Learners' definition of courage and adaptive behavior

One interest underlying value-based pedagogy relates to whether learners can adapt an attribute within the environment to develop it into the best experience and value. In this study, the definition of courage, which is an attribute of global citizenship, created by learners and how they put their theoretical understanding into practice in varied situations were investigated. The participants were students studying in English language courses that took a humanistic approach at a private university in Tokyo, Japan, in 2020. Text data from open-ended questions about courage were analyzed by a mixture of a grounded theory approach and quantitative text analysis. The results showed that learners altered the courageous actions they took within and outside of the classroom. Learners’ theoretical understanding and its application to real life changed over time, corresponding to the principle of continuity of experience, as enunciated by Dewey.