“What hypocrites!”: interactions between Japanese international and white domestic students in a U.S. teacher education programme

ABSTRACT

This two-year-long qualitative study investigated how white teacher candidates at a U.S. university interacted with two international teacher candidates from Japan. Findings reveal that the participants stopped interacting with their white peers because the interactions did not occur on equal grounds, and they disliked the fact that they were always positioned as lower and subordinate. The participants were resistant to the new power relations in which they were embedded. Ironically, the more the participants withdrew, the more solid the power hierarchy became as it proved their inferiority from the perspective of their white peers. The study ends with strategic suggestions for creating more meaningful interactions between domestic and international students.

KEYWORDS:

• International students
• whiteness
• white-Asia power relations
• interactions

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my husband, Daniel Miles Amos, for our many discussions of this article and for his editorial suggestions. I am also grateful for the insightful comments made by the anonymous reviewers.

Ethics statement

The study presented in this article was approved by the university’s human subjects review council.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yukari Takimoto Amos

Yukari Takimoto Amos is a professor in the Department of Education, Development, Teaching and Learning at Central Washington University where she teaches multicultural education and TESL-related classes.