Transformation of Higher Education in the Age of Society 5.0: Trends in International Higher Education 3031155262, 9783031155260

Table of contents :
Preface
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Images
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Introduction: Assessing Change in Asia-Pacific Higher Education on the Threshold of the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Facing the Challenges of the COVID-19 Era
Chapter 2: Redefining the Role of the University and the Social Sciences Within the Emergent Structures of Society 5.0.
Introduction
Dimensions of Change
Transforming Higher Education
Transforming the Social Sciences and Humanities in the Emergent Era of AI
Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: STEAM Education in the Case of Engineering (Empowerment Informatics: Tsukuba University, Japan) and the Art Studies (Interface Cultures: University of Arts and Design Linz, Austria)
Symbiosis Between Science and Art
Symbiosis Between Science and Technology
Responsibility of Science, Technology, and Arts Advancements
The Importance of Interdisciplinarities in Study Programs: STEAM
The Value of Integrating the Arts and Sciences in the School Curriculum
STEAM Education at the PhD Program Empowerment Informatics, University of Tsukuba, Japan
Empowerment Informatics STEAM Projects
idMirror in the Field of Social and Information Networks and Face Recognition
Body Swapping Experiment in the Field of Android Robotics Science
Study of Body Swapping with Android Robots
STEAM Education at the Interface Culture Master Program at University of Arts and Design Linz, Austria
STEAM Projects at Interface Culture
VR in Wonderland
STEAM Platform in Slovenia
Network of Research Arts and Culture Centers Slovenia (McRUK)
Newly Established Steam Laboratory in the Frame of McRUK: DDTLab
STEAM Projects at McRUK: Brain Lab
Brain–Computer Interface Hackathon in Trbovlje
VR Lab
Sensory Integration Manipulation Through VR Tools
Conclusion
Reference
Chapter 4: Cultivating Future Competencies Through Interdisciplinary Education in the Society 5.0 Era
Introduction
Society 5.0: The Vision
Society 5.0: Technologically Driven Social Change
Japanese Educational Reform Trends
Developing Next-Generation Competencies
Society 5.0 Collaboration
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5: Fitting Square Pegs into Round Holes: Developing an English-Taught Liberal Arts Program at a Japanese University
Introduction
Background to ETPs in Japan
Issues Concerning the HE Curricula in Japan
Innovating a Liberal Arts ETP at a Comprehensive University
Issues of Square Pegs and Round Holes
Degree Certificates and “Domesticated” Enrollment Management
Student Inclusiveness in University Life: The Dejima Effect
Conclusion: Ways Forward
References
Chapter 6: From Total Environment to Sustainable Development: Interdisciplinary Learning as the Cornerstone to a Survivable Future
References
Chapter 7: Construction of a Learning Network for Linking STEM, Social Science, and Humanities in Higher Education
Introduction
Structural Problems
Curricular Design
References
Chapter 8: Convergence Education Based on the Liberal Arts: Focusing on the Lecture-Pairing
Why Convergence Education?
How to Develop Convergence Thinking Competency
Two Levels of Convergence Education
Prerequisites for the Successful Convergence Education in the Basic Level
A Method of the Convergence Education in the Basic Level: Lecture-Pairing
The Current State of the Lecture-Pairing
Advantages of the Lecture-Pairing
Conclusion
References
Chapter 9: How Does US STEM Higher Education Cultivate Global Competences Through Interdisciplinary Programs?
Introduction
Previous Studies of Interdisciplinary Studies and Global Competences
Two Case Studies: Stanford BOSP and Singapore University of Technology and Design
The Online Survey
Results of Descriptive Statistics
Active Learning Experiences
Global Work Experiences
Results
Discussion and Conclusion
References
URL
Chapter 10: Who Gets a Global Competency?: The Case of University in Japan
Introduction
Materials and Methods
Data Distribution
Factor Analysis
Statistical Analysis
Results
Does Global Experience Connect Good Jobs?
Who Gets a Global Competency?
What Is a Global Competency?
Conclusion
References
Chapter 11: University Social Responsibility in Taiwan: Diverse Goals and Interdisciplinary Learning
Introduction
Concepts, International Trends, and National Policy of University Social Responsibility in Taiwan
International Trends
National Policy of Taiwan
Concepts, Factors, and Importance of Interdisciplinary Ability of University Students
Definition of Interdisciplinary Ability
Factors of Interdisciplinary Abilities
Importance of Interdisciplinary Talents of Higher Education
USR, Social Entrepreneurship, and SDGs
USR and Learning of Interdisciplinary Abilities: A Case of University A
Conclusion
References
Chapter 12: Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

INTERNATIONAL AND DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION

Transformation of Higher Education in the Age of Society 5.0 Trends in International Higher Education Edited by Reiko Yamada Aki Yamada · Deane E. Neubauer

International and Development Education Series Editors

W. James Jacob Collaborative Brain Trust American Fork, UT, USA Deane E. Neubauer East-West Center Honolulu, HI, USA

The International and Development Education Series focuses on the complementary areas of comparative, international, and development education. Books emphasize a number of topics ranging from key higher education issues, trends, and reforms to examinations of national education systems, social theories, and development education initiatives. Local, national, regional, and global volumes (single authored and edited collections) constitute the breadth of the series and offer potential contributors a great deal of latitude based on interests and cutting-edge research. The series is supported by a strong network of international scholars and development professionals who serve on the International and Development Education Advisory Board and participate in the selection and review process for manuscript development. SERIES EDITORS W. James Jacob, FamilySearch International Deane E. Neubauer, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and East-West Center INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Clementina Acedo, Webster University, Switzerland Philip G. Altbach, Boston University, USA N’Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba, Cornell University, USA Carlos E. Blanco, Universidad Central de Venezuela Sheng Yao Cheng, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan Evelyn Coxon, University of Auckland, New Zealand Edith Gnanadass, University of Memphis, USA Wendy Griswold, University of Memphis, USA Ruth Hayhoe, University of Toronto, Canada Yuto Kitamura, University of Tokyo, Japan Jing Liu, Tohoku University, Japan Wanhua Ma, Peking University, China Ka Ho Mok, Lingnan University, China Christine Musselin, Sciences Po, France Yusuf K. Nsubuga, Ministry of Education and Sports, Uganda Namgi Park, Gwangju National University of Education, Republic of Korea Val D. Rust, University of California, Los Angeles, USA Suparno, State University of Malang, Indonesia Xi Wang, University of Pittsburgh, USA John C. Weidman, University of Pittsburgh, USA Weiyan Xiong, Lingnan University, China Sung-Sang Yoo, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea Husam Zaman, UNESCO/Regional Center for Quality and Excellence in Education, Saudi Arabia Collaborative Brain Trust 45 W South Temple, #307, Salt Lake City, UT 84010, USA Asian Pacific Higher Education Research Partnership East-West Center1601 EastWest Road, Honolulu, HI 96848, USA

Reiko Yamada  •  Aki Yamada Deane E. Neubauer Editors

Transformation of Higher Education in the Age of Society 5.0 Trends in International Higher Education

Editors Reiko Yamada Faculty of Social Studies Doshisha University Kyoto, Japan

Aki Yamada Tamagawa University Tokyo, Japan

Deane E. Neubauer University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu, HI, USA

ISSN 2731-6424     ISSN 2731-6432 (electronic) International and Development Education ISBN 978-3-031-15526-0    ISBN 978-3-031-15527-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Yuichiro Chino / Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

The twelve substantive chapters that constitute this volume explore a range of activities within an array of higher education (HE) institutions, primarily in Japan, but with attention to some of its overall dimensions and implications for the conduct of higher education at the university level. Together they suggest how the Fourth Industrial Revolution and what in Japan has been framed as “Society 5.0” are affecting the existing structures of higher education and promoting new modalities for instruction, research, and community service. The vision of “Society 5.0” promoted by the Japanese government is one “where advanced technologies and service platforms integrate with and empower individuals in a human-­ based society” (MEXT, 2018). This proposal for the development of Japanese society and the economy suggests a STEAM approach to curricula might best provide the next-generation competencies needed to effect such societal change. At the same time, though, there has been a recent tendency by the Japanese government to dismiss the societal importance of humanities and social sciences both in policy statements and the censoring of expert voices in social science and humanities, which are critical of government policies. These events have had the unfortunate effect of further dichotomizing university campuses rather than promoting interdisciplinary approaches to the HE curriculum worldwide. But this phenomenon is not only applicable to Japan but also applicable to other Western and other Asian countries too. For instance, “I-Korea 4.0” (I for Intelligence, Innovation, Inclusiveness, Interaction, and 4.0 for the Fourth Industrial Revolution), and the “Taiwan Productivity 4.0 Initiative” implies the meaning of the society dealing with the Fourth Industrial v

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Revolution. We are obliged to explore how the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Japan’s vision for Society 5.0 affect the existing structures of higher education and promote new modalities for teaching, research, and community service. First, we explore various dimensions in which these dynamics will impact the conventional disciplines that constitute the social sciences. In our view, this leads to radically differentiated knowledge activities within these fields, and perhaps of even greater importance, the emergence of newly determined conjoint hybrid fields in which the traditional disciplinary boundaries that have separated such areas are progressively reduced. We aim to redefine the role of the university and the social sciences within the emergent structures of Society 5.0. When we consider the impact on the knowledge economy in a globalized world, it has become increasingly prominent in recent years. There is a growing expectation and demand for innovation in higher education. The term “STEM” has become a dominant part of educational discourse, coined to recognize the widely recognized concept of integration between Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Worldwide, it is generally expected that the STEM fields of study will take a leadership position in innovation. However, there is a recent trend of additionally integrating the arts into STEM studies under the “STEAM” moniker. We will argue how this new trend can provide the competencies necessary for realizing the Society 5.0 era. We will explore this not only from the higher education and comparative educational points of view but also from the historical view of interdisciplinary learning in higher education. Tracing its roots to the late 1960s shows how the call for interdisciplinarity first gained traction with the push for environmental education, as seen in the events leading up to and following the first Earth Day (1970). Between the inaugural publication of The Journal of Environmental Education (1969) and the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (1972), educators formulated the belief that an understanding of the “total environment,” or the interconnectedness of natural, economic, and social phenomena, would require a multidisciplinary approach. This belief has continued to the present in the context of education for sustainable development, being articulated among others in the Bonn Declaration (1999) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015). Yet, apart from a limited number of academic programs, interdisciplinarity within the context of environmentalism failed to materialize as anticipated. Instead, interdisciplinary learning was eventually reformulated in

 PREFACE 

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bolstering the liberal arts and developing twenty-first-century competencies. Nevertheless, the arguments formulated fifty years ago have become increasingly relevant with the growing environmental crisis. The scale and complexity of the current crisis necessitate interdisciplinarity capable of developing the ecologically oriented competencies needed to sustain the next generation. The purpose of the book is to create a foundation for clarifying the role of interdisciplinary education in overcoming the vertical division of academic disciplines and restoring the “integrated nature” of scholarship. This study seeks to contribute to an understanding of how education systems can use the humanities, social sciences, and arts to enhance STEM education and how this STEAM approach to teaching is key to enabling the vision for Society 5.0. Our book is distinctive along three dimensions. Readers will recognize much of what is going on in higher education in the era of “Society 5.0” and the COVID-19 era from the perspective of their own situations. We emphasize first that higher education continues to confront the COVID-19 pandemic, and educators face and will continue to face the many challenges of teaching in a completely new setting compared to before the pandemic. The more we teach through distance learning, the more we realize how much we depend on technology, including online communication tools such as ZOOM, Microsoft Teams, and others. Because of such changes, we again must renegotiate how technology plays a significant role in our lives. This shift is aligned with the Society 5.0 vision of sweeping adaptations needed for an increasingly technologically integrated society. Second, these constitute a comparative analysis that will clarify the commonalities and differences between countries. One persuasive hypothesis holds that many countries covered in this project have commonalities in Science and Technology-oriented policy in the emergent knowledge-­ economy society. However, some persistent differences exist in the various approaches to interdisciplinary education reform. We examine some of the more important commonalities and differences that exist between countries, and we propose some new directions for interdisciplinary approaches to different types of societal circumstances. Third, the authors of the chapters consist of a combination of individuals who have social science backgrounds supplemented by a few from STEM backgrounds, resulting in an interdisciplinary and novel mix. This project explores various dimensions in which the conventional boundaries

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between disciplines will be impacted by changing dynamics in desired educational outcomes. Finally, as indicated in Chap. 1 this book is based on the outcome of a medium-sized international conference entitled “The Importance of Interdisciplinary Aspects of University Programs: Facing the Challenge of Global Competencies for both STEM and SSHM (Social Science and Humanities),” initially planned to be held at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, in March 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the substance of the conference was held virtually online from November 14 to November 15, 2020. Each presenter submitted a working paper after reading meeting’s organizing concept paper. Each of the two online virtual conference presentations included an intensive follow-up discussion in which participants developed further arguments about redefining what it means to study STEM in the current situation, defining the emerging roles of the university for students, and how Asia-Pacific higher education is changing within the dynamics of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Society 5.0 era. Individual chapters are interrelated with an overarching theme while providing comparative points of view between the Asia Pacific, such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and the United States. These arguments are analyzed comparatively in examples from the United States, Slovenia, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Kyoto, Japan Tokyo, Japan  Honolulu, HI, USA 

Reiko Yamada Aki Yamada Deane E. Neubauer

Contents

1 Introduction:  Assessing Change in Asia-­Pacific Higher Education on the Threshold of the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Facing the Challenges of the COVID-19 Era  1 Deane E. Neubauer, Reiko Yamada, and Aki Yamada 2 Redefining  the Role of the University and the Social Sciences Within the Emergent Structures of Society 5.0.  9 Deane E. Neubauer 3 STEAM  Education in the Case of Engineering (Empowerment Informatics: Tsukuba University, Japan) and the Art Studies (Interface Cultures: University of Arts and Design Linz, Austria) 23 Maša Jazbec 4 Cultivating  Future Competencies Through Interdisciplinary Education in the Society 5.0 Era 37 Aki Yamada 5 Fitting  Square Pegs into Round Holes: Developing an English-Taught Liberal Arts Program at a Japanese University 53 Gregory S. Poole

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6 From  Total Environment to Sustainable Development: Interdisciplinary Learning as the Cornerstone to a Survivable Future 67 William R. Stevenson III 7 Construction  of a Learning Network for Linking STEM, Social Science, and Humanities in Higher Education 79 Masaaki Ogasawara 8 Convergence  Education Based on the Liberal Arts: Focusing on the Lecture-Pairing 93 Hasuk Song 9 How  Does US STEM Higher Education Cultivate Global Competences Through Interdisciplinary Programs?105 Reiko Yamada 10 Who  Gets a Global Competency?: The Case of University in Japan127 Takuya Kimura 11 University  Social Responsibility in Taiwan: Diverse Goals and Interdisciplinary Learning145 Jason Cheng-Cheng Yang 12 Conclusion159 Reiko Yamada, Aki Yamada, and Deane E. Neubauer Index169

Notes on Contributors

Maša  Jazbec  is an artist, curator, and researcher. She holds a PhD in Human Informatics from the University of Tsukuba (Virtual Reality Lab) in Japan and an MA in Interactive Art, conferred by the Interface Culture at the University of Arts and Design Linz. She was a visiting researcher at Ishiguro Laboratory at ATR, where she has deepened her research in human-like robotics and android science also in practice. She is a guest professor in the Interface Culture MA program at the University of Arts and Design Linz, Austria; is engaged in developing the vision and the execution of the Trbovlje New Media Setting project in Slovenia; and was curating events integrating science, art, and technology at the new media culture festival Speculum Artium.She is head of DDTLab where she is leading program for production of projects that are at the crossroad among art, science, engineering, and STEAM education. The DDTLab during her guidance received various awards for innovation.She presented her research at the conferences such as Human Robot Interaction (HRI acm), Computer Human Interaction (CHI acm), SIGGRAPH Sparks, ISEA, Ars Electronica, and ResetEdu. Takuya  Kimura  is a professor at the Faculty of Human-Environment Studies, Fukuoka’s Kyushu University, Japan, and a professor (Cross Appointment) at the National Center for University Entrance Examinations, Japan. He holds an MA from the University of Tokyo in Philosophy of Education, and a PhD from Tohoku University in Sociology of Education. He is the President of Japan Association of College and

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University Admissions Profession. He has been interested in the history and statistical analysis of academic and student surveys. In particular, he has quantitatively studied transitions from high school to university and from university to society. Deane  E.  Neubauer holds a BA from the University of California Riverside and MA and PhD degrees from Yale University. He is also Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where he also served as founding Dean of the Social Sciences and Interim Chancellor of the Manoa Campus and Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs of the multi-campus University of Hawaii System. He also for over ten years served as Senior Adjunct Faculty of the Professional Development Program of the East-West Center, and Co-director of the Asia Pacific Higher Education Research Partnership (APHERP) of which he was a founder. APHERP is located at Lingnan University Hong Kong. His research specialty is comparative higher education policy. Masaaki Ogasawara  is a professor emeritus at Hokkaido University and the former president of Japan Association for College and University Education. He holds an MA degree from Hokkaido University, School of Science, and later the title of Dr. of Engineering while he was working for Faculty of Engineering, Hokkaido University. His interest gradually shifted to science and technology education when he was working as the head of the Department of Integrated Science, Hokkaido University of Education. Then, he became a professor at Hokkaido University where he was assigned to the director of Research Division of Center for Research and Development in Higher Education, concurrently with holding the post of professor in the Department of Applied Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering. Also, he worked at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology and the University of Tsukuba. Gregory  S.  Poole  is a Professor of Social Anthropology at Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan, where he previously served as the Vice President for International Affairs and Dean of The Institute for the Liberal Arts. Greg holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. His area of research focuses mostly on the anthropology of education and his books include three co-edited volumes, Foreign Language Education in Japan: Exploring Qualitative Approaches (2015), Reframing Diversity in the Anthropology of Japan (2015), and Higher Education in East Asia:

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Neoliberalism and the Professoriate (2009), as well as a monograph, The Japanese Professor: An Ethnography of a University Faculty (2010). Hasuk Song  is a professor at Dasan University College of Ajou University, Korea. He is the Dean of Dasan University College and the Director of the Center for Convergence Education. Also, he is the President of the Korean Council for University General Education. He holds a PhD from Claremont University, US. His major is philosophy, especially analytic philosophy, and logic. While teaching at Ajou University, he has been striving for improvement and innovation in liberal arts education. Recently, he is interested in research for convergence education based on liberal arts education. William R. Stevenson III  is an associate professor in the Department of Education and Culture at Doshisha University. He holds a PhD from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and is studying the history and practice of environmental education. He lives with his wife and three boys in Kyoto City where he spends much of his time running a garden-based learning project for students of all ages. Reiko Yamada  is a professor at the Faculty of Social Studies and Director of the Center for Higher Education and Student Research at Kyoto’s Doshisha University, Japan, where she was also the former Dean of the Faculty of Social Studies. She holds MA and PhD degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Education, in Social Sciences and Comparative Education. She has long been interested in comparative higher education policy in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. More recently, she has conducted a quantitative study for acquisition of global competences before and after the COVID-19 pandemic and is engaged in comparative student research between Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. She served as the Director of the Center for Learning Support and Faculty of Development. She also served on the committee of the Central Education Council in Japan. She is the president of the Japan Association for College and University Education. She is the author of Prospects for University Education in 2040: Based on 21st Century Learning Outcome (2019). She is also the editor of New Directions of STEM Research and Learning in the World Ranking Movement: A Comparative Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). She has published 9 single-author books and

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11 edited books in both Japanese and English. She has published more than 150 articles in both Japanese and English. Aki  Yamada attended Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, with a Bachelor of Arts in Policy Studies. She continued studying at Doshisha University and received her Master of Arts in American Studies. During her master’s program, she studied at Stanford University for one year as a Freeman Spogli Institute Visiting Researcher. Aki began her doctoral studies in education at the University of California Los Angeles in 2011, pursuing research on New Japanese living in the United States, under the direction of advisor John Hawkins. After graduating, she worked for four years as an assistant professor in the Empowerment Informatics leading graduate program at the University of Tsukuba. Aki is an assistant professor at Tamagawa University. Her research interests include globalization, contemporary Asian immigration, transnational identity, STEM and STEAM education, and internationalization of higher education. Her research methodology focuses on qualitative studies, with an emphasis on ethnography. She has published several comparative studies on higher education trends in Japan and the United States. In 2018, Aki co-­edited a book that Palgrave Macmillan published as part of its International and Development Education series (a series for which John Hawkins, Reiko Yamada, and W.  James Jacob served as co-editors): New Directions of STEM Research and Learning in the World Ranking Movement: A Comparative Perspective. In 2021, She has also published article “Japanese Higher Education: the Need for STEAM in Society 5.0, an Era of Societal and Technological Fusion” in the Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education, 2021, and three book chapters (1) “Globalisation in Higher Education: Bridging Global and Local Education” (Springer 2022, International Handbook of Globalization, Education and Policy Research), (2) “Globalization and Higher Education Reform in Japan: Pre and Post Covid-19” (Springer 2022, Discourses of Globalization and Higher Education Reforms: Emerging Paradigms), and (3) “STEM Field Demand and Educational Reform in Asia-Pacific Countries” (The Oxford Handbook of Higher Education in the Asia-Pacific Region). Jason Cheng-Cheng Yang  is a professor in the Department of Education at the Teachers College of National Chiayi University (NCYU) in Taiwan. He is the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Office at NCYU since 2022, the Secretary-General of Chinese Taipei Comparative Education Society since 2019, and the Deputy Secretary-General of Taiwan Higher Education

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Society since 2019. He holds a PhD degree in Social Sciences and Comparative Education from UCLA. His research interests include higher education policy and international higher education. His recent research works focused on sustainability and social responsibilities of higher education, interdisciplinary teaching and learning, and the social impacts of universities.

List of Figures

Fig. 8.1 Fig. 8.2

The idea of lecture-pairing (image made by the author) 99 Schematic diagram of convergence education curriculum expanded from lecture-pairing (image made by the author) 103 Fig. 9.1 Active learning experiences in university and graduate school 117 Fig. 9.2 Work experiences related to global competences 1 117 Fig. 9.3 Work experiences related to global competences 2 118 Fig. 9.4 Scores of acquisitions of skills and abilities related to global competences and assessment of educational contribution for acquisition121 Fig. 11.1 Content of Higher Education Sprout Project of Taiwan 147

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List of Images

Image 3.1 Image 3.2 Image 3.3 Image 3.4 Image 3.5 Image 3.6

idMirror installation—captured faces of the installation participants28 Body swapping experiment with android robot and human 29 VR in wonderland installation 31 Demonstrating BCI system to the children 33 First Brain–Computer Hackathon in Slovenia (Trbovlje), 2019 34 Sensory integration experiments with VR tools 35

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List of Tables

Table 8.1 Table 8.2 Table 8.3 Table 9.1 Table 9.2 Table 9.3 Table 9.4 Table 9.5 Table 9.6 Table 10.1 Table 10.2

Table 10.3

Table 10.4 Table 10.5

State of the lecture-pairing 100 Lecture-pairing using two general education classes 101 Lecture-pairing using a general education class and a major class101 Proportion of major by university classification 113 Average income by age group and gender 114 Learning experiences by university classification 115 Learning experiences related to global competences in university days 116 Work experiences related to global competences by university classification 119 Factors predicting global work experience: multiple regression analysis 122 Overseas experiences of respondents 131 Frequency of varied experiences in university. (“How often did you do the following as a student in college/university or graduate school? (Please select one answer for each statement)”)132 Perceived acquisition of knowledge, abilities, or attitudes. (“Please indicate the degree to which you think you have acquired the knowledge, abilities, or attitudes described below”)133 Work experiences. (“How often have you experienced the following in your work?” Please select one answer for each item)135 Correlation matrix between global competency, global work experience, and current income (N = 1957) 137 xxi

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List of Tables

Table 10.6 Table 10.7 Table 10.8 Table 11.1 Table 11.2

One factor ANOVA about global competency, global work experience, and current income Hierarchical multiple regression about global competency. Dependent variable; Global competency Hierarchical multiple regression about cross-disciplinary innovation ability. Dependent variable; cross-disciplinary innovation ability Comparison of two main higher education policies in Taiwan in the last decade (2006–2018) USR projects in Taiwan in 2017

139 140 141 148 151

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Assessing Change in Asia-­Pacific Higher Education on the Threshold of the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Facing the Challenges of the COVID-19 Era Deane E. Neubauer, Reiko Yamada, and Aki Yamada

As the title of this volume suggests, its motive force lay in the many challenges that have arisen with the rapid introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) across societies and with the particular desire to reframe some of the various dimensions of higher education being affected by the phenomenon. Several of the participants had been engaged in related conversations

D. E. Neubauer (*) University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA R. Yamada Faculty of Social Studies, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan e-mail: [email protected] A. Yamada Tamagawa University, Tokyo, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Yamada et al. (eds.), Transformation of Higher Education in the Age of Society 5.0, International and Development Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7_1

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D. E. NEUBAUER ET AL.

through scholarly meetings across various locations, most particularly in Japan and Hawaii but with other participants from such wide-ranging venues as Australia, the US mainland, and Europe. Having identified a group of willing participants, an initial two-day conference was planned for Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, for February 2020. Given the rapid onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the organizers postponed the face-to-face meeting with the hope and presumption that it could be resumed in the near future. As the rapid progress of the pandemic made this scenario not a viable option, the event was eventually conducted virtually in November 2020 over a two-day period. The chapters that appear in this volume are the eventual result of this extended process. As the varied dimensions and dynamics of the phenomenon that rapidly had come to be termed the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4th IR) unfolded in the latter half of the century’s second decade, a collection of investigators associated in various ways with the Asia Pacific Higher Education Research Partnership (APHERP) were particularly interested in how to conceptualize and analyze how the emergence of these revolutionary dynamics would affect higher education institutions in general, and in particular the status in higher education institutions of the disciplines traditionally associated with the social sciences and humanities. Participants in the November virtual sessions were requested to explore aspects of these emergent phenomena. The essays that constitute these chapters, perforce, range across a considerable range of institutional structures and traditions. Collectively, they provide a useful sketch of what is an ongoing set of processes whereby higher education institutions have been “caught,” as it were, in the pivot from long-standing traditional models of operation and their transition into those more congenial to the demands of the 4th IR. As one moves across the landscape provided by these contributions, one perforce notes the differentiated responses of these multiple institutional settings and structures to the dislocations of the COVID-19 pandemic, wherein the reader is invited, along with the contributors, to anticipate some of its unknown and at this point unknowable implications for the complex, overall structures of international higher education. Our initial focus in this regard is provided by Deane E. Neubauer, in the second chapter, whose contribution focuses on ways in which the social sciences may be reconceptualized in the broader context of the AI revolution. In particular he suggests that the historic normative dimension

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of these fields, an aspect that had been to a large degree displaced by a broad array of methodological and empirical innovations, may be revitalized by the simple but profound changes likely to arise in society from the combined disruptive forces of the pandemic and technological change. On his view, the range of social disruptions and reassignment of priorities and resources that may occur over the next five to ten years will generate novel discourses on both the revised purposes of specific social institutions and practices and the consequences that may flow from them. At the most elemental level the core questions within the social sciences and humanities are likely to shift from “what are the essential elements of society and its practices” to “what should social institutions do to create, institute, and preserve valued outcomes in the mist of such far reaching change dynamics?” As these questions gain currency, he argues, higher education institutions will enter a period of exploration and change that surely will focus on STEAM—Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics— elements, but also with a renewed emphasis on a revitalized concept of the social sciences as well. With a similar orientation, in the third chapter, Maša Jazbec frames such transformative elements as “creating a permanent plural progressive development” through which “we can see that the world is becoming ever smaller,” and through which as the field of art has adopted new media tools, the “new technologies of computer systems and artificial intelligences make new directions in art possible.” Within this broad setting he explores some of the art creations made possible by these technologies. Central to these developments, he argues, is the emergent sense of social responsibilities placed upon the artist who seeks creativity within these novel structures. Each act of art, science, and philosophy, he argues, “itself is an event and transfiguration in the understanding of ourselves, society, and the world as a whole.” Within this framing, the chapter moves on to explore how these inter-relationships are being formed and developed and the impress they are making on the overall emergence of STEAM. This investigation into the development of the arts that may be implicated in this overall endeavor is followed by Aki Yamada’s exploration, in the fourth chapter, of how the coming generation of students in Japan may be educated as the varied elements of Society 5.0 are developed in the context of a society that will have just experienced the rigors of the pandemic. Among the key industrial societies in the world, Japan, as is well-­ known, is proceeding them into the future, as it were, by the speed at which it is becoming an aging population with the resultant effect of

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having a rapid shrinkage of its working-age population, which combined with other elements of contemporary globalization have contributed to its overall decline in global competitiveness. As Yamada emphasizes, one central response of the Japanese government is to look to the power of emergent technologies as a base on which to construct its overall global endeavors. In its policy pronouncements the government has emphasized that whereas the foci embodied in the conventional STEM fields are essential, there are broader needs that extend beyond these familiar concerns represented by the transformative role of the new technologies. At some levels the very nature of Japan society is being altered by these events and a significant role of universities will be to assist new generations in understanding and adapting to the transformative changes involved. In the fifth chapter, Gregory S. Poole examines a broader range of factors that are brought into play when a very traditional institution such as a well-established and reputed Japanese university (Doshisha) is faced with addressing major, challenging changes. The case at hand that Poole addresses involves the creation and development of an English-taught liberal arts program. In the process, he details, a good deal of what is commonly, and rightfully, accepted as the fundamental structural and administrative conservatism, and consequent rigidities to change are brought into play. In situating and providing his case study, Poole very usefully positions both the narrative and subsequent analyses within the dual, well-established structures of the hierarchy of a Japanese public university and the rigidities of accepted disciplinary hegemonies within the institution. In providing this specific institutional case study he situates it within the context of Japan’s broader political economic status in the region and ultimately throughout the world—realities that undergird the national government’s overall support for higher education. In doing so, his chapter provides a useful simultaneous engagement of the major structural factors that are framing higher education not only in Japan but throughout the world at the multiple interfaces of the 4th IR. William R. Stevenson’s Chap. 6 follows this exposition of the change dynamics involved in effecting usable responses to the 4th IR and Society 5.0 with an explicit examination of the phenomenon of interdisciplinary learning that he posits as the “cornerstone to a survivable future.” In doing so he reviews some of the critical recent history of the environmental movement that among its other accomplishments contributed so directly to the United Nations’ varied efforts to set its comprehensive environmental agenda. In making his case Stevenson traces a range of early

