealed that cultural simulations emboldened TCs’
abilities to serve their students as intercultural classroom mediators. They started to feel69

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

responsible for noticing and connecting students’ cultures in their instruction and making
learning more meaningful.
Being
Being was the sub-dimension of ICC with the lowest frequency count. This sub-dimension
included the attitudes, beliefs, motivations, values, cognitive styles, and personalities thatlinked TCs’ to a sense of personal identity. Values and biases were prevalent sub-themes in the
being sub-dimension.
Values. TCs shared what their respective cultures valued or believed. For example, throughout
the study, TC s spoke about how they practiced respect for elders:
The respect of your elders is huge in Ethiopian culture. If you do not respect yourelders, you get in a lot of trouble and are frowned upon. Which is why I always treat
my elders with respect and use “Yes ma’am,” “no ma’am,” “yes sir,” “no sir” when
speaking to my elders.
Accept and give things with both hands, bow enough to show your respect andhumbleness, generally, actions and ideas centering around respect. I’ve seen it
reflected across other cultures as well, but I suppose, for the most part, it’s considered
the actions we use to respect elders in Japanese and Korean cultures.
Cultural simulations created a space where TCs shared similar cultural values with each other(how they respected elders) and recognized their cultural similarities even though they
identified as culturally different.
Bias. As TCs reflected on their cultural values, they also encountered biases. One explained abias on her ethnicity:
I cannot even count on my hands the amount of times I have been called a“Nazi.” This has even happened within the past sixth months, coming fromsomeone the same age as I am. It makes me wish I was invisible and often
negatively categorize the type of people who call me a Nazi.
Another TC reflected on societal perceptions of skin color stating,People look at me and think I’m African American, but I’m actually Ethiopian.
This is much different, and I’ve grown to love and feel more connected to my
Ethiopian culture. People who are not familiar with the different shades of“black” have no idea about all the cultural groups that ‘black’ represents, andit angers me.
Other TCs reflected on the racial biases they experienced in the classroom setting whenworking with students. For example, one TC expressed:
I was the only White person in my [field experience] class, and they [students]
all knew it. They [students’] asked me, “What color are you? Peach?”
Negative emotions surfaced when TCs reflected on biases they had encountered. However, as
these emotions were discussed with peers, conversations shifted from anger and70

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

embarrassment to advocacy. Negative emotions became a springboard for dialogue
surrounding issues such as cultural oppression, marginalization, and equity.
One TC voiced her concerns about marginalized student cultures saying:
I feel like as a society, we tend to only celebrate the majority, and that affects
the minorities. As teachers, we need to consider the cultures we are celebrating
and ask ourselves: are we acknowledging the culture of every student in ourclassroom, and if not, we need to do so!
Another TC considered the influences of a hegemonic curriculum:
There are three students in my class who are from Chuuk. I learned that
culturally they do not value school the same way we do here in America. They
enjoy group work, collaborative hands-on tasks, and being outside. I feel like allthese standards and objectives we use to plan our lessons don’t consider what
my Chuukese students need to succeed academically. They [standards] are madefor the “white” American student or student who was born and raised here in
the US, not for culturally diverse students, but we teach to culturally diverse
students, so how is this right?
Cultural simulations raised TCs’ critical consciousness. TCs strengthened their own cultural
identities (values and biases) to reflect on cultural marginalization and hegemonic curriculum
and began to think critically about culture and how it related to social, community, andclassroom practices.
Discussion
TCs developed ICC through cultural simulations. TCs built awareness and discussed different
cultural practices, similarities, and differences between ethnic groups and other target
communities. This finding aligns with existing research of how preservice teachers lookbeyond “individualism” (Keengwe, 2010, p. 10) to accepting cultural differences. The
knowledge sub-dimension of ICC developed TC’s awareness from two perspectives. First, TCs
developed an awareness of the various cultures in Hawaii. Secondly, they began connecting totheir cultural practices and to others. Several TCs were third or fourth generation AsianAmericans and had feelings of cultural loss. For instance, one person shared, “I’m fullJapanese, so it kind of hurt a little to know that hey, this is new to me when this is traditional
Japanese culture”. Findings also reveal that TCs’ feelings of cultural loss should be discussed
in MTE coursework. We say this because in-depth cultural knowledge and empathy reflect theimportance of TC’s being prepared for and immersed in the simulation through readings,
discussions, and reflections (Ference, 2006; Keengwe, 2010).
The know-how sub-dimension of ICC was the most prominent finding. TCs discussed theirpractical understanding of culture, revealing their new insights. Like Brunsmeir’s (2016), theTCs considered alternative classroom strategies that could be used to improve CLD instruction
such as using languages other than English and utilizing students’ culture to increase
engagement and meaning. Keengwe (2010) highlighted teachers need to understand thecultural diversities represented in the classroom and be ready for challenges. However, theresearchers did not adequately prepare our TCs in promoting their own culture in the fieldplacement classroom so students could learn more about them. We didn’t realize some TCs

71

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

felt discomfort during the cultural simulation such as when one TC was asked if her skin color
was peach. Know-how should not only include knowledge of others but also to the TC. We
recognize that the TC’s utterance should have been probed more to cause her to consider why
her student referred to her as “peach”. Moreover, TCs discussed strategies they wanted to
implement in their field experience classrooms; however, we did not investigate if TCs put
these ideas into practice. While we acknowledge that ICC is an important goal of MTE, ourfindings agree with literature (Brunsmeier, 2016), revealing that ICC is not consistently put
into actual teaching practices.
The being sub-dimension of ICC exhibited a shift in TCs’ attitudes, beliefs, and motivations.
Cultural simulations allowed TCs to increase awareness of how personal biases affected theirability to work across and with different cultures present in their field experience classrooms.
They began to critically examine their own cultural identities (values and biases) to reflect onlarger sociopolitical issues such as cultural marginalization and a hegemonic curriculum. In
addition, valuable opportunities to use hegemonic societal issues as seminar discussion topics
were missed and should have promoted critical dialogue. We say this because the being subdimension of ICC had the lowest frequency in the data. Gorski (2012) notes that most MTE
scholars ignore power and oppression concerns and instead focus on cultural diversity mattersin multicultural coursework. Also, we should have included opportunities to learn more about
Native Hawaiian culture, especially since Native Hawaiian students are the largest populationin the public-school system. While we did not intend to ignore TCs’ comments about criticalsociopolitical issues, we acknowledge that we should have provided more post-cultural
simulation (seminar) time to explore topics related to power, race, cultural marginalization,and hegemony. As teacher educators, we should have worked harder to develop a ‘Pedagogy
of discomfort and empathy’ (Zembylas & Papamichael, 2017) to acknowledge TCs’
uncomfortable feelings and respond productively to elicit critical thinking.
Findings from this research underscore the criticality of using a dialogic approach to promotecultural competence in TCs. If the goal is to prepare teachers for teaching diversity and equity
in the classroom, then teacher educators must provide TCs with opportunities to examine andreflect on their own privileges coupled with considerations about what it means and feel liketo experience classroom learning as the “other.” While we recognize other TPPs may not have
Hawaii’s rich cultural diversity, we urge teacher educators to consider ways to mobilize culture
and diversity within TPP curriculum. One idea is to create an online cultural exchange whereTCs communicate with TCs who live in another country (Haley, 2012; Lin 2018). Future
research should examine what online activities and guided questions work best to spawn richdialogue for ICC development. With the current challenges entailed in teaching online during
the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe technology has the potential to serve as a mediatedplatform for ICC. TCs who reside in two different countries may use online platforms tocommunicate and build strong relationships to develop a keen global understanding.
Our research included several limitations. First, participants worked together in a cohort andhad strong, trusting relationships. We acknowledge this study may be difficult to replicate in a
non-cohort model. Secondly, the research examined the role of cultural simulations in a 16week semester and three cultural simulations. While research (Ference, 2006) reveals shortterm simulations help teachers’ cultural competence, we believe longitudinal research may
provide more insight on how teachers develop and use ICC over time with CLD students. We
did not study how TCs used ICC in their classroom-based field experiences and believe
studying ICC’s practical applications will offer insight into how TCs bridge multicultural
theory with practice. Lastly, as researchers, we had an insider position where access to72

