Title: Enhancing Cultural Understanding Attitudes through International Collaborative Learning Project

Author: Kiyota Yoichi, Professor, Meisei University (Japan)

Abstract: Drastic developments in intelligent technology and changes in the geopolitical situation have increased the need for improvement of learning at schools. Schools are expected to make students capable to deal with those changes as global citizens. This presentation reports a case study through “Art Mile International Collaborative Learning Project” at a high school in Japan. The project is thought to enhance the abilities which are considered to be necessary qualities for global citizenship including understanding different cultures, thinking and acting independently, expressing thoughts by words and other forms. This project provides collaborative learning between the partner schools overseas using the Internet on themes such as “education”, “equality” and “environment”. In this case, the students collaboratively produced murals with their partner schools in Czech and Portuguese expressing messages on common themes from SDGs. At the starting stage of the project, museums played an important role in helping the students to understand how artistic murals could convey their messages efficiently whilst reflecting cultural differences, which increased their motivation to realize this international project. At the end of the project, the majority of the attendants indicated that they were able to obtain positive attitudes to understand their partner countries and other different countries.

Video: https://youtu.be/hQ4Md9szhXs