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efforts to come to grips with the complexities of environmental policy making, dating in particular from the first Earth Day in 1970 and examining the efforts embodied in early interdisciplinary journals that emerged to focus the effort. In recalling this movement and the institutionalization of emergent models for interdisciplinarity within universities, he emphasizes that “nowhere was the need for such an approach more apparent than in knowing how to best prepare students to confront the growing environmental crisis.” Once established as a pathway, he asserts, it is one that links interdisciplinarity with environmentalism, and leads us to effective knowledge of how to pursue other modes of interdisciplinarity with emergent social changes, such as those embodied in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, even as we have emphasized such a “game-changing” development has been exaggerated and extended by the pandemic. It follows directly from such a framing that the explicit and continuing attention that has been given to emergent climate transformations fits within this understanding of the structures of interdisciplinarity as well. In the seventh chapter, Masaaki Ogasawara’s subsequent contribution shifts the ground a bit to examine the construction of a learning network that explicitly links STEM with social science and humanities in higher education settings in the specific context of the Fifth Science and Technology Basic Plan (the 5th Plan) at the beginning of 2016 developed by the Cabinet as an explicit device to “catch up” with other industrial nations and in time surpass them. After a detailed review of how laboratory-­ focused science in higher education institutions was developed and disseminated throughout the world, he turns to its introduction into the distinctive Japan higher education structure with a specific focus on how such education can be developed at the undergraduate level, giving emphasis to the role that English language construction and use plays in the historical accounting, and emphasizing the importance of situating that capability with undergraduate STEM programs. In proceeding in this way he points to the many differences that exist within the characteristic Japan higher education structure and suggests various innovations in the Japan structure that would assist in allowing them to parallel the dominant Western STEM model. Within this framework he emphasizes the need for more extensive training in mathematics for the general high school student and the addition of relatively generalized “introductory courses” in the basic sciences at the “front” of higher education science-oriented programs. It is both the relatively generalized nature of such courses that he suggests can most benefit matriculation at this level and the entre they can

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provide to related intellectual questions of interest in related endeavor, for example, the social sciences. Framing these endeavors as “integrated science” he suggests provides a useful vehicle for allowing both flexibility and rigor into higher education curricula, a structure that will increasingly benefit graduates as they move into a society itself being rapidly transformed by the integrative technologies of the 5th Plan. In the eighth chapter, Hasuk Song addresses the subject of “convergence education” in liberal arts, in particular examining the phenomenon of lecture pairing. Song makes the strong, and now familiar, case for how the rapid transformational processes of the 4th IR have already instilled powerful change dynamics in society that affect many of its essential purposes and without question pose significant challenges. Having made the point of how such changes will come to transform many fundamental aspects of society as currently experienced, Song emphasizes that we “as teachers” (with whom he directly identifies) will need to discuss how to transform the existing higher education system to help students develop soft skills and competencies “to survive and contribute to a progressive society.” Song distinguishes two levels of convergence in thinking: one exists at the level of academic majors in which courses are linked in a pathway consonant with the intellectual logic of the subject matter in question; the second is developing the capability for learners to merge elements of different fields to create what in effect would be novel approaches to a rapidly changing “real-world” environment. Within this framework, Song suggests the practice of “lecture pairing.” (In this context, Song is employing the word “lecture” to embrace practices that in other higher education systems might be termed “courses” or in some instances, even majors.) Overseen by a Convergence Education Committee, students would initiate the process by preparing a proposal in which they state which lectures they propose pairing, “which convergent ideas they have, and which results they expect.” Song then proceeds to provide evidence of how lecture pairing operates at his own university and to enumerate the advantages that arise from this practice. In the ninth chapter, Reiko Yamada broadens the frame by examining the role of STEM education in the United States in the context of developing global competencies within interdisciplinary programs—in reporting on a major empirical study that drew data from the United States, China, and Japan. Within the frame of the US data she has sought to identify and further explore the relationship between skills and abilities related to the global competencies acquired through university and

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graduate programs and work experiences related to global competences and activities, with a major research focus being the separation between those in an older cohort currently in their 30s and 40s who majored in STEM disciplines in their university and graduate programs. In exploring these relationships, she is concerned with identifying the dominant factors that frame and determine these outcomes and especially the roles played with opportunities to study abroad and/or to engage in interdisciplinary education. Her data indicate that for the important case of how US universities in STEM fields prepared their students for global experiences. A more “transitional” set of variables (as it were) will be framed by how the rapid advances in AI become situated within existing higher education structures and are targeted in various ways on the task of equipping graduates with the kinds of global-relevant skills that promote their success in further occupational engagements. In the tenth chapter, Takuya Kimura focuses on the issue of global competency itself within the overall structure of Japan higher education. He uses the same dataset of the joint research with Reiko Yamada and he picks up the Japanese data. He analyses an extensive sample of 1957 Japanese in their 30s and 40s to examine the extent to which global competencies have been acquired by those generations and how the acquisition of such competences “play out” across a common set of variables deemed to be indicative of social success. In particular the study was focused on whether the acquisition of global competencies, largely through overseas experiences at university or in employment, was positively associated with the nature of one’s job(s), levels of achievement, and income. The study found that there was almost no correlation between annual income and global competences and similarly within the limits of the study there was no statistically significant difference in annual income with overseas experience. In examining the conclusions from his empirical study, Kimura stresses the need for further research that links the experiences of a university education with subsequent acquisition of global competencies. One significant portion of the value of such research would be to provide universities with more data on which subjects and experiences to promote to enhance their contribution to the acquisition of global competencies. In Chap. 11, Jason Cheng-Cheng Yang shifts the focus from the overall dimensions of the university’s varied contributions within the current technology-focused social environments to the broader task of promoting university social responsibility in Taiwan within this era of dynamic change.

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His chapter documents the transition within Taiwanese higher education at the national level from a focused effort to score high within the measurements of international higher education competition, such as indicated by the global rankings, embodied in its Aim for Top University Project, with its Higher Education Sprout Project. The shift was designed to create desired outcomes in a specific set of endeavors, including: to cultivate a new generation of students, educate student interdisciplinary abilities, link with the local community to fulfill the university’s social responsibility and facilitate local development, and internationalize universities. His chapter details the structure of the policy and details how these stand in relation to the overall recent historical development of higher education in Taiwan.

CHAPTER 2

Redefining the Role of the University and the Social Sciences Within the Emergent Structures of Society 5.0. Deane E. Neubauer

Introduction Perhaps best signaled by the World Economic Forum of 2016 and the address of its Executive Director, Karl Schwab, what has come to be commonly referenced as The Fourth Industrial Revolution and/or Work 4.0 refers to the vast, complex, extended, and fundamentally transforming an array of social processes that are arising out of the rapid exploration and development of artificial intelligence (AI). Schwab’s statement remains prophetic: We have yet to grasp fully the speed and breadth of this new revolution. Consider the unlimited possibilities of having billions of people connected by mobile devices, giving rise to unprecedented processing power, storage capabilities and knowledge access. Or think about the staggering confluence of emerging technology breakthroughs, covering wide-ranging fields such

D. E. Neubauer (*) University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Yamada et al. (eds.), Transformation of Higher Education in the Age of Society 5.0, International and Development Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7_2

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as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the internet of things (IoT), ­autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage and quantum computing, to name a few. Many of these innovations are in their infancy, but they are already reaching an inflection point in their development as they build on and amplify each other in a fusion of technology across the physical, digital and biological worlds. (K. Schwab, 2016, p. 7)

Within Japan, articulated as early as April 2016, this focus has been framed within the notion of Society 5.0, in which: The underlying idea is that the rapid development of information technology now allows the combination of cyber space--the information--with the physical space--the real world. The combination of both are Cyber Physical Systems (CPS), objects of the real world enhanced and combined with information. This is expected to bring about a major shift in society. (Granrath, 2017)

And, while such a broad view brings a sobering sense of the range and magnitude of social change that may (will!) result from the progressive growth of AI, the implications for education in general and higher education in particular deserve attention inasmuch as they will both simultaneously stand at the center of this enterprise of social change and be impacted by it and transformed. In the following, I seek to outline some of the changes that are likely to occur within the higher education enterprise defined by the contemporary university and its accepted component disciplinary organizations.

Dimensions of Change Three inter-related dimensions of change are already apparent at this point in this ongoing transition: effects on society in general; changes in the roles that higher education institutions will be called on to perform; and changes in what may be viewed as the “content” of existing patterns of knowledge organization and pursuit within the academy. The dimensions of broad social change and their immediate impacts on higher education are already beginning to be experienced in a wide variety of jobs that are being impacted, some of them significantly, by AI and

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robotic engagement.1 For example, in 2018, Luke Dormehl provided a brief list of a number of occupations that may be “hit hard” by automation. Surprising in this regard is that it differs in some regards from the more conventional listing of lower-level factory-floor and other “generalized” jobs, in that they require professional training, and stand in many respects in contrast to those that others may see as susceptible to being replaced by robots.2 Within this list he includes some occupations that have historically required considerable higher education accomplishments and subsequent stringent licensing, and correspondingly have been rewarded with relatively high social status and income. His list includes: lawyers, data entry clerks, journalists, drivers, chefs, financial analysts, telemarketers and customer service assistants, medics of various types,3 construction and other manual labor jobs, and musicians and other artists (Dormehl, 2018). Resinger (2019) has estimated that in the United 1  In a previous publication I sought to capture some of this transformational process by noting changes in the various functionalities of higher education institutions and suggesting some of the structural facilitations taking place. In this particular exercise I pointed to what was then termed the changing “dimensions of higher education” of which the following were given note: (1) changes in the characteristics of learners; (2) changes in the roles and responsibilities of faculty; (3) changes in methods of instruction and learning processes; (4) changes in the content and focus of instruction; (5) changes in the political and economic environments of higher education; (6) changes in the frameworks of higher education; (7) changes in the process and values of certification; and (8) changes in the policies that frame and govern higher education and the metrics that are being developed to assess it (Neubauer, 2015). The benefit of such an inventory in my view was the need to update it on a continuous basis, in part to add new elements as they emerged and delete others as they faded from higher education practice (Neubauer, 2015). 2  At the very end of 2019, Computer Hope listed the following jobs in these categories: Assembly-line and factory workers; bus drivers, taxi drivers, and truck drivers; phone operators, telemarketers, and receptionists; cashiers; bank tellers and clerks; packing, stockroom, and warehouse moving; prescription preparation; information gathering, analysts, and researchers; journalists and reporters; pilots; bartenders; stock traders; postal workers; doctors and anesthesiologists, and some surgeons; soldiers and guards; travel agents; chefs and cooks; bomb squads; typists; switchboard operators; bowling ball pinsetters; film projectionists; home and small garden workers; and hotel staff and room service. Perhaps the best way to make use of this list is to see it as a set of generalized activities that is capable of being transformed by the gradual, and in some cases rapid, introduction of robotic activities (Computer Hope, 2019). 3  I suspect many will be surprised to see doctors and other medical professionals being included in such a list, but in some aspects of medical diagnosis and treatment, including certain surgeries and radiology, the evidence is growing that AI may provide better results than humans. See, for example, Medtech Boston (2019).

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States, AI could replace 40% of jobs within 15 years. With predictions such as these, one can easily see why the dimensions of such changes are being characterized as the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Society 5.0. And, within such a frame of reference, it is clearly difficult to predict with any confidence what the overall dimensions of social change will be other than to state the obvious: namely that the elements of dislocation from existing patterns will be varied and of great extent. If in fact up to 40% of jobs in industrial societies will be “lost” within a 15-year period, one can presume that this will create a general politics and social climate in which all sectors of society, but specifically the public and private economic sectors, will be called on to create new jobs and to develop other public policies (such as income guarantees) that provide activities and/or security for vast numbers of persons who are either engaged in developing new skills and capabilities of value to the emergent economy (although many projections suggest these will be limited in number compared with our current societies), or to prepare and socialize individuals with vast, new amounts of non-vocational time to participate in what are meant to be regarded as “meaningful” activities. It is these dimensions that all educational institutions, but especially higher education institutions in both public and private sectors, will be “brought into play” (as it were) by these powerful emergent structural dynamics.

Transforming Higher Education In a recent paper presented to the International Addemic Forum (IAFOR) Conference on Sustainability held in Honolulu, January 9–10, 2020, I sought to view these transformative social dynamics in terms of the four functions traditionally performed by higher education institutions in society: knowledge creation, knowledge transmission, knowledge conservation, and pursuit of the public good (Neubauer, 2020). In effect, I have argued that all of these functions are likely to be radically transformed over the coming decade, a pace of change that will most probably speed up as the recursive nature of AI-change impacts these institutions. In brief, the research function will become increasingly impacted with larger aspects of inquiry being both undertaken and performed by AI-assisted and, subsequently, AI-conducted research. Such a tendency can already be seen in several top-ranked universities developing AI

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centers as well as units for the study of human-centered AI.4 One can predict that as the near-future progresses, these leading examples will be replicated in many other universities and other research entities. The knowledge transformation function (teaching) is already being impacted by any number of AI-assisted endeavors, from creating individual learning devices for very young children (Rabideau, 2019) to conceptualizing more fully developed “knowledge assisting schemes” for adult learners, including university-level students (Neelakantan, 2020), a process that has been given a considerable boost by the need to create new modalities of distance education during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic. Some American universities such as Georgia Tech and Georgia State have demonstrated distinct leadership in the development of these devices.5 It is clearly the case that within the knowledge transmission/teaching function, perhaps the greatest amount of “structured-conformity” continues to exist, in which the conventional classroom/lecture format is continued (albeit with varieties of AV and other electronic content transmission devices), and it is therefore here that perhaps the greatest amount of resistance to change may occur, even in the face of rapidly occurring instances of innovation and creativity in the transmission of data/information to students. The knowledge conservation function, historically performed primarily by libraries, has been in the throes of “modernization through digitalization” for the better part of two decades, but is perhaps being ultimately transformed even more by the creation of massive digital databases of written/published material such as that already accomplished by sources such as Google, and which stand in the midst of even greater pretentions to creating massive digital repositories (Tait et al., 2016).6 To the extent that university libraries continue to be maintained, their primary function is 4  With regard to the first, see Shweta Mayekar’s review “top universities,” so engaged (Mayekar, 2018) in which she focused on MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), Harvard, University of Edinburgh, University of Amsterdam, Cornell University, and the University of Washington. Within this set, MIT and Stanford have established centers explicitly focused on Human-centered AI. 5  The Center for Twenty-First Century Universities at Georgia Tech has become a most useful source for an entire range of activities being conducted to effect change within existing universities in response to a broad range of social variables. 6  Google’s effort got as far as scanning 25 million books, at which point the combined resistance of various sources to effectuate the reality of copyright protections effectively stopped the process. See Howard (2017).

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less to serve as a repository of printed material as it is as a convenient, and often public, access point to the varied electronic repositories maintained by the facility. The public interest function of higher education has been historically more recently acknowledged and is more ambiguously constructed depending in large part on whether a given higher education institution is located in the public or private sector. It seems reasonable to predict that as the social impacts of AI spread throughout society, the tendency will be to demand that such institutions make clear how they engage in the public interest function as they construe it, and in particular how they engage the specific aspect of fundamental social change being generated by extreme technology/AI change. Within this frame of reference, one can specify three primary ways in which such institutions will be asked to articulate and perform their public interest function: (1) by looking to higher education itself to perform as a primary mitigating actor in addressing the dislocations bring caused by AI; (2) to challenge and charge higher education institutions to directly address AI’s social dislocating aspects and to hold these institutions responsible in various ways to propose responses and mitigation of affected populations; and (3) for universities to function as intellectual “centers” for generating both creative and responsible reactions to the innovations of AI, framed within the discourse of significantly ameliorating its negative aspects.

Transforming the Social Sciences and Humanities in the Emergent Era of AI Accepting this brief framework as a vehicle for engaging just a limited inquiry into the various roles that AI may have in higher education in general, let me turn my attention to the specific and particular roles that may become dominant in the social sciences and humanities in such a

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powerful transitional moment in our societies.7 Few voices, I suspect, might be raised to contest the view that within higher education over the past two and perhaps even three decades, the relative role of preparation for work within the knowledge economy has dramatically increased within higher education in general—a transformation that is probably most notable within the changing assignments of budgetary allocations across universities and the focus on both new recruitment of faculty and students and the important symbolic awards provided for higher education scholarly accomplishment (Shin et al., 2018). Within this knowledge economy focus, one that has transitioned directly into a more considered view of the AI aspects of it, overall, the social sciences and humanities in general have lost relative status to the physical sciences, engineering, and information fields focused in STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics—organizations, budgetary allocations, and recruitment of both students and faculty. The most notable exception to this movement is that of economics,8 as implied notions of the developing importance of the direct social utility associated with academic endeavors have gained currency. Generally, in relative terms, the social sciences and humanities have seemed to be of lesser social value to students and funders at all levels and society in general. Even as this has emerged as the case in point, however, in the latter years of the just-past decade, two related processes of adaptation have emerged. In one of these the social sciences are viewed as moving closer to the STEM fields and in some cases developing

7  In doing so, I recognize that the broad term “social sciences” has differing meanings across national and cultural borders and that their institutional organizations within such higher education structures reflect such differences. In general, my usage is framed around the disciplinary foci conventionally embraced (and usually reflected in the structure of international associations) by the disciplines of economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, geography, linguistics, and psychology. In some constructions, units with a strong applied focus, such as urban and regional planning, are included. History is perhaps most often located in a designated “Humanities” unit, along with philosophy. Law, while most often established within a separate professional school, is sometimes included as a social science (and as both undergraduate and graduate programs.) In general, however, the social sciences are most commonly constituted by the disciplines listed above. 8  In part a result of the privileged role of economics within the era of globalization and the symbolic importance provided to it by the giving of an annual Nobel Prize in Economics.

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inter-related programs.9 In the other, looking toward the social science disciplines as sources of both analysis and normative solutions has gained currency. This sense can be seen within the increasing literature focused on the range and degree of social transformations premised by the increased impacts of AI in society, as suggested above. When as much as 40% of existing work forces may be impacted, either directly or indirectly by AI in some form or another, virtually the whole of societies as we currently know them may well be significantly disrupted. At the most fundamental level will be an acute need to account for both the nature and extent of the changes occurring. The basic and accepted tools of social description, analysis, and explanation will be pressed into service with increasing urgency, as the accelerating pace of social change underscores the need for a discourse within which are combined a focus on the continually shifting process of description (what is happening?), analysis (why and how is it happening?), and recommendations and notions of intervention, engagement, and solution (given these answers, what can and should be done to serve stipulated values?). The urgency of the range and pace of social change initiated by AI will be such that if higher education institutions are slow to accept these challenges, or indeed neglect to, other programmatic responses will come from different portions of society (most probably led by the private sector or new public sector programs framed within a language of urgency), in effect marginalizing higher education even further. The emergent paradigm for the social sciences will be: identify; describe; analyze; recommend valued alternatives; and propose meaningful ways to achieving them. The emergence of top-flight universities developing human-centered AI programs, such as MIT, Stanford, and Georgia Tech in the United States, suggests one major direction in which such academic endeavors are proceeding. The implication here is that what are currently in effect multiple developmental status processes will come to predominate within the social sciences in relatively short order as a necessary response to the 9  An early manifestation of this is detailed in a 2014 book by Dunleaby, Bastow, and Tinkler who posited five dimensions on which the social sciences were gravitating toward STEM fields. A review of this can be found at: https://www.socialsciencespace.com/2014/01/ the-contemporary-social-sciences-are-now-converging-strongly-with-stem-disciplines-inthe-study-of-human-dominated-systems-and-human-influenced-systems/. Accessed: January 30, 2020. The volume itself bears the title: The Impacts of the Social Sciences, published by SAGE.

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magnitude and extent of the social changes that AI will produce within a period of 10–15 years. And, to place this observation within the context of the above, the “traditional ways” in which instruction has proceeded within higher education will either rapidly give way to those being innovated within AI-influenced methodologies, or alternative institutions, most likely in the private sector, will arise to do so. The increased “value-­ added” of AI-relevant education within the social sciences will likely proceed rapidly, and by doing so change the existing “exchange rates” between what will be viewed as a “conventional” university degree, in the social sciences, and a “change-relevant” degree often in newly developed fields of endeavor outside the conventional social sciences.10 The potential consequences for what are traditionally regarded as the humanities may face an even greater challenge. Whereas the academic structures of conventional humanities studies have indeed already been significantly challenged by the ever-increasing pace of “modernity” and “post-modernity and their associated critiques of traditional texts,”11 at their core the historical framing and mission of such disciplines has been to articulate, discuss, and critique the variety of forms in which valued endeavors are created, presented, and retained in society. In line with the expectation that the social sciences will come to be increasingly “normative” in the sense of modeling how people “might/should” live in such a rapidly changing society as that fully impacted by AI, the humanities are likely to “move closer” to the social sciences in terms of creating and extending ways for individuals and groups in these rapidly changing societies to articulate and (re-)experience the values that underlie and are embedded in these emergent ways of life. Such a movement in content and social responsibility would certainly be the case as societies seek to articulate and respond appropriately to the myriad ethical dimensions of behavior that AI has already presented and will, indisputably, continue to do so (van Rijmenam, 2020).12 And, in line with what appears to be a growing consensus of a central aspect of social life within this emergent AI-society, the massive reduction in human labor and effort directed at “work” will result in consequential massive increases in the amount of 10  As an early example of this process, see a recent report by Maggie Martin (2019) on innovation-focused programs being developed at the University of Houston in the United States. 11  Often, at least in the United States and Europe, in what is a highly contentious manner. For a singular instance, see Quigley (2019). 12  See this recent piece by van Rijmenam for a telling survey of “why we need ethical AI.”

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“leisure” time, that is, that not committed to remunerative employment. Such a prospect is often held out as a primary benefit of the AI revolution, allowing humans to focus on activities regarded more generally as “of value” rather than merely “of necessity.” Such a value state has often held pride of place in various utopian novels as well as standing at the center of what some regard as the most valued aspects of social philosophy. As an instance of this, when faced with the possibility of significant developments in “non-work times” as a future prospect in the 1930s, the economist John Maynard Keynes saw the “loss of jobs” and their overall meaning for human development as “a temporary phase of maladjustment,” and suggested that within a century humankind would be freed from “the biological necessity of working,” which he regarded as a significant marker of desired social progress (Wolcott, 2018). Among the varied higher education consequences of these dynamics will be the reconstitution of existing PhD fields,13 the kinds of recruitment appeals made to potential students, and the bureaucratic engagement of institutions to make such transformations easier to develop and institutionalize. Doctoral students will, perforce, be fundamentally engaged in the detailed consideration of how “values” are created and presented in society and how basic normative structures come into being, are serviced by technology, and are transformed by the ever-changing institutions of society. However such predictions play out in practice, it seems clear that in general terms societies will be fundamentally and sufficiently impacted by changes in the nature of work, as we currently know and understand it, to occasion new modalities of social life. At the center of these will be issues of how societies create wealth, manage it, work to sustain and increase it, and distribute it with sufficient social consensus to permit appropriate levels of social acceptance and overall tranquility. It is out of such a transformation that the predicted world of “new leisure,” defined as time for individuals outside of work environments, may emerge. And it is within 13  In this regard, note a current research project underway at RMIT University in Melbourne that seeks to re-conceptualize the PhD in the context of the impending climate forecast, which itself constitutes another modality of a near-future disruption as potentially significant as that premised within the framework of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. An edited volume by Robyn Barnacle and bearing the title, The PhD at the End of the World: Provocations for the Doctorate and a Future Contested, is framed around the work of Bruno Latour and his seminal in work seeking to alert audiences to the transformative effects of climate change.

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this significantly revised notion of “society as we know it” that higher education will be called on to frame, articulate, and inculcate value, much of it of novel invention, and place it within acceptable institutional structures to meet the challenges of such fundamental transition. And, to repeat the point made above, in this highly challenging climate, the social sciences and humanities, as currently embodied within existing higher education structures, will be called upon to provide effective descriptions and explanations of such dramatic changes and to frame useful discourses about desirable futures within such environments, and to do so in a manner in which they are readily accessible. Among the many transformations that an AI-focused society will bring to existing university-level study, two seem of particular note. One is the reconstitution of existing PhD fields of endeavor to bring them into alignment with the kinds of social change taking place. One can expect that the kinds of developments one can observe in most societies of closer links between various industries and higher education institutions will intensify as the dimensions and dynamics of the Work 4.0 transformation proceed. With these will come demands of many sorts for society in general and higher education in particular to generate the kinds of expertise required in such a transforming society. And, as such dynamics proceed, it seems quite reasonable to predict that the traditional and conventional ways of creating and providing expertise in higher education will shift accordingly. Within such an environment the demands created within higher education institutions to become more effectively responsive to change will increase dramatically. One can reasonably expect that some institutions will prove to be “quick to the task” in this regard and that others will experience painful instances of a form of academic bureaucratic “politics” that tends to be more resistant to change.14 The result in many different countries will be variations on a theme of higher education institutions seeking to simultaneously develop new modes of responding to such social challenges even as the framing of the overall social environment in which they are occurring is itself changing. Out of these dynamics will most likely emerge a “new politics” of the academy in which the forces of persistent novelty and 14  For a recent review of university bureaucracy within an American context, see Motyl (2019). The challenge for higher education institutions in most Asian countries to engage necessary change brings into play centralized governmental bureaucracies that are often highly resistant to change.

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change will contest and be contested by the more “conservative” forces that are embedded in and serve the interests of existing structures. Predicting the likely outcome(s) of such an institutional struggle is an uncertain task at best, but if the varied existing histories of higher educational institutional change are any guide, one likely dynamic will be the emergence of “new” institutional forces that align with the dominant forces of institutional change and benefit present in the larger society. In short, such within-institutional struggles are likely to quickly move outside existing institutional boundaries and seek alliance with broader social economic forces that themselves are at the center of the technological forces producing such change. At the macro level one can already begin to see basic elements of realignment in the political economic forces controlling the more technologically advanced societies that are both creating the mechanisms for such change and being simultaneously impacted by them—a set of social transformations very much in evidence in the continuing concentration and aggregation of wealth, both within specific societies and globally (Goda, 2019).

Conclusion This brief review of some aspects of the intersection between the Fourth Industrial Revolution and varied impacts on the role of the social sciences and humanities within higher education is intended to stimulate a conversation about the multiple dimensions of these still vaguely understood, but fundamentally transforming, social dynamics. Within that conversation it seems relevant for all current participants in higher education to initiate an inquiry that at the very least engages the many varied clusters of expertise, interest, and orientation that make up such communities. It is in the nature of these wonderfully complex institutions that they have created specialized languages and perspectives that embrace their particularized interests. Often, however, this very exceptional attribute of higher education can, unfortunately, act as a barrier to effective communication and change throughout the institution. It will be a continuing challenge of the progressively unfolding future, increasingly framed and dominated by the dynamics of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, to transform this latent, if powerful, higher education culture in the direction of the emergent narratives of our rapidly changing societies.

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References Computer Hope. (2019). What jobs are being taken over by robots and computers? Accessed January 20, 2020, from https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ ch001799.htm Dormehl, L. (2018). Replaced by robots: 10 jobs that could be hit hard by the A.I. Accessed January 20, 2020, from https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-­ tech/examples-­of-­robots-­replacing-­jobs/ Dunleavy, P., Bastow, S., & Tinkler, J. (2014). The impacts of the social sciences: How academics and their research make a difference. Sage Publications. Goda, T. (2019). The global concentration of wealth. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 42(1), 95–115. Accessed January 30, 2020, from https://academic. oup.com/cje/article-­abstract/42/1/95/3748290?redirectedFrom=fulltext Granrath, L. (2017). Japan’s society 5.0: Going beyond industry 4.0. Industrial R&D. Accessed January 16, 2020, from https://www.japanindustrynews. com/2017/08/japans-­society-­5-­0-­going-­beyond-­industry-­4-­0/ Howard, J. (2017, August 10). What happened to Google’s effort to scan millions of university library books? Digital Learning in Higher Ed. Accessed January 30, 2020, from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-­08-­10-­what-­ happened-­to-­google-­s-­effort-­to-­scan-­millions-­of-­university-­library-­books Martin, M. (2019). New innovation-focused programs emerge at Univ. of Houston. The Houston Report. Accessed January 20, 2020, from https://www. houston.org/news/new-­innovation-­focused-­programs-­emerge-­univ-­houston Mayekar, S. (2018). Top universities in the world to study artificial intelligence. Analytics Insight. Accessed January 20, 2010, from https://www.analyticsinsight.net/top-­universities-­in-­the-­world-­to-­study-­artificial-­intelligence/ Medtech Boston. (2019). 3 Ways AI has transformed the healthcare industry. Accessed January 20, 2020, from https://medtechboston.medstro.com/ blog/2019/06/04/3-­ways-­ai-­has-­transformed-­the-­healthcare-­industry/ Motyl, A. J. (2019, April 1). Bureaucracy and power in American higher education. Facts and Arts. Accessed January 23, 2020, from https://www.facts-­and-­arts. com/index.php/essays/bureaucracy-­and-­power-­american-­higher-­education Neelakantan, S. (2020). Successful AI examples in higher education that can inspire our future. EdTech. Accessed January 20, 2020, from https://www. facts-­a nd-­a rts.com/index.php/essays/bureaucracy-­a nd-­p ower-­a merican-­ higher-­education; https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2020/01/ successful-­ai-­examples-­higher-­education-­can-­inspire-­our-­future Neubauer, D. E. (2015). Rethinking innovation in a higher education context. In J. N. Hawkins & K. H. Mok (Eds.), Research, development, and innovation in Asia Pacific higher education. Palgrave Macmillan.

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Neubauer, D. E. (2020, January 9–10). Reframing the functionalities of higher education with the 4th industrial revolution. In Paper presented to the IAFOR conference on sustainability, Honolulu, HI. Quigley, P. (2019). The forbidden subject: How oppositional aesthetics banished natural beauty from the arts. The White Horse Press. Rabideau, C. (2019). The best electronics for kids in 2020. The Spruce. Accessed January 20, 2020, from https://www.thespruce.com/best-­ electronics-­for-­kids-­4150697 Resinger, D. (2019). AI expert says automation could replace 40% of jobs in 15 years. Fortune. Accessed January 20, 2020, from https://fortune.com/2019/01/10/ automation-­replace-­jobs/ Schwab, K. (2016). The fourth industrial revolution. Cologne/Geneva, Switzerland. Available also at www.weforum.org Shin, J. C., Postiglione, G. A., & Ho, K. C. (2018). Challenges for doctoral education in East Asia: A global and comparative perspective. Asia Pacific Education Review, 19, 141–155. Tait, E., Martzoukou, K. & Reid, P. (2016). Libraries for the future: The role of IT utilities in the transformation of academic libraries. Palgrave Communications. Accessed January 30, 2020, from https://www.nature.com/articles/ palcomms201670 van Rijmenam, M. (2020, January 23). Why we need ethical AI: 5 initiatives to ensure ethics in AI. Artificial Intelligence Blog. Accessed January 23, 2020, from https://vanrijmenam.nl/why-­we-­need-­ethical-­ai-­5-­initiatives-­ensure-­ethics-­ai/ Wolcott, R. C. (2018, January 11). How automation will change work, purpose and meaning. Harvard Business Review. Accessed January 21, 2020, from https:// hbr.org/2018/01/how-­automation-­will-­change-­work-­purpose-­and-­meaning

CHAPTER 3

STEAM Education in the Case of Engineering (Empowerment Informatics: Tsukuba University, Japan) and the Art Studies (Interface Cultures: University of Arts and Design Linz, Austria) Maša Jazbec

Symbiosis Between Science and Art In the entire history of mankind, visual art has characterized the level of development of socio-economic relations. A human has always created and developed languages and tools appropriate to the time she/he lives in. We can say that we are defined by time and space. Today we are creating a permanent plural progressive technological development and we can see that the world is becoming ever smaller. The field of art has adopted new media tools. New technologies of computer systems and artificial intelligence (AI) make new directions in

M. Jazbec (*) DDTLab, Trbovlje, Slovenia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Yamada et al. (eds.), Transformation of Higher Education in the Age of Society 5.0, International and Development Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7_3

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art possible, one of which is the creation of highly interactive works based on computation. Art, incorporating science, is questioning our existence and by this means it is showing us a way forward. Art may have some meanings or messages, but what makes it art is not only its contents, but also its impact, the sensible force or style through which it produces the actual content; however, much of it is mixed with other functions. The fact that we do produce styles and sensible effects in art discloses something about what our thinking can do—that our minds are not just machines intended to give information or for communication, but that we also possess the tools that produce desires and work with affectedness.

