大学におけるカウンセリングと教育の融合 : 大学教員と外国人留学生との関わり

There are a few universities in Japan where the facilities for foreign students' counseling are well-equipped and fully functioning. However, many of the universities do not show much concern for the mental health of these foreign students and provide little moral support for them. If a person must work both as a teacher and as a counselor, there is a risk that conflicts may arise. How can one avoid these conflicts? What is needed to fulfil both roles? The theory and practice discussed in this paper emerged from the experiences of teaching at a private Japanese university, where the institution did not pay much attention to the importance of counseling foreign students. The notion of ""Transcultural Educational Counseling"" (TEC) is based on the Generative Theory of Cultural Learning, developed by this author, which stresses how both a learner and a teacher (a transcultural mediator) learn and develop their competency of transcultural understanding with each other through various kinds of interpersonal interactions. The theory emphasizes the perspective of understanding the variable, dynamic, generative aspect of cultures. Culture learning under this notion is no longer a learner's one-way adaptation of static aspects of a given culture. Through continuous interactions between learners and teachers, reciprocal learning occurs, creating new cultural values. Transcultural Educational Counseling (TEC) is not just ordinary cross-cultural counseling performed by psychologists and psychiatrists. It is, rather, a significant part of educational activity and is carried out collaboratively by both a teacher (a transcultural mediator) and a learner (with various cultural backgrounds). A teacher takes part in the process of cultural learning with his / her students, and also becomes a partner in intercultural dialogue with a learner on an equal footing. The learner here can be anyone who is learning a culture different from his / her own. Through the dialogue, both teacher and learner deepen their levels of understanding o