Abstract
Cross-cultural experiences can offer unique opportunities to examine our assumptions that underlie our worldviews. This paper discusses a cross-cultural action research program in which US and Japanese university students mutually presented and discussed their action research projects in Tokyo. Planning and organizing the program involved a series of dialogues with the Japanese partner that had led to mutual agreement to frame the cross-cultural exchange as ba, a Japanese cultural concept that implies intersubjective and open communicative arena to co-develop a new understanding. This paper discusses what the US students and faculty group experienced and learned in the cross-cultural program. Through the program, the students encountered different styles of communicating meanings and epistemology and made sense of new ways of viewing the world. During the program, the US faculty group experienced an unanticipated disconnect with the Japanese partner about restructuring the discussion format to elicit more participations of the Japanese students, but it was eventually overcome though a series of reflective dialogues regarding the nature of silece and voicing one’s opinions. This paper discusses how encountering different modes of communications and social dynamics in cross-cultural dialogues can help us become aware of various assumptions that underlie our action research endeavers.
Cultural assumptions in action research
Action researchers can encounter highly complex situations in which discrepancies in values and perspectives can easily stagnate practice improvement efforts (Smith, Bratini, Chambers, Jensen, & Romero, 2010; Tulinius & Hølge-Hazelton, 2011). Within repeated cycles of practice improvement, many assumptions can be in play, including the formulation of initial questions, the design of specific methods, and the analysis of the obtained data and experiences in the form of reflective inquiries. In each step of this process, implicitly employed assumptions held by action researchers can benefit or limit the practice improvement efforts as double-edged swords (Inoue, 2012). On the one hand, some of the assumptions developed in the cultural context could function to scaffold action researchers to reach a higher level of understanding of practice situated in the cultural context (Inoue, 2010). On the other hand, some assumptions about our practice may create discrepancies in views and perspectives with others who do not share the same assumptions. This can bring various forms of ‘gridlock’ in which attempts to improve professional practices stagnate because of firm political stances, personal attitudes, and assumptions people have regarding viewing and interpreting contextual needs and what it means to be good professionals in the context. A similar problem can be observed in the educational research community characterized by proliferations of paradigms that lead to confrontations among researchers and scholars (Donmoyer, 1996). Once such gridlocks occur, the situation may lead to breakdowns in the development of shared understandings regarding what needs to be done and how action researchers should develop within a given social, political, economic, and/or professional domain (Whitehead & NcNiff, 2006). As action researchers, we can easily encounter and get stuck in such gridlocks in any given situation.
How can we resolve such gridlocks? What kinds of transformations do we need to go through to overcome such conflicts and differences in epistemology? This project assumes that collaborating with action researchers outside our own culture and pursuing cross-cultural dialogues could lead to gaining epistemological flexibility and becoming better prepared for overcoming a variety of problems of practice in a local context. With this in mind, we designed and conducted a cross-cultural action research (AR) exchange program with a Japanese partner in Tokyo.
Contextual background
This project started when a group of US faculty members at a higher education institution in California (including the author) met a Japanese faculty group teaching AR at an international AR conference. Both faculty groups had a series of conversations about what hold the keys for successful AR in each cultural context, and agreed that there is a large potential for learning from each other in cross-cultural collaborations. In the following year, the US faculty group was invited to the Japanese university’s AR symposium, and were impressed with the quality of the AR projects that the Japanese faculty group was involved in.
This “first contact” stage triggered our interest in building a long-term relationship with the Japanese partner for further cultural exchanges. As the dialogue continued, an idea of hosting a cross-cultural exchange of AR projects emerged. Through our continued dialogues, both sides agreed to plan and co-host a cross-cultural AR program in Tokyo in which the US and Japanese students present and discuss their AR projects. We continued communicating with the Japanese partner to develop a more specific framework for the cross-cultural AR program.
In one of the planning meetings, the Japanese partner proposed to use the concept of “ba ( Ba versus non-Ba.