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

participants was easy to achieve, and the need for relationship-building with participants was
not a challenge.
Conclusion
The present study found that cultural simulations promoted TCs’ cultural competence. TCs
developed an awareness of other cultures, began to consider ways to integrate student culture
into their teaching, and challenged personally held deficit beliefs about others to question
critical sociopolitical issues. However, the authors found that difficult issues and topics (e.g.,race, gender) were not explored enough and should have been, through the use of intentional
probing questions to elicit pedagogies of discomfort and empathy. Future research is needed
to examine how cultural simulations motivate TCs to become social change agents in theirclassrooms and how online, intercultural exchange between TCs from different countries may
work to mobilize ICC.

73

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

References
Banks, J.A. (2019). An Introduction to Multicultural Teacher Education (6th ed.), Pearson.
Banks, J. A., & Banks, C. A. M. (Eds.). (2016). Multicultural education: Issues andperspectives (9th ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Brunsmeier, S. (2017). Primary teachers’ knowledge when initiating interculturalcommunicative competence. TESOL Quarterly, 51(1),143–155.
https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.327
Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence.
Multilingual Matters.
Campbell, J. L., Quincy, C., Osserman, J., & Pedersen, O. K. (2013). Coding in-depth
semistructured interviews: Problems of unitization and intercoder reliability andagreement. Sociological Methods & Research, 42(3), 294–320.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124113500475
Creswell, J., & Creswell, J. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed
methods approaches (5th ed.). Sage.
Cruz, B. C., & Patterson, J. (2005). Cross-cultural simulations in teacher education:
Developing empathy and understanding. Multicultural Perspectives, 7(2), 40–47.
https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327892mcp0702_7
Deardoff, D. (2009). The Sage handbook of intercultural competence. Sage.
Durham, C. (2018). Teacher interculturality in an English as a second language elementarypull-out program: Teacher as broker in the school’s community of practice. The
Qualitative Report, 23(3), 677–695.
Ference, R. (2006). Building and sustaining short-term cross-cultural immersion programs inteacher education. AILACTE Journal, 3(x) 11–24.
Gay, G. (2018). Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice. Teachers
College Press.
Gorski, P. C. (2009), What we’re teaching teachers: An analysis of multicultural Teacher
education coursework syllabi. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(2), 309–318.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2008.07.008
Gorski, P. C. (2012). Instructional, institutional, and sociopolitical challenges of teaching
multicultural teacher education courses. The Teacher Educator, 47(3), 216–235.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08878730.2012.660246
Hahl, K., & Löfström, E. (2016). Conceptualizing interculturality in multicultural teacher
education. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 11(3), 300–314.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2015.1134544
Haley, M. H. (2012). An online cultural exchange in preservice language teacher education:
A dialogic approach to understanding. US-China Education Review. 528–533.
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education (2019), Race-ethnicity of public school students inthe state of Hawaiʻi, available at: https://dashboard.hawaii.gov/FormalEducation/Race-Ethnicity-of-Students-in-Public-Schools-in-Ha/6zur-cwiz (accessed
13 October 2019).

74

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Hoff, H. E. (2014). A critical discussion of Byram’s model of intercultural communicativecompetence in the light of bildung theories. Intercultural Education, 25(6), 508–517.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14675986.2014.992112
Holm, G., & Zilliacus, H. (2009). Multicultural education and intercultural education: Is therea difference. In M-T. Talib, J. Loima, H. Paavola & S. Patrikainen (Eds.), Dialogs on
diversity and global education, pp. 11–28. Peter Lang.
Keengwe, J. (2010). Fostering cross cultural competence in preservice teachers throughmulticultural education experiences. Early Childhood Education Journal, 38(3), 197–
204. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-010-0401-5
Lázár, I., Huber-Kriegler, M., Lussier, D. Matei, G.S., & Peck, C. (Eds.). (2007), Developing
and assessing intercultural communicative competence: A guide for language
teachers and teacher educators. Council of Europe.
Leh, J. M., Grau, M., & Guiseppe, J. A. (2015), Navigating the development of preservice
teachers’ intercultural competence and understanding of diversity: The benefits offacilitating online intercultural exchange, Journal for Multicultural Education, 9(2),98–110. https://doi.org/10.1108/JME-12-2014-0042
Lin, M. (2018). “I don’t even know where Turkey is.”: Developing intercultural competence
through e-pal exchanges. Journal of Global Education and Research, 2(2), 68–81.
https://doi.org/10.5038/2577-509X.2.2.1019
Lucas, T. (Ed.). (2011). Teacher preparation for linguistically diverse classrooms: A
resource for teacher educators. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203843239
Lucas, T., & Villegas, A. M. (2013). Preparing linguistically responsive teachers: Laying thefoundation in preservice teacher education. Theory Into Practice, 52(2), 98–109.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2013.770327
Merriam, S. B. (2009). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation. JosseyBass.
Munezane, Y. (2019). A new model of intercultural communicative competence: bridging
language classrooms and intercultural communicative contexts. Studies in Higher
Education, x(x),1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1698537
National Association for Multicultural Education. (2019). Definitions of Multicultural
Education, available at: https://www.nameorg.org/definitions_of_multicultural_e.php(accessed 21 April 2019).
National Education Association. (2019). Diversity Toolkit: Cultural Competence for
Educators, available at: http://www.nea.org/tools/30402.htm (assessed 02 July 2020).
Saldaña, J. (2013). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (2nd ed.), Sage
Publications, Inc.
Sharma, S., El-Atwani, K., Rahatzad, J., Ware, J., Phillion, J., & Malewski, E. (2012). How
disorienting experiences in informal learning contexts promote cross-culturalawareness in preservice teachers: Findings from a study abroad program. LEARNing
Landscapes, 5(2), 281–294. https://doi.org/10.36510/learnland.v5i2.566
Smolcic, E., & Katunich, J. (2017). Teachers crossing borders: A review of the research into
cultural immersion field experience for teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education
62(1), 47–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.11.002

