“Go abroad, young women”: A narrative inquiry of Japanese female youth exchange students in the United States

Reiko Habuto Ileleji, Purdue University

Abstract

In this longitudinal narrative inquiry, I investigated the cross-cultural experiences of five Japanese female youth exchange students who came to the United States for one academic year, then returned to Japan to finish their high school education. My study focused on the students’ voices during and after their one year exchange stay in the United States, and the impacts of their cross-cultural experiences on their cultural identity. My study aspired to develop a narrative understanding of the students’ cross-cultural experiences in the investigation of the impacts of study abroad at the secondary school level on their personal developments and language learning trajectories. Directed by narrative inquiry perspective, I collected field texts, which took place over 30 months, through multiple sources, such as interviews, focus-group discussions, open-ended naturalistic observations, letters/e-mails, conversations, student journals/blogs, documents, photographs, and other personal artifacts designed to elicit stories from the participants. Out of the field texts, five themes were merged in this study: imagined communities, relationship with host families, social networks, academic issues, and cultural identities. Each theme was presented with a student’s diary (except for the relationship with host families, which was presented with two students’ diaries) and followed by a reflective chapter to connect the student’s personal voice on her cross-cultural experiences with other students’ experiences, secondary participants’ (such as host families in the United States, families in Japan, and the students’ teachers and friends) perspectives, as well as literature review. This longitudinal narrative inquiry revealed that the Japanese youth exchange students’ language learning in the host communities were always allied to their cross-cultural experiences, which influenced their cultural identities such as social, gender and racial positions. In the writing of the inquiry, I formed a metaphor of cultural identity, which I called environmental metaphor. I found that every aspect of international youth exchange programs is interrelated and interdependent. The students’ cultural identities were impacted by the cross-cultural experiences with their host families and in the host communities, while the impacts that the students had on the lives of their host families and people in the host communities were substantial.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Phillion, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Language arts|Bilingual education|Modern language

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