)” as a framework to conceptualize the cross-cultural program. “Ba” is a Japanese cultural concept whose direct translation is “place”, but when the term is used in a professional or educational context, it implies an organic social field or arena, more broadly a setting to co-develop a new understanding of complex matters through intersubjective exchanges of personal meanings and perceptions (Inoue, in press). It is social space characterized by the lack of pre-determined directions in which participants freely discuss their perceptions with a purpose of co-developing a new understanding of the complex matter. Nonaka and his colleagues introduced the concept of ba to the West as a key arena of knowledge creation in Japanese organizations (Nonaka & Toyama, 2003, 2005; Nonaka & Konno, 1998; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). In Japanese organizations, a meeting is often announced to be held as ba, and then the participants would understand that they are expected to freely exchange ideas and engage in intersubjective and open exchanges of meanings with an intention to co-develop a new understanding or making a shared decision on a complex matter. This mode of communication makes a stark contract to individualistic and confrontational dialogues on the cogency (or winner) of the claims by individuals (see Figure 1).
The US faculty group agreed to conceptualize the cross-cultural AR program as an attempt to create ba between Japanese and US students, assuming that it would bring us rich realizations on the ways to discuss various aspects of AR. Based on the dialogues with the Japanese partner, we understood that creating ba in the AR exchange program meant that (1) we create various informal opportunities for the students to personally get to know each other so that it becomes easy for them to freely engage in intersubjective exchanges of perspectives and meanings, (2) we do not follow pre-determined, linear procedure to discuss AR projects so that a new understanding about AR can organically emerge in the discussions, and (3) minimum facilitation is done to promote organic co-development of a new understanding about AR. Though the use of this concept in AR was new to us, we roughly grasped the concept that seemed similar to the concepts we were familiar with such as the community of practice (Wenger, 1999) as opposed to liner and individualistic form of learning in a spectrum. At that point, we assumed that working with the partner and learning about this Japanese concept could bring a rich dimension into our cross-cultural endeavor.
Action planning
Since then, the US faculty group exchanged numerous emails with the Japanese partner to develop concrete plans, schedules, and logistics for the cross-cultural exchange program. During the process, we decided that the program would take place in a Japanese university where the Japanese partner was teaching. We agreed that in the program an equal number of AR presentations should be given by the US and Japanese students followed by open discussions on the presented projects. We also decided to have the discussion without pre-determined procedures so that the participants can freely co-construct a shared understanding. To support this process—or for ba to emerge—we planned to include a variety of informal social events such as welcoming party and going out for lunch in small groups so that the students get to know each other and develop informal relationships. We also agreed that due to the language barrier, the program would be conducted in English, with the bilingual US faculty providing simultaneous translations. (One of the US faculty group was originally from Japan and has lived in the US more than 20 years. Since the bilingual US faculty is not technically “American,” we used “US” faculty group rather than “American” faculty group in this paper. The same description was used for the “US” students many of whom would identify their cultural and ethnic backgrounds as Mexican, Latino, Asian, etc. rather than “American”.)
Eventually, a total of 30 US graduate students participated in the program. The US students consisted of master’s students in education (9 students) and school counseling (20 students), and a doctoral student in leadership studies. The group was diverse in age, ethnic background, and gender. The faculty group consisted of the three faculty members who served as the instructors for the three graduate courses that these students took. Each of the global study courses included a 7-day travel portion that involved a tour of Tokyo, visiting Japanese schools, interacting with Japanese teachers, etc. The AR exchange program that we planned constituted the first 3 days of the 7 day Japan Program. Though the US students were not familiar with the concept of ba in AR, we did not explicitly announce this conceptual framework. Rather, we hoped that both our students and we would intuitively experience ba and gradually grasp the idea through the cross-cultural program.
On the Japanese side, about 25 Japanese undergraduate students majoring in business and management participated as a part of the undergraduate AR seminar that they were required to take in the 3rd or 4th years of their university's program led by one of the Japanese faculty who we were working with. Though the students were in different disciplines, we envisioned that there would be a large potential of learning from each other in cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary dialogues since such differences would help us see how different perspectives and worldviews interact and are overcome in the ba that we sought to create in the program.
Action implementation
In the early summer, we flew to Japan, were welcomed warmly by our Japanese partner, and convened the program that we had planned. The following description recounts what happened in the AR exchange program.
First day
Opening
We declared the opening of the cross-cultural program with the Japanese partner in an informal tone.