75

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Stake, R. E. (2008). Qualitative case studies. In N. K. Denzin, & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.),
Strategies of qualitative inquiry (3rd ed.) (pp. 119–149). Sage.
TESOL International Association (TESOL). (2019), Standards for Initial TESOL Pre-K-12
Teacher Preparation Programs. TESOL Press.
United States Census Bureau. (2018), Quick Facts: Hawaiʻi, available at:https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/HI (accessed 12 March 2019).
Wyatt, T. R. (2017). The influence of “super-diversity” on preservice teachers’ sensitivity tocultural issues. Multicultural Learning and Teaching, 12(1), 87–109.
https://doi.org/10.1515/mlt-2015-0014
Xu, Y., Hao, C., & Huennekens, M. E. (2016). Effects of a multicultural perspectives
course on teacher candidates’ intercultural competence. Journal for Multicultural
Education, 10(1), 72–86. https://doi.org/10.1108/JME-07-2015-0025
Zembylas, M., & Papamichael, E. (2017). Pedagogies of discomfort and empathy inmulticultural teacher education. Intercultural Education, 28(1), 1–19.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14675986.2017.1288448
Corresponding author: Jennifer Padua
Contact email: paduajen@hawaii.edu

76

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Framing Undergraduate Perspectives on Experiential Learning
Within Soka Education Theory
Paul Sherman
University of Guelph-Humber
CanadaOlivia Boukydis
University of Guelph-Humber
Canada77

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Abstract
This article reports findings on two studies that explored undergraduate perspectives ofexperiential learning as a pedagogy that can produce impactful outcomes that align with
Makiguchi’s concept of Soka (value-creating) education. The twin studies examined
perspectives of undergraduate faculty and students by investigating how experiential learning
is viewed in terms of its impact on students’ sense of happiness and satisfaction, acquired
knowledge and skills, and potential for positively contributing to societal welfare. The article
addresses how experiential learning provides critical opportunities for students to create value
for making significant impact on the wellbeing of both the students and the wider society. Ten
instructors and twelve students from a small university in Toronto, Canada, answered a seriesof identical questions in confidential semi-structured interviews. The data were analyzed forthemes related to Makiguchi’s values of beauty, gain, and good. A key finding from theanalysis suggests that instructors and students agree on the primary importance that experiential
learning holds for the value of personal gain (among other things knowledge and skill
acquisition), while the values of beauty and social good were seen to be important, but of lesser
significance. It is noted that while certain limitations to the research exist, nevertheless, it issuggested that incorporating value creating principles within undergraduate course learning
objectives may provide opportunities for encouraging more transformative reflection andaction for learners, not only in the pursuit of their own individual happiness, but also for thebroader societal context.
Keywords: experiential learning, Soka education, value-creating

78

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Experiential learning, while not a novel pedagogical platform, has recently been gaining
increased traction in higher education as an effective approach to help students learn to addresssocial, economic, and environmental challenges at the local, national, and global levels. It is apedagogical practice whereby students actively engage actively in creating knowledge andcritically reflecting on their experiences, allowing them to understand how to transfer theirknowledge and skills to future endeavors (University of Guelph Experiential Learning,n.d.).Various scholars have emphasized the need to deliver academic programming for
facilitating the transformational praxis from classroom-based knowledge to community-based
engagement (Aktas et al., 2017; Chickering & Braskamp, 2009; Hendershot & Sperandio,
2009; May, 2017; Wynveen et al., 2012). Lorenzini (2013) suggests that when students learn
about local community and global issues, they are motivated to engage in proactive initiatives
to effect social change. Shephard (2008) notes that learning outcomes in the affective domain(values, attitudes, behaviours) are typically attained through experiential learning, citing thepromotion of racial understanding and social justice as an example. To cultivate students’ socioglobal awareness and participation in prosocial action, it is critical for educators to deliver
learning platforms that provide opportunities for students to transfer acquired theoreticalknowledge into meaningful prosocial actions.
Experiential learning provides students with relevant real-life opportunities for integrating theirunderstandings of global issues with the development of strategies for effective prosocial
action. Study abroad is one particular type of experiential learning platform that has become
recognized as an effective approach for reflective learning about other cultures, and in so doing,
developing transformative cultural awareness and experiences (Earnest et al., 2015; Reade etal., 2013; Strange & Gibson, 2017). Study abroad participation has been shown to afford a
multitude of benefits for the learner. It offers potent opportunities for critical self-reflection,
analysis, and synthesis (L. Stoner et al., 2014); and enhances students’ personal and moral
development, intercultural competencies, awareness of global issues, and commitment to social
justice (K.R. Stoner et al., 2014; Tiessen & Epprecht, 2012).
Overview of Present ResearchThis article reports findings from two related research studies that explored perceptions of the valueof experiential learning in undergraduate education, framed within the Theory of Value as
formulated by Japanese educator Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (Gebert & Joffee, 2007). Study 1,
conducted in 2018, examined instructor perceptions, while Study 2, conducted in 2019, looked atstudent perceptions. Both studies explored perspectives of undergraduate-level experiential
learning courses by investigating how this specific teaching and learning practice is viewed interms of its impact on students’ happiness and sense of satisfaction, acquired knowledge andskill benefits, and potential for making positive contributions to societal welfare. The studies
frame both teachers’ and students’ perspectives of their experiential learning courses in termsof Makiguchi’s values of beauty, gain, and good; the underpinnings of Soka (value-creating)education.
This article addresses how experiential learning provides critical opportunities for university
and college students to create significant value in their lives that can have both immediate andsustainable impact on the wellbeing of both the students and the wider society. In the following
sections the authors provide a review of relevant scholarly literature on experiential learning
and Soka education, which will be followed by the research methodology used in the two sisterstudies, research findings, discussion, and concluding remarks.

