The manifestation of global identity among international students in Japan

Health literacy (HL) is the ability to access, understand, evaluate, and apply health information for well-being. However, comparisons between domestic and international students remain limited. This study aims to investigate HL among Japanese and international university students in Japan and explore the factors that influence it. This cross-sectional study used both the English and Japanese versions of the 47-item European Health Literacy Survey Questionnaire (HLS-EU-Q47). Using convenience sampling, a total of 1366 university students across six regions in Japan who provided informed consent participated in this self-administered, online-based survey. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, ANOVA and multiple regression were conducted as appropriate at a 0.05 alpha level using JMP statistical software (version 17.0.0). The results revealed that 60 % and 32 % of participants had inadequate and problematic HL, respectively, indicating that 92 % of all students had limited HL. International students exhibited better HL than Japanese university students (p < 0.0001), a difference that remained after adjusting for sociodemographic and educational factors (β = 3.39, 95 % confidence interval = 2.83 - 3.95, p < 0.0001). The competency of "appraising" within the healthcare domain presented the greatest challenge for international students, whereas "understanding" within the disease prevention domain was most difficult for Japanese students. Furthermore, the results indicated a strong association between HL and sociodemographic factors such as age, level of study, marital status, and religious affiliation. In contrast, health literacy showed an inverse association with economic status, program of study and parental education level. There was an observable trend between improved Japanese language proficiency and improved HL among international students. International students in Japan demonstrated better HL than Japanese university students. Educational institutions must take a more proactive role in fostering HL for all students through general health education and peer-to-peer programs to create a more informed, healthy, and productive student community.

Background Numerous studies have assessed health literacy (HL) among university students; however, gaps remain in HL comparison across regions of migration among international students. While gender differences in HL are recognized, they are not well understood. This study aims to examine region of migration and gender differences in health literacy among international students and its association with healthcare perception. Methods Leveraging data from the Japan International Migrant Population and Comparative Health Study (J-IMPACT Study), a total of 500 international students who self-identified as male or female and completed the 47-item European Health Literacy Survey Questionnaire (HLS-EU-Q47) participated. Regions of migration were categorized into nine groups based on participants’ countries of origin. Healthcare perception was self-reported and classified as effective or ineffective. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, ANOVA, and multiple regression analyses were performed using JMP 17.2.0 as appropriate. Results Male international students in Japan had higher HL than female international students (p &amp;lt; 0.0003). After adjusting for potential covariates, this difference remained robust (β = 2.87, SE = 0.72, 95% CI = 1.45 - 4.29, p &amp;lt; 0.0001). Region of migration was associated with HL (p &amp;lt; 0.002), with international students from East Asia displaying the lowest and those from North America the highest HL. After adjusting for potential confounders, students from North America, Southeast Asia, and Europe exhibited a notable increase in HL, with percentage point rises of 5.6, 4.3, and 2.5, respectively, compared to their counterparts from the East Asia region. Furthermore, sufficient HL was associated with effective healthcare perception (odds ratio [95% CI]: 1.68 [1.02-2.77], p = 0.03). Conclusions HL was associated with both gender and region of migration among international university students in Japan. Improved HL was associated with reported healthcare effectiveness. Key messages • HL was associated with both gender and region of migration among international university students in Japan. • Improved HL was associated with reported healthcare effectiveness.