Ice-breaking
After the opening, the US students and Japanese students were asked to stand up and mingle together, and each of the US students individually gave a souvenir to a Japanese student. The students embraced this moment of celebration as they began to connect informally and personally in the social arena.
When the first presentation was about to start, all the students were asked to be seated. Interestingly, all the Japanese students chose to sit on the right side of the conference hall, and all the US students sat on the left side separately, with the exception of two US students. We did not suggest or anticipate this physical division that spontaneously emerged in the context.
AR presentations
The presentation session then began. First, four Japanese student groups gave AR project presentations, each of which was followed by whole group discussions about the project. Each presentation was scheduled to be for 20 min, followed by a 20 min free discussion about the presentation. (The topics of the presented projects will be introduced later in this paper.) The discussions were conducted in the physical arrangement usually done at a Japanese university, that is, faculty and guests sat in front and the students sat behind with both facing the presenters. After each presentation, the faculty group and guests were asked to give comments on the presentations first, and then students were asked to speak up and give comments. At that time, many US students spontaneously spoke up and gave their comments, mostly focused on how impressive the Japanese students’ projects were and how relevant the AR topics were to their lives in US, but sometimes including “critical” suggestions about the projects such as addressing the lack of focus, practical implications, and effectiveness of their actions. However, the Japanese students were mostly silent, with occasional participations in the discussions. Both the Japanese and US faculty, their other guests as well as US students gave numerous comments such as practical aspects of the projects, existential roots of the AR questions, and so on. The discussions became highly interactive, but again, with very few Japanese students speaking up in the discussions.
Lunch
For lunch, the US and Japanese students were encouraged to go out to the neighborhood in small groups and have lunch together in local restaurants and nearby fast food locations. This arrangement was planned beforehand by the cross-cultural faculty group in order to help both groups of students get to know each other and feel at ease in engaging cross-cultural dialogues in the program. Most of the students went out to lunch in small cross-cultural groups and came back in good cheer talking enthusiastically about their experiences at lunch. The two faculty groups also had lunch together with other guests in a local restaurant.
AR presentations
One more Japanese student’s AR project presentation and four US AR project presentations were given in the afternoon, with each followed by the discussion of each project. As in the morning session, the discussions became highly interactive and often went over the planned time limits, but again, there was a disparity between the US and Japanese students’ participation levels with the US students speaking up frequently and most of the Japanese students remaining silent.
Welcome party
At the end of the first day presentation/discussion session, the entire group moved to a site for a welcoming party, which took place in the cafeteria at the Japanese university. The cafeteria was nicely set up with Japanese foods and beer. The Japanese and US students mingled with each other and communicated with many laughs, jokes, and patting each other on the back. Both the Japanese and US students were actively talking in this informal event. There was much spontaneous laughter and picture taking with each other during the welcoming party.
Going back to the hotel
When all the events were over, it was very late and the US students were tired for jet lag. The US faculty needed chaperone the jet-lagged students to the hotel by train, and hence there was no time to debrief with the Japanese partner.
US faculty group meeting
After returning to the hotel, the US faculty group had a short meeting and exchanged perspectives on the program. We were generally happy about the success of the first day, especially the informal communications. However, we were concerned with the silence of the Japanese students during the AR sessions. The US faculty group agreed on the need to help the Japanese students speak up more and decided to propose to the Japanese partner that a change be made in the format of discussions on the second day with a different seating arrangement that would elicit more student-centered discussions.
Second day
As soon as we arrived at the conference site, we proposed the change in the program format for facilitating more active exchanges of ideas to the Japanese partner. Though we did not have a chance to discuss this in depth given the busy morning schedule to start the 2nd day program, the Japanese partner agreed to conduct the second day in the way that we proposed. After a brief conversation on this, the opening started without delay.
Opening
Brief opening remarks were given, with us announcing the new program format.