79

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Literature Review
Experiential Learning Theory
Universities typically employ a conventional learning approach that has been a staple of higher
education (Chmielewski-Raimondo et al., 2016; Nakelet et al., 2017). This traditional
pedagogy is largely theory-based where knowledge is deepened at the expense of engagement,
and students merely absorb information (Chmielewski-Raimondo et al., 2016; A. Y. Kolb &D. A. Kolb, 2005). In contrast, Experiential Learning Theory emphasizes the continuousreformation of skills and knowledge which leads to self-development (Bonnycastle &Bonnycastle, 2010; Lewis et al., 2017; Lin et al., 2016). A. Y. Kolb and D. A. Kolb (2005)
describe experiential learning as an on-going cycle in which students participate in anexperience, reflect on that experience, and formulate new ideas which are then put into practice(Henoch et al., 2014; Lewis et al., 2017). Although there are numerous definitions ofexperiential learning, our research employed the description developed by Lachapelle andWhiteside (2017, p. 2),
Experiential learning opportunities are grounded in an intentional learning cycle and clearly
defined learning outcomes. They engage students actively in creating knowledge and criticallyreflecting on their experiences, allowing them to understand how to transfer their knowledge
and skills to future endeavours.
Experiential learning allows students to become critical thinkers and problem solvers in various
fields and disciplines such as psychology, business, social work, and nursing (Chavan, 2011;
Greenfield et al., 2012; Roholt & Fisher, 2013). McGuire et al. (2017) found that nurses who
participated in specific political experiential learning activities became motivated to takepurposeful advocacy in the healthcare field. De Groot et al., (2015) examined the learning
outcomes of kinesiology students who participated in experiential learning courses. The study
found that these courses helped students gain real life experience, promoted independence, andshifted perspectives to a place of increased empathy and understanding.
Research has highlighted that teaching and learning does not need to be situated solely in theclassroom, as often seen in traditional pedagogy. Lin et al. (2016) found that students inNorthern Taiwan had increases in self-actualization, as well as improved communication skills
and relationships because of their involvement in experiential learning activities on and off
campus. Chen (2012) reports that university students who participated in local community
earthquake relief initiatives felt empowered to work together for the sake of cultural identity.
Furthermore, both preceding studies found that the experiences encountered by students
produced outcomes that formed new goals for positive societal change.
Experiential learning can be utilized beyond geographical borders through study abroad field
trips. These excursions bring a level of dynamism where the curriculum is infused with theexcitement of traveling to another country (Earnest et al., 2016; Greenfield et al., 2012).
Students can interact with an unfamiliar cultural environment and apply their knowledge to thecourse work (Greenfield et al., 2012). Philips et al. (2017) studied students who travelled to
Ghana on study abroad. Their research show that the students’ pre-trip preconceptions of the
Ghanaian peoples were inaccurate and biased, however, post-trip the students gained a
newfound respect for the local culture and developed a better understanding of the population’ssocial issues. Wynveen et al. (2012) came to a similar conclusion in their research on how
study abroad promotes a broader worldview for students. They found that study abroad
provides the opportunity to incorporate new knowledge into existing values and beliefs – an80

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

experience that fosters global citizenship. Numerous other studies report that study abroad trips
serve as a unique platform for reflection, social development and personal growth (Earnest etal., 2016; McPhee & Przedpelska, 2018; Philip et al., 2017).
Value Creation Theory
Soka (value creating) education is a humanistic-based approach to wellbeing formulated by theJapanese educators Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-1944) and Josei Toda (1900-1958) in theearly part of the 20th century. Daisaku Ikeda (1928-), a leading Buddhist philosopher, educator,
and international peacebuilder, has further advanced Soka education over the past 50 years.
Makiguchi was convinced that education was the key to securing individual and societal
wellbeing, or as he believed, happiness. He felt that happiness was discovered through atransformational process of creating value in one’s life through everyday interpersonal
interactions. The term soka was born of discussions between Makiguchi and Toda that centeredon the concept of value creation (Ikeda, 2009). Ikeda (2010a) states, “Our daily lives are filledwith opportunities to develop ourselves and those around us. Each of our interactions withothers – dialogue, exchange and participation – is an invaluable chance to create value” (p.117).
Hefron (2014) suggests that Soka education might be better understood as a philosophy of life
rather than a philosophy of education, as it “describes neither a specific school nor a generalschool of thought…[but] a way of being in the world [and] a process of becoming” (p.3). Ikeda(2010b) notes that, according to Makiguchi, what ultimately defines value, “is whether
something adds to or detracts from, advances or hinders, the human condition” (p. 246).
Makiguchi’s integrated system of values, consisting of beauty, gain, and (social) good, form
the most essential components of his Theory of Value (Bethel, 1989; Brannen, 1964).
According to Makiguchi, beauty is a sensory response that brings temporary fulfillment to theaesthetic awareness of the individual, and indirectly affects the life of the individual. Gain isviewed as a measure of personal outcome that directly maintains and advances the individual’slife. In contrast, good represents a level of social relevance that contributes to the wellbeing ofsociety (Bethel, 1989; Brannen, 1964; Gebert & Joffee, 2007; Goulah, 2010). In essence, value
is generated and sustained when humans seek to create beauty, personal benefit, and social
good, either together or independent of one another. However, Makiguchi theorized that a life
based primarily upon the pursuit of beauty, or sensory fulfillment, is unstable, as beauty alone
cannot sustain individual and societal wellbeing. Similarly, a life that only focuses on individual
gain cannot produce fulfillment on a holistic level. However, when contributing to the welfare
of society forms the foundation of one’s life, individual wellbeing and attainment of beauty arestrengthened, leading to the highest degree of value creation in one’s life.
Makiguchi believed that the essential role of education lies in enabling the creation of value
for both the individual and society. He wrote, “Human life is a process of creating value, andeducation should guide us toward that end. Thus, educational practices should serve to promotevalue creation” (Bethel, 1989, p. 54).
Methodology
Research Ethics Approval
Both studies received research ethics approval from the Humber College Research Ethics
Board.

81

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Study 1The purpose of this study is to examine undergraduate instructor perspectives on experiential
learning through the lens of Soka (value creating) education theory. Working within theframework of Makiguchi’s Theory of Value, the concepts of beauty, gain, and good are
explored in relation to teachers’ perceived value and outcomes of the experiential learning
courses that they deliver.
Research questions. The main research inquiry addressed in this study is: How doundergraduate instructors perceive the value of experiential learning for their students? In orderto frame the instructors’ responses within Makiguchi’s Theory of Value, three sub-ordinate
research questions were posed:
1. How do instructors perceive the impact of experiential learning on their students’ ability
to experience enjoyment or pleasure through learning? (Related to Beauty)
2. How do instructors perceive the impact of experiential learning on their students’knowledge acquisition, skill building, and personal growth? (Related to Gain)
3. How do instructors perceive the impact of experiential learning on their students’ ability
to positively impact society? (Related to Good)
Participants and procedure. Undergraduate instructors from a university within a large urban
area in Ontario, Canada comprised the population sample for this study. Teaching at least one
experiential learning course as classified by the University of Guelph (University of Guelph,n.d., Curricular…) was a necessary condition for our population sample. Forty potential
participants teaching an experiential learning course in the Fall 2018 semester were identified
and contacted by research assistants via email with an invitation to voluntarily participate in
the research study. Of the twelve teachers responding to the initial invite for an interview, two
individuals subsequently withdrew their involvement, leaving ten interviews that weresuccessfully completed.
Measures. Interview questions created by the research team were based on Makiguchi’s
principles of beauty, gain, and good within his Theory of Value (Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, n.d.,Life’s Values). All interviews were conducted by the research assistants using a nine-question
prepared script within a structured interview format (Appendix A). Interviews were audio
recorded, transcribed, anonymized, and then imported into MAXQDA (ver. 2018.1) computerassisted data analysis software for subsequent text segment coding into the four categories ofbeauty, gain, good, and value.
Data analysis. On a purely numerical basis, 77 distinct coded text segments were identified
for analysis that related to RQ1 (beauty), 140 distinct coded text segments related to RQ2(individual gain), and 76 distinct coded text segments related to RQ3 (social good). The
discrepancy with the significantly higher number of coded segments found for gain isaddressed in the ensuing Findings section.
The thematic network technique outlined by Attride-Stirling (2001) was adapted for use as theprincipal analytic tool for thematic development of the data set. In this method, thematic
analysis is conducted by systematically extracting the text data at three levels of increasing
abstraction—Basic themes, Organizing themes, and Global themes. Five steps were followedin undertaking the thematic network analysis, which consisted of coding the material,
identifying themes, constructing the thematic networks, describing and exploring the thematic
networks, and summarizing the thematic networks (Attride-Stirling, 2001, p. 391).