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; International student mobility has been increasingly subject to turbulences in politics, culture, economics, natural disasters, and public health. The new decade has witnessed an unprecedented disruption to international student flows and welfare as a consequence of the COVID-19 outbreak. COVID-19 has laid bare how fragile the current transactional higher education model is, in Australia and in other major destination countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand. This health crisis hitting international education presents a range of challenges for host universities. In such a fallout, the connection between university communities and international students is more critical than ever. This connection is vital not only to university’s operations and recovery but more importantly, to international students’ learning and wellbeing. This in turn will have longer term impacts on host countries’ and universities’ sustainable international recruitment and reputation as a study destination. Therefore, it is timely to reflect on how we view and conceptualize the way we engage and work with international students. This article presents a new frame for conceptualizing the teaching, learning, and engagement for international students, which emphasizes people-to-people empathy and people-to-people connections.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Conceptualize Student Connection Through Formal and Informal Curriculum&#x0D; Dis/connection has been argued to play “an important role in shaping international students’ wellbeing, performance and life trajectories” (Tran &amp; Gomes, 2017, p. 1). Therefore, it is important to frame international student connectedness not only within the context of formal teaching and learning on campus, but also in a broader setting, taking into account the dynamic, diverse, and fluid features of transnational mobility.&#x0D; Some of the primary dimensions of international student connection vital to their academic and social experience and wellbeing have been identified as:&#x0D; • Connection with the content and process of teaching and learning• Bonding between host teachers and international students• Engagement with the university communities• Interaction between domestic and international students and among international peers• Integration into relevant social and professional networks, the host community, and the host society• Connection with family and home communities• Online and digital connection&#x0D; Based on interviews with around 400 international students, teachers, and international student support staff across different research projects, I identified four main principles underpinning effective engagement and support for international students. Most participants stressed the importance of understanding international students’ study purposes, needs, expectations, and characteristics in the first place in order to meaningfully and productively engage with and cater for this cohort (Tran, 2013). Second, effective teaching of and engagement with international students is based on understanding not only their academic needs but also other aspects that are interlinked with their academic performance, including pastoral care needs, mental health, employment, accommodation, finance, life plans, and aspirations. Third, a sense of belonging to the content of teaching and learning and the pedagogy used by teachers is essential to international students’ engagement with the classroom community. In this regard, connection is intimately linked to international students being included and valued intellectually and culturally in teaching and learning, and in being treated as partners (Green, 2019; Tran, 2013) rather than ‘others’ in the curriculum. Fourth, to position international students as truly an integral component of campus communities, it is essential to develop explicit approaches to engage them not only academically and interculturally, but also mentally and emotionally, especially during hard-hitting crises in international education such as the 2019–2020 COVID-19 outbreak, the 2003 SARS epidemic, and the 2001 September 11 attacks.&#x0D; Productive Connectedness&#x0D; The lack of engagement between international and domestic students is often identified as a primary area for improvement for universities that host international students, especially in Anglophone countries (Leask, 2009). While international education is supposed to strengthen people-to-people connections and enrich human interactions, ironically it is this lack of connection with the local community, including local students, that international students feel most dissatisfied about in their international education experience. To support and optimize the learning and wellbeing of international students, productive connectedness is essential. Productive connectedness is not simply providing the mere conditions for interaction between domestic and international peers (Tran &amp; Pham, 2016). These conditions alone cannot ensure meaningful and real connectedness but can just lead to artificial or surface engagement between international students and the host communities. Productive connectedness is centered around creating real opportunities for international and local students to not only increase their mutual understandings, but importantly also to reciprocally learn from the encounter of differences and share, negotiate, and contribute to building knowledge, cultural experiences, and skills on a more equal basis. In this regard, productive connectedness is integral to optimizing teaching and learning for international students.&#x0D; Teaching and Learning for International Students&#x0D; Over the past 15 years, I and my colleagues have undertaken various research on conceptualizing the teaching and learning process for international students, an evolving and dynamic field of scholarship (Tran, 2011; Tran, 2013a, 2013b; Tran &amp; Nguyen, 2015; Tran &amp; Gomes, 2017; Tran &amp; Pham, 2016). Figure 1 summarizes the six interrelated dimensions of teaching and learning for international students emerging from our research: connecting, accommodating, reciprocating, integrating, “relationalizing,” and empathy.&#x0D; &#x0D; Connecting&#x0D; It is critical in effective teaching and learning for international students that conditions are provided to engage them intellectually, culturally, socially, and affectively. Curriculum, pedagogies, and assessment activities should aim at supporting international students to make transnational knowledge, skills, experience, and culture, as well as people-to-people connections (Tran, 2013).&#x0D; Accommodating&#x0D; Effective teaching and learning for international students cannot be achieved without an effort to understand their purposes to undertake international education, their cultural and educational backgrounds, their characteristics, their identities, and their aspirations. Good teaching and learning practices in international education are often built on educators’ capacities to tailor their curriculum and pedagogies to cater to international students based on an understanding of their study purposes, backgrounds, and identities.&#x0D; Reciprocating&#x0D; Reciprocal learning and teaching is integral to international education (Tran, 2011). It is centered around positioning international students as co-constructors of knowledge and educators as reciprocal co-learners (Tran, 2013b). It refers to extending beyond mutual understanding and respect for diversity, to validate and reciprocally learn from diverse resources, experiences, and encounters of differences that international classrooms can offer. This is vital to making international students feel included and valued as an integral part of the curriculum and the university community.&#x0D; Integrating&#x0D; Integrating refers to the purposeful incorporation of international examples, case studies, materials, and perspectives into the curriculum. Strategies to diversify the teaching and learning content and pedagogies are closely connected with de- Westernizing the curriculum and moving away from Euro-centric content (Tran, 2013a). Integrating contributes to enriching students’ global awareness, world mindfulness, and intercultural competence, which are central to internationalizing student experience and outcomes.&#x0D; “Relationalizing”&#x0D; “Relationalizing” is crucial in assisting domestic and international students to develop open-minded and ethno-relative perspectives. Engaging students in a comparing–contrasting and reflexive process about professional practices, prior experiences, and cultural norms in different countries represents a critical step in assisting them to develop multiple frames of reference and build capacities to relationally learn from richly varied perspectives and experiences that an international classroom can offer.&#x0D; Empathy&#x0D; International students’ sense of belonging to the classroom and university community significantly depends on the empathy local teachers and students display toward them. Teachers can develop activities that enable students to develop an understanding and empathy toward what it feels like to be an international student in an unfamiliar academic and social environment, studying in a language that is not their mother tongue. One of the teacher-participants in our research shared an activity she used to help all students develop empathy:I asked for volunteers, I’d speak to them in English and they had to answer in their language. The group had to try and figure out from their body language and tone of voice what they were actually saying to me...But what I try and make them understand that part of the reason we’re doing that, not in English, is because it’s like excluding the local students and it’s making them look like foreigners and to understand the challenge.&#x0D; Conclusion&#x0D; Effective practices in engaging, teachin