Symbiosis Between Science and Technology We are living in an era of constant changes. We are creators and also consumers of new political systems, technological advancements, new scientific knowledge and discoveries, globalization, and economic growth and recessions. We are creators of new socio-economic relations and thus of a suitable socialization of the human race. Technology and science are so advanced today that they are entering the space previously ruled by laws of nature. Today the world is understood through the constantly evolving paradigm of technology and science—an era defined by constant and profound changes. We are increasingly losing touch with nature, our genuine sense of inside and outside space. A contemporary person is losing their own identity and intimacy. We are in an era in which it is harder and harder to be a human. What is human, where do this meaning and identity come from, and where are they heading? What is the meaning of a human life? Religious answers are no longer sufficient. With the end of antiquity, the faith in myths and gods has almost ended. Today the crown has been usurped by the science of technology and biology. We live in an era of contemporary alchemists, trying to create life out of nothing, in the era of a contemporary Prometheus stealing the last of the god’s secrets. Already in 1931 Aldous Huxley in the book Brave New World described a society as empty, confining, cold, locked in the techno world without emotions. Cloning, toying with genetics without ethical and moral responsibilities, and natural and technological miracles of Huxley’s world are no longer foreign and fictional. We are closer and closer to the state of society as prophesied by Huxley.

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Responsibility of Science, Technology, and Arts Advancements Being engaged in contemporary visual practice also carries along with it the need for social responsibility, which, at the same time, is also the subject of exploration of many contemporary visual artists. We all live in the time of over-commercialization of urban and personal spaces, aggressiveness of the globalization process, and media manipulation. All these offer a broad field of research to an artist, seemingly free of ideological projects and varied myths of the twentieth century. New, unperceived means of production are opened to them, independent from the power players who are trying to instrumentalize new technologies for manipulation of everything and everybody. Today we understand art in terms of its possibilities, or what it might be able to do. Each act of art, science, and philosophy itself is an event and transfiguration in the understanding of ourselves, society, and the world as a whole. Each transformation changes life in its own specific way. The perception of culture, for example, has been transformed through digital technology. It is important to understand or to be aware of the changes that are coming along with those sensations. Art can give us the support to understand all these transformations, and to understand the complexity of the contemporary world around us. Deleuze in the book Anti-Oedipus stated that art, science, and philosophy serve as powers to transform our lives. We are living in a time of constant changes in our daily living systems. The explosive force of new knowledge and digital technological advancement are changing our understanding of life. If we understand that driving power, then we will be able to maximize our creativity, our life, and our future. Art should not become just an ornamental style, used for making data more pleasing or consumable, but a powerful statement about the world we live in. Art has the power, not just to represent society, but to imagine, create, and vary the affects that are not yet given or experienced. Social responsibility should be taken into account when dealing with visual practice. By analyzing a social structure, political theory, excessive commercialization of both public and personal spaces, aggressiveness of globalization, and manipulation of the media, a broad field of action is open to a contemporary artist.

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The Importance of Interdisciplinarities in Study Programs: STEAM Through the study of most recent art–science–engineering production, our aim in this chapter is to focus on how new media art flirts with scientific ideas and technological development. Much has been written about crucial differences, structural similarities, and the striking interdependencies of art, science, and technology. I would like to expose the importance of the interaction between art and technology on the one hand, and the critical reflection of art on science and technology on the other, for the beneficial evolution of our information societies.

The Value of Integrating the Arts and Sciences in the School Curriculum The approach of STEAM—Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics—is an emerging discipline unique in its desire to provide a well-rounded approach to education. STEAM education has been founded to increase scientific efficacy and creativity as well as maximize interest and motivation in science, which helps improve scientific competitiveness. However, there is no specific STEAM framework that focuses on nurturing convergent talent and there is little research that verifies the effects of the STEAM program. In this chapter I would like to introduce STEAM education examples at the Empowerment Informatics program at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, the Interface culture program at the University of Arts and Design Linz, Austria, and the platform of Network of Research Arts and Culture Centers in Slovenia.

STEAM Education at the PhD Program Empowerment Informatics, University of Tsukuba, Japan The word “empowerment” originally means to “give abilities and powers to people.” It has been used in a sociological sense to explain the process of realizing a society in which individuals or groups can exert their latent abilities. In recent years, empowerment has been increasingly practiced in the fields of nursing and business.

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Empowerment Informatics is a branch of informatics that has been systematized to encourage and support human independence and autonomy, and to improve the quality of life. Interdisciplinary Ability has been framed as the aptitude to consider issues from multiple perspectives, see the “big picture,” and approach issues with ingenuity. The Empowerment Informatics PhD program’s main goal is to integrate arts and culture into scientific, mathematics, engineering, and technological research, development and innovation, digitalization, entrepreneurship, and training and education, with an emphasis on the humanities and social sciences, ecology, circular economy, and sustainable development.

Empowerment Informatics STEAM Projects idMirror in the Field of Social and Information Networks and Face Recognition This project was developed by software engineer Floris Erich and intermedia artist Maša Jazbec. The project was also supported by the FutureLab Academy, from Ars Electronica. idMirror was exhibited and presented at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) academic Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI conference in San Jose, California, and the Ars Electronica festival in Linz, Austria, both in 2015. A scientific research paper about idMirror was published in the AI and Society journal. idMirror is an artistic project that investigates how social networks and emerging mobile technologies have forever changed the perception of human identity (Image 3.1). Social responsibility should be considered when dealing with visual practice. People today live in a time of constant changes in their daily life. Technological progress brings about transformation in every aspect of human existence, including the perception of oneself. New ways of communication and cultural forms are a means of transfiguration of present-­ day identities, forms of community, and interpersonal relationships; our perception of time and space is being re-established. People talk about digital life as the place of hope, the place where something new will come to them. Has the identity of the contemporary citizen shifted to the level of a code, captured in our mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, and exposed in a form of information on the WWW? The essential question nowadays is: Where are we?

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Image 3.1  idMirror installation—captured faces of the installation participants

Body Swapping Experiment in the Field of Android Robotics Science The project was conducted at Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro’s Laboratory at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR). The research was conducted by an interdisciplinary research team of a neuroscientist, robotics engineers, and an artist. The research results were presented at the Human–Robot Interaction conference, in Vienna, Austria, and the System, Man and Cybernetics conference, in Banff, Canada, both in 2017. Study of Body Swapping with Android Robots The study of body swapping extends existing Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) experiments to employ a life-size full-body humanlike android robot to investigate a body ownership illusion and the sense of agency. For this study, we designed a novel experimental setting. The android robot moved synchronously with a participant’s head and arm motion. A stereoscopic camera was mounted on the android’s head and the video stream from the camera was provided to a head mounted display (HMD) worn by the participant. At this point, the participant and the robot were facing each

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Image 3.2  Body swapping experiment with android robot and human

other, so that the participant could see her/his own body in the HMD like a reflection in a mirror. During the experiment, the participant was asked to touch her/his own body by the hands of an android robot. The results of our study confirmed that the body ownership process worked with the full-body android robot. The results also showed that our system enabled the participants to feel the sense of agency to some extent (Image 3.2). STEAM Education at the Interface Culture Master Program at University of Arts and Design Linz, Austria Acting as creative artists and researchers, students learn how to further develop the state-of-the-art current interface technologies and applications. Through interdisciplinary research and teamwork, they also develop new aspects of interface design, including its cultural and social applications. The themes elaborated under the Master’s program in relation to interactive technologies include Interactive Environments, Interactive Art, Ubiquitous Computing, game design, Virtual Reality (VR) and MR environments, Sound Art, Media Art, Web Art, Software Art, HCI research, and interaction design. The Interface Cultures program is based on the above-mentioned know-how. It is an artistic-scientific course of study to give budding media

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artists and media theoreticians solid training in creative and innovative interface design. Artistic design in these areas includes interactive art, net art, software art, robotic art, sound art, noise art, games and storytelling, and mobile art, as well as new hybrid fields like genetic art, bio-art, space art, and nano-art. It is precisely this combination of technical know-how, interdisciplinary research, and a creative artistic–scientific approach to a task, that makes it possible to develop new, creative interfaces that engender progressive and innovative artistic–creative applications for media art, media design, media research, and communication. STEAM Projects at Interface Culture Students with different background formed a VR research group and made a research installation VR WONDERLAND. The installation was exhibited at Ars Electronica festival in Linz, Austria, in 2019. VR in Wonderland With the help of VR tools and devices for consumers, integrated into our VR in Wonderland#1 system, the perception of the body of the participants in another room can be directed to a new perspective. Consequently, the VR in Wonderland#1 research setting actually makes it possible to manipulate the participants’ physical perception through self-localization. The natural view of the participants is replaced by the vision of a small robotic device running in an abstract city labyrinth model. While wearing head mounted displays and looking around, users can observe themselves from the perspective of the third person from below and above, leading to confusion about self-localization. This is a common approach where bodily illusions influence bodily self-awareness (Image 3.3). Virtual Reality (VR) systems allow the user to experience a sense of presence in a place other than their physical body. VR also allows users to feel like someone else when they take the first-person perspective of another real person or avatar.

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Image 3.3  VR in wonderland installation

STEAM Platform in Slovenia Network of Research Arts and Culture Centers Slovenia (McRUK) Is a Slovenian and European network of art and culture research centers, operating at the intersection of art, science, and technology. This interdisciplinary triangle is a platform for developing innovative products and services for a humane technology of the future. RUK is a network of creative centers and organizations connecting art to scientific disciplines. Our ideas focus on humanizing technology, and on fostering technological systems, aiming to support humans as co-­ creators in the arts, culture, natural environment, architecture, and urbanism. Our innovative products shatter the one-dimensional goals of market growth. RUK’s primary mission is to create bridges between natural and social sciences in the areas such as information and communication technologies; virtual, augmented, and mixed realities; robotics; biotechnology; and nanotechnology. Non-linearity and processualism reveal new possibilities for production practices in the economy as well.

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Newly Established Steam Laboratory in the Frame of McRUK: DDTLab DDTLab is a research lab operating in the fields of cybernetics, virtualization, brain–computer interface (BCI) systems, and robotics. DDTLab enables regional, national, and international connectivity. As part of social innovation for smart factories, demands for the humanization of technology are being placed through robotization. Robotization is one of the key directions of progress at the onset of the twenty-first century. Advancements in this field are moving toward increasing autonomy, flexibility, and sustainability. Thus, a modern-day “machine” is not only intended for a mechanic performance of a single function, but also becoming an increasingly independent agent, designed to solve complex problem faced by the individual, the economy, the society, and mankind. The development of robotics thus actually refers to advancements in human– robot interface, AI. STEAM Projects at McRUK: Brain Lab Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) are devices that were initially developed in the field of biomedicine. Biomedical applications of BCI have facilitated restoring the movement ability for physically challenged or locked-in users and replacing the lost motor functionality. Through the use of BCI, we develop computer systems for capturing brain signals, analyzing them, and converting out a desired action. At the same time, our efforts are focused on educating a wider public of the latest research in the fields of neuroscience and arts (Image 3.4). Brain–Computer Interface Hackathon in Trbovlje The BR41N.IO Brain–Computer Interface Designers Hackathon has been created as an education opportunity to study current and future developments and unlimited possibilities of brain–computer interfaces and neurotechnologies in creative, scientific, and clinical fields. BR41N.IO helps students and professionals to understand artificial intelligence, life science, art, and technology, and how they become a unity to evolve innovative BCI headpieces. The BR41N.IO hackathon series brings together engineers, programmers, designers, artists, or enthusiasts to collaborate intensively as an

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Image 3.4  Demonstrating BCI system to the children

interdisciplinary team. They program or build their own fully functional EEG-based brain–computer interface (BCI) to control a drone, a Sphero or e-puck robot, or an orthosis. The participation only requires basic knowledge in brain–computer interfaces, machine learning, programming, or designing (Image 3.5).

VR Lab Sensory Integration Manipulation Through VR Tools The goal of the experience is to gain basic knowledge of the neurophysiology of the human body. Participants will learn that the human brain is constantly adapting its functioning to various external stimuli. The ability of the brain to create new neural pathways based on new experiences confirms the fact that the human brain is a highly plastic organ. Participants will learn about the concept and importance of sensory integration, which is responsible for the smooth flow of information in the brain. Sensory integration is a neurological process that helps us properly utilize the body

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Image 3.5  First Brain–Computer Hackathon in Slovenia (Trbovlje), 2019

in its interaction with the environment. The body organizes sensory information and stimuli that a person receives from the environment through various sensory systems: tactile (touch), visual (sight), auditory (hearing), olfactory (smell), proprioceptive (pressure, temperature, vibration), and vestibular (position and motion in space). Participants will gain this knowledge by learning about scientific and artistic experiments that deal with manipulations of sensory integration (manipulation of visual, haptic, and tactile stimuli), using VR technologies (Image 3.6).

Conclusion However, neither art nor sciences are hermetic or independent systems. Both are inevitably interwoven with other social subsystems, hence also with the technological and economic ones, so the STEAM education programs aim much wider than just to the field of artistic and scientific research. In the fusion of technology, science, mathematics, and art there lies an outstanding potential also for economic development.

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Image 3.6  Sensory integration experiments with VR tools Higher education should prepare students to be proficient in collaboration with different fields, and understanding an interdisciplinary approach in problem solving. It is important for students to be trained to engage in interdisciplinary thinking and work with individuals from different fields as a team. (Claudia Schnugg, 2019, p. 27)

Reference Schnugg, C. (2019). Creating Artscience collaborations: Bringing value to organisations. Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 4

Cultivating Future Competencies Through Interdisciplinary Education in the Society 5.0 Era Aki Yamada

Introduction In today’s increasingly technologically driven and globalized economies, scientific advancement has become a core component of future economic development. This shift has led to worldwide national policy crises to ramp up the education and training for workers with skills in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. These fields are most associated with high-paying, high-value jobs that drive increased efficiency through innovation and new technical processes. Though there are critics who argue that STEM field supply and demand ratios are far from crisis levels, it is evident that our use of technology will continue to grow and be a core component of societal and economic changes in the near and distant future. While STEM graduates are in high demand, there are new incentives for education systems to revisit what skills they seek to

A. Yamada (*) Tamagawa University, Tokyo, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Yamada et al. (eds.), Transformation of Higher Education in the Age of Society 5.0, International and Development Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7_4

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develop among students. Many within academia and the workforce believe that technical skills alone are no longer sufficient and that modern problem-solving involves collaboration, teamwork, leadership, new perspectives, and innovative solutions. Proposals for increased interdisciplinary learning and the development of soft skills among technical field studies seek to address this emergent skills gap. This chapter uses Japan as a case study and focuses on the Japanese governmental and educational approaches to meet the current and future demand for STEM field expertise. Although Japan makes up the third-­ largest economy in the world measured by GDP, it is facing two major challenges to remain competitive: (1) a dwindling working-age population, and (2) diminishing strength in global competitiveness. The country seeks to utilize STEM fields as a primary means for driving innovation and efficiency improvements that can address these challenges. The Japanese government envisions the next societal revolution as “Society 5.0,” an era where new technologies are fully integrated throughout society to empower individuals in all sectors of a human-based endeavor. The Keidanren, Japan Business Federation (2018) describes this as, “Digital transformation will dramatically alter many aspects of society, including private lives, public administration, industrial structure, and employment. Utilization of data and AI will open up many new possibilities. The important question is what to use these technologies for” (p.  9). The policy planning for Society 5.0 posits that STEM fields are essential, but there is a need for educational reform so that graduates and workers have the next-generation competencies this era will require. This chapter first examines the societal changes the Japanese government is anticipating and how they pose new challenges for individuals in the workforce and education systems. Subsequently, it will illustrate the pathways and challenges to obtaining next-generation competencies, such as the interdisciplinary skills and soft skills needed in today’s higher education systems. This case study of Japan will discuss how higher education programs can prepare students with the skills and competencies to be global leaders who can harness new technologies and leading-edge concepts like artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven service platforms for the benefit of society.

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Society 5.0: The Vision The existing social and economic systems, established during the industrial and information revolutions, need to be overhauled in order to maximize the advantages of human-empowering technology in a Society 5.0 era. This vision entails that humans will no longer need to compete with technology; instead, humans and technology will blend in a synergy that makes up for weaknesses and achieves the best outcomes by leveraging the strengths of each. Mechanisms for collaboration between humans and technology will be fundamental in allowing technology to work on strengths in computation and calculations, such as analyzing and modeling data, while allowing humans to focus on areas such as defining problems, interpreting meaning, and evaluating social and creative values and results. Before examining the Society 5.0 vision and the changes needed to meet it, it is meaningful to first look at Japan’s relationship with science and technology from a societal and cultural perspective. It is important to note that Japan has a unique history and cultural outlook that strongly shapes the vision for the role of technology in a human-based society. Since the 1960s, Japan has been synonymous with technology, major global electronic and automotive conglomerates, and cutting-edge innovation. The US National Research Council (1997) has attributed technology as a critical component of Japan’s post-World War II economic miracle, stating: …developing new applications and markets for imported technologies, modifying technologies for new applications, and rapidly moving forward with complementary innovations have been hallmarks of the companies in most of Japan's internationally competitive industries. At the aggregate level, a late 1980s study showed that Japanese firms tend to develop and introduce new products and processes based on external technology more quickly and economically than U.S. companies do. (p. 32)

Given the importance of technological industries, both technology and robots became a core part of Japanese pop culture dating since the 1950s. Gilson (1998) explained how Japan perceives and accepts technology, stating, “One nation has slowly but surely been integrating robots into daily life, both in the open and behind the scenes. In contrast to the West, Japan has always exhibited a unique form of what can be described as robophilia” (p.  367). Whereas many cultures view robots as mindless

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domesticated servants or an “other” entity to be feared, Japanese culture often portrays robots as integrated with humanity, and often even possessing aspects of humanity. Since the 1950s, Japanese pop culture comics and characters like Astroboy and Doraemon depict how robots can act as members of an extended family and have a nurturing effect on their human companions. Similarly, Japan also popularized the notion of virtual and robotic companion pets with the Tamagotchi fad of the 1990s and inventions like the Sony Aibo robotic dog. In this manner, Japan has long been a leader in prototyping the use of robots and AI in the industrial, hospitality, medical, and service industries. More recently, in 2017, Hollywood released the movie Ghost in the Shell, an adaptation of a highly popular Japanese comic and animation series that depicts a world where cybernetic enhancements and full-body prostheses are viable through technological advancements. These are just a few examples of Japan’s unique view of a close symbiosis between humans and robotics. Gilson (1998) argues that technology was vital to Japan’s postwar revival and rapid development into a major global power. Thus, this reliance and acceptance extend toward its societal views on the manifestations of technology, such as robots. This perspective helps illustrate the unique outlook Japan has in planning for the integration of technology within society.

Society 5.0: Technologically Driven Social Change To understand what Society 5.0 will be, we must carefully consider what a future human-centered society may embody and how its social structures will function. From a societal perspective, it is also essential to understand how people will be situated and how they will cooperate and adjust to new ways of life after the Information Society (Society 4.0). Looking at the integration of technology in the modern workplace, we can see that companies and employees are subject to working conditions established from a highly task-centered economic perspective. We see companies focusing on advancing technology and automation to increase efficiency in order to reduce costs and employee headcounts, leading to increased profits. This trend has been a constant in the industrial and information societies that precede Society 5.0. However, Japan’s vision seeks to move forward to a human-centered society, and rather than seeing technology replace humans and jobs, society can utilize it to augment the capabilities and value of a human workforce. Nordfors (in Japan Science and Technology Agency [JST], 2016) estimates that innovating the economy in this

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manner can double the world GDP to a $200 T global economy. One key difference from the advances of Society 4.0 and 5.0 is a strong desire not to displace humanity with technology but to use it as a force to enact social innovations and enable people to reach their full potential. While technology is a critical component of Society 5.0, we need to carefully consider its role and how it fits into a human-centered societal framework. From a policy perspective (JST, 2016), four key points emphasized in the technological advancement of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) are: 1. Big Data—the increasing quantity and quality of data that service platforms can collect, store, analyze, and manipulate. 2. Artificial Intelligence (AI)—leveraging data to develop new models and services that can efficiently shift existing social systems. 3. The Internet of Things (IoT)—increasingly prevalent networked and connected devices that can collect and store data, for example, computers, mobile phones, smartwatches, and fitness trackers. 4. Open Data—open access and the free sharing of data can drive accountability, collaboration, and innovation across organizations, fields of study, and society as a whole. In order to predict how people will begin to work differently in Society 5.0, we need to understand the significant effects that advances in these technological areas and others have on our daily life: educationally, economically, and socially. The technological aspects above all deal heavily with the collecting, storage, access, and utilization of large amounts of data. These are some fundamental points upon which society can build services to solve real-world problems for the benefit of all. The development of IoT, the efficient use of Big Data, and the progress of artificial intelligence can provide strong support for the next revolution of information technology within society. For instance, in the area of healthcare, Big Data and AI can help to assist in the diagnosis of medical conditions quickly and accurately. To follow up, service platforms making such information conveniently and readily accessible and shareable between patients, medical professionals, and caregivers will help long-term treatment. Such services can manifest themselves in ways ranging from the automation of clerical, service, and industrial tasks to analyzing and correcting problematic trends in public services, such as governance and health care. Society 5.0 also positions technology as a means to address substantial systemic

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issues affecting humanity in the long term to enact better environmental protections and sustainability efforts and reducing current inequalities across rural and urban regions. While data and software can aid in knowledge, information processing, and efficiency, technology can also directly integrate with the human physical experience. Such technological solutions provide varied means for Japan to prepare for its aging and shrinking population. According to Japan’s Statistics Bureau (2020), in 2019, Japan had a population of 126,167,000, and they expect this number to decline to 101,923,000 by 2050. In Japan, “Empowerment Informatics” (EMP) is a new field that seeks to use technology in harmony with humans, drawing out or extending their abilities. The University of Tsukuba’s (2019) EMP program describes this area of study as: Empowerment Informatics is composed of three major disciplines: supplementation, harmony, and extension. Supplementation supports and improves physical, cognitive, and social functions of human. Harmony integrates engineering systems into people’s everyday life. Extension externalizes the latent creative functions of people. (p. 2)

This statement aligns well with the vision for Society 5.0, using technology not as a way to displace people in favor of automation but to help them maximize their full potential. For instance, advanced prostheses and wearable devices can resolve physical disabilities or impairments, and robotics can extend human strength and endurance. Additionally, robotics and autonomous vehicles can assist caregivers of the elderly and help those with disabilities achieve greater mobility in everyday life.

Japanese Educational Reform Trends Considering this vision for Society 5.0, higher education is essential for preparing the next generations of the workforce with the right STEM skills. Many higher education programs are undertaking reforms to prepare and cultivate students with the skills and competencies to be global leaders who can harness new technologies and leading-edge concepts for the benefit of society. For Japan, one challenge to this goal is that its education systems are strongly tied to Confucian traditions rooted in Chinese education principles and shared throughout Southeast Asia. The hallmarks of the Confucian tradition include mass acquisition and memorization of

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knowledge, one-way teacher-driven instruction, and rigorous and competitive standardized testing. These teaching methodologies have helped make Asian countries consistently produce top-performing students in primary and secondary international testing benchmarks (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2019). However, Confucian education is also cited for its lack of soft skills, including creativity, real-world problem-solving, teamwork, and collaboration. Until recently, Japanese higher education STEM field programs were strongly siloed by field and the prioritization of technical knowledge domains. Because these educational principles no longer fully align well with the skillsets sought in the modern workplace, Japan and other Asian education systems are enacting reforms to shift traditional Confucian education models to address the demand for STEM field workers with the competencies needed today (Shin et al., 2015). The latest round of reforms targeting next-generation competencies in the STEM fields follows up multiple decades of lead-in toward progressive reform. While long-standing aspects of Confucian education are entrenched in Japan, major education reform in 2002 helped shift Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) policy toward more progressive theories of pedagogy. This movement was Japan’s third major modern educational reform, the first since the post-­ World War II era, and it was driven by a slowing economy, national crises, and increased influence from business interests. Motani (2005) described how national crises like the 1995 Hanshin Earthquake and reporting on incidents of student violence and misbehavior contributed to an interest in civic duty and a “mature civil society.” Whereas Japanese education largely omitted instruction in civics before the 2002 reform, Japanese society began to see the value of progressive education in human rights, social justice, and national and global citizenship. During this period, both neo-­ liberal and neo-conservative influences coincided with a demand for a flexible workforce of creative problem solvers exhibiting global competencies. To shift to these new priorities, MEXT was forced to cut back on traditional curricula based on the rote memorization of knowledge. These changes helped shift educational interest toward embracing a society with global influences and global competition. Since 2010, MEXT has promoted the internationalization of higher education institutions, with programs to encourage more students to study abroad and attract international students and faculty to Japan (MEXT, 2010; Yonezawa, 2014). Since then, foreign language ability, communication, and multicultural

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understanding have become key overlapping priorities for many reform initiatives, not limited to STEM students. More recently, progressive attitudes have continued to help bring Integrated Studies into the national curriculum discourse. Integrated Studies introduce open-ended problem-solving scenarios, giving instructors discretion to develop lesson plans that could offer opportunities for students to discover problems and apply critical thinking and reasoning. Despite this, higher education STEM field faculty and studies in Japan remain largely segregated from other fields. Many education systems in Asia are now borrowing from Western pedagogical methods, utilizing active learning, and integrating arts education. Compounding the issue, most Japanese faculty have not received exposure or instruction in Western pedagogy, including training in Integrated Studies, active learning, and other newer teaching methods. Amano and Poole (2005) also note that Japanese university faculty are historically heavily oriented toward research activities over teaching, putting less emphasis on developing their curriculum and adopting new teaching methods. An OECD (2015) survey evidences this deficiency, finding that only 16% of Japanese teachers felt capable of helping their students think critically, compared to an OECD average of 80%. Motani (2005) further cites a lack of resources, teaching support, and training as structural issues hindering progressive education reform and even pre-dating the 2002 reform movement. Despite the existence of this latest movement for over a decade, there is still much progress to be made, and these issues remain as key points in MEXT’s policy papers.

Developing Next-Generation Competencies The high demand for STEM graduates has become an essential factor influencing the direction of higher education program reforms worldwide. If Society 5.0 is to be realized, nations must drastically transform existing economic systems to become information-intensive; this serves as a prerequisite for leveraging technology to empower humans. The Keidanren vision for Society 5.0 aligns with a notion of a human-centered society, stating, “Society 5.0 will require rich imaginations to identify both a variety of needs and challenges scattered throughout society and the scenarios needed to solve them, as well as creativity to realize solutions making use of digital technologies and data” (2018, p. 10). Thus, while the importance of STEM-driven technological reliance is unquestionable, a purely

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technical-skills-based society is not the end goal. For the Society 5.0 era, higher education should prepare students to be proficient in collaboration with different fields and understand an interdisciplinary approach to problem-­solving. It is important for students to be trained to engage in interdisciplinary thinking and work with individuals from different fields as a team. As technology advances, it will need to interface in greater depth with human psychology, behavioral and emotional intelligence, language, pattern recognition, and so on. The Japan Society and Technology Agency (2016) points out that there are many ways in which technologies are just starting to be used to interface closely with humans, for instance, in speech, facial, and body language recognition. As these fields continue to advance, it will be necessary to approach problem-solving from both physiological and psychological perspectives. Devices that rely on behaviors, emotions, and self-reporting will need to be interpreted from a humanistic point of view. These inputs will have many influencing factors, such as the interpretation of complex linguistic patterns, cultural differences, and an understanding of human psychology. Thus, quantitative inputs alone will no longer be sufficient for a high level of cohesion between humans and technology. The shift to new next-generation competencies is further backed up by economic analysis. Frey and Osborne (2013) estimate that within the next two decades, it is reasonable to expect that nearly half the jobs in the United States may be replaced by automation. It is telling that many of the jobs that are the hardest to automate fall under the purview of the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences, and these are the same jobs Frey and Osborne predict will gain in demand relative to other fields. While STEM is at the forefront of educational interest globally, there is a related movement to elevate and integrate the Arts into STEM field education under the acronym “STEAM.” As the humanities and arts are fundamentally linked to human experiences, perception, interpretation, and action, we cannot ignore their potential contribution to technical matters. By introducing elements of the arts into STEM education, students develop creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking, communication, initiative, and collaborative skills (Sousa & Pilecki, 2013). In contrast to traditional STEM programs, STEAM education seeks to provide students with an understanding of the structure of its component fields and their alignment. Yakman and Lee (2012) researched STEAM education in Korea, focusing on a practical educational framework that establishes a baseline breadth of knowledge and functional literacy. They conclude:

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Functionally literate people are more effective because they know how to think across the spectrum of topics and understand the connections between the disciplines. Students engaged with STEAM, not only learn to be literate in a singular (silo) field, but they become life-long learners who are much more capable of adapting to and advancing the global society. (p. 1075)

STEAM education is considered beneficial for helping STEM-major engineering students become globally competent by allowing them to develop the soft skills necessary to work effectively with people who define and perceive problems differently. This concept is applicable across many boundaries, such as national perspectives, linguistic communication, and fields of specialization. Future STEM workers require advanced technical skills and awareness of social issues, teamwork ability, strong communication skills, and collaboration within diverse settings. Parkinson (2009) points out that globalization has made global operations management, manufacturing dependency chains, and international partnerships more common. Additionally, fierce international competition and rapidly changing technologies mean engineers need to stay abreast of new developments worldwide. This view stands in opposition to the notion that scientists and engineers can isolate themselves to technical knowledge and domestic affairs, especially as they move up in their career pathways. Studies like that of Ragusa et  al. (2014) show that engineering undergraduate students can gain measurable improvements to global skillsets through international research experiences. By collaborating with non-­ STEM-­major students, students gain an understanding of the importance of interdisciplinary studies and knowledge. Furthermore, this presents an opportunity to exercise the soft skills essential in workplace teamwork but are notably lacking in educational settings. Yakman and Lee (2012) point out that from a pedagogical standpoint, the constructivist practices advocated by STEAM are neither untested nor unproven but are just starting to be applied within the STEM fields. Islam and Stamp (2020) highlight research that points to an increase in demand for global competencies and that students benefit when interdisciplinary global studies are systemically built into a program’s curriculum.