82

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Study 2The purpose of this sister study is to examine undergraduate student perspectives on
experiential learning through the lens of Soka (value creating) education theory. As with Study
1, Makiguchi’s concepts of beauty, gain, and good were explored in relation to the participants’
perceived value and outcomes of their experiential learning courses.
Research questions. The main research inquiry addressed in this study is: How doundergraduate students perceive the value of their experiential learning? In order to frame thestudents’ responses within Makiguchi’s Theory of Value, three sub-ordinate research questions
were posed:
1. How do students perceive the impact of their experiential learning on their ability toexperience enjoyment or pleasure through learning? (Related to Beauty)
2. How do students perceive the impact of their experiential learning on their knowledge
acquisition, skill building, and personal growth? (Related to Gain)
3. How do students perceive the impact of their experiential learning on their ability topositively impact society? (Related to Good)
Participants and procedure. Undergraduate students from a university within a large urban
area in Ontario, Canada were participants for this study. Taking at least one prior experiential
learning course as classified by the University of Guelph (University of Guelph, n.d.,Curricular…) was a necessary condition for our population sample. Fourteen senior-level
experiential learning classes that occurred in the Fall 2019 semester were selected at random
to be visited by the research assistants and presented with details of the study, including
information on opportunities for voluntary student involvement. The research team further
promoted the study through informational materials that were placed around the university
campus and on social media. Twelve students were subsequently interviewed for the study by
the research assistants.
Measures. Interview questions were adapted from the previous study’s interview questions,and as in the first study, all interviews were conducted by the research assistants using a ninequestion prepared script using a structured interview format (Appendix B), and were audio
recorded, transcribed, anonymized, and then text segment coded for subsequent thematic
analysis into the four categories of beauty, gain, good, and value.
Data analysis. On a purely numerical basis, 80 distinct coded text segments were identified
that related to RQ1 (beauty), 82 distinct coded text segments related to RQ2 (individual gain),and 60 distinct coded text segments related to RQ3 (social good). The discrepancy with thesignificantly lower number of coded segments found for social good is addressed in the ensuing
Findings section. The data analysis process mirrored the process used in Study 1, i.e., AttrideStirling’s (2001) thematic network technique (See Study 1 Data Analysis description).
Findings
Given the comparative affinity of each corresponding sub-ordinate research question in Studies
1 and 2, the findings for each research question will be reported in composite form below.
Minor phrasing edits are made to the research questions to reflect the similarity of thecorresponding questions from each study.

83

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Research Question 1: How do instructors and students perceive the impact of experiential
learning on the students’ ability to experience enjoyment, satisfaction, or pleasurethrough learning? Instructors and students were asked to describe opportunities in theircourses that offered students a sense of satisfaction or gratification, and how students
experienced enjoyment through their course. This part of the interview is related to
Makiguchi’s concept of beauty.
Instructor Global Theme 1: Enjoyment, satisfaction and self-confidence are cultivatedthrough peer and community engagement. This global theme was created from twoorganizing themes that ostensibly identified experiential learning as a pedagogy that provides
students with enjoyment through engaging both with their peers and with the course content,
and satisfaction by building self-confidence in overcoming challenges faced through direct
application of practical skills.
Instructors commented that students especially experience enjoyment and a sense ofgratification from their course when they connect with each other and provide peer support inthe classroom environment. They also felt that facing real world challenges in the community(e.g., via field practicums, internships) offered students opportunities to grow and create asense of happiness and wellbeing. The suggestion that experiential learning is both a satisfying
and gratifying educational activity is reflected in this observation from an instructor,
There’s that layer of the satisfaction and gratification that comes with doing a job
well done, getting good feedback, maybe getting experience that they know will help
them in their next steps towards their career.
Other instructors commented that students obtain enjoyment from experiential learning bygoing out of their comfort zone, by expressing joy that shows they are fully engaged with thecourse material, and by appreciating that the challenges they face can make them stronger.
Student Global Theme 1: Interacting with others fosters empathy and a sense ofcommunity by enhancing perspective-taking. This global theme was created from fourorganizing themes that ostensibly identified experiential learning as a pedagogy that affords
students the ability to connect with others through interaction, collaboration andcommunication, foster a sense of community through individual contributions, broaden andcreate new perspectives, and gain empathy for others.
Students reflected on the satisfaction, gratification and happiness they experienced whencollaborating with others. Whether, for example, through interactive classroom learning,practicum placements, or study abroad, the practice of connecting with others enhances
perspective, fosters empathy, and encourages a sense of community. The students’ responses
below reflect on how they achieve a sense of satisfaction and gratification by interacting withothers beyond their everyday environment,
Putting myself out of my comfort zone was definitely the most gratifying, getting to
see the world and getting to share that experience with people.
Learning about other people’s culture and their society makes you have anappreciation for yours, but also be respectful towards others.

84

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

One student reflected on how the positive emotion of happiness can spread from experiential
learning when she linked her study abroad trip to a “chain reaction”,
I think if we bring that [happiness] home with us … and spread it to others…I thinkthat’s how happiness spreads, it’s contagious.
Research Question 2: How do instructors and students perceive the impact of experiential
learning on the students’ knowledge acquisition, skill building, and personal growth?
Instructors and students were asked to describe how the students derive individual benefits andpersonal growth from experiential learning. This part of the interview related to Makiguchi’s
concept of gain.
Instructor Global Theme 2: Students develop transferable skills for personal andprofessional growth. This global theme emerged from three organizing themes that identified
the experiential learning experience as one that affords students opportunities to developtransferable skills for personal and professional development, appreciate one’s place in theworld and how to contribute to society, and foster student wellbeing and academic
achievement.
As noted previously, instructors’ responses for this segment (i.e., experiential learning related
to gain) outnumbered their responses for the other two segments (i.e., experiential learning
related to beauty or good) by nearly 2:1. This is a significant finding in that it might suggestthat teachers perceive that the value of experiential learning for attaining skills, knowledge,
and personal/professional growth outweighs its usefulness for providing aesthetic value orsocietal good. This distinction may be indicative of instructors’ understanding of how they
view the purpose of their course. For example, when asked to explain the value of their coursein terms of contributing to their students’ happiness, which Makiguchi believed was the chief
purpose of education (Ikeda, 2010a), one instructor quite genuinely remarked,
That is an interesting one, because we really don’t think about their happiness. And
I’ll be honest, I never thought, “Are my students happy”?
Nevertheless, the instructors offered various views on how experiential learning helps students
to acquire skills, knowledge, and personal growth. The following comments by instructors
aptly describe elements of the student growth process applicable to experiential learning,
I think they’re seeing themselves in a different light, not as a student, but as a
student entering a profession versus just doing classroom learning. So, I think that
adds a certain measure of growth.
You go out in the field and you act, and then you come back in the class and you
reflect on your actions, and then you go back into the field and use those learnings
to act differently.
So, it’s not just building specific skills, but it’s also becoming wiser about yourself
and about the world around you.
There were also considerable comments from instructors related to specific soft skills thatexperiential learning gave students, such as critical thinking, troubleshooting, creativity,

