Abstract
The vision of “Society 5.0” being promoted by the Japanese government, “where advanced technologies and service platforms integrate with and empower individuals in a human-based society” (MEXT, 2018: http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/koutou/koudai/detail/1408090.htm), suggests a STEAM—Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics—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 with the censoring of expert voices in the social science and humanities that are critical of government policies. This has had the unfortunate effect of further dichotomizing university campuses rather than promoting interdisciplinary approaches to the higher education (HE) curriculum.
The question I address in this chapter is how we might successfully return the “A” to STEM programs in Japan, despite these challenges posed at the level of the central government. I hope to raise attention to issues and challenges that exist at the micro-level of university policy, which, in addition to macro-level government policy, present considerable roadblocks at the institutional level to the solutions we are proposing in this volume—interdisciplinary curricula and pedagogy that may provide competencies necessary for realizing Society 5.0.
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Notes
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- 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).
- 6.
- 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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Poole, G.S. (2023). Fitting Square Pegs into Round Holes: Developing an English-Taught Liberal Arts Program at a Japanese University. In: Yamada, R., Yamada, A., Neubauer, D.E. (eds) Transformation of Higher Education in the Age of Society 5.0. International and Development Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15527-7_5
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