Society 5.0 Collaboration As stated by Japan’s Council for Science, Technology, and Innovation (CSTI, 2016) 5th Science and Technology Basic Plan:

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Furthermore, researchers need to broaden their outlooks and develop a deeper awareness of the importance of the use of their research in society. Along with such enhanced perspectives, it is important to make effective use of collaboration between the humanities/social sciences, the arts and the natural sciences and provide internships for experts in companies.

Integrating such an outlook into STEM education allows students to reflect on beliefs and social commitments and provide perspective toward developing technology and service platforms and their role in society. In areas such as these, it is obvious that a balanced approach with STEM and the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts is necessary as we move toward Society 5.0. STEAM education connects individuals from different educational backgrounds and guides them to collaborate, combining diverse perspectives in holistic and realistic problem-solving. Just as the Society 5.0 era focuses on human empowerment through the seamless integration of technology and people, STEAM education will allow future innovators and leaders to understand both the technological and human perspectives and the ramifications of the problems they will solve. Emergent problems will substantially benefit from an interdisciplinary collaboration between fields to develop solutions. STEAM education can also guide STEM students to understand when and how different approaches or perspectives can be considered in problem-solving scenarios. Golde and Gallagher (1999) point out that while the need to be fluent in multiple disciplines is not clear cut and requires more time, it can be especially important in study areas that are interdisciplinary by nature. They cite environmental science as one such field where the interdisciplinary nature of ecological research truly benefits from an understanding of multiple fields. Another such instance is a field like bioinformatics, which blends biological studies with analysis and data processing facilitated by computer sciences and mathematics. However, interdisciplinary research can be inherently challenging, as collaborators must learn to work within unfamiliar disciplines, where concepts, frameworks, and methodologies may be utterly dissimilar from their own expertise. Though the typical ways of thinking in different fields may be at odds with one another, resulting in conflicting approaches to problem-solving, doing so can also be highly beneficial to approaching problems from new perspectives. The research area of biomimicry is a perfect example of this; by drawing inspiration from biology and the evolutionary physical problem-solving exhibited in nature, scientists can repurpose those findings to manufacturable

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solutions. For example, Kobayashi (2005) interviewed Eiji Nakatsu, a director who worked on the Japanese Shinkansen bullet train. He learned how a Kingfisher’s beak inspired the shape of the Japanese bullet train for its ability to pierce through water without disrupting pressure. Additionally, the engineering team drew inspiration from the serrated feathers of owls, known for their silent flight, to reduce the noise generated by the train at high speeds. There are countless examples of advances and improvements that show interdisciplinary studies are not just helpful in applying knowledge from one field to another. Sometimes they are essential for holistic problem-solving that addresses the real-world concerns of multiple fields. By working together as a team with members from different fields in STEAM, students can experience and practice problem-solving from a multitude of perspectives and methodologies, gaining a better understanding and appreciation of the values held by alternative fields. Despite the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to education, it is challenging to implement such an approach in traditional higher education systems that structurally silo academic fields by departments and where curricula place additional constraints that discourage students from striking out beyond their primary area of specialization. As we enter the Society 5.0 era, MEXT predicts that societies will increasingly rely on the integration of technological developments and concepts, and we will have to learn how to manage the relationship between the two properly. The challenge for education programs is to produce graduates that can adapt to the needs of this new era. STEAM education is key in assisting students in learning how to work across different fields, obtain experience in collaboration, and solve real-world problems from multiple perspectives. A humanistic point of view can inform STEM studies with a critical perspective to viewing problems and solutions through a human lens and help students understand the ramifications of their work. For instance, some moral, ethical, and larger picture concerns that isolated STEM studies traditionally ignore include: • How can we responsibly collect and utilize social, health care, and economic information? • Who has access to Big Data, how secure is it, and who controls it? • What responsibilities do we have regarding the environment, international politics, and human rights? • How can we create devices and experiences that appeal to human nature and are intuitive to use?

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• How can technology empower society as a whole and the diverse subgroups within it? For a sustainable society, problem solvers need more than purely technical knowledge and skills. There is a constant need for an awareness of ethics, the environment, and technology’s impact on society. Mindfulness of these concerns can be developed by adding interdisciplinary aspects to STEM education. This notion is especially true in ICT, where developments in Big Data, IoT, AI, and Open Data pose severe concerns for the safety, privacy, and ethical use of technology. Data management and sharing will also become a critical topic as technology becomes more integrated into our lives and our devices begin to collect data in larger quantities with higher fidelity and detail. McDuff (in JST, 2016) asserts that data privacy and intent will be crucial issues to address as members of the traditional STEM fields develop these technologies. Similarly, with IoT, security becomes a higher risk as remote connectivity and the control of devices and information become increasingly widespread problems. In 2018, the start of the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) enforcement evidenced exactly how data collection increasingly affects society. As companies collect increasing amounts of personal data about customers and their usage of these companies’ services, GDPR legislation requires consent for that collection of data. GDPR legislation provides that organizations must document the use of personal data, and individuals can freely request to receive or erase the data they are collecting. While technologically advanced companies like Google and Facebook provide service platforms, it is not enough to offer such services without considering how they interface with individuals and society. We rely on the arts and humanities for critical thinking toward social, moral, ethical, and aesthetic values, and STEAM education is one promising way to bridge this gap.

Conclusion Looking at the concept of Society 5.0 and the roadmap that Japan’s MEXT has set, their policy is actively preparing for changes brought about by continued globalization and the need for STEM workers who can drive efficiency and social benefits through innovation. Society 5.0 presents a clear concept seeking an economic and social paradigm shift with respect to the role of technology while avoiding the non-humanistic societal

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revolutions of the past. This policy uses a humanistic viewpoint to guide technological innovation to uplift humanity and enable us to reach new potentials. Because Society 5.0 maximizes the seamless integration of technology with people, there is a major shift in the skills and competencies required to fulfill this vision. With this in mind, education reform in Japan is seeking to advance interdisciplinary initiatives, providing holistic curricula that develop both technical and soft skills. By creating a bridge between traditional STEM field studies and the arts/humanities, there are numerous advantages for preparing students with next-generation competencies such as global citizenship, communication, collaboration skills, and the open perspective needed for critical problem-solving. The arts and humanities will play a significant role in questions of ethics, environmental and social impacts, and legal concerns, among many other areas. For instance, when it comes to prosthetics, human augmentations, and AI, where will we draw the line between humans and technology? To what extent can technology like AI help or assist humans, and what limitations, if any, should be enforced? Globally, education systems are already in fierce competition to produce STEM graduates while also enacting reform to ensure their skills meet modern needs. The efforts to address next-generation competencies and soft skills in STEM education through STEAM or other interdisciplinary efforts are not specific to Japan. Furthermore, the prioritization of humanistic social innovation is essential globally and affects many issues that require global coordination, such as addressing climate change, environmental sustainability, and social inequalities. Though the concept and planning around Society 5.0 are heavily from Japanese government policy planning, its core concepts apply to most technologically advanced societies worldwide.

References Amano, I., & Poole, G.  S. (2005). The Japanese university in crisis. Higher Education, 50(4), 685–711. Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (CSTI). (2016). The 5th science and technology basic plan. https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/english/basic/ 5thbasicplan.pdf Frey, C. B., & Osborne, M. A. (2013). The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/ academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf

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Gilson, M. (1998). A brief history of Japanese Robophilia. Leonardo, 31(5), 367–369. Golde, C. M., & Gallagher, H. A. (1999). The challenges of conducting interdisciplinary research in traditional doctoral programs. Ecosystems, 2(4), 281–285. Islam, M. S., & Stamp, K. (2020). A reflection on future directions: Global international and intercultural competencies in higher education. Research in Comparative and International Education, 15(1), 69–75. https://doi. org/10.1177/1745499920901951 Japan Science and Technology Agency, Center for Research and Development Strategy Japan Science and Technology Agency (2016). Future services & societal systems in society 5.0. https://www.jst.go.jp/crds/pdf/en/CRDS-­ FY2016-­WR-­13.pdf Keidanren. (2018). Keidanren policy & action. Society 5.0. – Co-creating the future. http://www.keidanren.or.jp/en/policy/2018/095_proposal.pdf Kobayashi, K. (2005). JFS Biomimicry Interview Series: No. 6 “Shinkansen Technology Learned from an Owl?”  - The story of Eiji Nakatsu. Japan For Sustainability. https://www.japanfs.org/en/news/archives/news_ id027795.html Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. (2010). The concept of global human resource development focusing on the East Asia region. https://www.mext.go.jp/en/policy/education/highered/title02/detail02/ sdetail02/1373900.htm Motani, Y. (2005). Hopes and challenges for progressive educators in Japan: Assessment of the 'progressive turn' in the 2002 educational reform. Comparative Education, 41(3), 309–327. National Research Council. (1997). Maximizing U.S.  Interests in Science and Technology Relations with Japan. The National Academies Press. https://doi. org/10.17226/5850 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2015). Educational policy outlook: Japan. http://www.oecd.org/education/Japan-­ country-­profile.pdf Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2019). Programme for international student assessment (PISA): Results from PISA 2018. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/PISA2018_CN_JPN.pdf Parkinson, A. (2009). The rationale for developing global competence. Online Journal for Global Engineering Education, 4(2), 10. Article 2. Ragusa, G., Mathery, C., & Phillips, S. (2014). Comparison of the impact of two research experiences for undergraduate programs on preparing students for global workforces. In 2014 IEEE frontiers in education (FIE) conference proceedings. Shin, J. C., Postiglione, G. A., & Huang, F. (2015). Mass higher education development in East Asia: Strategy, quality, and challenges. Springer.

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Sousa, D. A., & Pilecki, T. (2013). From STEM to STEAM: Using brain-compatible strategies to integrate the arts. Corwin. Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. (2020). Statistical Handbook of Japan 2020. https://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/ handbook/pdf/2020all.pdf University of Tsukuba. (2019). Ph.D. program in empowerment informatics (EMP) school of integrative and global majors. https://www.emp.tsukuba.ac.jp/wp-­ content/uploads/sites/33/2020/03/pr_02_leaflet_20190729.pdf Yakman, G., & Lee, H. (2012). Exploring the exemplary STEAM education in the U.S. as a practical education framework for Korea. Journal of the Korean Association for Research in Science Education, 32(6), 1072–1086. Yonezawa, A. (2014). Japan’s challenge of fostering “global human resources”: Policy debates and practices. Japan Labor Review, 11(2), 37–52.

CHAPTER 5

Fitting Square Pegs into Round Holes: Developing an English-Taught Liberal Arts Program at a Japanese University Gregory S. Poole

Introduction In April of 2011, Doshisha University (DU) launched a four-year English-­ taught undergraduate degree program (ETP), The Institute for the Liberal Arts (ILA). This interdisciplinary ETP was, and still is, unique in Japan since it spans six different faculties across the university encompassing a broad program of liberal arts studies in the social sciences and humanities. Entering its eleventh year, the ILA serves a diverse body of over 200 students holding a variety of passports and speaking dozens of languages. As a small college within a large, comprehensive private university of 29,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in Japanese-taught programs (JTPs) on two campuses in Kyoto, the ILA has been very successful. Unexpectedly, there also have been challenges to these successes, issues

G. S. Poole (*) The Institute for the Liberal Arts, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Yamada et al. (eds.), Transformation of Higher Education in the Age of Society 5.0, International and Development Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7_5

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mostly arising from the very nature of an inter-faculty Institute located within a faculty (gakubu) system, including: (1) the integration of enrollment management (teiin waku) into the larger university approach in terms of admissions, (2) administrative burdens of the small core of academic staff, (3) effective bilingual administration of student services, (4) ILA student inclusion into the larger campus life, and (5) the nature of the ILA graduation certificate itself. In this chapter, I will present these issues as a case study of a successful ETP program at a Japanese university with the intention of adding to the growing literature on the development of liberal arts programs in higher education (HE) systems where such English-medium instruction (EMI) interdisciplinary programs are still very much the exception rather than the norm. First, I will discuss the background to the development of ETPs in Japan, including the Japanese government initiatives over the past 15 years as well as the institutional responses to these “internationalization” efforts, including the approach taken at Doshisha. As a case study, I will then outline the ILA program in some detail, discussing the institutional history and organizational framework of the department, the approach to recruiting and enrollment management, the pedagogical stance of the core faculty, and the overall content of the four-year curriculum. After a discussion of the challenges that we have faced as a unique faculty, I will sum up with a few thoughts on ways forward that might transcend the issues we face, and how as a case study the experience of the ILA may be a lesson for developing other such interdisciplinary programs worldwide.

Background to ETPs in Japan Globalization processes in general, and in particular the long-term impact of a shrinking population including college-age youth in Japan, are forcing the government and higher education institutions (HEIs) to address the issue of how Japanese society can invite more highly skilled labor from overseas. One response is through attracting larger numbers of international students to Japanese HEIs, the impetus for a series of central government internationalization initiatives to “import diversity” (McConnell, 2000). Although the response to these policies by HEIs has been varied, one significant near and long-term trend is the proliferation of English-­ taught degree programs (ETPs) targeting international students (Poole et  al., 2019, 2020a, 2020b; see also Bradford & Brown, 2017). These globalization forces and government and institutional responses have

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made Japan HEIs more attractive to international students. Robust, emerging economies in Asia combined with populist politics in the United States and the United Kingdom have influenced international student mobility trends that are increasingly regionally focused. The highly developed system of HE with relatively low tuition fees, combined with a booming tourist industry (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, 2017), has made Japan an increasingly attractive place for transnational youth to consider for both their undergraduate and graduate education (see Poole et al., 2019). Capitalizing on these pressures and opportunities, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) adopted the goals of increasing both the number of international students in Japan to 300,000 by 2020 and the number of Japanese students studying abroad to 120,000 by 2020, as well as having 10 Japanese universities rank among the top 100 universities in the world by 2024 (Poole et al., 2020a). To accomplish these goals, MEXT established a set of competitively funded HE projects—“Global 30” (G30), “Global 30+” (G30+), and “Top Global”—which were launched initially in 2009 (Ishikawa, 2011) and in the ensuing 10 years these initiatives have resulted in achieving over two-­ thirds the number originally set as the goal in the long-term “300,000 International Students Plan” established by the federal government in July 2008 (Japan Student Services Organization, 2019). The latest initiative, “Top Global,” beginning in 2015 and funded through 2023 (Goodman, 2016), continues the government’s 25-year-long demand on HEIs in Japan to respond to globalization by reforming and diversifying, becoming more globally competitive, with higher standards and higher quality all around (Newby et al., 2009: 11). This push to better respond to globalization began with the move in 2004 to corporatize the national universities (Hirowatari, 2000; Kawano & Poole, 2021; Poole & Chen, 2009) and is consistent with neoliberal policy trends worldwide to introduce competitiveness and entrepreneurship among top universities (Kawano & Poole, 2021; Rappleye et al., 2011: 8). However, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) analyses, the challenges with this response to globalization that has been undertaken at Japanese HEIs are fourfold: (1) the problem of overcoming inertia; (2) the reluctance of MEXT to give up much of its power over the university system; (3) the nature of what a national “steering body” could be; and (4) the lack of a pool of academic managers of the caliber required to make university reform and

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diversification work in practice (Aspinall, 2016: 109). MEXT also regulates transnational HEIs from operating degree-granting programs in Japan (MEXT—Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2019 5).

Issues Concerning the HE Curricula in Japan As pointed out by the OECD team, these challenges that HEIs in Japan face are systemic issues for the sector as a whole. At an institutional level, however, there are additional structural factors not least of which is the subject of this volume—the curricula generally, and more specifically an interdisciplinary approach to HE programs. Recently, these issues have been summarized elsewhere (see Ota et al., 2020). The first challenge for Japanese HEIs is to create curricula that are designed for both domestic and “international” students under a common agenda, not only to provide equal learning goals and opportunities, but also to enable all students to participate fully in the classes on offer while developing cross-cultural competencies. Also, it has been argued that such curricula should consider education for the global knowledge society, with an emphasis on the development of students’ personal qualities as responsible citizens (Brookes & Becket, 2011; Takagi, 2013). However, Japanese universities traditionally provide those so-called “intercultural” opportunities through offering study abroad programs relying heavily on their partner institutions abroad since their campuses and local communities are for the most part perceived as being  not necessarily “culturally diverse” (Takagi, 2009). The second challenge is to transform pedagogy from teacher-centered to student-centered. The knowledge society requires not only knowledge per se but also competence, that is, an ability that enables one to do something with acquired knowledge. However, students cannot always develop such competence by just attending lectures. More interactive approaches, such as experiential learning, challenge Japanese academics to adopt instructional methods that engage students’ learning actively and responsibly. The reality is that it is difficult to transform university teaching methods and practices without systematic faculty development and clear incentives (Kawashima, 2008). The third challenge is to systematically collect data on students’ learning in order to objectively assess the achievement of learning outcomes. In order to assure the validity and reliability of learning outcome assessment,

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teachers need to provide numerous opportunities to assess students’ learning and to produce in advance a set of criteria and rubrics against which students’ performance will be evaluated. The still widespread instructional practice that focuses on assessing students’ academic performance through mid-term and end-of-term exams and essays makes the measurement of learning outcomes a challenge (Kawashima, 2008).

Innovating a Liberal Arts ETP at a Comprehensive University Unlike liberal arts HEIs in the United States, most Japanese universities are modeled around an undergraduate education based in one faculty (gakubu). High school applicants apply to, enroll in, and graduate from one specific university faculty. Rarely is there room for changing one’s major area of study. Prestige is not only associated with the university brand, but also certain faculties within the same university are assigned a rank based on competitive entrance requirements—referred to as hensachi, or the abstract notion of a national norm-referenced score. How does such a faculty-centered HE system accommodate a four-­ year, interdisciplinary, liberal arts ETP? This was the question facing a committee formed in 2009 and 2010 as part of an application for competitive funding from MEXT (“Global 30” mentioned above) and under the leadership of the Doshisha University vice-president. The goal was to construct an interdisciplinary and “international” liberal arts curriculum to attract degree-seeking students from around the world. The faculty structure of universities in Japan was the first challenge facing the vice-­ president and his committee when devising the interdisciplinary, undergraduate ETP—how can the rigid compartmentalization of disciplines in Japan be overcome structurally? To compensate, they did their best to devise an innovative strategy when they conceived of a liberal arts ETP, fitting the square peg of interdisciplinary liberal arts into the round hole of compartmentalized faculties through a “hybrid approach.” Instead of creating yet another faculty (there are at present 14 undergraduate faculties and 38 departments at Doshisha), the committee located the ETP as a quasi-independent “Institute for the Liberal Arts” (ILA) between six faculties of humanities and social sciences (Letters, Social Sciences, Policy Studies, Law, Economics, and Commerce) with the students enrolled in these faculties

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on paper but in actuality being recruited into and educated entirely within the Institute. This actually helps to fulfill the mission of the ETP, which is not only to attract top international students, but also to attract top domestic JTP students, since undergraduates from these six faculties have the option of enrolling in the liberal arts ETP as part of a second major, or fuku senkō (Poole et al., 2020b). Within this structure, the ILA recruited students using the enrollment management quota (teiin waku) of the six faculties to admit its first cohort of students into the four-year ETP in April of 2011, targeting international students (ryūgakusei) as well as Japanese nationals preferring English-medium instruction to Japanese-medium instruction. Students choose a concentration when they enter the program—Humanities and the Human Sciences, Business and Economics, or Politics and Policy Studies—but are encouraged to study across the entire range of subjects offered in the curriculum, an approach that is supported by minimizing the number of required courses. While all classes are conducted in English, students have the option, and are encouraged, to study the Japanese language alongside their major content courses. Upon graduation, students are awarded a bachelor’s degree in the liberal arts, along with a second degree in a university department depending on their faculty affiliation, which is decided by their choice of concentration/major. ILA had an enrollment of slightly more than 200 students for the 2019 school year and has had over 45 passports/nationalities represented during the eight years since the program began. Class sizes are typically small, from 5 to 30 students for most courses. The ILA has five core faculty members, and students take many of their classes with these professors over the course of the degree program. Students get to know these faculty and choose one whose specialization aligns with their interests for their senior research project or honors thesis.1

1  It is worth noting here that students from other undergraduate faculty not enrolled in the four-year ILA programs can also take ILA classes. Short-term study abroad students are sometimes based at the ILA as the host department and attend its classes for the duration of their stay. However, their enrollment is not prioritized over ILA students.

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Issues of Square Pegs and Round Holes The globalization of HE in Japan has created tension in the education market and campus politics. At most HEIs, staffing practices and governance models are ill-equipped to accommodate an increasingly diverse student body. Admissions systems, housing, counseling support, permanent office staff, curriculum development, style of pedagogy, and general campus infrastructure are predominantly focused on serving the domestic student experience (Poole et  al., 2019), understandable since at most institutions the vast majority of students enrolled are from MEXT-­ accredited secondary schools.2 This is no different at Doshisha University (DU). Like other HEIs, the interdisciplinary innovation for degree-­ seeking ETP students at the ILA program level was not fully supported by bureaucratic and structural innovation at the university level. Degree Certificates and “Domesticated” Enrollment Management One such bureaucratic challenge arose because the academic affairs office (gakuji) was not able to grant the ILA full independence from the six faculties—at the point of application for admissions to the ETP, all students are assigned an enrollment place (shozoku) in a JTP at a faculty outside the ILA.  This is a workaround that is not able to account for the fact that nearly all of the ILA students’ undergraduate education takes place and is administered through the ETP institute, not the JTP faculty. Because of this situation, two substantial issues have arisen in terms of graduation degree certificates and enrollment management. When the first cohort of ETP students approached graduation, the academic affairs office advised ILA staff that the degree certificate must not bear the name of the ILA but rather only the name of the JTP gakubu (e.g., Faculty of Law, Department of Political Science), even though none of the students’ classes would have been in the JTP program. This issue resulted in discussions between the academic staff (deans of the faculties 2  Of course, recently the domestic HE students have also been impacted by globalization forces with, for example, the government announcement to implement private sector four-­ skills standardized English proficiency testing (e.g., the ETS Test of English as a Foreign Language) as part of the new version of the national standardized university admissions exam starting from 2020 and replacing the existing National Center Test. This new exam format is an attempt to further emphasize the need for English communicative skills (McCrostie, 2017; MEXT, 2018).

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and the ILA) and the university administrators that ended with the ETP institute issuing a separate degree certificate inscribed with the actual name of the liberal arts ETP, alongside the degree certificate that indicates the JTP faculty from which the student has also graduated.3 Until very recently, universities have been almost entirely focused on recruiting students from the domestic market and understandably, the admissions system is localized to Japan. However, this system is not easily adapted to an international context where applicants are located worldwide. During the past ten years of implementing the four-year ETP, ILA faculty members and staff have struggled to adapt to the rules and practices surrounding the wider university admissions, especially given that many of these practices are more or less irrelevant to the ILA program, which focuses on enrolling a diversity of students. Although there does exist a university “admissions office,” it is not staffed by admissions officers with special knowledge of international recruiting. One reason for this is that the organizational role and bureaucratic purpose of the university admissions office is focused on overseeing a university-wide budget for advertising—general Doshisha pamphlets and open campus days—and the administering of high-stakes faculty admissions tests on behalf of the individual faculties.4 The academic and administrative staff at individual faculties and departments are largely responsible for both recruiting and admissions. Within each faculty, office administrative staff are assigned to work on helping the academic staff to visit local high schools, staff the open campus events, and administer the admissions interviews. Again, none of these staff members are necessarily admissions specialists. As of this writing, there was still a very limited online application process at the university; most admissions applications are still  paper-based, submitted through the postal mail, a practice typical at Japanese HEIs. Although admissions practices at Japanese universities have been criticized for years (see, for example, Amano, 1990; Kinmonth, 2005; Poole, 2003), in terms of domestic, Japanese students in Japanese-taught programs (JTPs), the process does effectively enroll a sufficient number of students for Doshisha University as a whole. Risk aversion means that 3  A bit ironically, recently MEXT has indicated that the innovation of such inter-faculty programs at universities will be encouraged and degree certificates do not need to be issued by a faculty but can be issued by the university (gakui seido). 4  As mentioned earlier, admissions are on a faculty basis, with each faculty constructing their own admissions exam.

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change in the administrative system is slow, as at many universities in Japan (see Kawano & Poole, 2021). For the ILA, however, as the sole undergraduate ETP on campus, expectations to follow the established enrollment management norms and rules set out for the local JTP faculties make for a challenging enrollment management environment when competing for and enrolling students from 45 different countries on 6 continents. Student Inclusiveness in University Life: The Dejima Effect Not only is the slow pace of structural and bureaucratic change a challenge for implementing an interdisciplinary, international program such as the ILA, but also enrolled students tend to struggle integrating into the wider university life. For ILA students, space has a significant role in their sense of belonging, even within the same university. The vast majority of ILA classes take place at a satellite campus that is separated by a ten-minute walk from the two main campuses. While this is not a substantial physical distance, there does exist a logistical and mental distance between the campuses. There are international students on both the main campuses, but they are either in short-term exchange programs or in JTPs and do not have much chance to interact with ILA students. Unlike the international students on these main campuses, ILA students make up a good number of the students taking classes on the satellite campus. The “global” feel on the satellite campus is paradoxically part of a dejima effect5 that actually hampers the promotion of diversity at Doshisha, a phenomenon common at other innovative institutions as well (Breaden, 2012). There is an “othering” of international students at Doshisha, and in Japan generally, as they are interpellated as “study abroad students” (ryuugakusei). Notably, they also subvert this interpellation regarding their sense of belonging, and thus the border that delineates the interpellation (Doerr et al., 2000).

5  “Dejima” was the name for the Dutch trading post in Japan from the mid-seventeenth to mid-nineteenth century during Japan’s isolationism, the only place where “international” encounters were allowed in the country. Here, the name suggests a designated “global” space that differs from the rest of Japan. For example, while English as a medium of instruction (EMI) courses and English-taught programs (ETPs) are often peripheralized in “international centers” or “global faculties” like the ILA, at the same time they are usually spotlighted as part of an institution’s “window dressing” (Ota & Horiuchi, 2018).

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Conclusion: Ways Forward Paradoxically, the MEXT initiatives to support innovative interdisciplinary and international programs (of which the ILA is one product) tend to have a secondary effect of peripheralizing “global education” (“dejima effect”) rather than working to spotlight such programs as central to the core university mission or reform of institutional practice. The gap between government policy and institutional practice can be stark. Universities are torn between the allure of the MEXT grant money earmarked for internationalization on the one hand and conservative actors (professors and administrators) wishing to maintain traditions and re-entrench the border of Japanese language and culture. ETPs such as the ILA are of special interest to those students who are in the best position to cross borders and transform understandings of “the global”—for example, transnational, multilingual youth that might happen to have Japanese heritage or, even if not, certainly a sense of belonging in Japan. To continue this example, because of their local Japanese passports, paradoxically such students are not recognized as “global talent” (gurōbaru jinzai)6 since they fall outside the strict category of “global.”7 Rather than a catalyst for change as intended, innovative curricula and programs such as the ILA become what Jeremy Breaden has labeled “inward-facing” internationalization (Breaden, 2012), mechanisms of border construction and border patrolling around the “global,” which is seen by leaders and administrators as a means to prevail in the domestic competition between Japanese universities but actually has the effect of “de-internationalizing” the university campus (Poole, 2009, 2016). One way forward is to reconsider the role of university administrators, both academics (kyōin) and non-academics (shokuin). After all, administrators are the only actors with the power to change local practices at the institutional level. One praise I hear expressed of “good” administrators in Japanese universities is that they are “serious” (majime) workers. The cultural translation is that the person works hard through their agency to 6  For further discussion of gurōbaru jinzai, see Breaden (2014), Brown, (2014), and Poole et al. (2020b). 7  The criteria that MEXT uses to evaluate programs under initiatives such as the G30 exclude students with Japanese citizenship or permanent residents meaning that many of the globalized ILA students fail to help Doshisha to reach its numerical targets (which is ironic since meeting these goals in terms of numbers seems to be a key measurement of success for “global education” initiatives).

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uphold the bureaucratic norms of reliability and stability that the job entails and understands well the administrative system of rules, both formal and informal (in other words, possessing “common sense” [jōshiki]). This “serious” administrator is loyal to the university bureaucracy, helping to construct an institutional identity that embodies both this system of rules and the tacit understanding that these rules ensure efficiency and are applied consistently and meritocratically. I would argue that buying into this institutional identity by such university actors is an example of what Merton (1968: 254) describes as “a structural source of overconformity”, and even a form of complicity, as Graeber (2015: 27) purports: The first criterion of loyalty to the organization becomes complicity … with the fiction that rules and regulations apply to everyone equally, when, in fact, they are often deployed as a means for entirely arbitrary personal power.

Not only does it assume this sort of complicity, but referring to a university administrator as “serious” also glosses a serious resistance to other forms of “common sense,” opposition to alternative understandings and innovation if these do not immediately symbolize the bureaucrat the Weberian rational ideal of established bureaucratic rules. Such resistance is a form of goal displacement in which the “[f]ull realization of the inadequacy is seldom attained by members of the group who have not divorced themselves from the meanings which the rules have for them. These rules in time become symbolic in cast, rather than strictly utilitarian” (Merton, 1968: 254). In other words, the ideology of a “serious” administrator brings about “a kind of bizarre inversion of ends and means, where creativity is marshalled to the service of administration, rather than the other way around” (Graeber, 2015: 141). Because of this inversion, or goal displacement, the rule-bound common sense of serious administrators is more often than not at odds with the very mission of the university where they work. Indeed, the founder of Doshisha University, Joseph Hardy Neesima, the first Japanese citizen to graduate from a university (foreign or domestic), receiving both an undergraduate and an honorary doctoral degree, himself defied the rules of the Tokugawa-era bureaucrats, broke the law, and in doing so risked his life to flee Japan for the United States. He lacked a “common sense” (hijōshiki-­ teki) of the times, the Edo period. Although Neesima became a leading progressive educator of his day, today he would be labeled as “not serious” (fu-majime) by these same loyalist, Weberian administrators who

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ironically edify Niijima-sensei as the beloved idealist behind the university liberal arts mission. Needless to say that for these majime bureaucrats, the dissonance of their complicit goal displacement is not apparent. This is because, generally speaking, the administrative systems in place at Japanese HEIs tend to prioritize protocol over education or research and the resulting bureaucratic process consumes precious creative energy that could better be used to implement actual innovation and pedagogy for ETPs such as the ILA (Poole, 2017).

