"From Abstraction to Empiricism: The Need for New Paradigms in Intercultural Education"

Cultural psychology has made great strides in understanding culture and cognitive processes. Unfortunately, these insights have not been incorporated into intercultural education, and the field finds itself in crisis as dominant models have lost credibility. This plenary will explore this gap and outline a vision for moving away from abstraction and ideology towards a more empirical, psychologically realistic paradigm.

About the Speaker

Prof. Joseph Shaules, Ph.D, specially Appointed Professor at the Keio University, has worked in intercultural education in Japan, Mexico and Europe for more than 25 years. He is a Specially Appointed Professor – Keio University: Global Inter-disciplinary Course in Tokyo. He is the director of the Japan Intercultural Institute. He teaches in the Tsuda University Graduate Program in TESOL. Books include: Transformation, Embodiment and Wellbeing in Foreign Language Education (Bloomsbury); Language, Culture and The Embodied Mind (Springer); The Intercultural Mind (Inter-cultural Press); and Deep Culture (Multilingual Matters). He is the creator and host of The Deep Culture Podcast.