Creative Excellence in the Japanese University: Knowledge-Content-Cognition and Language-Culture-Communication Integrated Global Awareness Learning

Abstract

Barnett (1997) argues that the university has lost its way, but that the world needs the university more than before but for different reasons. He says that the university must clarify a new role in the world and in society, and find a new vocabulary, and a new sense of purpose. The world including the university is faced with what Barnett calls supercomplexity where human frames of understanding, action, and identity are continually changing and being challenged. In this new supercomplex world, the university, Barnett maintains, must take on two roles in particular. Firstly, it needs to compound supercomplexity, thus making the world more challenging than it has seemed. The second role is to enable humans to live effectively in this chaotic world. Internally, says Barnett, the university needs to become a new kind of organization that must, whether it likes it or not, live with uncertainty (i.e. “the uncertainty principle”) and at the same time help people to live with and revel in that uncertainty. Creativity, excellence, and excellence in creativity are also uncertain in this new supercomplex world which requires new and innovative ways of framing their interpretations and development in higher education. We focus in this paper on the potential of additional L2 global language English to serve as the medium of effecting an integrated content-knowledge-cognition and language-culture-communication creatively excellent higher education. However, it is our belief and hope that such a higher learning can and should be developed in the L1 Japanese language as the primary medium of learning and communication. The employment and deployment of CLIGAL in the home L1 Japanese and the globally useful L2 English are necessary for there to be creative excellence across the Japanese higher education curriculum.