References Amano, I. (1990). Education and examination in modern Japan. Tokyo University Press. Aspinall, R.  W. (2016). Is ‘dynamism without risk’ possible in the Japanese University sector?: A critique of the 2009 OECD report on higher education in Japan. In J. Mock, H. Kawamura, & N. Naganuma (Eds.), The impact of internationalization on Japanese higher education: Is Japanese education really changing? (pp. 107–119). Sense. Bradford, A., & Brown, H. (Eds.). (2017). English-medium instruction in Japanese higher education: Policy, challenges, and outcomes. Multilingual Matters. Breaden, J. (2012). The organisational dynamics of university reform in Japan: International inside out. Routledge. Breaden, J. (2014). Global attributes or local literacy? International students in Japan’s graduate employment system. Japan Forum, 26(4), 417–440. Brookes, M., & Becket, N. (2011). Developing global perspectives through international management degrees. Journal of Studies in International Education, 15, 374–394. Brown, H. (2014). Contextual factors driving the growth of undergraduate English- medium instruction programmes at universities in Japan. The Asian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 50–63. Doerr, N. M., Poole, G. S., & Hedrick, R. (2000). ‘Post study abroad students,’ ‘never study abroad students,’ and the politics of belonging: The global education effect of Japan’s English-medium campus. In N.  M. Doerr (Ed.), The global education effect and Japan: Constructing new borders and identification practices in “Japan”. Routledge. Goodman, R. (2016). Foreword. In J.  Mock, H.  Kawamura, & N.  Naganuma (Eds.), The impact of internationalization on Japanese higher education: Is Japanese education really changing? (pp. vii–ix). Sense. Graeber, D. (2015). The Utopia of rules: On technology, stupidity, and the secret joys of bureaucracy. Melville House Publishing.

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Hirowatari, S. (2000). Japan’s National Universities and Dokuritsu Gyōsei Hōjinka. Social Science Japan, 19, 3–7. Ishikawa, M. (2011). Redefining internationalization in higher education: Global 30 and the making of global universities in Japan. In D. B. Willis & J. Rappleye (Eds.), Reimagining Japanese education: Borders, transfers, circulations and the comparative (pp. 193–223). Symposium Books. Japan Student Services Organization (2019). International students in Japan 2018 [Online]. Accessed February 20, 2020, from https://www.jasso.go.jp/en/ about/statistics/intl_student/data2018.html Kawano, M., & Poole, G.  S. (2021). National Universities: Autonomy in their governance; ideology and practice. In P. Snowden (Ed.), Handbook of higher education in Japan. Amsterdam University Press. Kawashima, T. (2008). Outcomes-based approach in Japanese higher education: Emerging concerns and challenges. Kobe Journal of Higher Education, 17, 31–42. Kinmonth, E.  H. (2005). From selection to seduction: The impact of demographic change on private higher education in Japan. In J.  S. Eades, R. Goodman, & Y. Hada (Eds.), The ‘big bang’ in Japanese higher education: The 2004 reforms and the dynamics of change (pp. 106–135). Trans Pacific Press. McConnell, D.  L. (2000). Importing diversity: Inside Japan’s JET program. University of California Press. McCrostie, J. (2017) “Spoken English tests among entrance exam reforms Japan’s students will face in 2020”, Japan Times. Accessed February 20, 2020, from https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2017/07/05/issues/spoken-­ english-­t ests-­a mong-­e ntrance-­e xam-­r efor ms-­j apans-­s tudents-­w ill-­ face-­2020/#.XFz-­Yc8zau4 Merton, R. K. (1968). Social theory and social structure. Free Press. MEXT—Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. (2018). Minkan no eigo yon ginou shiken no kekka no teikyou ni tsuite [Implementing private sector four-skills standardized English proficiency testing scores]. Accessed February 20, 2020, from http://www.mext.go.jp/a_ menu/koutou/koudai/detail/1408090.htm MEXT—Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. (2019). Top Global University Japan. Accessed February 20, 2020, from https://tgu. mext.go.jp/en/about/index.html Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. (2017). White paper on tourism In Japan: The tourism situation in FY2016. Accessed February 20, 2020, from http://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001255530.pdf Newby, H., Weko, T., Breneman, D., Johanneson, T., & Maassen, P. (2009). OECD reviews of tertiary education: Japan. OECD.

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Ota, H., & Horiuchi, K. (2018). Internationalization through English-medium instruction in Japan. In D. Proctor & E. L. Rumbley (Eds.), The future agenda for internationalization in higher education (pp. 15–27). Routledge. Ota, H., Poole, G. S., & Ashizawa, S. (2020). “Curricula and international higher education in Japan”, Bloomsbury education and childhood studies. Bloomsbury. Poole, G. S. (2003, March). Assessing Japan’s institutional entrance requirements. Asian EFL Journal, 1–11. Poole, G. S. (2009). Faculty members at a Japanese private university: Professors as conservative actors in an era of reform. In G. S. Poole & Y. Chen (Eds.), Higher education in East Asia: Neoliberalism and the professoriate (pp. 49–56). Rotterdam. Poole, G. S. (2016). Administrative practices as institutional identity: Bureaucratic impediments to HE ‘internationalisation’ policy in Japan. Comparative Education, 52(1), 62–77. Poole, G.  S. (2017). Administrative impediments: How bureaucratic practices obstruct the implementation of English-taught programs in Japan. In A. Bradford & H. Brown (Eds.), English-medium instruction in Japanese higher education: Policy, challenges, and outcomes. Multilingual Matters. Poole, G.  S., & Chen, Y. (Eds.). (2009). Higher education in East Asia: Neoliberalism and the professoriate. Sense. Poole, G. S., Ota, H., & Ashizawa, S. (2019). Trends in higher education (Japan). In Bloomsbury education and childhood studies. London: Bloomsbury. Poole, G. S., Ota, H., & Ashizawa, S. (2020a). Globalization and higher education in Japan. In Bloomsbury education and childhood studies. London: Bloomsbury. Poole, G. S., Ota, H., & Kawano, M. (2020b). Tracing the developments of the “global education effect” in Japanese higher education: Discourses, policy, and practice. In N.  M. Doerr (Ed.), The global education effect and Japan: Constructing new borders and identification practices in “Japan”. Routledge. Rappleye, J., Imoto, Y., & Horiguchi, S. (2011). Towards ‘thick description’ of educational transfer: Understanding a Japanese institution’s ‘import’ of European language policy. Comparative Education, 47(4), 411–432. Takagi, H. (2009). Internationalisation of undergraduate curricula: The gap between ideas and practice in Japan. London Review of Education, 7, 31–39. Takagi, H. (2013). The internationalisation of curricula: The complexity and diversity of meaning in and beyond Japanese universities. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 52(4), 349–359.

CHAPTER 6

From Total Environment to Sustainable Development: Interdisciplinary Learning as the Cornerstone to a Survivable Future William R. Stevenson III

Interdisciplinary learning and environmental education are historically linked. Fifty years ago, students from across the United States celebrated the world’s first Earth Day by holding “teach-ins” at schools across the country. By design, the event was interdisciplinary. Organizers believed that environmental action required the cooperation of persons from multiple disciplines, so they invited scholars and researchers from across university faculties to speak at rallies on thousands of campuses. The “teach-ins” galvanized the growing environmental movement and made universities vital to its spread. Two years later, in 1972, members of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment declared education to be an essential part of any solution to the environmental crisis and recommended that all levels of environmental education be

W. R. Stevenson III (*) Department of Education and Culture, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Yamada et al. (eds.), Transformation of Higher Education in the Age of Society 5.0, International and Development Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7_6

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“interdisciplinary in approach” (UN General Assembly, 1972). As with environmental education, the concept of institutionalized interdisciplinary learning was still new. The 1970s were a boom to both. Each gained widespread acceptance within the same context, forming an interdependent relationship that saw environmental education and interdisciplinary learning take root on campuses across the globe. In recent years, educators and administrators have looked to interdisciplinary studies as a way to develop problem-solving skills and twenty-first-­ century competences. Yet, if global competences involve the teaching of knowledge and skills that “cross disciplinary domains” in order to “comprehend global events and respond to them effectively,” as Fernando Reimers suggests (2009), the greatest impetus for higher education reform must remain ecological in nature, for no challenge will have a greater impact on both human society and the natural world than the failure to resolve the growing environmental crisis. The following clarifies the historical link between interdisciplinary studies and environmental education and explores the implications of the connection within the context of global competences. Interdisciplinarity in its most basic form is ancient, being as old as the first divisions between academic disciplines. Nevertheless, the debate over what interdisciplinary learning means and how it can be best applied to university curricula is a recent phenomenon. Klein (1990) argues that interdisciplinarity emerged in the early twentieth century, growing out of the perceived need to educate the “whole person” in liberal arts colleges. The first attempt at institutionalizing these developments, according to Klein, was the creation of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in the 1920s, which looked “to promote integration across disciplines that were being increasingly isolated by specialization” (1990, p. 24). During the prewar years, several universities also began to explore the use of interdisciplinary curricula, including the short-lived University of Wisconsin Experimental College under the leadership of Alexander Meiklejohn and the University of Chicago under Robert M. Hutchins. Nevertheless, it was not until World War II that interdisciplinarity gained traction within the hard sciences and other STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics—fields (Klein, 2000). The need was practical. Winning a war required the cooperation of multiple fields of knowledge with experts that could navigate more than one discipline. The Manhattan Project became the best-known of such interdisciplinary projects, but it was far from being the only one. Nevertheless, following the war, the majority of these

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projects came to an end, with scholars and students returning to their former academic departments. Whereas pragmatism had encouraged interdisciplinarity during the war, the practical challenges of turning interdisciplinary research into interdisciplinary curricula proved too great a barrier. There was, after all, no clear precedent for structured interdisciplinarity that did not undermine the traditional commitment to specialization (Hausman, 1979). It was in this context that, in 1959, C. P. Snow famously coined the language of “two cultures.” His argument was that the division between the sciences and humanities, while intended as a way to bring balance to the academy, had unintentionally produced a cultural schism with disastrous consequence in terms of unrealized creative potential. In short, he claimed that interdisciplinary learning—particularly between the humanities and the sciences—was essential to problem solving (Snow, 1964). Snow’s “two cultures” argument was much debated. And while some universities began to experiment with interdisciplinary ideas, most hesitated to establish such programs until roughly 1970. In September 1970, a mere three months following the first Earth Day, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) Centre for Educational Research and Innovation hosted a “Seminar on Interdisciplinarity in Universities” in Nice, France. The Centre had only been in existence for two years, but had been established under a grant from the Ford Foundation, in part “to promote and support pilot experiments with a view to introducing and testing innovations in educational systems” (CERI, 1972, p. 4). Interdisciplinarity was one such innovation. According to the meeting report, the participants believed that integrated teaching and research might “provide an important key to the innovations required in universities to meet the intellectual and social demands of the present time” (CERI, 1972, i). The seminar, involving participants from 21 nations, set out “to analyze the role of pluri-­ disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, and assess their respective places in a university which fits the needs of modern society,” with the goal of creating new and effective models of interdisciplinarity for universities (CERI, 1972, p. 15). Nowhere was the need for such an approach more apparent than in knowing how to best prepare students to confront the growing environmental crisis. The University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin had long been hubs for environmental education, with Clay Schoenfeld of Madison having established The Journal of Environmental Education in 1969. In its inaugural issue, Bill Stapp of the School of Natural Resources

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at Ann Arbor, who would become the first chief of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO’s) Environmental Education Section, defined environmental education in the context of problem solving, writing that it should be “aimed at producing a citizenry that is knowledgeable concerning the biophysical environment and its associated problems, aware of how to help solve these problems, and motivated to work toward their solution” (Stapp, 1969). This education, according to Stapp, needs an “approach that effectively educates man regarding his relationship to the total environment.” Though he did not use the term “interdisciplinary,” he writes that an understanding of natural resources requires “knowledge of the social, political, economic, technological processes, institutional arrangements, and aesthetic considerations which govern their utilization” (Stapp, 1969, emphasis added). Stapp, in essence, was calling for an interdisciplinary approach that included the arts, seemingly anticipating the much later appeal for STEAM—Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics—fields integration. In the same issue of The Journal of Environmental Education, Spenser Havlick (1969) provided an overview of environmental education within American institutions of higher learning. He found that while “most liberal arts colleges … lack the depth of interdepartmental resources to sustain a multidisciplinary program” (p. 22), institutions looking to establish a successful curriculum in environmental education would need “some mechanism of interdepartmental or interdisciplinary” learning (p. 23). In combination, Stapp and Havlick identified an enduring barrier to environmental education: the challenge of establishing an area of study that is by definition interdisciplinary within an institution that is historically disciplinary. In late 1969, OECD Secretary-General van Lennep produced a paper titled Problems of Modern Society: Economic growth, Environment and Welfare, which argued that the OECD needed to shift its focus in the 1970s from “growth for its own sake” to “emphasis on welfare” and life quality. He singled out the “Environmental Problem” in particular, recommending that the OECD “define our activities … in respect to this problem” (Long, 2000, p. 32). Several months later, in June 1970, the Secretariat established an Environmental Committee that was to be “dynamic and multidisciplinary” in order to avoid sectoral approaches that end up in a “dispersion of efforts and a lack of homogeneity” (Long, 2000, p.  36). Participants understood the natural connection between

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interdisciplinary learning and environmental education is clear in that they decided to follow the seminar with an “essentially interdisciplinary” workshop on university environmental education (CERI, 1972, p. 17). In sum, by 1970, institutions of higher education as well as international organizations had begun to associate environmentalism with interdisciplinarity, and interdisciplinarity with environmentalism. Case in point, the first argument made in support of interdisciplinarity at the “Seminar on Interdisciplinarity in Universities” was the need for a new field of “environmental studies” that did not fit into existing disciplinary frameworks (CERI, 1972, p.  46). Moreover, the majority of interdisciplinary programs named in the 1970 report were connected to the study of the environment, with particular attention given to the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. Less than a year old at the time of the OECD meeting, the new school was interdisciplinary by design, looking to provide “a broad general education on environmental problems to all students, regardless of their fields of specialization or their choice of professions” (CERI, 1972, p. 243). The following year, representatives from UNESCO and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) gathered for three weeks to discuss innovative possibilities for including environmental education in national curricula around the world. Although the meeting was geared toward primary and secondary education, it is significant for two reasons. First, participants arrived at a definition of environmental education that would become an international standard: “Environmental education is the process of recognizing values and clarifying concepts in order to develop skills and attitudes necessary to understand and appreciate the inter-relatedness among man, his culture, and his biophysical surroundings” (IUCN, 1970, p.  11). Second, the delegates “agreed that environmental education is a science-centered multidisciplinary subject where most—if not all school subjects—could and should be incorporated” (IUCN, 1970, p.  11). Agreeing on which subjects should be included was a different matter. The “final report” explained differences in opinion as being culturally based, and left it up to regional workshops in places such as the United Kingdom, Switzerland, India, the Netherlands, Canada, Kenya, and Argentina to explore specific ways to integrate environmental education into existing curricula (Palmer, 1998). From 1970, the same year that the OECD established its Environmental Committee, national-level environmental education policies and organizations emerged across the developed world. Examples include the United

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States Environmental Education Act of 1970 that led to the creation of the Office of Environmental Education, and a National Association for Environmental Education (NAEE) in the United Kingdom that, established in 1970, built off an earlier rural studies movement. The motivating forces for these developments are well documented, ranging from the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968) to concerns over the impact of deforestation, nuclear testing, and a series of oil spills in both the Pacific and Atlantic. The 1967 North Atlantic shipwreck of the oil tanker Torrey Canyon led Swedish delegates to the United Nations to propose what became the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment (Palmer, 1998). The conference, in turn, produced the Stockholm Declaration that described environmental education as essential to “protecting and improving the environment in its full human dimension” (UN General Assembly, 1972). Expanding on the ideas laid out by the IUCN, the conference report recommended that international organizations establish programs in environmental education that were “interdisciplinary in approach [emphasis added], in school and out of school, encompassing all levels of education and directed towards the general public” (UN General Assembly, 1972). The Stockholm conference provided few guidelines for how an interdisciplinary program in environmental education should work, but it did specify that the program should train or retrain teachers and professionals “in various disciplines and various levels,” and establish “groups of experts” from a range of academic and professional backgrounds (UN General Assembly, 1972). More importantly, the conference led to the establishment of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which in conjunction with UNESCO set up the UNESCO/UNEP International Environmental Education Programme (IEEP) in 1975. The inaugural IEEP workshop, held in the former Yugoslavia, resulted in the Belgrade Charter—A Global Framework for Environmental Education. Further expanding what an environmental education would entail, the Belgrade Charter stressed the concept of “total environment,” which was to include “quality of life” and “human happiness” within any given cultural context. How were educators to teach total environment? Once again, the “guiding principle” was that “environmental education should be interdisciplinary in its approach,” which, according to the Belgrade Charter, includes learning that is “ecological, political, economic, technological, social, legislative, cultural and esthetic” (UN General Assembly, 1975; emphasis added), echoing Stapp’s earlier definition.

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Two years later, in 1977, UNESCO organized an inter-governmental conference—the first of its kind—on environmental education. Held in Tbilisi, the goal of the conference was to explore the “role of education in facing challenges of environmental problems” and “strategies for the development of environmental education at the national level” (UNESCO, 1978). As with the Belgrade workshop, the conference recommended that environmental education be total, lifelong, and interdisciplinary. In his address at the beginning of the conference, UNESCO Director-General Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow explained that, “in the final analysis, the aim is to achieve an interdisciplinary education. But, however worthwhile this may appear in many respects, it must be admitted that it is a difficult undertaking and can only be carried out gradually, depending on each country’s available education resources and stage of development” (UNESCO, 1978, p. 68). It is difficult to gauge the extent to which institutions of higher education responded to the Stockholm, Belgrade, and Tbilisi meetings by establishing interdisciplinary programs. What is clear is that the appeal of interdisciplinarity was beginning to grow beyond the confines of any environmental agenda. Yet, the two remained loosely connected throughout the 1970s. In one of the first book-length studies of interdisciplinarity, for example, Swoboda (1979) argues that interdisciplinarity is needed because of environmental challenges, specifically naming problem-solving “solutions” such as the widespread use of pesticides and the introduction of nuclear power as having been too narrowly focused and inadvertently producing unwanted crises. If environmental challenges required interdisciplinary responses, the best argument for interdisciplinary studies was its service to the environment. Nevertheless, while environmental education is by nature interdisciplinary, interdisciplinary learning can exist without ecological content. As such, while proponents of environmental education continued to recommend an interdisciplinary approach, by the early 1980s interdisciplinary studies had gone beyond the environmental agenda of the previous decade. William Newell—a founding member of the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS, formerly the Association for Integrative Studies; established in 1979)—argued that by the 1980s, interdisciplinary studies in the United States had “moved from the radical fringe into the liberal mainstream,” motivated in part by “desires to revitalize the core of the liberal arts” (Newell, 1988, p. 6).

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There were significant changes in environmental education as well. Interest in environmental education had long been tied to the unprecedented expansion of environmental protection agencies and legislation that characterized the late 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s, with economic growth on a global upswing, the environmental movement stalled. Though there were exceptions—such as with the growth of the green parties in Europe—increased production and consumption cast a shadow over calls for further environmental protection and conservation. It was in this context that Secretary-General of the United Nations commissioned Norway’s Prime Minister Gro Brundtland to “re-examine the critical issues of environment and development and to formulate innovative, concrete, and realistic action proposals to deal with them” (WCED, 1987). The resulting study, Our Common Future, coined the phrase “sustainable development,” defining it as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987). Agenda 21, the 1992 plan that came out of the first Earth Summit (Rio), added “education” to sustainable development. According to the document, education is “critical for promoting sustainable development and improving the capacity of the people to address environment and development issues” (UNDSD, 1992, Chapter 36). As with environmental education, interdisciplinarity would become the method of choice for proponents of education for sustainable development, or ESD. Specifically, Agenda 21 called for an education that dealt with the “dynamics of both the physical/biological and socio-economic environment and human (which may include spiritual) development,” and recommended that this be realized within higher education by making interdisciplinary courses available to all students. Advocates for environmental education were initially wary of ESD. Many feared that education for sustainable development would undermine environmental education (for an overview of the literature, see Kopnina, 2012). ESD is by definition the attempt to teach a composite content: a middle ground position between environmental sustainability and economic development. Implicit to ESD is that development in its current form is sustainable, which most environmentalists contest. Whereas environmental economics has traditionally been aligned with the E. F. Schumacher camp of “small is beautiful” and “less is more,” proponents of sustainable development have often emphasized continued growth despite a reality in which global consumption has increasingly

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outpaced global conservation (Dasgupta, 2007). In a word, many believed that ESD was “not in the best interest of the stability of environmental education” (Knapp, 1995, p. 9, cited in Gough, 2013, p. 13). Nevertheless, in connecting environmental sustainability with economic development, the field of ESD has been every bit as dependent on interdisciplinarity as traditional environmental education. UNESCO’s 1998 World Conference on Higher Education, for example, concluded that higher education had a mission “to contribute to the sustainable development and improvement of society as a whole” (UNESCO, 2005, p. 3), again recommending interdisciplinarity as a core component of such a curriculum. A year later, in the Bonn Declaration of the World Congress on Education for Sustainable Development, UNESCO once more encouraged colleges and universities to “establish institutional and organisational structures that facilitate flexibility, student participation, and multi-­ disciplinary programmes” (UNESCO, 1999, p. 5). Most recently, within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—an agenda that evidences the broad appeal of the sustainability paradigm—the United Nations has expanded education for sustainable development to cover “sustainable lifestyles and ways of life, climate change, biodiversity, environmental sustainability, the greening of the economy and sustainable consumption, caring for the planet, and disaster risk reduction” (UNESCO, 2019). With all that falls within the scope of ESD, the challenge of establishing effective interdisciplinary curricula is considerable. This leads to a second obstacle to ESD, which is the difficulty of implementation within higher education. After all, whereas environmental studies—the most common framework for an interdisciplinary approach to environmental education—was generally heavy on the sciences, ESD requires students to think not only as scientists, but also as economists, sociologists, psychologists, ethicists, historians, and policy makers. In practice, most universities are unable to do this and end up teaching education about sustainable development rather than creating interdisciplinary programs on education for sustainable development (Mochizuki and Yarime, 2016). Nevertheless, independent of any ESD agenda, interdisciplinarity has continued to gain popularity. Within the United States, just over 6000 bachelor’s degrees were awarded in the field of multi/interdisciplinary studies in 1970 (Snyder et al., 2011). By 2016, this number approached 50,000, growing at a rate that far exceeds the total number of bachelor’s degrees awarded during the same period (Snyder et al., 2019). (Of note,

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the data suggest that students entering interdisciplinary programs are among the brightest, having earned higher SAT—Scholastic Aptitude/ Assessment Test—scores than any other field of study in the first year that such data were made available [Snyder and Dillow, 2012].) While revealing, most interdisciplinarity does not result in a university degree in multi/ interdisciplinary studies, which makes it hard to know how widely it is practiced and even more difficult to measure its effectiveness in terms of learning outcomes. Yet, the old and “inexorable logic that the real problems of society do not come in discipline-shaped blocks” (Swoboda, 1979, p. 35) has persisted to the present. For 50 years, beginning with the first environmental education meetings of the OECD and UNESCO in 1970, continuing with the Stockholm and Tbilisi Declarations of 1972 and 1977, and again with the many declarations, charters, and programs of ESD, the assumption has been that for environmental education—or its successor, education for sustainable development—to be successful, it needs to be interdisciplinary. To what extent these ideas have been implemented in institutions of higher education around the world is difficult to assess. Yet, unless universities place ecological learning in an interdisciplinary context—one that reflects the many dimensions of the environmental crisis—we cannot expect graduates to understand the complexity of the challenge much less hope that they have acquired the knowledge and skills needed to effectively respond. Rather than not compromise the ability of future generations, we will have further endangered them. At the same time, scholars need to evaluate the real-world impact that interdisciplinarity has had on environmental agenda, perhaps by exploring the correlation between methods of interdisciplinary learning within select regions and the governmental policies that have ensued. In doing so, specific models of interdisciplinarity might be shown to be particularly effective in developing within the current generation the competences needed to sustain the next.

References Centre for Research and Innovation (CERI). (1972). Interdisciplinarity: Problems of teaching and research in universities. OECD. Dasgupta, P. (2007). The idea of sustainable development. Sustainable Science, 7, 57–73. Gough, A. (2013). The emergence of environmental education research: A ‘history’ of the field. In R. Stevenson (Ed.), International handbook of research on

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environmental education (pp.  13–22). American Education Research Association (AERA). Hausman, C. R. (1979). Disciplinarity or interdisciplinarity? In J. J. Kockelmans (Ed.), Interdisciplinarity and higher education (pp. 1–10). Pennsylvania State University Press. Havlick, S. W. (1969). A glimpse and analysis of environmental education opportunities in American higher education. Journal of Environmental Education, 1(1), 21–24. IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources). (1970). Final report: international working meeting on environmental education in the school curriculum. (Held as part of the UNESCO’s International Education Year, Nevada, USA, September 1970). https://portals.iucn.org/ library/node/10447. Klein, J. T. (1990). Interdisciplinarity: History, theory, and practice. Wayne State University Press. Klein, J.  T. (2000). A conceptual vocabulary of interdisciplinary science. In P.  Weingart & N.  Stehr (Eds.), Practicing interdisciplinarity (pp.  3–24). University of Toronto. Knapp, D. (1995). Twenty years after Tbilisi: UNESCO inter-regional workshop on re-orienting environmental education for sustainable development. Environmental Communicator, 25(6), 9. Kopnina, H. (2012). Education for sustainable development (ESD): The turn away from ‘environment’ in environmental education? Environmental Education Research, 18(5), 699–717. Long, B. L. (2000). International environmental issues and the OECD, 1950–2000: An historical perspective. OECD. Mochizuki, Y., & Yarime, M. (2016). Education for sustainable development and sustainability science. In M. Barth et al. (Eds.), Routledge handbook of higher education for sustainable development (pp. 11–24). Routledge. Newell, W.  H. (1988). Interdisciplinary studies are alive and well. Newsletter (Association for Integrative Studies), 10(1). Palmer, J. A. (1998). Environmental education in the 21st century. Routledge. Reimers, F. (2009). Global competency is imperative for global success. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 55(21), A29. https://www.chronicle.com/ article/Global-­Competency-­Is/9742 Snow, C. P. (1964). Two cultures: And a second look. An expanded version of the two cultures and the scientific revolution. The University Press. Snyder, T. D., de Brey, C., & Dillow, S. A. (2011). Digest of education statistics 2010 (NCES 2011–015). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

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Snyder, T. D., de Brey, C., & Dillow, S. A. (2019). Digest of education statistics 2017 (NCES 2018–070). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Snyder, T.D., and Dillow, S.A. (2012). Digest of education statistics 2011 (NCES 2012-001). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Stapp, B. (1969). The concept of environmental education. The Journal of Environmental Education, 1(1), 30–31. Swoboda, W. W. (1979). Disciplines and interdisciplinarity: A historical perspective. In J.  J. Kockelmans (Ed.), Interdisciplinarity and higher education. University of Pennsylvania Press. UN General Assembly. (1972). Report of the United Nations conference on the human environment, Stockholm, 5–16 June 1972. http://www.un-­documents. net/aconf48-­14r1.pdf UN General Assembly. (1975, October 22). The Belgrade charter: A framework for environmental education. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/ pf0000017772 UNESCO. (1978).Intergovernmental conference on environmental education: final report, Tbilisi (USSR) 14–26 October 1977. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ ark:/48223/pf0000032763 UNESCO. (2005). World declaration on higher education for the twenty-first century, 9 October 1998. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/ pf0000141952 UNESCO. (2019). Proposal for monitoring of SDG indicators 4.7.1, 12.8.1 and 13.3.1. TCG6/REF/14. https://tcg.uis.unesco.org/wp-­content/uploads/ sites/4/2019/08/TCG6-­REF-­14 United Nations Division for Sustainable Development. (1992). Agenda 21: Rio declaration on environment and development. https://sustainabledevelopment. un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf WCED. (1987). Our common future. In G. H. Brundtland (Ed.), Report of the world commission on environment and development. Oxford University Press. http://www.un-­documents.net/our-­common-­future.pdf

CHAPTER 7

Construction of a Learning Network for Linking STEM, Social Science, and Humanities in Higher Education Masaaki Ogasawara

Introduction In recent years, universities in Japan have been asked by the government to take a leading role not only in scientific research but also in innovation for technological progress in cooperation with industry and business. This straightforward and, in my impression, unusual request to the universities reflects a vague sense of unease in the nation caused by the quickly changing society. Owing to the development of information and communication technologies, socioeconomic rules and people’s lifestyles change so quickly, and international relations become more and more dependent on each other, so that a problem that occurs in one country may grow rapidly into a global issue or disaster. The government advocates innovation

M. Ogasawara (*) Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Yamada et al. (eds.), Transformation of Higher Education in the Age of Society 5.0, International and Development Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7_7

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policies as a core of the socioeconomic strategy leading to a “Super Smart Society” that will bring citizens safe, convenient, and pleasant lives. Looking back at the history of Japanese higher education, it is not the first time for the universities to be asked to cooperate with industry or business. From the beginning, when the prototype of the Imperial College of Engineering was imported from Scotland in 1871, the government intended to transplant western technologies into the country. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the field of engineering was predominant in the Japanese higher education system. As the Japanese were latecomers in the world of modern science and technology, their efforts were focused on training successors. It is not easy to list any examples of success in accordance with a “linear model” (Innovation 1.0), in which a discovery in natural science was followed by technological advancements leading to economic growth. However, after World War II, the departments of science and engineering, in particular, made remarkable contributions to rebuild the industries destroyed in the war and in the following period, the 1960s–1980s. The secret of the success lay in the tight connection of the university graduates with their “mother laboratory,” which made frequent exchanges of information possible. It was, however, a voluntary relation and the government did not pay much attention to it until the 1990s. Unlike its western counterparts, there was no clear barrier between pure and applied science and the specialists of both sides were interested in working together. The researchers of pure science were also active in this particular period, and many of the Japanese Nobel Prize winners in the field of science, second in number after 2000, performed their representative works then. The academic–industrial collaborations, together with frequent feedback from customers, successfully resulted in establishing efficient, original production technologies. The technological breakthroughs and epoch-making innovations made from the 1960s through the 1980s contributed to the basis for world-class, strong industries. In the 1980s, inspired by the success of the academic–industrial collaborations in other countries,  including Japan, the US government launched a series of plans to promote such collaboration in a more systematic way. Oki pointed out, in her book about the history of science and technology (ST), two important actions with regard to those plans (Oki, 2018). First, regulations were changed so that a researcher in a university was able to possess intellectual property rights related to the achievements obtained using funds from the government and companies. Second, the government recommended organizing an “Open Innovation

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System,” in which universities and organizations like nonprofit organizations (NPOs) cooperated with each other to reach a common goal. Owing to those positive policies, many venture businesses concerning information, life-sciences, and pharmaceuticals were born in the United States. Some of them are quite successful and have grown into global industries and businesses. These US plans were later called the Innovation 2.0 Policy and many other countries followed the trend for establishing a “Knowledge-­ Based Society.” However, in Japan, most of the industries and businesses failed to keep up with the times, mainly because of the bursting of the bubble that occurred in the early 1990s and the following prolonged recession, and partly because of the inflexible, conservative nature of the social system. The cabinet office disclosed the Fifth Science and Technology Basic Plan (the 5th plan) in the beginning of 2016, aiming at catching up with the world trend and going beyond it. In the process of putting the US plans into practice, the PhD machine in American universities played an important role. Researchers and students in graduate schools looked for business chances and became, sometimes “spun off” from the laboratories, entrepreneurs of new businesses. Motivated by the US success, the Japanese government is encouraging universities, in the 5th plan, to activate and reinforce graduate schools for PhD degrees. But before pushing the universities to innovate for practical purposes, we must carefully examine both undergraduate and graduate programs in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Some of the structural problems embedded deeply in Japanese universities have to be resolved to cope with the highly competitive environment in the world of business and industry. Otherwise, innovation policies will destroy the pedagogical functions of traditional universities in Japan.

