A presentation from the TIS International Conference - Internationalisation of Pedagogy and Curriculum in Higher Education: Exploring New Frontiers June 2011.
This research will look at the different approaches to the reception of international students in Japan China and the UK. Both UK and Japanese higher education receive large numbers of international students as in the US Australia and elsewhere.
In the current transnational education market students from new emerging countries such as China provide the highest proportion of international students in both Japan and the UK. Currently countries in Asia (e.g. China Malaysia) are also recruiting international students.
On the other hand there are distinct differences between the UK and Japan. Japan is still a more homogeneous society with less accumulated experience of the acculturation teaching or supervision of international students. This study will illustrate what Japanese and UK universities can learn from each other. Questionnaires were administered to students during their study abroad in Japan and the UK. A small sample from China gives a contrasting experience. This research was conducted jointly with Professor Masahiro Chikada of Nagoya University in 2010.
Anticipated differences in the preparation of academic staff or of international students in Japan and in the UK were not however borne out completely. It was revealed that in fact international students may be well catered for in the orientation phase of their study abroad at Japanese universities but the medium or method chosen was different with greater use of paper documents and face-to-face meetings in Japan compared with greater use of intranet sources for students to refer to in the UK. Approaches to staff preparation also varied with an emphasis in the UK on workshops being made available to academics on a free choice basis.