Previous research has focused on how students adapt to the host country during study abroad. However, less is known about how these experiences influence students’ social engagement upon returning home. This study explores how Japanese students’ social interactions abroad influence their relationships with international students in Japan after their return. Using a qualitative approach based on grounded theory, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 Japanese students who had studied abroad for one academic year. The findings suggest that social interactions abroad facilitate recategorization, a process in which individuals redefine group boundaries and develop a broader shared identity. This process was influenced by four key factors: language and social skills, motivation, opportunities, and perceived fit. Through this process, Japanese students expanded their group boundaries and formed a shared identity with international students in Japan as individuals with study abroad experience. As a result, they developed more positive attitudes toward international students, heightened empathy, and a stronger motivation to engage with and help international students. These findings indicate that recategorization can occur through the formation of a new social identity based on shared experiences rather than direct intergroup contact, highlighting the long-term impact of study abroad on students’ intercultural engagement. This study underscores Japanese students’ tendency to identify with international students in Japan rather than with host nationals upon their return.

The COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted a tremendous impact on international higher education (Coffey et.al., 2020; IIE, 2020; Jayadeva, 2020; Mok et al., 2021). We assume that it will lead to some structural transformation in student mobility and international education. To foresee such structural transformation, we propose a comprehensive framework to monitor the changes not only in destination countries but also in source countries, and not only at institutional level (meso), but also at individual level (micro) and government level (macro). As a case study utilizing this framework, we present some analytical results of international student surveys conducted in the USA and Japan at the beginning of 2021: more than 400 international students shared their experiences and choices during the pandemic. We compare the responses not only by study destination (the USA and Japan) but also by student home country income level (World Bank classification). We examine the influence of government policies, institutional responses, and the relation of their host and home countries on their responses.As the result of the analysis, we found out that, in both the USA and Japan, the most serious issue perceived by the majority of international students is financial difficulty. Its main causes derive from loss or decrease of part-time jobs, decrease in scholarships, and disruption of remittance. The difficulty is more strongly felt by students from low or lower-middle-income countries than those from upper-middle-income countries.Their future plan has also been greatly affected by the COVID-19: 64 percent of the respondents in the USA and 87 percent of those in Japan who had planned to find employment in their study destination replied that they changed their plan because of the decrease in job offers, internship, interview and part-time job opportunities, caused by the COVID-19.Although most international students are rather satisfied with online classes, insufficient interaction between instructor and students and/or among students and unstable internet connection are among the issues reported by the international students.Regarding the future inflow of international students from their home country to their current study country, 63 percent of the respondents in the USA and 58 percent in Japan predict that it will decrease. Remote learning and decrease in employment opportunities in the study country are among the top reasons for their negative prediction.Although international higher education has expanded in the last twenty years (OECD, 2020), we may witness its decline in the near future. Many higher education institutions may struggle with the increased needs of online education and its price setting. Values and Cost-effectiveness of face-to-face “real” education will be reexamined by international students. Employment prospects and enhancement of employability will become more important in students’ choice of study destination. Employability is closely related to “soft skill” and “tacit knowledge,” which are likely to be acquired through face-to-face communication. Higher education institutions will be required to respond to such demand of international students.

Celebrating the Last 10 Years of Community College Internationalization

This chapter examines trends in international student enrollments in the Canadian community college sector over the past decade. We first provide an overview of the Canadian community college sector and its longstanding mandate of training students for local labor markets. We then discuss how federal, provincial, and institutional authorities have all supported increasing international student enrollments for primarily economic rationales. Next, we draw on data from Statistics Canada to examine recent trends in international student enrollments in the community college sector. We point to three major trends: (1) the unprecedented growth of international student enrollments in the college sector; (2) an increasing proportion of international college students from India; and (3) a high concentration of international college students in only two provinces, namely Ontario and British Columbia. We argue that these trends raise important policy questions for the sector's traditional mandate of local labor market preparation, while also having important implications for how college leaders and student affairs professionals meet the needs of their students. Such questions include: how to provide needed academic and social supports for international students and how to best facilitate international students' pathways to the labor market, university study, and immigration.