Structural Problems A possible obstacle for globalization of Japan’s universities is our language itself. The question of what language should prevail in STEM higher education in Japan is not an axiom anymore. Historically, already since 1886, STEM education in Japan was conducted in the Japanese language exclusively from primary school to the university level. Use of the mother tongue in education sounds natural, but as a matter of fact, except for the so-called great powers in the west, not so many countries are able to do so, especially within higher education. The nation is so accustomed to using

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the Japanese language in all fields of STEM that even university students, except for those within STEM, do not know basic terms such as force and momentum, in English. ST in Japan should be called Japanese science and technology in terms of language. Yet, at least some “Japanese ST” has been proved to be at the top level of the world. Language can function as both a positive and negative factor depending on the use to which it is intended and employed. Japanese STEM researchers conduct their studies and reach conclusions in Japanese. Then, in writing their reports, they divide into two groups: one group writes in Japanese and the other in English. In the field of pure science it is the norm to write papers in English, but the departments of science make up only 7% of the national university student number. In the fields of applied science, the ratio of the papers written in English changes depending on the case and discipline. It is 100% in pharmacy, maybe 50% in engineering, and less than 50% in agriculture and other fields. Even when confined to the output of national universities, the ratio does not exceed 50%. If the private sector is included, the ratio goes down. In world university rankings, the citation index is essential for evaluation, and papers written in Japanese tend to be overlooked. Thus, Japanese universities have a disadvantage in the ranking evaluation, even STEM fields. Achievements in the social sciences (SS) and the humanities (HUM) are, unfortunately, beyond the scope of the ranking race because of the language. In STEM fields, the idea of using a lingua franca, for example, German, French, or English, in higher education has been suggested from time to time. The recent plan of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) to encourage universities to increase the number of the classes conducted in English reflects this “old and new” idea. However, if the plan were to be enacted thoroughly, it would cause serious inconsistencies not only in university education but also in related businesses and industries. In the case of the demand for studies coming from domestic industries and businesses, it is natural to write reports in Japanese. The demand is not necessarily trivial, as some Japanese companies may have a prevailing share of certain goods and products throughout the globe. Another reason I put emphasis on Japanese is the importance of the mother tongue in learning STEM. STEM specialists express their thoughts and ideas by using technical terms, symbols, and equations. To investigate problems and communicate with each other, they must recognize and understand a concept, for

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example, deeply and consistently in their minds. Such an understanding is attainable by going back and forth between the concept and a certain, concrete model. Deeper understanding is possible only on the basis of a first language, namely the mother tongue and/or domestic language. English, the lingua franca nowadays, is nothing but a second language for Japanese and, in learning STEM, it cannot be an alternative to the first language. I have the impression that originalities of Japanese STEM, at least partly, come from the language. In STEM learning, therefore, emphasis should be put not on replacing the Japanese language with English, but on how to translate from Japanese to English precisely and smoothly. This has long been an issue in the need for undergraduate programs to cope with the competitive environment of the world. Another important structural problem lies in the “laboratory training system” characteristic to Japanese universities. It is a core aspect of education as constituted, and without considering its functions we cannot fully discuss STEM learning and research training. A prototype of the laboratory, the “chair” system, first appeared at the end of the nineteenth century in the Imperial Universities. A typical modern chair in the 1960s consisted of one professor, one associate professor or lecturer, two Joshu (meaning assistants, actually assistant professors), one technician, and one secretary or typist. The number of undergraduate and graduate students depended on each laboratory, with the size, including staff and students, ranging from 10 to 20 persons or more. In the 1990s, when the graduate schools of the national universities were reinforced by MEXT policy, the size of the chair became larger and that of the composing laboratories smaller, but the following basic functions of each laboratory have been kept intact. A laboratory has a cohort training system for newcomers, that is, senior students, who are trained in how to behave in the laboratory, how to make a presentation, and how to write a paper as well as given know-how about the experiments in the laboratory (I wrote about the merits and demerits of this laboratory tradition in a previous book) (Ogasawara, 2018). This important system, however, is now facing difficulties emerging from the shrinking national budget and is losing its stability. The new redistribution policy for governmental funds based on world rankings and other indices is also having serious effects on the financial management of such laboratories. Behind the policies is the growing influence of the US laboratory system, which is quite strong in the competitive environment of the research race. In the US system, a professor is, in a sense, an independent

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entrepreneur as well as the manager of the laboratory, although they usually have joint appointments within related science departments of universities. The professor solicits funds from outside and “rents” a shop, laboratory, from the university. If no more money is available or better conditions are offered by a different university, he/she will shut the shop with little hesitation. The professor moves when offered new opportunities, together with his/her PhD students and post-doctoral fellows, and his/her instruments as well. The laboratories led by those professors form the cores of the formal organizations of graduate schools and play a leading role in scientific research and the training of professional researchers. Undergraduate programs in the United States, on the other hand, are carried out by different pedagogical institutes. The quality of education in each college is supposed to be assured by the hand of the provost, one of the vice-presidents of the university. This double-layered structure of US universities was formed in the modernization processes of small colleges. The advanced German research system was imported in 1876 as a graduate school for the PhD degree on the collegiate base of higher learning. As the PhD machine was built separately in the existing colleges, the rights of the undergraduate students were prevented from being infringed by the severe research race. But, it should be added, for the sake of accuracy, that it is common within the departments that constitute the university for such professors to hold positions wherein both undergraduate and graduate degree programs are located; within STEM courses, undergraduates take laboratory courses even if they, unlike graduate students, are not fully occupied by them. In Japan, the German research ideal arrived less than ten  years later than in the United States. However, in contrast to the US case, laboratory work was built into the programs for the bachelor’s degree. (Precisely speaking, “bachelor” was not a degree but a “title” in the old system.) Graduate schools were also added to the university but the attempt to provide a steady PhD machine was not successful in the fields of STEM. It was a complicated issue to understand the consequences,  but the main reason was strong demands for bachelor’s degree holders in various fields of the growing society, with less demand for specialized PhDs. In this system, the bachelor’s degree was acquired after three years in a high school and another three years in a university, meaning a total of six years of experience in higher education institutes after secondary education. There are ample reasons to consider that, until the 1910s, the level of the

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bachelor’s degree in the STEM fields reached that of the PhD degree in the United States. When the educational system was completely reformed after World War II, there was a good chance, from the present point of view, for the old bachelor’s degree to be promoted to the new PhD degree. Actually, however, different kinds of higher education institutes, including liberal arts colleges, vocational schools, teachers’ colleges, and high schools were all then reorganized into a homogeneous university group and the bachelor’s degree was changed to a four-year one in the new universities (Ogasawara, 2018). As this was two years shorter than in the old system, it meant that the bachelor’s degree was downgraded. The group of former Imperial Universities and former universities should have formed a group of new graduate schools. Such a possibility was seriously discussed, but not realized partly because of the egalitarianism that emerged in the post-war democratization movement. As a result, the German-born laboratory system was built as a core course in all of the undergraduate programs of the new universities, regardless of their origins and characteristics. For this historical reason, the parasitic nature of the laboratory system in relation to undergraduate programs has not been overcome even now, giving rise to a serious obstacle to the modernization and strengthening of the PhD machine. For example, most current graduate students finish their study at the MA level and do not go on to PhD programs. The laboratory courses are continuous from the undergraduate to the graduate level and once a student chooses a laboratory in the senior year, the student usually stays in the same laboratory. To gain the PhD degree, the student has to stay in the same laboratory for as long as six years. Although students may feel at ease in the same field and laboratory, they lose chances to expand their experience and perspectives. Both students and companies know this well and thus show limited interest in PhD programs. As the boundary between undergraduate and graduate programs is blurred in terms of laboratory work, it is difficult to find any mechanisms to protect students from the bad effects of the competitive environment caused by the intense research race. The graduate schools for PhD degrees have to be independent, in the real meaning, from undergraduate programs. They should be more open and attractive not only to domestic students but also to those from abroad. The government should prepare special financial support for PhD students to give them a more promising future. At the same time, we have to pay much more attention to the status quo of undergraduate programs in which too much emphasis is on

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laboratory training. Practice in reading, writing, communication skills, and academic English should be shifted to course work. The main human power of the laboratories, now consisting of undergraduate and MA students, has to be replaced by PhD students and post-doctoral fellows. The so-called graduation thesis, a relic of the ancient German research ideal, should not be compulsory anymore in undergraduate programs. In brief, while PhD programs should be more specialized and innovative to cope with an ever-changing society, classes in undergraduate education should be places where different disciplines meet together. We have to construct a learning network for linking STEM, social sciences (SS), and humanities (HUM) as explained in the following section.

Curricular Design Urgent problems to be solved in undergraduate education are: (1) how to open an academic English course, (2) how to attain articulation to secondary education, and (3) how to exploit courses for integrated science and its counterpart on the side of SS/HUM. Academic English has continued to be a qualified lingua franca since the end of World War II because of its abilities to bridge and link different nations and different disciplines in both STEM and non-STEM fields. Providing that students are well trained in using their first language for academic subjects, their efforts should be focused on mastering academic English before starting laboratory work. According to Miyamoto, an outstanding scholar of American culture, the origin of this style of English is a slim volume called The Elements of Style, privately printed in 1918 by W. Strunk Jr., a professor at Cornell University (Miyamoto, 2016). The textbook was long overlooked as his teaching method seemed rather eccentric (Strunk Jr & White, 2000). When the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in the United States created a mobilization system for World War II, the textbook was adopted for training researchers of different fields; they had to understand each other for the purpose of collecting information from the American possessions. Miyamoto writes that the main reason for the domination of the English language over the world should not be ascribed to the military or economic supremacy of the United States, but to efforts to make American English useful for general purposes: the language was optimized for intellectual reproduction and the soft power of academic English helped make America the superpower of the world (Miyamoto, 2016).

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Academic English is a powerful tool to deal with problems concerning the contents of STEM, which are described using technical terms, symbols, equations, and, in the case of the Japanese, the domestic language. Although science, in particular, is accepted as being free from specific cultures, it actually has a certain cultural aspect depending on the language in which it is discussed. Through the use of academic English, we can communicate with each other setting cultural differences aside. Being in international contexts a sort of artificial language, it is clear, straightforward, and culturally neutral. A course for academic English should be positioned at the center of undergraduate programs as one of the core courses in STEM learning. The second problem, how to articulate to secondary education, has become increasingly serious in Japanese universities. Harsh competition for entering a “better” university makes the problem difficult. In Japan, secondary education is under the control of MEXT: the contents of every subject are regulated by the national course of study. All university students accepted are supposed to finish all the courses in secondary education, but this does not reflect the reality at all. In actuality, even in the case of the national universities, where more subjects are assigned in the entrance examinations, the number of natural sciences subjects elected by applicants does not exceed two. High school students, throughout their matriculation, in an effort to obtain better marks tend to concentrate on one or two subjects they plan to select in the entrance examination. In the case of the private sector, this tendency is much more enhanced. Most high school students who aspire to non-STEM fields pay no attention to STEM courses. For this reason, many of the students accepted by universities lack knowledge of mathematics, physics, and biology, for example. Among them the absence of mathematical knowledge in non-STEM students is a serious problem for the quality assurance of the university graduates. Universities need to pay more attention to providing courses to help those students. The “introductory courses” for each of the natural sciences commonly given in US universities are one of the recommendable models for this purpose. In the United States, the contents of secondary education are so different depending on the state that each university cannot prepare any standardized courses assuming a certain level of knowledge of the natural sciences and mathematics outside of a particular jurisdiction. I have investigated the contents of the introductory courses in many universities and found some of them interesting and exciting, even for a mature learner.

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Most of them are so designed that the student can finish the course within two semesters with two or three classes a week. Although the courses start from a high school level, they quickly advance during the semesters and reach the level of the early second year of the university at last. Therefore, the courses are not really for remedial education, but are something between secondary and higher education. The latest trend is that some high school students who want to study a certain discipline in the university voluntarily take this level of the relevant courses in universities in advance, and on entering the university take advanced courses directly. By way of intensive study, the introductory courses for freshmen assure that all graduates have finished first-year level mathematics and sciences courses of the university. The system is well designed and reasonable. However, the introductory courses are disciplinary ones and a little difficult for students who plan to go to a different field. The problem will be relieved by widening the scope of the course considering the concept of the “Science for All” movement in the United States. In particular, including the perspectives of the social sciences is important as a vehicle to motivate students to learn. By widening the scope and covering other disciplines, introductory courses can become integrated science courses at last. So, the question of how to design introductory courses has direct relevance to how to exploit the integrated science courses. Integrated science has become an essential part of undergraduate programs, although the term and the concept are not prevalent in Japan yet. The course is intended to articulate secondary education to higher education and, at the same time, to link various fields and disciplines. The movement for the integration of sciences seemed to start from the publication of the National Science Education Standards (NSES) by the National Research Council of the United States in 1996, but the origin was actually a textbook, The Sciences: An Integrated Approach, by Trefil and Hazen published three years prior (Trefil & Hazen, 2007). Inspired by these pioneering works, Hisao Suzuki, a professor of physics, started a class in 2006 at Hokkaido University and recently published, in collaboration with professor Toshiyuki Hosokawa, an e-textbook entitled Integrated Science: For Better Life in the Present Day, which is available from Amazon (Suzuki & Hosokawa,  2017). Similarly, I incorporated new contents for a class at University of Tsukuba and was co-editor of a textbook called Integrated Science for Students Today: From the Big Bang to Biological Diversity (Ogasawara et  al.,  2012). These publications reflect the state of the ST

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fields reaching a new stage as a whole, where integration of knowledge of the STEM fields is inevitable. Each chapter of the textbook by Trefil and Hazen (fifth version) was written according to a great idea, such as energy, relativity, quantum mechanics, and so on. The textbook by Suzuki and Hosokawa basically follows the same pattern, but there is more emphasis on the historical perspectives of each finding and biographical interest in the great discoverers. In both books, each chapter covers a wide range of topics focused around a central idea, from the beginning of the discovery to its applications to our daily life, following the guidelines stated in the NSES. Our co-edited book is, on the other hand, mainly composed of several big stories: the universe, earth, life, and humankind leading as a whole to one great story from the Big Bang to biological diversity. It goes further to the disappearance of the universe at the end. So far, in general, STEM professors do not like to be “storytellers” like this, probably because they know so many problems are left unsolved. Recently, however, owing to the remarkable progress in ST, reliable stories can be compiled on a firm base of evidence. Since state-of-the-art integration can be done only through the cooperation of specialists in a variety of disciplines, it will take time. But it is worth spending time doing, because “stories about nature” are interesting and helpful for students who are not prepared for disciplinary courses in the university. My question is, however, whether integrated science can be a meaningful course without any help from the SS and HUM sides. Students can understand what has been done by ST, but it is not easy to have any idea about what will happen in the future due to the progress of ST. The 5th plan holds up the “Super Smart Society” as a target for ST innovations, but it is just an extension of the present information society and does not predict any future. Harari wrote in his controversial book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2015) that modern science differed from all previous traditions of knowledge in three critical ways: • The willingness to admit ignorance: No concept, idea, or theory is sacred and beyond challenge. • The centrality of observation and mathematics: Having admitted ignorance, modern science aims to obtain new knowledge. • The acquisition of new powers: Modern science creates theories and uses them in order to acquire new powers, and in particular to develop new technologies.

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In these ways science and technology are able to go forth by themselves, but their directions of advance are not predictable. For example, modern ST have clarified without any doubt that all life on earth has evolved for four billion years under the decisive influence of natural selection. Harari writes that no other restrictions or any kind of “will” has been found. He warns that ST may bring about serious problems that mankind has never experienced: without any restrictions, even from the characteristic nature of each species, scientists are freely violating the natural selection rule now. This could lead to a biological revolution such as has never been experienced since the birth of life itself. They are even going to create a new Homo sapiens. The three characteristics of ST listed above suggest the value-neutral nature of them that cannot decide, in theory, the appropriate direction to proceed. In this connection, a note by J. N. Hawkins in the book New Directions of STEM Research and Learning in the World Ranking Movement: A Comparative Perspective (2018, pp. xxvii–xxviii) draws my attention. Pinker (2013), however, offers another point of view in an article provocatively entitled “Science is Not Your Enemy.” He argues that STEM scholars often do reach out to those in the SS/HUM fields but find that these efforts are deeply resented and often rebuffed. This rejection of STEM by SS/HUM comes from both the political right and left. From the right, science is viewed as an attack on religious values, culture, and belief systems in general and presents itself as “soulless” to those in SS/ HUM fields. From the left, it is pointed out that STEM is responsible for a variety of social ills and historical disasters including scientific racism, eugenics, two world wars, and horrific and destructive weapons among others. Actually, Harari expresses his pessimistic view about SS and HUM: the present thriving of Homo sapiens is attributed to their ability to talk about and convey to others what does not exist, namely “fictions” (Harrari, 2015). For him, not only legends and myths but also religions, countries, businesses, laws, and even the concepts of human rights and equality are all fictions that Homo sapiens has created. It means that all of the achievements accomplished in the fields of SS and HUM fields are “fictions.” I cannot help recognizing the deep and wide gap between STEM and SS/HUM. However, in the previously mentioned article, Steven Pinker thinks that “science is of a piece with philosophy, reason, and Enlightenment humanism.” He continues:

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And in combination with a few unexceptionable convictions … the scientific facts militate toward a defensible morality, namely adhering to principles that maximize the flourishing of humans and other sentient beings. This humanism, which is inextricable from a scientific understanding of the world, is becoming the de facto morality of modern democracies, international organizations, and liberalizing religions, and its unfulfilled promises define the moral imperatives we face today.

Moreover, STEM contributes “to the fulfillment of these values” by promoting empirical evidence for human development and growth. I agree with Pinker. Empirically, we can say that advancement in ST is made when society and human thought need it. Assuming that the “natural selection rule” is working in the achievements of the SS/HUM fields too, construction of a counterpart of integrated science in SS/HUM should be possible. It is not necessary to be “integrated,” but, hopefully, have relevance to the questions asked from the STEM side. If integrated science, its counterpart in SS/HUM, and academic English are all combined into a comprehensive program, it will work as a learning network for linking the STEM, SS, and HUM fields in the first half of undergraduate education. Such comprehensive learning about academic achievements with regard to nature and humankind provides fertile soil for future innovations in advanced, specified work in graduate schools for PhDs.

References Harrari, Y. N. (2015). Sapience: A brief history of humankind (p. 279). Vintage. Hawkins, J.  N. (2018). Introduction: The dilemma of STEM—Social science/ humanities re-integration. In J.  N. Hawkins, A.  Yamada, R.  Yamada, & W.  James Jacob (Eds.), New directions of STEM research and learning in the world ranking movement: a comparative perspective (pp. xxvii–xxviii). Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Miyamoto, Y. (2016). Atomic melodrama: Dramaturgies of Cold War America. (in Japanese) (pp. 300–301). Sairyusha. Ogasawara, M. (2018). STEM education in a changing society: Japanese experience and urgent problems to be solved. In J.  N. Hawkins, A.  Yamada, R.  Yamada, & W.  James Jacob (Eds.), New directions of STEM research and learning in the world ranking movement: A comparative perspective (pp. 142–145). Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Ogasawara, M., Arai, I., Sawamura, K., Sugita, M., & Morihashi, K. (Eds.). (2012). Integrated science for students today: From the big bang to biological diversity. Tsukuba University Press. Oki, S. (2018). Naze Rikei to Bunkei wa Wakaretaka?. (in Japanese) (pp. 134–141). Seikaisha. Pinker, S. (2013, August 6). Science is not your enemy. New Republic. https:// newrepublic.com/article/114127/science-­not-­enemy-­humanities Strunk, W., Jr., & White, E. B. (2000). The elements of style with revisions, an introduction, and a chapter on writing (4th ed.). Longman. Suzuki, H., & Hosokawa, T. (2017). Integrated sciences: For better life in the present days. Kindle version from Amazon Services International, Inc. Trefil, J., & Hazen, R.  M. (2007). The sciences: An integrated approach (5th ed.). Wiley.

CHAPTER 8

Convergence Education Based on the Liberal Arts: Focusing on the Lecture-Pairing Hasuk Song

It is in Apple’s DNA that technology is not enough – it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing. The best ideas emerge from the intersection of technology and the humanities. (S. Jobs)

Why Convergence Education? The Fourth Industrial Revolution will change not only what we do but also who we are. It will affect our identity and all the issues associated with it: our sense of privacy, our notions of ownership, our consumption patterns, the time we devote to work and leisure, and how we develop our careers, cultivate our skills, meet people, and so on. It is already changing everything related to our lives.

H. Song (*) Ajou University, Suwon, South Korea e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Yamada et al. (eds.), Transformation of Higher Education in the Age of Society 5.0, International and Development Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7_8

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Furthermore, children entering primary school today will work in jobs that don’t exist yet. In other words, they will face a future in an uncertain job market. According to Dell Technologies’ Realize 2030 Report, 85% of jobs in 2030 have not been invented yet. That’s just ten years left. The question is how we can prepare our students for an unknown job title. A Korean scholar says, By means of the convergence of technology, development of information and communication technology, change of labor market, development and convergence of bio-nano-aerospace science and technology, increased interest in quality of life, the future job market will be completely changed. As a result, non-regular workers will be the mainstream, the distinction between work and leisure will be blurred, we will change our jobs about ten times in a lifetime, and project-based employment will be prevalent. What is important in this society is the flexibility of thinking and the ability to create new competencies, in particular, convergence thinking ability (Jang et al., 2011, pp. 17–18).

In order to cope with the rapid changes in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, education should focus on the foundational literacies, competencies, and character qualities. The World Economic Forum (WEF) reports that future education should help students build foundational literacy with which they can apply core skills to everyday tasks, and competencies or soft skills with which they can approach complex challenges and also character qualities with which they can meet the changing environment. In particular, the key words that we have to pay attention to here are “confluence and convergence.” The future society is characterized by technology integration and the blurring of lines between physical, digital, and biological aspects of life. These technologies are foreseen to have a substantial influence over our work, social and cultural environments. There is also a need to ensure that everyone can continue to learn, adapt, and apply relevant technologies to the dynamic learning and work environment, and re-adjust to cultural, economic, political, and social advancements. However, it is said that in the current environment, the educational tools, techniques, and curriculum that we have been using for decades may no longer be fit for the purpose. So, we have to realize that traditional educational tools do not work anymore. To face this situation, it is necessary and important to change everything in education, that is, educational

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objectives, materials, methods, curricula, and so on. That is, we have to consider seriously how we can help students develop such competencies, especially convergence thinking competencies. We should think about the best way for the convergence education. Although there have been discussions on student-initiated learning, learning outcomes, lifelong learning, and use of ICT in education, the education sector, particularly higher education, is still depending on outmoded approaches to facilitate learning. Curricula and programs are hardly in line with the industry demands and present social life. With the massification of education worldwide, the design of both traditional and present education systems has failed to warrant access to quality and relevant education for everyone, not just the younger generation. Therefore, it is essential to re-work present educational systems to create an adaptable and flexible system that promotes educating for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and beyond. So, we, as teachers who are in charge of higher education, will have to discuss how to reshape the educational system into an adaptable, flexible, and relevant social environment. We have to present the ways to pursue lifelong learning and gain the necessary soft skills and competencies to survive and contribute to a progressive society. It seems obvious that the direction of change is to have students develop soft skills and competencies, in particular, convergence thinking capabilities. The question that we have to answer is the kind of education which will be appropriate and how to educate students to develop such abilities.

How to Develop Convergence Thinking Competency Before we discuss the right way to develop convergence thinking ability, I will mention two things: the problem of traditional and current method of education for convergence, and two levels of convergence education. The problem of traditional and current teaching-learning method for convergence thinking. First, I examine the dominant traditional and current teaching-learning method. Most universities utilize the distributive model for the general education system. The model classifies general education courses into three or four fields, such as history and philosophy, literature and arts, social sciences, and natural sciences, and has students who choose to take

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one or two courses of each field. The purpose of the distributive model is to encourage students to build convergence thinking capacities by learning about various fields different from their major. I believe this is on the right track for gaining convergence education. But students generally take just 1 or 2 classes of each field, that is, 3 or 4 courses (9–12 units) in total, which is not enough to build convergence thinking abilities. And students tend to take courses in which they can easily earn credits, avoiding academically important courses that require hard work. The proposal presented to solve this problem is to provide students with an integrated or interdisciplinary course that functions to connect more than two different fields. For example, there is a course, “From Big Bang to Contemporary Culture,” which is offered in a university in South Korea, which has been evaluated as an excellent interdisciplinary course. It deals with important topics of social science and humanities such as environmental problems and conflicts between social classes as well as dealing with basic concepts of natural science such as the Big Bang and evolution. Although it is a good example of the interdisciplinary course, it just presents integrated knowledge made by existing faculties. As such, it is not very helpful for students to develop the competency of convergence thinking. In other words, there is an obvious limit to students’ developing such a competency just by offering faculty-centered lectures, because such lectures just present the particular perspectives and contexts of their faculties, and do not result in making students develop their own perspectives and contexts. In addition, it costs a good deal to design and manage interdisciplinary courses. It is also difficult to teach such classes because instructors should become knowledgeable in their non-primary field. To solve this difficulty, some interdisciplinary courses are often taught as a teamteaching exercise. Although team-taught classes obviously have some advantages, their problems also are already well known.

Two Levels of Convergence Education Within two levels of convergence education, one can be called “upper-­ level convergence” or “convergence in the upper level,” and the other “basic level one,” or “convergence in the basic level.” The first is usually provided at the academic level of the major, connecting more than two major courses to yield new majors or tracks which meet perceived social needs. Most universities provide majors or tracks such as bio-mechanical engineering, digital humanities, and so on. Arizona State University in the

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U.S., famous for its innovative educational reforms, recently established “the School of Human Evolution and Social Change” which aims for upper-level convergence education by combining biology, anthropology, and sociology. I think this kind of convergence education is necessary and important. But in and of itself, it is not enough because unexpected nature of work and jobs in the future society will keep on demanding new knowledge or skills and the university should continue to provide many new convergence programs to meet social needs. So, it might be more important for students by themselves to develop the thinking ability to merge different fields than to provide ready-made integrated majors. In this sense, training for basic level convergence is very important. Typically, convergence is done at the general education level, the aim of which is to make students develop the competency of convergent thinking. I believe that the distributive model of general education is designed for building this kind of competence. But as I have already mentioned, the distributive model is insufficient to accomplish such a goal because the students take just one or two classes in various fields. How, then, can we help students develop their convergence thinking competencies? That is, how will students be trained at the general education level? Stop here.

Prerequisites for the Successful Convergence Education in the Basic Level I think there are some prerequisites for successful convergence education. First of all, we have to recognize it should be the students who are the primary agents of effecting convergence. In such cases, there should be students who are passionately challenging without fear of failure, because convergence thinking competencies are not built by faculty-centered lectures but by student-initiated activities. Let me quote Steve Jobs again. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. (Jobs, 2005)

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Jobs says here that it is most important to challenge to truly achieve what we believe is right. Then, how can we make students more active and challenging? Frankly speaking, it is not easy, or it does not seem possible. But we can provide them with the place or opportunity to perform their challenging tasks. Stop here. The other prerequisite for the successful convergence education in the basic level is that students should be well educated with highly academic general education. In order to know what and how to integrate, you must first have a basic knowledge of what to think about and how to fuse it. For this, the general education system should be improved in curriculum and completion system. In detail, most courses in the distributive areas (core courses of the GE) should be changed to the courses of the Liberal Arts, which are widely recognized as having academic value. And it is necessary that the courses require students the same amount of academic works. Otherwise, it is hard to prevent students from flocking to easy-going classes. In addition, the completion system of GE should be improved for students to take about 30–35% of all graduation credits as liberal arts courses. I think this is why most of the famous universities in the USA are increasingly stressing the importance of general education.

A Method of the Convergence Education in the Basic Level: Lecture-Pairing The idea that I try to suggest is inspired by Job’s statements. He insisted that in an age of intellectual fragmentation, the best creations occurred when people from disparate fields were connected together, when our distinct ways of seeing the world were brought to bear on a singular problem. As the Latin crest of Pixar University says, “Alienus Non Diutius (Alone no longer).” I will suggest an efficient method of the convergence education in the basic level, which we call “lecture-pairing.” It is a kind of platform for students to connect two classes that they have already taken or are taking to yield a converging result. In detail, if students take a lecture-pairing, they should hand in the research proposal to say which lectures they choose to connect, which converging ideas they have, and which results they expect. Then the Convergence Education Committee examines the proposal and assigns an academic adviser to them. Although they have the help of the advisor, in principle, they research by themselves. In other

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Fig. 8.1  The idea of lecture-pairing (image made by the author)

words, their research is student-centered. And they should present their interim report during the mid of the semester and the final poster at the end of the semester. And to get grade they submit the final results like term papers, videos, or web app. The Committee evaluates their works to give them the grade and to give award to excellent results. The lecture-pairing is eventually defined as the problem-shooting activities that students take two classes delivered in the university as a group or a pair to yield the research results. The lecture-pairing can be a place and an opportunity where students find problems passionately and challenge to solve them without fear of failure. Figure  8.1 shows the idea of the lecture-pairing.

The Current State of the Lecture-Pairing In my university, the lecture-pairing started in 2015, and we had the tenth poster presentation in the last semester. Table  8.1 shows the state and results of the lecture-pairing during five years. In the beginning, about half of the students who took the lecture-­ pairing chose the lectures related to their major. Even if they did lecture-­ pairing based on their major field, the problems that they challenge to

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Table 8.1  State of the lecture-pairing Year-semester

Applicant

Final result submitter

Drop-out (rate%)

Awardee

Spring, 2015 Fall, 2015 Spring, 2016 Fall, 2016 Spring, 2017 Fall, 2017 Spring, 2018 Fall, 2018 Spring, 2109 Fall, 2019

47 32 49 34 49 34 14 23 12 32

40 22 25 21 25 21 13 16 10 24

7 (14.9) 10 (31.25) 24 (48.9) 13 (38.2) 24 (38.2) 13 (38.2) 1 (7.14) 7 (30.4) 2 (16.6) 8 (25)

12 16 18 19 18 19 13 11 10 11

Source: Made by the author

solve were unique and specific because the problems were based on their own experience and interests. Students try to change existing perspectives and contexts to have new ones to solve the problems. Over time, lecture-­ pairings using liberal arts classes have increased. We are sure the experience of solving original problems in a specific context enables students to develop genuine convergence thinking abilities. A student who took a lecture-pairing to connect between “Mass Culture” and “Classics of Oriental Philosophy” said as follows: The course, “Mass Culture,” analyzes the ideas of scholars who see phenomena of mass culture and helps us understand the impact of culture from various perspectives. Until now, research on mass culture has been done mainly in the light of western philosophy. My question is what Confucius and Lao-tzu would think if they experience contemporary culture. I want to look into the contemporary mass culture in the oriental perspectives.