AR presentations
One of the US faculty facilitated the entire session with the bilingual US faculty translating all comments back and forth. In this session, two US students’ AR projects and two Japanese students’ AR projects were first presented back to back without any discussion between the presentations. After the four presentations were done, a discussion about the four presentations was started. Then for the discussion, the US faculty who was facilitating the session asked that the seats be re-arranged into two large circles that involved equally distributed numbers of Japanese and US students in each circle. After the seating arrangement was completed, the facilitator posed a few questions to the two groups in English, which were immediately translated into Japanese for the Japanese students and guests (e.g. “What knowledge and wisdom might be derived from the similarities and differences observed in the presentations of the action research projects by the Japanese and US students?”). Each group then discussed the presentations in relation to the questions that were posed by the US facilitator. During the circle group discussion, the Japanese students spoke up more frequently than the first day and interacted with the US students more actively, though it seemed that they struggled to catch up with the speed of the discussion mainly led by the US students. The circle group discussions continued for about 30 min. After the circle group discussions, a representative from each circle was asked to share a summary of the discussion with the whole group. The presented summaries indicated that the two groups seemed to have captured various similarities and differences in the four AR projects. We then went to the lunchtime.
Lunch
The US and Japanese students went out to the neighborhood and had lunch together as in the first day. The faculty group had lunch with other guests in a local restaurant. During this time, we began to sense a psychological disconnect from the Japanese faculty group due to the change in the discussion structure. Since there was little time for lunch, we needed to go back to the conference site without discussing the source of the disconnect. When we came back from lunch, the student groups also returned from lunch, and we again observed much joy, laughter, and mingling between the Japanese and US students. The social bonding of the students seemed even stronger compared to the first day.
AR presentations
As in the morning session, two US AR project presentations and two Japanese AR presentations were given followed by circle group discussions and a summary presentation from each circle. Again, the session was conducted using the format proposed by the US side in the morning session.
Closing
A closing was facilitated by the faculty group followed by the Japanese and US students taking group pictures together and saying goodbye with a sense of celebration. Again, we needed to return to the hotel by taking trains with almost no time to communicate with the Japanese partner for co-reflection on the second day.
Third day
On the next day after the two day program, the US students spent half a day in the university’s seminar room to discuss their experiences and reflected on how they could improve their projects based on the experience (which will be discussed later). The Japanese students had classes and exams on the day, and therefore, could not attend the session. However, there was a surprise visit by a few Japanese students who came to express how thankful they were for the opportunities to interact with the US students. The US students responded that they were also thankful to them and were impressed with the depth of reflection that the Japanese students exhibited through their AR projects. The US students flew out of Tokyo in the end of the week.
Differences in AR topics
Through out the AR exchange program, there were interesting differences in AR topics that the Japanese and US students pursued. The research topics that the Japanese students presented mainly originated from deeply reflective questions posed in relationship to their everyday lives such as “What does it mean to contribute to society?”, “What does it really mean to engage in job-hunting?”, “What does it mean to create a good atmosphere for everyone?”, and “What does it mean to fall in love with virtual characters?”. In contrast, the research topics of the US AR projects were related to improving professional practices such as “How can we help low achieving high school students develop future career visions?” and “How can elementary students be motivated to participate in class discussions?” It seemed that the Japanese students’ AR projects were originated in personal and existential questions they co-identified in their lives while the US students’ AR projects were characterized by aiming at professionally and pragmatically meaningful goals associated with their chosen professional field. (Though this difference was salient, please note that this difference can reflect not only difference between Japanese and American cultures but also the particular ways the two faculty groups taught AR in each cultural context.)
Post-program reflections
After the program ended, we kept on communicating and exchanging our reflections among ourselves as well as with our Japanese partner. We interacted about the students’ feedback, reflective essays and AR papers submitted after the program, and engaged in self-reflection on what happened in the program. The following section discusses our reflections regarding US students’ learning and our own learning.
US students’ reflections
This cross-cultural program generated rich data through which we could analyze the US students’ learning through (1) comments that the students gave during/after the program, (2) reflective essays written in conjunction with the global study experience, and (3) and the AR papers that they submitted as a part of the global study course after they came back to the US. The analyses involved a number of meetings to seek a chain of evidence for the patterns that emerged in the data and to identify the common threads and themes that captured what the students learned (Miles & Huberman, 1994). The following are the salient themes extracted from the data.