85

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

initiative-taking, appreciation for research, working independently and collaboratively,
accepting critical feedback, effective communication, and interpersonal proficiencies.
Student Global Theme 2: Applying knowledge gained through new meaningfulexperiences creates lasting personal growth. This global theme emerged from threeorganizing themes that identified experiential learning as offering students’ opportunities tolearn through new and different experiences, create lasting experiences, and acquire andimplement knowledge gained by virtue of experiences.
As mentioned previously, the number of student responses related to gain is the highest (82),followed by beauty (80) and good (60). While the difference in the data is very slight between
beauty and gain, the discrepancy with the number of responses related to good may suggestthat students see the value of experiential learning more in terms of how it contributes to theirpersonal and professional growth and sense of gratification, as opposed to its value for helping
them to contribute to societal wellbeing.
Following are students’ reflections on how experiential learning not only fosters opportunities
for skill and knowledge acquisition, but also gives opportunities for personal growth andfulfillment.
I felt after or during placement – I reflect a lot about what I do or what I can
improve on in order to grow and learn from it.
Yes, my confidence, definitely my confidence…before I would be very passive…but
I felt confident in sharing my ideas.
Doing more hands-on experiences and …having to put yourself out of what you areused to, definitely benefits you…it’s personal growth”
Students also commented on the specific soft skills that experiential learning affords them,such as skills in leadership, time management, and organization, the ability to work
independently as well as collaboratively, and improved communication skills.
Research Question 3: How do instructors and students perceive the impact of theirexperiential learning on the students’ ability to positively impact society? Instructors andstudents were asked to describe how knowledge and skills acquired in experiential learning areapplied for the benefit of society. This part of the interview related to Makiguchi’s concept ofgood.
Instructors Global Theme 3: Local and global communities are benefitted by students’increased prosocial and professional competencies. This global theme was developed fromtwo organizing themes that identified the experiential learning experience as one that affords
students opportunities to gain empathy and inter-cultural understanding, which encourages
students to help others, and benefit local and global communities by developing professional
competence.
Instructors commented that their experiential learning courses helped students gain empathy
for others through developing an understanding of themselves in the world, and furthermorethat reflective learning increases students’ happiness and inspires them to look for opportunities

86

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

to positively benefit others. Following are instructors’ comments related to how they perceive
experiential learning helping students to make a positive impact on society,
Some of them are doing placements that are more directly global, like with
newcomers or other kinds of populations that are coming from different parts of theworld and so there may be some opportunity to make a positive effect with thoseclients and then ultimately with other countries.
They are learning about intercultural competence, diversity, equity and inclusion,
which I think will make them better workers, but also better collaborators andleaders and managers. I think that could benefit society, whereby they’re thinkingof their work not only just for personal gain.
Instructors also commented on how experiential learning helps students prepare for exercising
their citizenship, understand their obligation to care for and stand up for the rights of others,
and look for opportunities to create positive experiences for themselves and others to create abetter society.
Students Global Theme 3: The sense of fulfillment through positive experiences andaccomplishments contributes to the betterment of society. This global theme was developed
from two organizing themes that identified the experiential learning experience as one thataffords students opportunities to gain a sense of fulfillment through happiness, enjoyment,
gratification, satisfaction, and pride in accomplishment, and understand how their personalhappiness can have a positive impact on society.
Students reflected on how experiential learning helped them to develop a broader awareness of
issues that impact communities at the local and global level. It is through this process thatstudents gain an appreciation and understanding of others, an experience which may influence
their role in society and motivate them to take action to improve it. Furthermore, the positive
emotions students experienced through experiential learning leads to a sense of fulfillment andaccomplishment, which fuels their motivation and offers them an impetus to contribute
positively to society.
Following are student comments related to how experiential learning positively benefitssociety,
The connections [that experiential learning courses] make for students and learning
is so important because we are the future…in order for this course to help society,people have to go, experience it, and then tell everybody about it.
It contributes to society in a way because you’re taking people and you’re opening
their mind a little bit…we are able to go and see other cultures and we are able tobring those ideas back into our society and that’s a big contribution.
Students also commented on how experiential learning contributes to personal fulfillment andgrowth, including how it encourages students to “think together”, “welcome new ideas”, “bemore empathetic” and “more kind”, and how to “project love and happiness”.

87

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Additional Theme
A fourth global theme developed from the thematic analysis was largely related to questions
that specifically queried how experiential learning benefitted students and society andcontributed to their happiness.
Instructor Global Theme 4: Experiencing challenges builds a sense of purpose that cancontribute to personal and societal happiness. Instructors’ comments reflected an overall
agreement that experiential learning indirectly contributes to both students’ and societal
happiness. Some of the ways they envisioned this occurring were by improving opportunities
for employment, building self-confidence and sense of purpose through real-world challenges,
and developing citizens who are willing to challenge themselves to grow personally and forthe betterment of society.
Instructors emphasized how experiential learning offered students’ opportunities to become
happier and to make a positive contribution,
I think that it has the potential to help them see themselves as a more rounded individual anda more contributing individual.
Happy people treat other people better. If you have happy people that are learning andgrowing, that are considering the needs of other people, the environment, feeling good about
themselves, creating accomplishments, putting themselves in a position where they feel goodabout this; that’s what builds a great society and a great world.
When you have challenges or things to do that you overcome, and it makes you feel
good and accomplished, that definitely contributes to your happiness because it
isn’t a superficial thing.
Students Global Theme 4: Experiential learning leads to the development and applicationof practical and interpersonal skills. Students’ comments reflected a consensus view thatexperiential learning leads to the development of practical and interpersonal skills, which canbe applied in ways that create personal and societal benefit. Students’ interactions inexperiential learning can lead to the development and application of interpersonal and practicalskills, which fosters learning and growth, and contributes to the broadening of one’s
perspective. This view is reflected in comments such as,
It’s not just to get marks and move on, its actually to learn, to actually apply and tosee if this is actually what you want to do with the rest of your life.
You can apply what you’ve learned in class…it also gives you perspective of what
it would be like in the real world…you can gain different experiences…it gives you
a different perspective on what you can do and opens your eyes to see what’s out
there.
Discussion
In this section we will explore the major themes that evolved from the research, framed within
the three essential values that comprises Makiguchi’s Theory of Value. The discourse will
specifically focus on comparing and contrasting the corresponding perspectives of instructors
and students.