Tables 8.2 and 8.3 show some examples of the lecture-pairing to connect two lectures of general education and to connect between a lecture of GE and that of a major course.

Advantages of the Lecture-Pairing As the lecture-pairing is designed to develop for the learner-centered convergence education, it does not require changes in the educational system. Thus, it has the following advantages.

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Table 8.2  Lecture-pairing using two general education classes Lecture 1

Lecture 2

What Is Logic?

Creative Thinking

Research title

Application of Analogy to Appearance and Extinction of Dinosaurs Philosophy & Science Creative Thinking Analysis and Application of Methodology to Train the Creative Thinking What Is Sociology? Western Contemporary On the Effect and Limitation of the Literature Mirroring of Feminism Western History of The World of Movies The Dialectical Investigation on the Intelligence Editing Technology of Films Ethics of Introduction to East Should We Nuclear Power Plant Contemporary Society Asia Reduce? Mental Health of The World of Movies The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Modern Life the Movies History of Science The World of Music The Relation Between Modern Scientific Revolution and Baroque Music What Is Sociology? Architecture and Architectural Approach for Solving Human Society Conflicts Between Social Classes Modern Society and Crimes in Efficient Socializing Ways for Preventing Law Contemporary Society a Second Offense Source: Made by the author

Table 8.3  Lecture-pairing using a general education class and a major class Lecture 1

Lecture 2

Research title

Western Culture and Arts Western History of Intelligence Introduction to Analysis of Data Science & Philosophy Religion and Life

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Psychology of Language English Discourse Analysis Macro-economics

To Overcome the Fear of Death in the Perspective of the Baroque Art How Can Human Beings Be the Conqueror of the Earth? Inquiry on the Stereotype of Asians in the American Drama The Analysis of Macro-economics Phenomena by Falsificationism Examining The Islamic Financial System as an Alternative Finance Resolving the Problem of Electric Power in the North Korea by Building Solar System in the Reservoir Meeting Pictures!

Understanding on the North Korea What Is Art?

Project of Business Administration Principles and Properties of Materials Theories of Personality

Source: Made by the author

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First, as the lecture-pairing uses the existing lecture as resources, it is very economical and efficient. That is, it does not require to develop and offer new integrated or interdisciplinary courses. Research and project on convergence education mainly focus on what kind of integrated courses should be developed and how they should be taught. That is, research on the contents and the teaching-learning method of convergence education is necessary. But it requires a lot of human and financial support to continue, and it also takes a certain amount of time and efforts for the lectures to be developed. Therefore, it is a big advantage that it is not necessary to develop and offer a new integrated course. Second, the system of the lecture-pairing will be likely to develop students’ designed majors or tracks. In other words, it can help students design their own major by themselves which will fit for the future society. The system is said to be a kind of platform to connect multiple areas. If certain requirements are met, it can be developed into a track system that students design by themselves. In the process of expanding and reviewing the links between lectures, students also develop a self-directed learning plan. The third advantage of the lecture-pairing is that it can lead to strengthening of liberal arts education. Since the lecture-pairing is not limited to lectures chosen for pairing, not only the pair of two general education courses but also that of general education and that major courses are possible. These various connections reinforce academic integrity of general education courses and their linkages with major courses. For the lecture-­ pairing make both faculty and students reflect on academic value of the lectures. The general education courses tend to be considered relatively easy to learn and low in academic value. Recently, general education is asked to help students build various soft skills including comprehensive thinking, problem-solving, convergence thinking skills. I believe that the linkage between lectures can be the basis for synergistic support to form and expand intellectual connection horizons. The lecture-pairing will help to achieve synergistic support that fuses domain-general competencies with domain-specific knowledge. The fourth advantage is that the lecture-pairing is good for fitting with social needs, especially the job market. The future job market has different social needs than now. It is expected to change rapidly and continuously. This situation requires “deep generalists” that are distinguished from “special technicians.” They should be able to analyze, assess, and solve various problems in the proper way. In other words, deep generalists are

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Fig. 8.2  Schematic diagram of convergence education curriculum expanded from lecture-pairing (image made by the author)

able to cope with the rapidly changing society by applying their skills to the specific situation and deriving their own results. I believe that the experience of solving problems by linking multiple lectures will be a great help to be a deep generalist (Fig. 8.2). This diagram shows how to meet the social needs by using lectures offered at universities. That is, it shows how to achieve the objectives of the convergence education by demonstrating that convergence education by lecture-pairings can be isomorphic to convergence industry and that competencies developed by convergence education meet the needs of future society. Students can use all lectures offered in the university for the lecture-pairing. Thus, the basic level of the diagram includes all classes of general education and major that the university offers. It is the first layer over the basic level (Layer 1) where two lectures are connected as a pair in the hands of students. Each pairing may evolve into a convergence track

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through several successive pairings, linking to other classes, and linking to higher-level classes. This is what Layer 2 shows. In order to develop into a convergence track by linking more than a certain number of lectures, it may be necessary that the committee of faculty members examines and approves the process and the results. The competencies that students develop in Layer 2 are consistent with thsose which the future society and industry Industry demand, the track or student-designed major made in Layer 2 will be suitable for the convergence industries in the future society. In addition, there are advantages such as lightening and diversification of the convergence education program, and expanding and strengthening the function of the liberal arts education institution.

Conclusion We have to remember that the successful way of convergence education consists in student-centered activities. So, it is important to consider how we have students participate in converging activities. For this, we have to provide the chance and place for them to do these freely. The lecture-­ pairing aims to provide such a chance and place. It is sure that students should be highly well educated by liberal arts program that has academic integrity before taking the lecture-pairing. Thus, it is required to improve the general education curricula to have academic value and to improve the completion system of general education in order that students can take enough classes of general education.

References Jang, J. & et al.(2011). Work life, 2030. Seoul. Jobs, S. (2005). You’ve got to find what you have love. Stanford|News, 6, 14. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-­061505.html

CHAPTER 9

How Does US STEM Higher Education Cultivate Global Competences Through Interdisciplinary Programs? Reiko Yamada

Introduction The impact of the knowledge economy in the globalized world has become increasingly large in recent years with an accompanying growing expectation and demand of commensurate innovation on and within universities. In this situation, it is widely expected that Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields will take a leadership position on innovation. Nobody disagrees that STEM fields play important roles in research and development, producing future jobs and upgrading the world rankings of universities. In the context of science and technology and education policy, the trend of enhancing STEM education from K12 to higher education is common in the United States, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, China, Singapore, and other countries. However,

R. Yamada (*) Faculty of Social Studies, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Yamada et al. (eds.), Transformation of Higher Education in the Age of Society 5.0, International and Development Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7_9

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there is a concern that too much emphasis on STEM-oriented policy ignores the importance of other disciplines such as those that constitute the humanities and social sciences. At the same time, interdisciplinary collaborations based on STEM and other disciplines are expected to develop in many universities worldwide. There is a growing concern that students of STEM disciplines need to acquire both the special knowledge based on their disciplines and other competences such as communication skills, intercultural knowledge and skills, and the varied abilities to understand global issues acquired through other disciplines in order to promote innovation and new design. Such capabilities as intercultural knowledge and skills and understanding global issues can usefully be included as components of broader global competences. In the United States, to take one illustrative example, the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC & U) outlines the role of twenty-first-century liberal arts and multicultural values for STEM education in the United States, for example, skills to discuss and collaborate with diverse people to find and solve problems. In common forecasting views of a knowledge society, STEM human resources are expected to have superior currency in the global labor market because of their relevance to innovation, and the global competences (GC) required of STEM human resources are being increasingly discussed as virtues of this focus. In this chapter, I define global competences (GC) as skills that effectively communicate and work together with diverse people to find and solve problems. At the same time, I will include design skills and integration based on interdisciplinary concepts. I also establish two research questions. First, what are desired learning outcomes in the STEM field, considering twenty-first-century types of educational outcomes? And, second, what is the relationship between varied skills and learning outcomes required in the global labor market presumed to foster innovation and international mobility or circulation? Based on these two foci, we conducted a survey of STEM university and graduate school graduates in three countries: Japan, the United States, and China.1 Our goal in developing this research is to determine the possible benefits accruing from related activities such as studying in university/ 1  This research is funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) between 2017 and 2021. The research team consists of 17 members, and the author of the chapter is the representative of this research.

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graduate programs, study abroad experiences, and current occupations. Throughout we explore the relationship between learning outcomes of university/graduate programs and global competences both promoted and realized in current occupations. From these data we conduct international comparisons of the three countries, controlling the analysis axis that classifies the attributes of universities and institutes in Japan, the United States, and China into (1) world-class research universities, (2) research universities, and (3) comprehensive universities. Specifically, the United States has facilitated the possibilities for such comparative research by having created an analysis axis based on the World University Ranking 2019 Times Higher Education ( h t t p s : / / w w w. t i m e s h i g h e r e d u c a t i o n . c o m / w o r l d -­u n i v e r s i t y -­ rankings/2019/world-­ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/ sort_order/asc/cols/statshttps://www.timeshighereducation.com/ world-­university-­rankings/2019/world-­ranking#!/page/0/length/25/ sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats) and the Carnegie University classifications (https://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/lookup/lookup. php), while referring to the 2019 QS Asian University Rankings for Japan and China (https://www.topuniversities.com/university-­rankings/asian-­ university-­rankings/2019). Since in the United States, the Carnegie University classifications have been used as a reliable tool for classifying universities, I used the Times Higher Education, the World University Ranking, and the Carnegie University classifications for making reliable analysis based on university classifications.

Previous Studies of Interdisciplinary Studies and Global Competences The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC & U) has emphasized the need—defined in part by the presumption of the social benefits gained—to produce more liberally educated STEM graduates. The direction of STEM education reform as guided by the AAC & U emphasizes the cultivation of communication skills and a cultural understanding useful for addressing and seeking solutions to global issues. According to the guidelines of the Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) initiative launched by the AAC & U in 2005 and active through 2018 (https://www.aacu.org/leap), STEM curricula should provide knowledge related to energy, air, and water quality, and global

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warming, and should provide real opportunities for students to analyze, practice, and implement solutions to problems. This perspective is closely associated with the possibility to show a solution to several such issues germane to world and local culture. Hence, the participation of STEM students in study abroad programs becomes more important than ever. At the same time, the guidelines recognize that complicated issues affecting the world cannot be solved only within the framework of STEM expertise, but also require ideas and approaches from various other disciplines. As such, there is an increasing need for STEM education to include interdisciplinary programs involving the humanities and social sciences. Integrated courses involving STEM and other disciplines are being developed at the general education level and courses related to design thinking are being encouraged at both lower and upper division levels (Yamada, 2018). Hawkins has suggested that the curriculum in higher education has proven to be an essential yet relatively unchanging part of the dominant educational paradigm and people are familiar with a disciplinary narrowness, a silo-like separation of knowledge that has changed little despite the rise of interdisciplinary studies in recent years (Hawkins, 2007; Jacob, 2015). However, while interdisciplinary studies are valued for the development of critical thinking, a broader perspective from other fields of study, and the ability to translate ways of thought between different fields (Yamada, 2018), it is expected that the addition of interdisciplinary studies provides a broad range of knowledge and skills that might lead to desired innovation. The need for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary programs has been pointed out in the past. And, in recent years, as the emphasis on policies in the STEM higher education fields is progressing throughout the world, the desired combination of humanities and social sciences programs for science and engineering students is gaining steady recognition. Referring to prior research in Europe and the United States, increasing emphasis is being paid to knowledge, ability, skills related to the discipline, and global competences defined in this paper as the learning outcomes required of science and engineering students. Vance et  al. (2014) have pointed out that it has been necessary to develop rubrics and organize the components of collaboration to effectively develop teamwork ability among STEM students. Chipperfield et al. (2015) pointed out the importance of STEM students’ interest in society and asserted that such skills could be acquired through focused interdisciplinary programs. Horn and Murray (2012) have argued that in order to realize a sustainable society,

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not only expertise in STEM is required, but also social, ethical, and environmental awareness are equally essential elements, and these are perhaps best learned through interdisciplinary liberal arts education. In a similar vein, Strelner et al. (2014) examined the effect of educational programs for engineering students designed to make them capable of responding to the issues of a global society and argued that educational programs incorporating research from a global perspective resulted in an additional and desirable element of the effectiveness of those students. From the aspect of education, especially when looking at engineering in the STEM fields, setting the learning outcomes of engineering education between Washington Convention member countries as aspects of educational standards by the Japan Accreditation Board for Engineering Education (JABEE) started from the accession to the Washington Convention, compared with many other fields, a high degree of commonality exists across engineering curricula and teaching methods. In other words, with the progress of globalization, the commonality of educational standards in the engineering field has come to share high standards and their attainment. For example, the number of engineering students who go abroad for internships while attending higher education institutions and experience working or research overseas after graduation has increased. In fact, in the field of engineering education, the need for educational reform to respond to globalization has been raised since the mid-1990s, mainly in the United States. In 1996, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) (2000) included a response to globalization in engineering education in its Engineering Criteria 2000 and regarded it as one of the standards. Previous research on engineering education and global competencies has substantially increased since the mid-2000s in Western engineering journals. Dawney et al. (2006) were of the view that increasing the global competence of engineers could be accomplished by collaborating with diverse people of different cultures and argued that engineering education curriculum programs have become effective in mastering such global competences. In their view the global engineering curriculum is effective if it includes elements such as a program of living experiences abroad, participation in international projects, and international field trips for students to acquire global competencies. Also, they argue that desired lesson content should consist not only of technical knowledge but should also incorporate elements such as communication methods and leadership development.

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As a result of examining the case of a global German company, Becker (2006) more flexibly integrates the applied-focus degrees of Germany with traditional academic degrees and incorporates not only knowledge and technology but also more literary elements into program design, leading to an argument for the overall need of educational reform to acquire soft skills that are essential for gaining global competences. Oda et al. (2018) organized a definition and indicators of global competencies used in the field of engineering education in the United States. As a result of their studies, they indicate that understanding and respect for different cultures and fields, attitudes, and the identities of the subject such as a global perspective are more often useful as indicators of global competencies rather than more commonplace capabilities such as second language capabilities and associated knowledge.

Two Case Studies: Stanford BOSP and Singapore University of Technology and Design Reform of engineering education in many countries is expected to include design-thinking and the cultivation of global competences as elements of their revised curricula. At the practice level, two case studies can be viewed as useful examples of acquiring global competences and design-thinking skills within such curricula. In the case of Stanford University, 50% of undergraduate students receive approximately three months of study abroad experience. A Bing Overseas Studies Program (BOSP) has been established for senior students majoring in the undergraduate engineering degree program to study one or two semesters abroad and experience an internship. Participants are expected to acquire specialized knowledge and skills through university engineering courses. The purpose of this program is to acquire not only knowledge and experience but also an international sense and an appreciation for a global context relevant to engineering endeavors. The study abroad program is regarded as essential to foster engineers with “Cultural Literacy” and “Intercultural Literacy.” Therefore, it is designed to acquire these literacies through an early undergraduate education program. BOSP cooperates with overseas centers located in nine cities in the world. In Japan, the Kyoto program in collaboration with Doshisha University is located on the campus of Doshisha University and features a program consisting of interdisciplinary content including elements such as

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language, technology, and science and technology policy, with the requirements for investigating “Japanese” ability focused within a summer internship. Students in all fields may participate in the Kyoto program, but 70% of them are students in STEM fields, and it seems that “cultural literacy” and “intercultural literacy” are realizable outcomes. Stanford University emphasizes its research abroad program both within and outside the regular curriculum for engineering and other university programs. One goal for Stanford students is to develop T-type human resources, leading to an outcome wherein such students gain a wide range of knowledge in various other genres in addition to their own deep disciplinary knowledge and skills. The Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) is a new national university of science and technology established in 2009 with the cooperation of MIT in the United States and Zhejiang University in China and had grown to serve approximately 1300 students by 2016. A design-­ orientation is the underlying basis of education throughout the university, characteristics of which include an integrative, interdisciplinary approach, and having real-world experiences within the curriculum. The overall curriculum features humanities and social sciences as well as engineering and science and is designed for students to take these subjects in the first semester of the first and second years. The presumption is that it is possible to foster design thinking through exposure to appropriate subjects based on the integration of culture and science in the first and second years. Students are required to experience three Independent Activity Periods (IAPs) and summer vacation periods require study internships through study abroad at overseas partner schools or internships at companies in Singapore and abroad. The characteristics of teaching methods are based on: (1) cohort learning and active learning; (2) use of cohort classrooms and fabrication labs; and (3) design projects. The design project was one of the basic ideas dating from the establishment of the university and is intended and organized to work on all design projects related to engineering, such as architecture, industrial product design, software, and systems. The institution’s various faculties include professionals from Asian and Western countries, from which students can experience working within an international environment. As previous studies and these two case studies show, global competences have become important learning outcomes for STEM students and those skills can be acquired through interdisciplinary studies or curricula.

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This then raises the question of investigating and assessing the actual work situations for professionals who graduated from STEM undergraduate/ graduate programs.

The Online Survey An online survey was undertaken in Japan intended for those in their 30s and 40s (50% in each age group) who hold a STEM-related degree (Bachelor/Master/Doctor) in Japan, the United States, or China and are currently working at companies or research institutes other than higher education institutions. Items consisted of questions concerning attributes, experiences related to global competences in primary, secondary education, and at university through graduate school if pursued. The survey sought to identify global competences acquired through university and graduate programs, provide assessments of the contributions of university and graduate school education on acquired global competences, and explore their influences on global work experiences within non-university settings. Original questions in Japanese were translated into English and Chinese and native researchers of English and Chinese with Japanese language ability double-checked the original Japanese questionnaires for content and reliability of the translations, the goal being to ensure the reliability of all questionnaire items. A web survey (monitor survey via an internet survey company) was conducted in late January 2019. Japan’s and the United States’ portions were conducted nationwide, while the China focus targeted residents in Beijing and Shanghai. A total of 2472 respondents were engaged (Japan: 1030, United States: 721, China: 721: with 1966 men and 506 women). In this chapter, I present and analyze only the data from the US portion of the survey.

Results of Descriptive Statistics Of working professionals in the 30–40 age group in STEM fields, 721 responded. Their institutions were categorized based on the Carnegie Classification and the Times University Rankings 2019, with 336 from world-class research universities, 110 were from research universities, and 139 from comprehensive universities. The remaining 136 were excluded from the data analysis, since it was difficult to categorize these excluded

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institutions within the three designations when comparing them with institutions of Japan and China. Aggregated results include attributes’ information such as degree acquisition status and the major field of specialization for each university classification. Assessing degrees obtained by university classification, the highest number of doctoral degrees was obtained through world-class research universities at 17.3%, followed by research universities at 12.7%. Regarding the master’s degree, 56.4% of research universities’ graduates obtained the degree compared with 52.7% from world-class research universities and 49.6% from general universities. Although there is a slight difference in the percentage by specialized fields, most graduates majored in three disciplines: Engineering, Science, and Computer Sciences (Table 9.1). Comparing annual income (conversion to current Japanese yen 110 yen/a dollar) based on university classification indicates that world-class research universities’ graduates who earn more than 12 million Yen a year accounted for 41.5%, those of research universities accounted for 32.4%, and general universities (comprehensive universities) accounted for 34.1% (Table 9.2). As Table 9.2 indicates, the average income based on the university category is highest among graduates of world-class research universities followed by those from research universities. The average income of comprehensive university graduates is lowest. Regarding gender differences with respect to annual income, there is a clear imbalance between male and female graduates in favor of males. While the average annual incomes of 30s’ and 40s’ males are 11,240,000 Yen and 16,320,000 Yen respectively, that of 30s’ and 40s’ females are 9,750,000 and 12,190,000 Yen respectively.

Table 9.1  Proportion of major by university classification % World-class research U Research U Comprehensive U

Science Engineering Agriculture

Life science

Information science

Other

23.8

47.3

1.5

9.8

14.3

3.3

27.3 21.6

31.8 42.4

0 1.4

9.1 8.6

25.5 18

6.4 7.9

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Table 9.2  Average income by age group and gender % '000 (Japanese YEN) World-class research U Research U Comprehensive U Average (age and gender)

30s Male

30s Female

40s Male

40s Female

Average (university category)

12,150

10,320

17,390

15,620

14,350

10,620 9600 11,240

9270 8030 9750

19,210 11,610 16,320

9410 8350 12,190

13,340 10,070 13,150

We compared the average number of years of employment, years to retirement, and years of education by university classification, and found no differences between university classifications. Examining academic majors within university undergraduate and graduate programs indicates that the highest occurring major is engineering in all university categories, with science and information science (computer science) following. Table 9.3 indicates the learning experiences of respondents at university and in graduate school. These learning experiences are presumed to be associated with twenty-first-century types of learning outcomes and global competences. While the results indicated are not statistically significant of experiences in university and graduate programs between university classifications, most of the items with four exceptions indicated that more than 60% of graduates experienced such activities in their university experience regardless of the institutional classification. Regarding experiences of global competences during their university tenure, 30–40% of respondents “Took courses on human rights, race and ethnicity,” “Took courses on intercultural understandings,” and “Lived with international students in a dormitory” in their school days. Again, these results were not statistically different. Around 10% of students experienced some form of overseas experience. The results indicated that the percentage of respondents having such experiences from comprehensive universities was slightly higher than in other categories. Respondents could select this question multiple times, but the percentage who did not have any such experience was about 20% and of these there were not many differences in the university classification as Table 9.4 shows.

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Table 9.3  Learning experiences by university classification % Frequency+often Took non-STEM courses Took interdisciplinary courses Participated in an optional study or research group Discussed coursework with classmates Studied with other classmates Used information online for research and homework Submitted course assignments online Tutored an international student Participated and presented in an academic conference in a foreign country Conducted research with faculty in a foreign country Discussed global topics Discussed global topics with students of different cultural backgrounds Led a project to completion Took a course with advanced IT equipment and tools Tok problem-based learning courses

World-class research U

Research U

Comprehensive U

64.9 69.9 58.3

66.4 71.8 57.3

71.9 68.3 58.3

86.9 82.1 82.4

94.5 86.4 87.3

86.3 77.7 81.3

66.7 35.1 34.8

72.7 30.0 35.5

75.5 41.7 36.7

35.4

36.4

41.7

62.8 61.6

70.0 64.5

63.3 62.6

75.6 67.9

78.2 70.0

77.7 70.5

78.9

80.0

79.3

Through graduate programs, there is a tendency that the proportion of enrollment in courses on human rights, race and ethnicity, intercultural understanding, and dormitory experience is slightly lower than those offered within undergraduate curricula. Overall, graduates of research and comprehensive universities tended to have more experiences gained from a training program provided in a foreign country. In general, programs at both university and graduate levels tend to offer more opportunities for STEM students to engage in global activities to acquire global competences than to those outside these disciplines. Within the data such differences between university categories both for university and graduate programs are not statistically significant.

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Table 9.4  Learning experiences related to global competences in university days University

Took courses on human rights, race, and ethnicity Took courses on intercultural understanding Lived with international students in a dormitory Participated in an internship program in a foreign country Participated in a training program in a foreign country Participated in volunteer activities in a foreign country Lived with a host family in a foreign country Presented research or a special topic in a foreign country Participated in a short-term (less than six months) training program or a study-abroad program in a foreign country Participated in a long-term (six months or more) training program or a study-abroad program in a foreign country Underwent training or participated in an internship program in a developing country None of the above apply

World-class research U

Research U

Comprehensive U

36.3%

38.2%

41.0%

32.4% 33.3%

40.9% 38.2%

41.7% 34.5%

15.8%

10.0%

13.7%

11.9%

12.7%

14.4%

11.3%

6.4%

15.8%

8.6% 13.4%

7.3% 14.5%

12.2% 15.1%

13.7%

16.4%

10.8%

7.7%

2.7%

9.4%

6.8%

7.3%

7.2%

21.7%

21.8%

18.7%

Active Learning Experiences In terms of experiences of active learning, as Fig. 9.1 shows, more than 60% of both the 30s and 40s age groups experienced active learning in their university and graduate programs. Research presentation in overseas and overseas research tends to be lower but exceeds 40%.

Global Work Experiences What then is the situation of experiences associated with global competences? Figures 9.2 and 9.3 indicate the degree of experiences at job settings for STEM graduates. STEM graduates have ample intercultural experience in their domestic countries. While their rate of such

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Fig. 9.1   Active learning experiences in university and graduate school 0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0% 70.0% 80.0% 90.0%100.0% Have thought, judged and acted to the best of your ability based on principles 2.9% 12.1%

45.4%

39.7%

Have been able to apply your special knowledge within your own area of study (major field) at… 2.8% 13.3%

43.0%

40.9%

Have approached different cultures with an open mindset 3.9% 12.9% Have found that your special knowledge within your own area of study (major field) was useful… 2.8% 15.1%

45.2% 41.1%

38.0% 41.1%

Have a broad perspective of the world 3.6% 14.6%

45.2%

36.6%

Have overcome differences in opinions or positions independently 3.5% 14.8%

45.1%

36.6%

Have been open to perspectives related to new fields and areas 4.0% 15.0% Have been innovative in using perspectives from new fields and areas 4.7% 15.1% Have interacted with people of different cultural backgrounds outside the workplace 3.2% 17.9% Have developed new perspectives and ideas based on previous studies and research 4.3% 17.3% Have had the motivation to take up new business challenges and projects 5.3% 16.5% Have found that knowledge of the social sciences was useful for the job 5.4%

17.3%

Have attained goals working with people of different cultural backgrounds 6.0%

18.3%

Have found that knowledge of the humanities was useful for the job 4.6%

19.8%

Have worked at a global company consisting of diverse races, ethnicities and nationalities Not at all

9.4%

Seldom

16.5%

Often

46.3%

34.7%

47.6%

32.6%

45.8%

33.1%

48.3%

30.1%

45.1%

33.1%

44.2%

33.0%

44.2% 41.5% 32.5%

31.5% 34.1% 41.6%

Frequently

Fig. 9.2  Work experiences related to global competences 1

engagements in foreign countries and through overseas business tends to be a little bit lower, those within this category tend to have increased levels of intercultural experiences associated with global competences from stays

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R. YAMADA 0.0%

10.0%

Have deliberated with people of different cultural backgrounds using technical terms 5.5%

Have managed people of different cultural backgrounds as a workplace leader

11.5%

Have learned in an environment where the majority of people were from different cultural backgrounds

6.9%

Have worked in an environment where the majority of people were from different cultural backgrounds

8.2%

Have worked for a boss of a different cultural background Have positively engaged in overseas businesses

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

22.7%

50.0%

19.4% 24.5%

70.0%

16.5%

90.0%

27.7%

40.5%

28.0% 27.2%

35.6%

19.6%

31.1%

34.8%

29.1%

Have always observed trends and developments in overseas markets

13.5%

22.6%

38.8%

25.1%

Have understood the local needs of foreign countries and incorporated them into a work plan

13.7%

23.0%

36.8%

26.5%

Have accurately explained to a boss how cross-cultural factors caused work plans to be delayed

16.5%

Have negotiated salaries and working conditions when working in a global company

17.3%

22.9%

Have taken a business trip to a foreign country

23.4%

Have used languages other than your mother tongue in the workplace

25.0%

Have presented material in multiple languages

Not at all

17.9%

28.0%

Have moved to a foreign country for work

35.4%

23.0%

20.0%

37.0% Seldom

Often

25.2%

36.9%

22.7%

34.5%

24.1%

29.4%

17.8%

31.2%

13.9%

100.0%

30.0%

40.6%

20.8%

80.0%

41.3%

24.0%

12.5%

60.0%

41.7%

29.7%

25.7% 23.0%

19.4%

Frequently

Fig. 9.3  Work experiences related to global competences 2

in the United States. In other words, they can engage in internal globalization or internationalized experiences in the United States where they encounter ample opportunities to work together with individuals of diverse races and ethnicities, and through such encounters they are required to express more intercultural tolerance and experience many opportunities to acquire increased intercultural tolerance through their job settings, although such findings are not statistically significant within our data. In addition, there are not many differences of work experiences related to global competences between university classification as Table 9.5 indicates. Figure 9.4 provides the current average scores of acquisitions of skills and abilities related to global competences. Many of the items ask for responses indicating aspects of initiative and attitudes, collaboration with others, experiences of smooth communication, innovation orientation, and so on in cross-cultural or multicultural situations. There are no statistical differences in the three-university classification with average scores of 3.2–3.6 (with 4.0 the maximum score). We also explored whether university and graduate school education experiences contributed to the acquisition of GC. Almost the same results were obtained, although the average value was slightly lower overall. Looking at the data from the United States up to this point, some differences in attribute information such as degree acquisition exist, but there was no significant difference attributable to university classifications with respect to GC experiences and the acquisition of current skills and abilities. Despite the level of university rankings, the contents of STEM

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Table 9.5  Work experiences related to global competences by university classification

Have worked at a global company consisting of diverse races, ethnicities, and nationalities Have negotiated salaries and working conditions when working in a global company Have learned in an environment where the majority of people were from different cultural backgrounds Have worked in an environment where the majority of people were from different cultural backgrounds Have deliberated with people of different cultural backgrounds using technical terms Have managed people of different cultural backgrounds as a workplace leader Have worked for a boss of a different cultural background Have understood the local needs of foreign countries and incorporated them into a work plan Have accurately explained to a boss how cross-cultural factors caused work plans to be delayed Have moved to a foreign country for work Have taken a business trip to a foreign country Have always observed trends and developments in overseas markets Have approached different cultures with an open mindset Have interacted with people of different cultural backgrounds outside the workplace Have had the motivation to take up new business challenges and projects Have attained goals working with people of different cultural backgrounds Have positively engaged in overseas businesses Have a broad perspective of the world Have presented material in multiple languages Have developed new perspectives and ideas based on previous studies and research

World-class research U

Research U

Comprehensive U

73.2%

71.8%

70.5%

55.7%

49.1%

61.9%

67.6%

65.5%

67.6%

66.1%

65.5%

71.2%

70.8%

72.7%

68.3%

68.2%

59.1%

70.5%

65.8%

59.1%

66.9%

62.5%

56.4%

61.9%

60.4%

47.3%

63.3%

46.7% 59.8% 62.5%

36.4% 46.4% 55.5%

46.8% 57.6% 68.3%

85.1%

83.6%

81.3%

77.7%

76.4%

81.3%

80.4%

77.3%

73.4%

74.7%

75.5%

76.3%

63.7% 82.7% 50.6% 76.5%

57.3% 82.7% 47.3% 77.3%

62.6% 81.3% 54.7% 75.5% (continued)

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Table 9.5 (continued)

Have been open to perspectives related to new fields and areas Have been innovative in using perspectives from new fields and areas Have overcome differences in opinions or positions independently Have thought, judged, and acted to the best of your ability based on principles Have found that your special knowledge within your own area of study (major field) was useful in your career Have been able to apply your special knowledge within your own area of study (major field) at the workplace Have found that knowledge of the humanities was useful for the job Have approached different cultures with an open mindset Have used languages other than your mother tongue in the workplace

World-class research U

Research U

Comprehensive U

81.0%

81.8%

78.4%

79.5%

79.1%

80.6%

81.8%

85.5%

80.6%

85.4%

85.5%

84.2%

82.4%

85.5%

79.9%

84.8%

86.4%

78.4%

76.8%

78.2%

71.9%

77.4%

78.2%

76.3%

50.3%

50.0%

51.8%

academic programs and curricula have commonalities and achievement goals within United States academic programs. Thus, graduates of STEM programs have engaged in common learning experiences and gained similar global competencies. By comparison, the achievement of global competences and learning experiences of Japanese STEM graduates do differ on the basis of the level of university rankings. Further, US STEM graduates recognize that abilities and skills acquired in university and graduate programs are actively related to the current global competences required in STEM job settings. Gender differences with respect to abilities and skills acquired in university and graduate programs are not significant in these data. Both male and female graduates tend to have similar experiences and gain comparable achievements.