Richness of different epistemology
The US students embraced deep reflections in Japanese students’ AR projects as something that had been missing in their original thinking about their projects. For instance, they learned the importance of embracing their feelings and passions in their projects, that is, starting from synthesizing their deep-seated feeling toward the professional practice as the foundation of their AR projects. Before going to Japan, these students had been guided in their graduate classes to make an effort to promote deep reflection using various literature and frameworks. However, it seemed that their efforts to develop the capacity for reflective practice were bounded by an intrinsic shortcoming in relationship to what it means to engage in reflection. For some of the US students, deep reflection meant thinking about the logistics of past actions, thinking of better action plans, or engaging in some form of trouble-shooting via contemplative practice. Thus, the US students felt at a distinct disadvantage in relationship to understanding a form of reflection that synthesizes deep-seated feelings and existential questions such as what they witnessed in Japan. Therefore, through the cross-cultural AR program, the US students had their foundational understanding of AR shaken by what they heard from the Japanese students regarding their deep reflection on their worldviews and how they ground AR in their deep-seated feelings and existential pursuits for meanings. Out of this cognitive dissidence, the US seemed to have broadened their views of AR. We cannot determine to what extent this owes to difference between Japanese and American cultures or the Japanese faculty group’s academic orientation, but it was true that this difference intrigued many of the US students who came to wonder what their AR might have looked like had they worked by incorporating such deep reflection.
Inquiry into worldview before problem solving
Based on their experience in Japan, many of the students indicated that they now had a better appreciation of the importance of starting from understanding others’ worldviews when attempting to understand AR in a cross-cultural context. Through their experience in Japan, they learned that their attitude or disposition to readily take action in relationship to problems of practice or to give advice to others can be problematic: Many of them reported a deepened understanding of the importance of starting from trying to understand the experienced needs and experiences of others and obtaining a deep and culturally contextualized understanding of the needs before jumping into problem solving.
For instance, in writing about their experience in Tokyo, many of the US students referred to an interaction in the program involving an AR presentation by a Japanese student group who examined ‘falling in love’ with virtual characters. In the presentation, one of the Japanese students mentioned that he has had the experience of falling in love with a virtual character in a video game and felt isolated from his peers due to his involvement in the virtual world. A few US students readily spoke up and suggested to the Japanese student what he should do to solve the problem such as going to a counseling center and asking for experts’ advise on the psychological problem. However, as the dialogue continued, the Japanese students revealed that things are not so simple since in Japanese culture, objects such as a stone and mountain are believed to have life, and that this cultural epistemology is something that cannot be easily dismissed as a psychological problem or resolved in a counseling center. This was an instance in which many US students had an ‘Aha’ moment regarding the need to understand the person better before jumping into problem solving or giving advice. Through such experiences, many of the US students have grasped the importance of carefully listening to others and deeply understanding the sources and cultural contexts of presented needs, which was reflected in their final AR paper they submitted after coming back to the US.
Experiences in a new culture can be unfriendly
Another important theme that was found in the students’ reflections was their realization that they could be easily caught in culture shock no matter how open-minded they perceived themselves or how ready they felt for a cross-cultural experience through readings and classroom discussions. Before departing to Japan, the US students had an orientation on Japanese culture and learned the importance of not making pre-judgments of other cultural values and behaviors. However, once in Japan, they did go through some form of culture shock, or cognitive dissonance particularly when they encountered the silence of the Japanese students during the discussion sessions and the seating arrangement in which students sat in the back with the faculty members in front. Though some of specifics of the initial interactions may have been unique to the particular context and may not be totally attributed to the Japanese culture, many of the US students, if not all, had difficulty understanding what they had seen given their value system centered around equality and democratic exchanges of ideas. Many of the US students addressed this point during the post-program reflection session after coming back to the US.
Overall, what the US students went through was the realization of the need to deeply understand other’s perspectives, values, and attitudes from points of views that they have never encountered, and at the same time, examine theirs in relation to their culture. This first time offering of a cross-cultural AR program resulted in new realizations among the US students that were not initially anticipated. (Our Japanese partner later indicated that the Japanese students also came to various essential realizations such as importance of speaking up one’s perspectives clearly for cross-cultural communications on their AR projects. We did not discuss Japanese students’ reflections in this paper since it is not the scope of this paper, but we hope that their experiences will be presented in another paper elsewhere.)
US faculty reflections
This section discusses reflections of the US faculty group through the cross-cultural exchange program. First of all, we were very pleased to see that our students reached many significant realizations about their AR projects, cultural assumptions, and communication styles, as discussed above. Thus, the cross-cultural exchange program that we planned by making use of he concept of ba seemed to have been successful in helping the students come to a variety of new foundational realizations regarding AR.