88

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

BeautyParallels were drawn from both studies when participants were asked how courses offeredsatisfaction, gratification or enjoyment. Instructors and students gave very similar reflections,with instructors noting that students are afforded the opportunity to connect with peers throughdiscussion and collaboration, and students commenting on the value of connection ostensibly
through interaction and collaboration. This finding may not be surprising given the known
benefits of experiential learning; however, it is worth noting because both instructors andstudents assigned satisfaction and gratification to opportunities for connection andcollaboration in experiential learning. Our research suggests that experiential learning createsa learning environment that moves beyond traditional teaching and learning as it provides
students with interactive opportunities that bring a sense of enjoyment to their learning.
Instructors and students also reflected on the community interaction aspect of experiential
learning, albeit with different meanings. Instructors reflected more on the value of community
engagement, as well as remarking on the happiness, satisfaction and gratification that is
experienced when facing challenges in the community. Facing challenges not only provides amore authentic learning experience but it can also lead to increased confidence when dealing
with adversity, an experience one may not get with traditional pedagogy. Furthermore,
instructors reflected on the benefits of learning in the community because students can apply
newly developed skills and become actively engaged in their learning. From the instructor’s
perspective, it is the act of community engagement that allows students to experience thebeauty of learning.
Students reflected more on the sense of community identity, with one student remarking that“banding together” with unfamiliar people brought feelings of satisfaction, while anotherstudent reflected on feelings of gratification by seeing the world and of sharing experienceswith others. The benefits of learning in through community engagement has been noted in priorresearch, for example, Seed (2008) asserts that socialization within a cohort increases
motivation to learn, improves skill development, and fosters reflection and the opportunity tolearn from peers. Our study suggests that in addition to establishing a sense of community andproviding opportunities for skill development, experiential learning also evokes feelings ofhappiness for the learner (with respect to satisfaction and gratification).
Gain
As noted in the findings section, instructors may see personal gain as a more significant value
in experiential learning than beauty or good, given that the number of responses for thiscategory outnumbered the others. This is supported by the themes drawn from the data, whichsuggest that experiential learning mainly helps students appreciate their role in a broader social
context, develop skills, and achieve academic success. In particular, the theme “Developtransferable skills for personal and professional growth” seems to overshadow concerns forstudent happiness, as reflected by the instructor who remarked, “I’ll be honest, I never thought,‘are my students happy’?”. This highlights an important contrast from value-creating
education. Makiguchi believed that the fundamental purpose of education was for students toexperience a “realization of happiness” and losing sight of this is one of the problems withmodern education (Ikeda, 2010, p. xi). This is not to suggest that instructors do not consider
the happiness of their students, however, it may give merit to exploring pedagogy through thelens of value-creating theory because it encourages educators and students to look at teaching
and learning in a way they haven’t before, that is not fundamentally for the purpose ofachieving personal gain.

89

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020Students offered considerable reflections on the positive emotions experienced throughexperiential learning courses. Themes drawn from the data identified the fulfillment gained
from positive emotions (e.g., happiness, enjoyment and pride). and an understanding that
personal happiness can have a positive impact on society. This perception aligns with the third
Makiguchian value of social good.
Good
Students remarked on the power of connection in terms of empowering others by sharing
experiences, which as one student noted, creates a “chain reaction” for change. Althoughstudents genuinely emphasized their motivations to contribute to society, their specificreflections, such as, fulfillment and pride seem to suggest that they place a higher degree ofvalue on the personal benefits received, as opposed to the good they provide for others. This
seems to accord with the instructors’ focus on personal gain as a primary value in experiential
learning.
Instructors, on the other hand, assigned greater value than students for the benefits to society
from experiential learning because experiential learning broadens the perspective of the learnerby developing an intercultural understanding and an awareness of social issues. Despite thisdifference in focus, it is evident that students and instructors agree that experiential learning
creates opportunities for students to learn about and appreciate the world around them.
Conclusion
The purpose of this research was to study how instructors and students perceive the value of
their experiential learning courses framed within Makiguchi’s Theory of Value. In exploring
the aims of experiential learning in terms of its benefits to students and society, we have notedsome interesting findings, which should be couched within a particular limitation of thisresearch, namely its relatively small sample size. Had a larger sample of instructors andstudents been used, it might have added more depth to participant perspectives and greater
diversity in the experiences shared.
Nevertheless, the research suggests that instructors placed a higher degree of value forexperiential learning on the acquisition of knowledge and skill (gain), and perceived
satisfaction in learning (beauty) and societal benefit (good) to a lesser degree of importance,
but fairly equally with each other. Comparatively, students assigned experiential learning’svalue for satisfaction in learning and the acquisition of knowledge and skill on an equal footing,and to a lesser degree ascribed value to the impact their learning might have on society. Whilenoting some differences between instructors and students between the respective weightings
assigned to the value of experiential learning, the research supports an alignment between theperceived value of experiential learning and Makiguchi’s principal values of Soka education.
There was agreement that the value of personal gain is of primary importance in experiential
learning, while the values of beauty and social good were important, but of lesser significance.
According to Ikeda (2010, p. 20) value creation encourages self-reflection, which thenmotivates students to think and act with a broader sense of purpose in their lives. Experiential
learning is also intended to motivate the learner toward reflexivity in a way that enhances
continued self-development. Incorporating value creating principles within undergraduate
course learning objectives may provide opportunities for the application of enhanced teaching
and learning practices. Regardless of the educational platform, this could take the form of90

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020encouraging more transformative reflection and action for learners, not only in the pursuit of
their own individual happiness, but also for the broader societal context.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the Makiguchi Foundation for Education for their generous funding
support of this project, as well as the following individuals for their invaluable contributions
to the research: Afifa Abbaszadeh, Alice-Simone Balter, Sarah Belyk, Neve Connolly, Heba
Elgharbawy, Kathryn Johnson, Sophie Martin, Amy Piercey, and Denny Tran.

91

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

References
Attride-Stirling, J. (2001). Thematic networks: An analytic tool for qualitative research.
Qualitative Research, 1(3), 385–405. https://doi.org/10.1177/146879410100100307
Bethel, D.M., (Ed.). (1989). Education for creative living: Ideas and proposals of
Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (A. Birnbaum, Trans.). Iowa State University Press / Ames.
(Original work published 1930)
Bonnycastle, M.M., & Bonnycastle, C. R. (2010). Photographs generate knowledge:
Reflections on experiential learning in/outside the social work classroom. Journal of
Teaching in Social Work, 104(4), 233–250.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08841233.2015.1027031
Brannen, N. (1964). Soka Gakkai’s theory of value: An analysis. Contemporary Religions inJapan, 5(2), 143–154. https://doi.org/ 10.2307/30232923
Chavan, M. (2011). Higher education students’ attitudes towards experiential learning ininternational business. Journal of Teaching in International Business, 22(2), 126–143.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08975930.2011.615677
Chen, P. (2012). Empowering identity reconstruction of indigenous college students throughtransformative learning. Educational Review, 64(2), 161–180.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911. 2011.592574
Chickering, A., & Braskamp, L.A. (2009). Developing a global perspective for personal andsocial responsibility. Peer Review, AAC&U, Fall, 27–30.
Chmielewski-Raimondo, D. A., McKeown, W., Brooks, A. (2016). The field as ourclassroom: Applications in a business-related setting. Journal of Accounting
Education, 34, 41–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/.jaccedu.2015.11.002
de Groot, M., Alexander, K., Culp, B., & Keith, N. (2015). Experiential learning inkinesiology: A student perspective. Pedagogy in Health Promotion, 1(3), 123–133.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2373379915594391
Earnest, D. R., Rosenbusch, K., Wallace-William, D., & Keim, A.C. (2016). Study abroad in
psychology: increasing cultural competencies through experiential learning. Teachingof Psychology, 43(1), 75–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628315620889
Gebert, A., & Joffee, M. (2007). Value Creation as the aim of education: Tsunesaburo
Makiguchi and Soka education. In D. T. Hansen (Ed.), Ethical visions of education:
Philosophies in practice, (pp. 65–82). Teachers College Press.
Goulah, J. (2010). (Harmonious) community life as the goal of education: A bilingual
dialogue between Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Francis W. Parker. Studies in Education,
7(1), 64–85. https://doi.org/10.1086/651295
Greenfield, E. A., Davis, R. T., & Fedor, J. P. (2012). The effect of international social work
education: Study abroad versus on-campus courses. Journal of Social Work
Education, 48(4), 739–761. https://doi.org/10.5175/JSWE.2012.201100147
Hefron, J.M. (2014, March). “To be or not to be”: The question of incommensurability in Soka orvalue-creating education. Paper presented at the 2014 Comparative and International
Education Society Conference, Toronto, Canada.