9  HOW DOES US STEM HIGHER EDUCATION CULTIVATE GLOBAL… 

3.60 3.36 3.33

3.20

3.44

3.43

3.34 3.32 3.28

3.32

3.41 3.27

3.34 3.25

3.38 3.27

3.28 3.17

3.33

3.35

3.24

3.23

3.24 3.22

3.10 3.06

2.80 2.65 2.62

3.32 3.27

3.26 3.25

3.39

3.37

3.31 3.24 3.28

3.28

3.36 3.32

3.18 3.15

121

3.24 3.20

2.70 2.65

2.40

ch

pr oa

Ca n

Ca n

ap

Ca n

th riv e

in

Cu r

di ffe re nt cu w ltu di or io f ra fe kw us le re ith ab nt nv Ca ou iro cu n pe Ca be l tf nm t o ur n pl fri or en at es e e ei ta nd of ts gn w in ith di pe co go ffe o an un als pl re M t e o rie nt ot w pe of Ca iva or s c n ul di n kin m t tu ffe po in g w ed t ra re sit ds lb o nt Ca ith et ive ch ac c n all ly ul pe kg co tu en en ro op m ra un ge ga le m lb ge ds un of th ac d e ica di kg in ne f te f r er m ou w w a e nd a Ha tte nt ith nd s ve c r pe sc ul un an tu op on kn ra in le ce ow lb te of rn n a r e i c di ng Ca st kg ffe Ha n in ro fo re de ve un re Ed nt ve ign ab ds uc cu lo at ro co p ltu io a u ne d n ra nt w pe fo l rie ba rS pe Ca rs s c p u rs n kg ec sta pe pr ro tiv in es ct un e a ive en ds on t m ble sa Op th De nd at en e Ca ve er w id to lo n or ial ea pm in ld pe in sb no rp en m as va Ca e tt u ed ct te lti n op ive pl th us o ics n e sr in i n l p an k, gp el re Ca at ju gu Ha vio er n ed dg ag sp ve us ov e to es ec sp er an st tiv ne co ud ec d es w m ac ial i Ca es e fie tt fro n kn an d o ld ap iff m ow d. th sa e pl n .. re le e ew nd ys dg be nc pe ar fie es e st Ha cia ea re of ld in ve lat s sa lk y o ou ed pi kn no nd n r ow w to io ab ar le ns le yo ea lilt dg dg or ur s yb e Ha e po fro ar of ve as ea sit m ed th kn i o y o e ow on fe ou ns hu x ra le pr pe m dg in re an rti cip e ao iti se of le es fe (y th s (p xp ou Ca e hi e so rm n rti lo cia us s s aj o e e ls or ph (y lan cie ... ou y, gu nc hi rm sto ag es aj es ry (p or , li ol ot ... iti te he cs ra rt ,p tu ha re ol n , i c ... yo ys ur tu m di ot es he ,.. . rt on gu e

2.00

Present

Contribution

Fig. 9.4  Scores of acquisitions of skills and abilities related to global competences and assessment of educational contribution for acquisition

Results What then is the relationship between skills and abilities related to the global competences acquired through higher education programs and work experiences related to global competences and activities? What are the determinant factors? We engaged in an analysis that allowed for the calculation of the total points gained by work experiences related to global competences and classified as global work experiences. Working from the correlations among variables, determinant predictors for global work experiences were then investigated through a multiple regression analysis. Many independent variables such as age, gender, university classification, income, and experiences in school days were added in the model. When we interpret the result of multiple regression analysis (Table 9.6), regarding attribute variables, gender is effective for predicting elements of the total global work experience. As a group males have more global work experiences than females and also accumulate these experiences at the workplace. Higher annual salaries, and in terms of disposition, are more positively associated with more global work experiences for STEM professionals. These findings support the common presumption that global

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Table 9.6  Factors predicting global work experience: multiple regression analysis Category Outcome: total global work experience

Total score of acquired skills and abilities Participated in an internship program in a foreign country Participated in a training program in a foreign country Took courses on human rights, race, and ethnicity Annual income Underwent training or participated in an internship program in a developing country Participated in volunteer activities in a foreign country Gender Fixed R square Adjusted R square

β

p

0.475 0.154 0.145 0.125 0.1 0.089

0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.003 0.008

0.085 −0.08 58.62 0.406 0.397

0.013 0.017

Bold figures indicate statistical significance at the 5% level. Bold italic indicates statistical significance at the 1% level *

companies can provide higher salaries for their employees. The total score for acquired skills and abilities (0.475 of β is highest among other β of Table  9.6) related to global competences is a determinant variable for dependent variable, namely the total global work experience. The analysis also, importantly, reveals a positive association between global competences acquired through university and graduate programs and meaningful global work experiences after graduation. The higher the score of global competences acquired in university and graduate programs by respondents, the more they tend to work for global companies and enjoy opportunities for extended global work experiences. Importantly, their global experiences in university and graduate school are positive predictors of total global work experiences. It is assumed that those experiences are strongly related with their global experiences during their university tenure. Those graduates who had more opportunities associated with global experiences in their university days give evidence of overall greater global work experiences.

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Discussion and Conclusion The result of this empirical study indicates how US universities and graduate schools in STEM fields provide global experiences for their students regardless of the level of institution and how such experiences are correlated with the current global competences of working professionals in STEM fields. It is recognized that STEM higher education is highly correlated with innovation and new jobs in the twenty-first century which makes them an attractive field of study. As previous studies indicate, interdisciplinary general education and study abroad experiences can increase the global competences of STEM students, who are extremely busy obtaining disciplinary knowledge through their curriculums. In the transition to a knowledge-based society, expectations for STEM fields are high for accelerating innovation, given the rapid speed of technological innovation and that AI will transform our social structure and occupations itself. At the same time, the development of interdisciplinary programs between STEM, arts, humanity, and social sciences is essential. In the United States, STEM-related research and curriculum-oriented policies have been promoted, and the number of students choosing this as their field of study is also increasing. However, as the results show, the 30s and 40s age groups have already experienced learning activities related to global competences in their universities and graduate school endeavors. This means that university and graduate programs in the United States already provided the curriculum and co-curricular activities related to GC for STEM students 15–20 years ago. Also, it is impressive that there are almost no differences in university classifications in the provision of curriculum and other experiences cultivating global competences. Although this chapter does not include comparable results for Japanese universities, there are clear statistical differences in scores for acquired skills and abilities related to global competences and the contribution of university and graduate education for cultivating them. Japanese world-class universities have almost without fail engaged in significant university reforms to achieve such status. As a component of this process, they have gained the capacity to provide effective global experiences for STEM students. On the other hand, lesser status universities and graduate schools affiliated with non-STEM categories to significant degrees have not practiced kinds of reforms that provide capacities and experiences comparable to global universities. It has been pointed out that the typical science and technology curriculum is systematic and highly structured, leaving little time for STEM students to

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experience study abroad programs. However, in what can be perceived as the “deviant case,” compared with other national university systems, across all higher education, the United States for over two decades has provided experiences and reformed curricula to enable STEM students to acquire a deeper understanding of the culture and language of their host countries in order for overcoming cultural barriers and making collaboration possible. From these data, we can conclude that in the United States, irrespective of differences in income and degree acquisition by university classification, it can be seen that the contents of education at universities and graduate schools provide some common learning experiences regardless of university level, and this is reflected in the participants’ subsequent achievements. In Japan, by contrast, the usefulness of specialized knowledge is high, but the current situation does not reflect a similar level of GC experiences and acquisition. Most striking in this regard perhaps are differences between university classifications, especially in relation to the acquisition of GC. Although this result derived from our study of the responses of generations in their 30s and 40s, this finding can also be interpreted to suggest that the functional differentiations related to globalization prevalent with STEM fields higher education has already reached an advanced stage.

References ABET. (1996). Engineering change: A study of the impact of EC2000. ABET Inc. Becker, S. (2006). Globalization, curricula reform and the consequences for engineers working in an international company. European Journal of Engineering Education, 31(3), 261–272. Chipperfield, S., Kulturel-Konak, S., & Konak, A. (2015). Assessing students’ global awareness. In Integrated STEM Education Conference. IEEE. Dawney, G. L., Lucena, J. C., Moskal, B. M., Parkihurst, R., Bigley, T., Hays, C., Jesiek, B. K., Kelly, L., Miller, J., Ruff, S., Lehr, J. L., & Bichols-Belo, A. (2006). The globally competent engineer: Working effectively with people who define problems differently. Journal of Engineering Education, 2006, 107–122. Hawkins, J.  N. (2007). The intractable dominant educational paradigm. In P.  D. Hershock, M.  Mason, & J.  N. Hawkins (Eds.), Changing education: Leadership, innovation and development in a globalizing Asia Pacific (pp.  137–162). Dordrecht, Springer and Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong Kong. Jacob, W.  J. (2015). Interdisciplinary trends in higher education. Palgrave Communications, 1(1), 1–5.

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Murray, P., & Horn, R. (2012). A global curriculum and global working environment. In International conference on innovation, practice and research in engineering education. EE2012. Oda, S., Yamazaki, A., & Inoue, M. (2018). Review of previous research and Japan-US comparative study of global competency in engineering. Journal of the Japan Association for Global Competency Education, 6(1), 11–22. Strelner, S.  C., Cunningham, S., Huang, S., Levonisova, S., Matherty, C.., Besterfield-Sacre, M. E., Shuman, L. J., & Ragusa, G. (2014). Exploring engineering education in broader context: a framework of engineering global preparedness. In 121st ASEEE annual conference & exposition, Indianapolis, USA. Vance, K., Kulturel-Konak, S., & Konak, A. (2014). Assessing teamwork skills and knowledge. In Integrated STEM education conference, 2014 IEEE. Yamada, A. (2018). Developing global competences through interdisciplinary studies: Why collaboration is important between STEM and non-STEM students. In J. N. Hawkins, A. Yamada, R. Yamada, & W. J. Jacob (Eds.), New directions of STEM research and learning in the world ranking movement: A comparative perspective (pp. 79–96). Palgrave Macmillan.

URL https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2019/ world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/ stats. Accessed on 5/29/2021. https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/asian-university-­ rankings/2019. Accessed on 5/29/2021. https://www.aacu.org/leap. Accessed on 5/29/2021.

CHAPTER 10

Who Gets a Global Competency?: The Case of University in Japan Takuya Kimura

Introduction Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) defined global competence in 2018 as follows: “Global competency is the capacity to examine local, global and intercultural issues, to understand and appreciate the perspectives and worldviews of others, to engage in open, appropriate and effective interactions with the people from different cultures for collective wellbeing and sustainable development”. So, what exactly is global competence in the Japanese context? What is it and of what relevance? In Japan, the internationalization of education began in 1987, when assistant language teachers were recruited for the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET), bringing many foreign people to Japan. From 2000, many leading universities in Japan established schools of international liberal arts: for example, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (2000),

T. Kimura (*) Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Yamada et al. (eds.), Transformation of Higher Education in the Age of Society 5.0, International and Development Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7_10

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Akita International University (2004), Waseda University (2004), Doshisha University (2011), Kyushu University (2018), and Ritsumeikan University (2019) to cite perhaps the best known. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) conducts a global study project in many universities in Japan, so many universities have English-taught courses. Moreover, from 2020, English education has begun at primary schools. There are several research papers on the internationalization of universities in Japan. Umakoshi (1997) argued that since the 1980s, universities in Japan have been developing curricula, including international undergraduate programs for Japanese students and several graduate schools focused on international development. His paper also mentioned programs on Japanese language and culture, mainly for Junior Year Abroad students from the United States, and plans to facilitate the career paths of foreign researchers who are seeking to complete their doctoral studies in Japan. It also pointed out that inter-university agreements include projects aimed at training scientists and other professionals from developing countries in Japanese institutions. Horie (2002) pointed out the contradictions in the internationalization of higher education in Japan during the 1990s. In other words, while restricting access to higher education to those who come from ethnic schools in Japan, universities in Japan provide generous support to foreign students who come from abroad, but this is a contrasting attitude. Therefore, in order to bridge this discrepancy, the study emphasized that the meaning of internationalization is based on human rights and equal opportunities for all and that the keywords “internationalization”, “improving the quality of university education”, and “opening up to students” are to ensure human rights and equal opportunities. In 2015, Yonezawa and Shimmi pointed out that the internationalization of higher education in a country like Japan in non-English speaking universities means a change in the governance of universities. As pointed out by Brandenburg and de Wit (2011) with “the end of internationalization”, as universities become more internationalized and popularized, their value is diminishing. The internationalization of higher education is no longer only for a few elites. It will be necessary to reconsider the changes that will occur when internationalization becomes a central issue in higher education and when it becomes more popular rather than just for a few.

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Therefore, the research question of this chapter is, why do we need global competency in Japan? Some parents are saying that if their children would learn English at an early age, then their children could get good job in the future. It is true for some cases, and often a good job means high salary. So early English education may constitute social and cultural capital. Perhaps gaining global competencies is a new reproduction strategy. This study sought to examine this question by examining available evidence. It focuses on three topics: “Does global experience connect to a good job or high salary in Japan?”, “Who gets a global competency in Japan?” and “What is a global competency in the context in Japan?”.

Materials and Methods This study is based on a global competency survey1,2 in STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics—areas conducted in January 2019. There were 721 respondents in the United States, 2021 in China, and 1030 in Japan. This was followed by a global competency survey in humanities and social science in November 2019 with 721 respondents in the United States, 2021 in China, and 1030 in Japan. The respondents were primarily aged 30s–40s who graduated from universities and colleges and got jobs and acquired subsequent work experience. This sample provides an opportunity to examine the effects of university and college experiences, which include acquisition of global competencies, experience abroad, and university education.

1  Data have been drawn from a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI research project (Grant Number 17H01986) focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) and Global education in higher education. 2  The surveys were conducted online from January 2019 to November 2019. Participants were recruited from an online panel database provided by a Japanese Internet research company, Macromill, Inc. We used the Internet research service provided by this company to conduct a cross-sectional survey of members in Japan, China, and the United States—at the time of the survey amounting to about 3 million members. An equal number of sex and age-­ matched participants were assigned to the survey. First, participants were informed about the research aims and the intended use of survey data and were guaranteed anonymity if they decided to participate. Individuals who agreed to the stated procedures and conditions were included in the current study. After they provided their consent, participants answered demographic questions on the Internet. After completing the questionnaire, each participant received approximately 50 US cents for the entire questionnaire as a pay for their participation by Macromill, Inc. system.

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In the subject countries—Japan, China, and the United States—both men and women in their 30s–40s were surveyed. The ratio of males to females was structured to approximate gender distribution in the particular academic subject with the result that the STEM survey had 80% males and 20% females, and the Humanities and Social Sciences survey had 50% males and 50% females. This survey focuses on Japan data. Initially, data for 103 of the 2060 surveys were initially excluded because respondents indicated that they may have been educated outside of Japan. Data Distribution The distribution of the data indicates that with respect to gender 1279 (65.4%) were male and 678 (34.6%) were female, while for age and consequent generation, 981 (50.1%) were in their 30s and 976 (49.9%) in their 40s. With respect to degrees held, 1312 (67.0%) had an undergraduate degree, 563 (28.8%) had a master’s degree, and 80 (4.1%) had a doctorate (PhD). Regarding the university ranking in Asia of the university providing their degree (s), 368 (18.8%) graduated from universities with the highest QS ranking of 1 to 50, 410 (21.0%) graduated from universities with the higher QS ranking of 51 to 250, and 251 to 500 graduated from universities with the high QS ranking of 484 (24.7%), and the remainder from lower ranked institutions 695 (35.5%). Next, in terms of academic disciplines, 823 (42.1%) were in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and 1134 (57.9%) were in STEM fields. Regarding overseas experience at the primary and secondary education levels, 324 (16.6%) had such experience, and 1633 (83.4%) did not. As for overseas experience at the university level, 382 (19.5%) had this background, and 1575 (80.5%) had no such experience. As for overseas experience at the graduate level, 197 (10.1%) indicated that had such experience and 1760 (89.9%) did not. Table 10.1 indicates the classification by overseas experience, which is the focus of this study and reveals that 1595 (81.5%) had no overseas experience at all. A total of 196 (10.0%) had overseas experience during their primary and secondary education, but not after entering university; 38 (1.9%) had no overseas experience at the primary or secondary level, but did have overseas experience after entering university; and 128 (6.5%) had overseas experience during their primary and secondary education and after entering university.

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Table 10.1  Overseas experiences of respondents Oversea experience classification No experience abroad

Frequency 1595 % 81.5%

Experience abroad at primary and secondary school No experience after postsecondary education

No experience abroad at primary and secondary school Experience after post-­secondary education

Experience abroad at primary and secondary school Experience after post-­secondary education

Total

196 10.0%

38 1.9%

128 6.5%

1957 100.0%

Factor Analysis A factor analysis was conducted to extract factors of global experience to be used in subsequent analyses. Table 10.2 indicates the experiences in college and graduate school, in response to the question: “How often did you do the following as a student in college, university or graduate school?” from which factors were extracted—(1) global experience and positive engagement of university life, (2) breadth of human-reaching and discipline, and (3) submission of assignments. Table 10.3 asked about the acquired knowledge, abilities, or attitudes, responding to request: “Please indicate the degree to which you think you have the acquired knowledge, ability or attitude described below”. Three factors were extracted: (1) global competency, (2) cross-disciplinary innovation ability, and (3) language ability. The questions referenced in Table 10.4 asked about the current work experience, and “How often have you experienced the following in your work?” Two factors were extracted: (1) global experience on the job and (2) innovation and global capacity on the job. Statistical Analysis The first step was to conduct a correlational analysis of the (global) experience in university or jobs and current income. Then, a one-factor analysis of variance was conducted on the (global) experience in university or jobs

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Table 10.2  Frequency of varied experiences in university. (“How often did you do the following as a student in college/university or graduate school? (Please select one answer for each statement)”) Factor

Conducted research with faculty in a foreign country Participated and presented in an academic conference in a foreign country Tutored an international student Discussed global topics with students of different cultural backgrounds Discussed global topics Led a project to completion Took problem-based learning courses Discussed coursework with classmates Studied with other classmates Participated in an optional study or research group Took interdisciplinary courses Took non-my major courses Submitted course assignments online Used information online for research and homework Took a course with advanced IT equipment and tools Intrinsic value Cumulative explanation rate Inter-factor correlation

Average SD

Communality

1

2

3

.978

−.133

−.071

1.45

.837

.759

.933

−.169

−.008

1.46

.846

.709

.865

−.129

.011

1.47

.845

.645

.804

.186

−.099

1.62

.934

.706

.776 .700 .542

.197 .079 .031

−.107 .074 .319

1.63 1.60 1.67

.917 .903 .914

.747 .633 .630

.036

.797

−.066

2.42

.933

.607

−.220 .229

.688 .591

.039 −.002

2.90 2.19

.893 .971

.371 .557

.117 −.064 .084

.527 .525 −.038

.131 .045 .794

2.39 2.74 2.01

.974 .483 .963 .268 1.085 .676

−.174

.112

.784

2.47

1.096 .584

.379

.014

.423

1.83

1.004 .523

7.263 48.4% 1.000

1.813 60.5% .580 1.000

1.063 67.6% .580 .615 1.000

Factor extraction: Maximum likelihood method Rotation method of factor loading: Promax method Kaiser’s normalizationa The rotation converged after six iterations

a

Factor 1: Global experience and positive engagement, Factor 2: Breadth of human relation and discipline, Factor 3: Submission of assignment

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133

Table 10.3  Perceived acquisition of knowledge, abilities, or attitudes. (“Please indicate the degree to which you think you have acquired the knowledge, abilities, or attitudes described below”) Factor

Can work with people of different cultural backgrounds Can approach different cultures with an open mindset Curious about foreign countries Can befriend people of different cultural backgrounds Can positively engage in matters concerning foreign countries Can communicate with people of different cultural backgrounds Can attain goals working with people of different cultural backgrounds Have a broad perspective on the world Motivated to challenge the new and unknown Can thrive in different cultural environments Can apply special knowledge from your area of expertise (your major field) Have special knowledge related to your area of expertise (your major field) Can think, judge, and act to the best of your ability based on principles Can innovate using perspectives from new fields and areas Can overcome differences in opinions or positions

Average SD

Communality

1

2

3

.934

.014

−.121

2.59

.899

.753

.928

.047

−.187

2.67

.884

.719

.821

−.081

.065

2.63

.950

.652

.819

−.020

.074

2.44

.927

.731

.796

−.054

.163

2.41

.944

.764

.732

−.017

.200

2.42

.931

.752

.725

.121

.068

2.42

.900

.750

.693

.128

.081

2.46

.923

.724

.634

.321

−.146

2.61

.901

.645

.516

−.070

.439

2.29

.913

.677

−.157

.867

.071

2.46

.903

.641

−.086

.847

−.047

2.58

.911

.574

.250

.715

−.185

2.62

.882

.647

.103

.703

.106

2.36

.893

.712

.120

.681

.078

2.40

.876

.684 (continued)

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T. KIMURA

Table 10.3 (continued) Factor

Can develop new perspectives and ideas based on previous studies and research Open to perspectives related to new fields and areas Have an interest in education for sustainable development topics Can present material in multiple languages Can use languages other than your mother tongue Intrinsic value Cumulative explanation rate Inter-factor correlation

Average SD

Communality

1

2

3

−.034

.668

.266

2.27

.887

.694

.270

.663

−.060

2.52

.892

.731

.277

.335

.229

2.24

.895

.561

−.104

.061

.911

1.82

.944

.776

.071

−.019

.817

1.96

.945

.730

12.239 1.442 61.2% 68.4% 1.000 .744 1.000

1.142 74.1% .674 .623 1.000

Factor extraction: Maximum likelihood method Rotation method of factor loading: Promax method Kaiser’s normalizationa a

The rotation converged after six iterations

Factor 1: Global competency, Factor 2: Cross-disciplinary innovation ability, Factor 3: Language ability

and current income, using the four student categories divided by overseas experience as independent variables. Through these analyses, we then clarified whether international experience has been associated with good jobs. Next, we conducted a hierarchical multiple regression analysis with global competency as the dependent variable. Model 1 contains only the attribute variables. Model 2 combines the attribute variables and overseas experience. Model 3 combines attribute variables, overseas experience, and university experience. Through these analyses, this study lends clarity to who has acquired global competencies. Finally, a hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted with the dependent variables being cross-disciplinary innovation ability. Through this analysis, this study has sought to understand what global competency is in the context of Japan.

10  WHO GETS A GLOBAL COMPETENCY?: THE CASE OF UNIVERSITY IN JAPAN 

135

Table 10.4  Work experiences. (“How often have you experienced the following in your work?” Please select one answer for each item) Factor

Have worked in an environment where the majority of people were from different cultural backgrounds Have negotiated salaries and working conditions when working in a global company Have learned in an environment where the majority of people were from different cultural backgrounds Have worked for a boss of a different cultural background Have accurately explained to a boss how cross-cultural factors caused work plans to be delayed Have understood the local needs of foreign countries and incorporated them into a work plan Have managed people of different cultural backgrounds as a workplace leader Have moved to a foreign country for work Have deliberated with people of different cultural backgrounds using technical terms Have worked at a global company consisting of diverse races, ethnicities, and nationalities Have presented material in multiple languages Have positively engaged in overseas businesses Have attained goals working with people of different cultural backgrounds Have taken a business trip to a foreign country

Average SD

Communality

1

2

.945

−.089

1.78

.980

.781

.910

−.135

1.67

.927

.672

.907

−.061

1.78

.970

.747

.904

−.101

1.71

.938

.697

.903

−.030

1.72

.932

.778

.890

−.016

1.74

.925

.772

.884

−.077

1.71

.935

.690

.872

−.118

1.60

.928

.628

.808

.084

1.83

.955

.756

.778

.016

1.93

1.035 .624

.761

.104

1.71

.942

.702

.732

.159

1.80

.972

.728

.676

.245

1.89

.985

.754

.651

.123

1.91

1.052 .554 (continued)

136 

T. KIMURA

Table 10.4 (continued) Factor

Have used languages other than your mother tongue in the workplace Have interacted with people of different cultural backgrounds outside the workplace Have always observed trends and developments in overseas markets Have thought, judged, and acted to the best of your ability based on principles Have been open to perspectives related to new fields and areas Have found that your special knowledge within your own area of study (major field) was useful in your career Have been able to apply your special knowledge within your own area of study (major field) at the workplace Have overcome differences in opinions or positions independently Have been innovative in using perspectives from new fields and areas Have developed new perspectives and ideas based on previous studies and research Have had the motivation to take up new business challenges and projects Have a broad perspective of the world Have approached different cultures with an open mindset Intrinsic value Cumulative explanation rate Inter-factor correlation

Average SD

Communality

1

2

.639

.212

1.92

1.008 .648

.608

.283

1.95

.998

.695

.551

.325

1.88

.993

.664

−.203

.941

2.37

1.005 .654

−.023

.898

2.18

.990

−.143

.824

2.37

1.028 .532

−.101

.815

2.29

1.024 .557

.040

.807

2.16

.968

.697

.102

.805

2.07

.979

.775

.173

.706

2.01

.976

.701

.197

.667

2.11

1.010 .671

.416 .367

.469 .456

1.99 2.17

1.008 .672 1.009 .581

.779

16.767 2.398 62.1% 71.0% 1.000 .713 1.000

Factor extraction: Maximum likelihood method Rotation method of factor loading: Promax method Kaiser’s normalizationa a

The rotation converged after six iterations

Factor 1: Global experience on the job, Factor 2: Innovation and global capacity on the job

137

10  WHO GETS A GLOBAL COMPETENCY?: THE CASE OF UNIVERSITY IN JAPAN 

Results Does Global Experience Connect Good Jobs? Despite the limitations of this data, we sought to confirm whether global experience is associated with getting a good job in Japan. Looking at Table 10.5, the correlation coefficients for current income (JY) are as follows: global competency (.021), cross-disciplinary innovation ability (.032), global experience on the job (.061), and innovation and global capacity on the job (.047), all of which are relatively low. We can conclude that for Japanese people in their 30s and 40s, current income is not linked to global competency and international experience on the job. Furthermore, this study used a one-way ANOVA to see if there is a difference in global competency, cross-disciplinary innovation ability, global experience on the job, innovation and global capacity on the job and current income (JY) with study abroad experience. Table  10.1 shows that 81.5% of the people in their 30s and 40s in this data have no study abroad experience at all (Group 1). Some go abroad for the first time at university (1.9%, Group 3), some have overseas experience at the school stage before university but not at university (10.0%, Group 2), and some have overseas experience both at the school stage before university and at university (6.5%, Group 4). One-factor analysis of variance was conducted using the categories in Table  10.1 as independent variables and global competency, cross-­ disciplinary innovation ability, global experience on the job, innovation and global capacity on the job, and current income (JY) as dependent Table 10.5  Correlation matrix between global competency, global work experience, and current income (N = 1957) Correlation coefficient 1. Global competency 2. Cross-disciplinary innovation ability 3. Global experience on the job 4. Innovation and global capacity on the job 5. Current income(JY) *: p < .10, **: p < .05, ***: p < .01

1 1.000

2 .788** 1.000

3 .595** .562** 1.000

4 .650** .750** .740** 1.000

5 .021 .032 .061** .047* 1.000

138 

T. KIMURA

variables (Table 10.6). A difference exists in global competency between Group 1 and the other groups (F = 102.709, p < .01, η2 = .130). For cross-­ disciplinary innovation ability, a difference exists between Group 1 and the others, and between Group 2 and 4 (F = 80.269, p < .01, η2 = .105). Global experience on the job showed a difference between all groups (F = 233.960, p < .01, η2 = .255). For innovation and global capacity on the job, a difference exists between groups 1 and 2, and between groups 2 and 3 and 4 (F = 101.081, p < .01, η2 = .129), There was no difference in current income (JY) (F = .650, n.s., η = .001). With the exception of current income (JY), the effect size of η2 is sufficiently large that we can trust the results of this analysis of variance, even considering the large and small sample size. In Japan, we can observe a clear effect of overseas experience on global competency, cross-disciplinary innovation, global capacity on the job, and innovation and global capacity on the job, but it is not linked to current income (JY). Whether this is because overseas experience is not emphasized in the Japanese labor market in terms of promotion or salary, or because the labor productivity of those without overseas experience is high cannot be determined from these data alone, but it is an interesting and contradictory result considering the emphasis on university’s internationalization in Japan.

Who Gets a Global Competency? We examined “who acquired the global competency” across our sample. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted with global competency as the dependent variable (Table  10.7). In Model 1, only Personal attribute variables were used, in Model 2, Personal attribute variables and overseas experience were used, and in Model 3, Personal attribute variables, overseas experience, and university experience were used. Table 10.7 indicates that the adjusted R-squared values as the coefficients of determination are .044 for Model 1, .176 for Model 2, and .357 for Model 3, indicating that the fit of the models increases. Looking at the β coefficients, the oversea experience at university is high (.176), and the university experience, for example, global experience and positively engagement, is high (.105), a result that is statistically significant at the 1% level. Moreover, breadth of human relation and discipline is also high (.413). In addition to the obvious result that those who had overseas experiences in university and students who were actively involved in global

*: p < .10, **: p < .05, ***: p < .01

5. Innovation and global capacity on the job 6. Current income (JY)

−.229 (.841) −.165 (.922) 5,964,409 (20,695,266)

.603 (.815) .427 (.891) .420 (1.011) .334 (1.00) 5,487,574 (7,822,742)

−.180 (.951) −.155 (.934)

1. Global competency

2. Cross-disciplinary 3. Innovation ability 4. Global experience on the job

Group 2 (N = 196)

Group 1 (N = 1595)

Average value (SD) .723 (.715) .600 (.762) .762 (1.02) .749 (.904) 7,008,899 (6,683,543)

Group 3 (N = 38) .778 (.697) .792 (.780) 1.469 (.688) .962 (.669) 7,912,192 (11,851,610)

Group 4 (N = 128)

102.709*** η2 = .130 80.269*** η2 = .105 233.960*** η2 = .255 101.081*** η2 = .129 .650 η2 = .001

F value (Effect Size)

Table 10.6  One factor ANOVA about global competency, global work experience, and current income

--

1 < 2 < 3,4

1 < 2,3,4 2