The Institute of International Education (IIE) 2018 Open Doors report highlighted that the United States is the leading international education destination, having hosted about 1.1 million international students in 2017 (IIE, 2018a). Despite year over year increases, U.S. Department of State (USDOS, 2018) data show that for a third year in a row, international student visa issuance is down. This is not the first decline. Student visa issuance for long-term academic students on F visas also significantly dropped following the 9/11 attacks (Johnson, 2018). The fall in issuances recovered within 5 years of 2001 and continued to steadily increase until the drop in 2016. Taken together, the drops in international student numbers indicate a softening of the U.S. international education market. In 2001, the United States hosted one out of every three globally mobile students, but by 2018 it hosted just one of five (IIE, 2018b). This suggests that over the past 20 years, the United States has lost a share of mobile students in the international education market because they’re enrolled elsewhere. The Rise of Nontraditional Education Destination Countries Unlike the United States, the percentage of inbound students to other traditional destinations such as Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, has remained stable since the turn of the 21st century. Meanwhile, nontraditional countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia are garnering more students and rising as educational hotspots (Knight, 2013). The UAE and Russia annually welcome thousands of foreign students, respectively hosting over 53,000 and 194,000 inbound international university students in 2017 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2019). This is not happenstance. In the past 5 years, these two countries, among others, have adopted higher education internationalization policies, immigration reforms, and academic excellence initiatives to attract foreign students from around the world. The UAE is one of six self-identified international education hubs in the world (Knight, 2013) and with 42 international universities located across the emirates, it has the most international branch campuses (IBCs) worldwide (Cross-Border Education Research Team, 2017). Being a country composed of nearly 90% immigrants, IBCs allow the UAE to offer quality higher education to its non-Emirati population and to attract students from across the Arab region and broader Muslim world. National policy and open regulations not only encourage foreign universities to establish IBCs, they alsoattract international student mobility (Ilieva, 2017). For example, on November 24, 2018, the national government updated immigration policy to allow foreign students to apply for 5-year visas (Government.ae, 2018). The Centennial 2071 strategic development plan aims for the UAE to become a regional and world leader in innovation, research, and education (Government.ae, 2019), with the long-term goal of creating the conditions necessary to attract foreign talent. Russia’s strategic agenda also intends to gain a greater competitive advantage in the world economy by improving its higher education and research capacity. Russia currently has two higher education internationalization policies: “5-100-2020” and “Export Education.” The academic excellence project, known as “5-100-2020,” funds leading institutions with the goal to advance five Russian universities into the top 100 globally by 2020 (Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, 2018). The “Export Education” initiative mandates that all universities double or triple the number of enrolled foreign students to over half a million by 2025 (Government.ru, 2017). These policies are explicitly motivated by boosting the Russian higher education system and making it more open to foreigners. Another growing area is international cooperation. Unlike the UAE, Russia has few IBCs, but at present, Russian universities partner with European and Asian administrators and government delegates to create dual degree and short-term programs. Historically, Russia has been a leading destination for work and education migrants from soviet republics in the region, but new internationalization policies are meant to propel the country into the international education market and to attract international students beyond Asia and Europe. Future Trends in 21st Century International Education Emerging destination hotspots like the UAE and Russia are vying to become more competitive in the global international higher education market by offering quality education at lower tuition rates in safe, welcoming locations closer to home. As suggested by the softening of the U.S. higher education market, international students may find these points attractive when considering where to study. Sociopolitical shifts that result from events such as 9/11 or the election of Donald Trump in combination with student mobility recruitment initiatives in emerging destinations may disrupt the status quo for traditional countries by rerouting international student enrollment to burgeoning educational hotspots over the coming decades.