92

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Hendershot, K., & Sperandio, J. (2009). Study abroad and development of global citizen
identity and cosmopolitan ideals in undergraduates. Current Issues in Comparative
Education, 12(1), 45–55.
Henoch, I., Ung, E. J., Ozanne, A., Falk, H., Falk, K., Sarenmalm, E. K., Ohlen, J., & Fridh,
I. (2014). Nursing students’ experiences of involvement in clinical research: an
exploratory study. Nursing Experience in Practice, 14(2), 188–194.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2013.07.009
Ikeda, D. (2009). Foreword: Special Issue: Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871–1944):
Educational philosophy in context. Educational Studies, 45, 111–114.
Ikeda, D. (2010a). Soka education: For the happiness of the individual. Middleway Press.
Ikeda, D. (2010b). A new humanism: The university addresses of Daisaku Ikeda. I.B. Tauris& Co. Ltd.
Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2005). Learning styles and learning spaces: Enhancing
experiential learning in higher education. Academy of Management Learning &Education, 4(2), 193–212. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMLE.2005.17268566
Lachapelle, S., & Whiteside, B. (2017). Experiential learning: A framework for impact [PDF
document]. Retrieved from https://www.uoguelph.ca/experientiallearning/about/experiential-learning-university-guelph
Lewis, M. L., Rappe, P. T., Albury, J. D., & Edler, L. D. (2017). Creative teaching andreflection in nontraditional settings: Regional, national, and international experiences.
Social Development Issues, 39(1), 29–40.
Lin, Y., Lai, P., Chiu, Y.C., & Chen, Y. (2016). Taiwanese university students’ perspectives
on experiential learning and psychosocial development. College Student Journal, 50(4),603–613.
Lorenzini, M. (2013). From global knowledge to global civic engagement, Journal of
Political Science Education, 9(4), 417–435.
https://doi.org/10.1080/15512169.2013.835559
May, D. (2017). Student perceived value of intensive experiential learning. International
Journal for Service Learning in Engineering, Humanitarian Engineering and Social
Entrepreneurship, 12(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.24908/ijsle.v12i1.6662
McGuire, M., Goldstein, C., Claywell, L., & Patton, R. (2017). Analysis of student
reflections of experiential learning in nursing health policy courses. Nurse Educator,
42(2), 95–99. https://doi.org/10.1097/NNE.0000000000000321
McPhee, S., & Przedpelska, S. (2018). Experiential learning, community engagement, andstudent experience: Undergraduate field school course in rural British Columbia. The
Canadian Geographer, 62(3), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12436
Nakelet, O.H., Prossy, I., Bernard, O.B., Peter, E., & Dorothy, O. (2017). Assessment ofexperiential learning and teaching approaches in undergraduate programmes at the
School of Agricultural Sciences, Makerere University, Uganda. International Journalof Higher Education, 6(5), 155–167. https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v6n5p155
Philips, L., Bloom, T., Gainey, T., & Chiocca, E. (2017). Influence of short-term study
abroad experiences on community health baccalaureate students. Journal of Nursing
Education, 56(9), 528–533. https://doi.org/10.3925/01484834- 20170817-03

93

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Reade, C., Reckmeyer, W. J., Cabot, M., Jaehne, D., & Novak, M. (2013). Educating global
citizens for the 21st century: The SJSU Salzburg program. Journal of Corporate
Citizenship, 49,100–116. https://doi.org/10.2307/jcorpciti.49.100
Roholt, R. V., & Fisher, C. (2013). Expect the unexpected: International short-term study
course pedagogies and practices. Journal of Social Work Education, 49(1), 48–65.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2013.755416
Seed, A. H. (2008) Cohort building through experiential learning. Journal of Experiential
Education, 31(2), 209–224. https://doi.org/10.1177/105382590803100207
Strange, H., & Gibson, H.J. (2017). An investigation of experiential and transformative
learning in study abroad programs. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study
Abroad, 29(1), 85–100. https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v29i1.387
Stoner, L., Perry, L., Wadsworth, D., Stoner, K.R., & Tarrant, M.A. (2014). Global
citizenship is key to securing global health: The role of higher education. Preventive
Medicine, 64, 126–128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2014.05.006
Tiessen, R., & Epprecht, M. (2012). Introduction: Global citizenship education for learning/
volunteering abroad. Journal of Global Citizenship & Equity Education, 2(1), 1–12.
Tsunesaburo Makiguchi. (n.d.) Life’s Values. Retrieved fromhttps://www.tmakiguchi.org/educator/educationalreformer/lifesvalues.html
University of Guelph Experiential Learning. (n.d.). Experiential Learning Definition andCriteria. Retrieved from https://www.uoguelph.ca/experientiallearning/projects/pastprojects/inventory-2017-2018/experiential-learning-definition-and-criteria.
University of Guelph. (n.d.). Curricular Experiential Learning Categories. Retrieved fromhttps://www.uoguelph.ca/experientiallearning/faculty-staff/what-experientiallearning/curricular-experiential-learning-categories
Wynveen, C. J., Kyle, G. T., & Tarrant, M.A. (2012). Study abroad experiences and global
citizenship: Fostering proenvironmental behavior. Journal of Studies in International
Education, 16(4), 334–352. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315311426782
Corresponding author: Paul Sherman
Contact email: paul.sherman@guelphhumber.ca

94

IAFOR Journal of Education: Undergraduate Education

Volume 8 – Issue 3 – 2020

Reviewers Volume 8 – Issue 3
The editorial team would like to thank the following reviewers for their contributions to thepeer review for this issue of the journal. Their dedication and assistance are greatly appreciated.
Idowu Elewa
José Miguel Lemus
Anemona Peres
Huiyuan Ye
Yanyue Yuan

95the iafor

journal of education

ISSN: 2187-0594