However, as described above, US faculty group encountered unanticipated disconnect with the Japanese partner about how the program was structured on the second day. In our view, the cross-cultural program with the second day format went better than the first day because of more participation by the Japanese students, but the Japanese faculty group was not very happy about the new discussion structure. Unfortunately, we were not able to co-reflect with the Japanese partner about this issue during the program due to the time and logistic constraints, as mentioned before. This was something that was not anticipated upfront.
However, right after the program—including our remaining days in Japan—we engaged in a series of reflective dialogues with the Japanese partner. Our dialogues with the Japanese partner continued over a year even after we returned to the US using Skype and emails, and generated rich and very interesting realizations of various aspects of cross-cultural collaborations in AR.
In the dialogues, the Japanese partner shared the reason why they were not very happy about what they call as the “American style” format of discussion on the second day. The Japanese partner maintained that since social dialogues needed to start from deep reflections in each individual student’s mind, it was okay for the students to be silent after they were presented ideas as on the first day, and suggested that their students’ silence simply reflected that they were processing what had been presented. For them, the circle discussions on the second day pushed the students to speak up without enough reflection and digesting the presentations. However, the US side did not necessarily share this view. For the US faculty group, social dialogues needed to involve active exchanges of ideas by all participants contributing to the dialogues in an equal manner as in the second day discussion. For the Japanese side, the US students speaking up and freely giving their opinions quickly seemed to represent a lack of deeply processing the psychological meanings presented by the Japanese students. For the US side, the Japanese students being silent in the first day discussions seemed to represent either a lack of willingness to participate or a problem in the political structure of the dialogue. The Japanese partner indicated to us that they knew that the Japanese students were deeply processing information non-verbally because of their long-term relationship with the students, while the US group found it difficult to fully comprehend this interpretation. In the post-reflection dialogues, we struggled to understand and accept each other’s interpretations of what had happened during the program, and the sense of disconnect cast a shadow on our communications. For the US side, it was hard to comprehend why the Japanese partner maintained that the Japanese students were processing the meaning deeply when they were silent, and for the Japanese side, it was hard to comprehend why the US side encouraged the US students to speak up so readily and share opinions without making them deeply process the presented meanings before doing so. Both the faculty groups went through numerous, rather difficult conversations over time as we attempted to understand each other’s points of view.
Fortunately, we managed to continue the dialogue without becoming totally disconnected after the program. As we continued reflective dialogues via emails and Skype, each side began to realize that the disconnect stemmed from the differences in epistemological stance and preferred style of exchanging and processing meaning. As both of the faculty groups reflected on students’ reflections as well as what happened in the program, we came to realize that the differences in the preferred style of communication existed in the way we conceptualized and taught AR in the two different cultural contexts.
Furthermore, we reflected that in teaching AR, the Japanese partner encouraged each group of Japanese students to start from personally meaningful questions from their everyday lives so that their projects involve collaborative and critical reflections on deep and existential aspects of their lives. Consequently, the Japanese students presented their work to share interpersonally shared meanings and contexts on which they had reflected together. This interpersonal sharing as an attempt to create ba was, in essence, a part of their AR process. In contrast, the US faculty expected their students to generate research questions starting from observed needs in actual fieldwork or practice-based experiences, from which the students were expected to craft interventions to improve the targeted professional practice and share their endeavors in the AR for obtaining useful suggestions for further actions. Consequently, the US students’ AR projects did not involve a deep inquiry into the personal and existential origins of their projects, while the Japanese students’ AR projects did not involve considerations of pragmatically workable actions grounded in actual work in the field. We learned that we conceptualized and taught AR based on quite different epistemological traditions.
When the two faculty groups reached a shared understanding of the source of the disconnect experienced during the program, the sense of disconnect disappeared between us. This reflective dialogue resulted in seeing each other as mirror images, with each ‘side’ functioning based on the same self-governing principle, that is, contextually valued ways of exchanging ideas and engaging in practice improvement. The post-program reflection that took over a year allowed the two faculty groups to co-develop a shared understanding as we engaged in organic exchanges of each other’s perspectives and understanding on what we went through in the program. In this sense, we managed to create ba—or intersubjective dialogues after the program.