International student enrollment has experienced dramatic increases on U.S. campuses. Using a national dataset, the study explores and compares international and domestic students’ incoming and post-training levels of motivation to lead, leadership self- efficacy, and leadership skill using inverse-probability weighting of propensity scores to explore differences between the two samples. Unweighted findings suggest that international and domestic students enter programs similarly across in many ways, and leave the immersion program with similar gains. However, a matched-sample comparison suggests that international students’ growth was statistically different in ethical leadership skills, affective- identity motivation to lead, and leadership self-efficacy. Discussion focuses on the benefits of leadership development to international students why campuses could build partnerships between units that serve international students and leadership educators to facilitate a more inclusive campus.

International students have a critical role in the internationalization of education. The export of education is a competitive process for attracting greater numbers of international students to educational programs in host countries and for the delivery of curriculum in “off-shore” programs. The United States leads the world in terms of the numbers of students involved in international education. Enrolment of international students in the U.S. peaked at more than 580,000 in 2001/02 and more than 154,000 American students studied abroad in 2000/01 (Chin, 2002). In Canada, enrolment of international students has fluctuated during the past 5 years, but has increased to more than 110,000 international students (Canadian Bureau of International Education (CBDE), 1999, 2002). Australia has experienced continued growth in international student numbers, with increases in enrolments both onshore and offshore. More than 188,000 international students were enrolled with Australian education providers in 2000 (Australian Education International, 2001) and those numbers currently approximate 200,000 (Bohm, Davis, Meares & Pearce, 2002). As educators consider target goals for international education, the United Kingdom provides an example where approximately 200,000 international students represent 12% of the entire student population at colleges and universities (CBIE, 1997, 2002).KeywordsInternational StudentCounseling ServiceForeign StudentInternational EducationInternational LearnerThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Australia’s involvement in international education has undergone several significant policy shifts since World War II. From 1950 onwards, Australia provided significant number of foreign aid‐related scholarships to selected “sponsored” students from needy “developing countries” as part of the Colombo Plan. In 1974, the federal Labor government simultaneously “took over” the total funding bill for higher education (relieving the states of their roughly 50 percent share) and abolished tuition fees. This free tuition also extended to foreign overseas students. The number of foreign students grew rapidly, and the federal higher education budget expanded in the 1970s. A decision was taken in 1979 to introduce a tuition fee for private (i.e., non-governmentsponsored) overseas students—the Overseas Student Charge—constituting one-third of the actual costs. The roughly 10,000 foreign students in this category—mostly from Asia—were viewed as being “subsidized” by the foreign aid budget. Despite some outrage from Australian academics, foreign students and their governments at this “comodification of education,” most universities saw little option but to engage in the pursuit of revenue through competitive marketing and student recruitment programs in Asia. As Australia’s international trade balance seriously deteriorated in the early 1980s, the federal government’s attitude hardened and like the United Kingdom, it introduced a full fee-paying overseas student policy—Australia had effectively shifted from a traditional “aid” to a “trade” perspective in relation to foreign students. The federal minister for education encouraged “cash-strapped” universities to charge a “profit margin” on foreign student tuition to generate revenue. Despite some outrage from Australian academics, foreign students and their governments at this “comodification of education,” most universities saw little option but to engage in the pursuit of revenue through competitive marketing and student recruitment programs in Asia. The result has been spectacular growth in international student enrollments.

