Deepening personalization through repeated contact with international students in Japanese higher education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32674/71mz2k05Keywords:
personalization, intergroup contact, contact between domestic and international students, internationalization at home, student staff roles, social identity inclusiveness, deprovincializationAbstract
Prior research suggests that contact with international students can encourage Japanese students to see them as individuals rather than category members; however, less is known about how such understanding deepens through repeated contact in everyday campus life. This study examines how Japanese students in student staff roles (teaching assistants, language assistants, and resident assistants) described changes in their understanding of international students and how the responsibilities attached to these roles shaped their relational orientations, thereby connecting research on contact between domestic and international students with research on student staff roles. The study draws on semistructured interviews with 21 participants and adopts grounded theory. It develops an interpretive model of deepening personalization informed by social identity and intergroup contact perspectives. Participants described deepening personalization beyond individuation, involving recognition of diversity among international students, common ground with them, greater familiarity and psychological closeness, reappraisal of Japanese norms and assumptions, and more open engagement with them. These changes were associated with two relational orientations shaped by self-positioning within student-staff roles and the responsibilities attached to those roles: peer-like, reciprocal relationships and staff-like, role-based relationships. The findings suggest that deepening personalization is both an interpersonal and a role-mediated process shaped by the institutional positioning of student staff roles. Japanese universities may therefore need to clarify student staff roles and support reciprocal contact as part of a more integrationist approach to internationalization at home.
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