Background

Background

This rubric was developed to enhance the effectiveness of educational practices utilizing "Intercultural Collaborative Learning, (ICL)" in which international students and domestic students learn from each other through meaningful interactions. ICL is expected to yield learning outcomes where learners deepen their understanding of different cultures and their own culture through mutual learning and collaboration, leading to the development of new perspectives (Suematsu, 2017). While ICL is recognized as an effective method for enhancing intercultural understanding, challenges have arisen in recent years regarding how to measure students’ learning outcomes and visualize their learning process.

To address these challenges, researchers and practitioners of ICL from various universities with different characteristics such as university type, size, location, educational philosophy, and characteristics, launched a research project* and developed this rubric over a period of two years. Through this process, extensive literature reviews, case studies both domestically and internationally, and repeated surveys and verifications to enhance the accuracy of the rubric were conducted, aiming to create a highly versatile indicator that considers as many learners and diverse learning formats as possible.

A Rubric Suitable for the Japanese Educational Context

ICL is often positioned as part of the "Internationalization at Home" that originated in Europe. It focuses on providing domestic students who cannot or do not go abroad with international experiences through both curricular and extracurricular activities. In other words, the role of ICL is expected to enhance learners' intercultural competence. Intercultural education originally began and developed in immigrant countries such as the United States, Australia, and Western Europe, composed of people with diverse cultural backgrounds. Around the end of the 20th century, when the focus began to shift to learners' achievements and their evaluation, various indicators including the Intercultural Sensitivity Development Model (Bennett, 1986) were published. The Intercultural Competence Rubric developed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) with reference to Deardroff (2006) has become widespread not only in the United States but also worldwide.

However, there have been criticisms that the same rubric is primarily based on a Western perspective, and there has been a demand for the development of rubrics suitable for the Japanese international education scene. This rubric places particular importance on intercultural competencies that also fit the cultural context of Japan while referring to established evaluation indicators of intercultural competencies such as AAC&U's Value Rubric and the European Council's Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture. For example, the reason why there are many competency evaluation items necessary for teamwork in this rubric compared to rubrics from Western countries is because of this focus. We have made an effort on developing a rubric that aligns with Japan's educational environment while maintaining globally applicable intercultural competencies.

Target and Scope of Application

This rubric can be applied not only in classes but also in various learning settings such as extracurricular programs and intercultural exchange activities. It targets learners of a wide range of ages, from students in secondary education to adults. However, since the development team consists entirely of university faculty members, there is a possibility that expressions that are difficult to understand for high school students or university students with limited international experience are included. In such cases, it is recommended that instructors responsible for classes or activities consider changing the expressions to ones suitable for the target learners and utilize the rubric.