Looking back, we took quite clumsy steps in planning and organizing cross-cultural AR program. We learned that patiently continuing dialogues even if it involves exchanges of uncomfortable critiques lead to making sense of the source of the discrepancy in perspective and can lead to developing new realizations of the foundational principle that penetrate the discrepancy and resolving the sense of disconnect. In this project, our sustained dialogues created essential opportunities to mutually develop these essential realizations about AR processes that we were previously unaware of.
Discussions
The cross-cultural AR collaboration revealed essential aspects about the nature of AR. It brought a realization that a certain set of assumptions can always underlie AR activities and communications both at student and faculty levels. AR has been viewed as a complex endeavor characterized by the dynamic interplay of personal, professional, and political dimensions (Noffke, 2009). This project implies that the cultural dimension can be another essential dimension of AR. More specifically, it suggests that cross-cultural dialogues can have a large potential to unlock various assumptions that we employ but are not aware of in engaging in AR in each cultural context.
This could be seen as what Hendersen (1967) calls “new dimensions of culture and personality”, pushing beyond where one expects to reach in his or her endeavor. This means that the ways that critical reflections are initiated and conducted in AR discussions could be highly dependent on a particular set of epistemological assumptions, the ways different perspectives and interpretations are communicated, values placed on silence and expressing opinions, and how deep reflection is elicited and communicated in the particular context.
One thing that should be noted here is that our true intention in this cross-cultural work was not to conduct a cross-cultural comparison or to make a supremacy judgment on a particular approach, but to explore how it is possible to understand ways to overcome differences and contradictions that emerge in the context of cross-cultural AR exchanges. It should also be noted that both of the faculty groups are not necessarily representative groups of the two cultures. Rather, there were many group-specific characteristics that we embraced such as each faculty member’s style of teaching, the views of the American culture that the Japanese partner had, the views of Japanese culture that we (the US faculty) had, the backgrounds of our students, and the history of the relationship between the two faculty groups.
However, we cannot totally deny that the cultural dimension played an important factor that underlay our experiences in the program described above. As Herbert (2006) reported in relationship to a cross-cultural study she conducted, what both of the groups experienced could be seen as “resistance and doubt” that stemmed from differences in cultural norm that each side had internalized. Such resistance and doubt can easily happen in cross-cultural AR exchanges, no matter how prepared we are in such endeavors, as was the case in this project.
What was also notable in this project was that through the reflective dialogues, both sides came to realize how the difference in preferred discussion style can function to make cross-cultural exchanges difficult. This was something the US faculty group did not anticipate when planning the cross-cultural exchange program, which could be characterized by a case of ironic validity (Lather, 1994; Whitehead, 2004).
In this project, different styles of behaviors and communications have led to discrepancies in perception in the context, but also created opportunities to go through the process to reflect and digest the discrepancies. This implies that cross-cultural exchanges in AR can serve as a rich arena that allows us to reflect on our own assumptions and stretch our worldviews even when initial attempts to communicate and understand each other collapses due to underlying epistemological differences. In the case of this project, the sense of contradictions and disconnect served as essential ingredients for mutual dialogues that led to eventually developing new perspectives at both student and faculty levels.
It could be further theorized that overcoming the sense of such contradictions and dilemmas could be successful only if both sides possess an intention to patiently work together and make sense of each other’s perspectives. For the students, their informal relationship building activities such as having lunch together and bonding in the welcoming party set the tone for making sense of the discrepancies that they sensed in the program. For the faculty groups, what secured the post-program co-reflection was trust and relationships that the groups had established through a history of mutually visiting each other’s sites, exchanging ideas and sharing interests through numerous formal and informal occasions. Without the mutual trust and relationships, it was not possible to overcome the disconnect. In other words, relationship and trust were the key ingredients for creating the social arena—or ba for co-developing a new understanding in social dialogues. Such relationship and trust to engage in open dialogue could be seen as the very last stronghold for any kind of collaborative practice improvement efforts.
Finally, this paper concludes by stressing the benefit of cross-cultural AR exchanges with action researchers outside our cultures for the purpose of enchnacing our capacity to flexibly examine our own assumptins and deal with increasingly complex professional practices.