The lack of exchange between international students and host nationals in Japan has long been a pressing issue, yet very little progress has been made to rectify this situation. This study examined this issue by focusing on how international students in Japan perceive intercultural contact with their host and home culture members during their sojourn. The study applied a qualitative approach based on grounded theory, collecting data through semi-structured interviews with 41 international students from China, the UK, and the USA, and tenets of Social Identity Theory and Anxiety/Uncertainty Management Theory were adopted. We analyzed the data on a framework of how international students manage uncertainty in the Japanese environment by identifying with the host and their own home cultures, which we distinguished as inter-cultural or intra-cultural contact orientation. International students demonstrated an intra-cultural rather than inter-cultural contact orientation due to the host nationals reacting to them as “foreigners.”

Individual preparedness for large-scale earthquakes is essential for safety and security in Japan, where earthquakes frequently occur. Foreign residents in Japan face barriers to gathering disaster information, and international students are likely to be more vulnerable to the effects of earthquakes due to the shorter duration of their stay in Japan. However, no studies have been conducted on international students' individual preparedness for large-scale earthquakes in Japan. This study aimed to investigate individual preparedness for large-scale earthquakes among international students in Japan. This cross-sectional study was conducted from May to August 2023 among 360 international students aged ≥20 years enrolled at seven Japanese-language educational institutions in Osaka, Kyoto, and Hyogo prefectures. Of these, 120 (33.3%) agreed to participate in the mail surveys. Students with invalid answers were excluded and 114 (31.7%) were included in the analysis. The information obtained using a self-administered questionnaire included participants' characteristics, methods used to collect information on individual preparedness for large-scale earthquakes (information sources and languages), and individual preparedness for large-scale earthquakes. Many international students had not implemented safety measures at home and lacked information about safety confirmation, evacuation sites and routes, items to wear during evacuation, items to take in case of evacuation, or items to stockpile at home. In particular, approximately half of the participants lacked knowledge about nearby evacuation sites, and only 37.7% had confirmed their evacuation routes to nearby evacuation sites. Only 32.5% had prepared bags containing emergency items to take in case of an evacuation, and most had not packed the items, even though they were stocked at home. In addition, only 8.8% had stockpiled radios and emergency portable toilets at home. It is necessary to promote individual preparedness for large-scale earthquakes among international students in Japan.

Greater demand for quality post-secondary education has been seen in Asia, particularly in China. Many Western countries have seen a rise in international education. Increasingly, schools in Australia are embracing internationalisation policies, leading to an increase in international student enrolment before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. International students in school education are something of a little-understood issue for educational scholars, policy makers and the general public. Leadership is seen as pivotal in the success of schools’ internationalisation program. By applying a mixed-method approach to collect data from an online Qualtrics survey and semi-structured interviews with independent school leaders in Australia, this paper reports how school leaders understand Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) international students’ linguistic, cultural and educational contributions to schools, and their experience in supporting the international students to adapt into the new educational environments through various programs and strategies. This article also advocates that it is vital to respect the international students’ educational subjectivities generated in their “home” countries when providing support programs to help them engage with new educational contexts in “host” nations.

Commentary: COVID‐19 Pandemic and Higher Education: International Mobility and Students’ Social Protection