Publication Date

2020

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Roth, Gene L.

Second Advisor

Johnson, Laura R.

Degree Name

Ed.D. (Doctor of Education)

Legacy Department

Department of Counseling and Higher Education (CAHE)

Abstract

Internationalization is a key component in the strategic visions of universities worldwide. Japanese universities are no exception. The strategic internationalization or Kokusaika of universities in Japan is led at the national level by the central government. Faculty members, in particular those charged with campus internationalization, are the drivers of internationalization at the institutional level. These faculty members are highly internationalized themselves. However, little is known about how faculty members at Japanese universities become internationalized. Research on the paths they take, what factors play a role in the process of internationalization, and what influence their internationalization has on the institutions they serve is absent from the literature. The author used a grounded theory type approach to collect and analyze reflections of the lived experiences of 15 current and former faculty directors of international programs at public and private universities in Japan regarding their personal internationalization.

Findings indicate the internationalization process is highly unique to each individual. Nonetheless, some commonalities emerged in the types of processes and paths participants took on their ways to becoming internationalized. Internationalization was also seen to be developmental in nature and emergent themes indicate some common factors contributed to internationalization of the participants. However, similar to the way experts have difficulty making their expertise explicit, the participants struggled to describe their internationalization, pointing to the tacit nature of it.

Synthesis of the findings enabled the author to create a working model for how internationalization occurred in participants and a working definition of what constitutes an internationalized faculty member in Japan. The author also proposes a set of conditions, strategies, and activities that may lead to internationalization of faculty members in Japan. Additionally, the author discusses his positionality and the influence of two important life events on his interpretation of the findings. Areas for future research include the role culture plays on faculty members’ paths to internationalization, the possible transferability of the findings of this study to other cultural and national contexts, and the exploration of affordances and challenges faced by insider-outsider researchers in contexts where they are not native speakers of the language used as the primary tool for conducting research.

Extent

268 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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