I am a graduate school student who participated in the 2022 CAMPUS Asia 6 program. I started to study educational administration to broaden my sights on understanding education issues and policies. By the same token, I decided to apply to this program. I expected to meet various students from other Asian countries and learn a lot of things by interacting with them academically and personally to be an educational professional in perspective of global issues. I heard that the University of Tsukuba is well-known for education in Japan and I thought I could develop my competencies in education as well as foreign languages.
As I expected, I spent a great time staying in Tsukuba. The faculty and staff welcomed the participants and offered us a great curriculum. The curriculum was aimed at comprehending the current state of global issues related to education and was composed of seminars and lectures to make us share other countries’ educational contexts. Besides, there were some opportunities for us to participate in UT’s various programs for foreign students such as well-organized Japanese language courses.
Among many things that I experienced at UT, one of the most impressive things was the field trip. According to the purpose of this program, which was to cultivate the professionals of the educational policies, we could visit different sights related to education like schools, a local administrative institution, and research centers and learn the leaders’ conception about educational issues. Especially, since I had an interest in the educational administrators’ leadership, I could develop my perspectives on the ideal leadership by communicating with each organization’s leader. All the leaders showed their trust in the teachers in that they are competent enough, and these ideas seemed significant in order to sustain the Japanese education system. Hence, I’d like to involve those ideas in my research paper. Also, I could grasp the real state that Japanese education faced and it made me interested in a comparative study.
Moreover, thanks to CAMPUS Asia 6 program, I could be aspired by various participants. This international program encouraged exchanging each other’s ideas on education in terms of different perspectives on urgent global issues, educational inequality, school daily routine, or school atmosphere. Multinational students were willing to share their cases and opinions with a positive mindset. Furthermore, they encouraged me to get confident in my jobs. Their attitudes to others influenced mine to students as a teacher. I think that meeting multinational proficient students is another benefit that I acquired from this program.
This program was a good opportunity for me to reflect on and develop myself as an educator. I learned how significant it is for leaders to support teachers and for people to experience the diverse culture. For these reasons, I hope this program would be flourished to affect more qualified students next time, too.
