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Parallel Universes: Globalization and Identity in English Language Teaching at a Japanese University
Abstract
The sociologist Anthony Giddens has written that the era of late modernity in which we live is characterized by a focus on and anxiety about identity. ‘What to do? How to act? Who to be? These are focal questions for everyone living in circumstances of late modernity — and ones which, on some level or another, all of us answer, either discursively or through day-to-day social behaviour’ (Giddens, 1991, p. 70). Our aim in this chapter is to explore this notion in the Japanese context by examining concepts of identity that are expressed by curriculum planners, teachers and students concerning the role of English language teaching in the processes of globalization at a Japanese university.
... Despite their perceived value and expansion in numbers, international faculty at Japanese universities felt difficulties integrating into the Japanese academic mainstream (Brotherhood et al., 2020;Brown, 2019). Regrettably, some of them have perceived themselves as a 'tokenized symbol' of internationalization (Brotherhood et al., 2020;Stewart & Miyahara, 2011). While most previous studies were concerned with their general characteristics (e.g., Huang & Chen, 2021;Huang, 2018aHuang, , 2018b, such as demographic situation, work roles, and motivations, there has been little focus placed on their integration at Japanese universities. ...
... To date, only a few prior studies were associated with the constraints that international faculty encountered at Japanese universities, describing international faculty as tokenized symbols of internationalization. For example, many international faculty perceived their recruitment as being closely aligned with their international visibility regardless of their specialties (Brotherhood et al., 2020;Brown, 2019;Stewart & Miyahara, 2011), and they felt they were treated differently due to their different roles from Japanese faculty (Brotherhood et al., 2020;Huang, 2018a). In addition, the insistence on Japanese language at Japanese universities has also been considered as a significant factor impacting their integration . ...
... Moreover, as hierarchy-based academic institutions (Shin, 2015), the management of Japanese universities has been generally conducted by the upper echelons of Japanese universities, who were mostly Japanese (Huang, 2018a). Even though many participants asserted their exclusion from institutional discussions, the implementation of reforms in this regard seems extremely difficult (Stewart & Miyahara, 2011) due to the active opposition of senior higher-ranking Japanese professors (Brotherhood et al., 2020). Consequently, many international faculty remain at the periphery of the Japanese management mainstream without participating in the decision-making processes, which is indicative of a closed institutional culture. ...
The study is devoted to identifying the key issues impeding the integration of international faculty at Japanese universities via a qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews with 40 international faculty hired in Japanese universities with various backgrounds were conducted. The interview data were analyzed based on a three-stage coding procedure, namely open, axial, and selective coding, which identifies the main themes through increasing the level of data abstraction. The study identified the key issues from work, cultural, and interpersonal dimensions in the context internal to Japanese universities, and environmental dimension in the context external to Japanese universities. Meanwhile, the study also acknowledged the perceptual differentiation of these issues depending on international faculty’s backgrounds. Based on the principles of Embedded Intergroups Relations Theory, it appears that the key issues differ according to international faculty’s identity (country of origins), cultural backgrounds (previous experiences in Japan), and their organizational characteristics (academic ranks and disciplines). In other words, junior faculty in the Humanities who were not from countries in which Chinese characters are historically used or without previous experiences in Japan tend to perceive themselves as tokens at Japanese universities. Theoretical and practical implications including policies, future studies, and support systems are offered for policymakers, researchers, and university administrators.
... Theoretically, this paper adds to critical scholarship that represents the professional identities of native English speakers in Japanese universities as politically, historically and socially constructed (e.g., Appleby, 2014;Rivers, 2013aRivers, , 2013bSimon-Maeda, 2004;Stewart, 2006;Stewart & Miyahara, 2011). In this, we draw on the 'critical tradition' theoretical work that scrutinises taken-for-granted representations of human social life, with a specific focus on uneven relations of power and their manifestation through language and representation (Lather, 2006). ...
... Despite its limitations, our study makes a unique contribution to internationalisation literature and suggests some important implications for internationalisation policy and practice. As noted, some previous empirical studies have explored the professional identities of native English speakers in Japan (e.g., Appleby, 2014;Rivers, 2013aRivers, , 2013bSimon-Maeda, 2004;Stewart, 2006;Stewart & Miyahara, 2011). However, these have focused predominantly on the experiences of native English speakers whose main job was teaching English. ...
‘Internationalisation’ in Japanese higher education (HE) is largely imagined in terms of English language acquisition. Native speakers of English are therefore desirable HE employees. However, ‘native-speakerism’ also reflects hierarchical notions of English language forms. In Japan, US and Anglo forms of English are privileged over others, which has uneven implications for English speakers employed in Japanese HE. In this paper, we discuss the findings of a qualitative doctoral study, conducted in 2015 and 2016, which involved interviews with 25 native English speakers working for Japanese universities. The study explored the interviewees’ experiences working in Japanese HE. Interviewees revealed that as so-called native speakers of English, they experienced a range of advantages in Japanese universities, but that their positioning also seemed to preclude institutional attention to their wider professional expertise. Participants’ narratives demonstrated how they sought to differentiate themselves from other native English speakers who were less qualified. We conclude the paper by considering the need for policies and practices in Japanese HE that acknowledge the diversity of ‘English speakers’, for example, by recruiting HE staff according to clearly defined skillsets (not just native speaker status) and developing internationalisation policies that move beyond English linguistic imperialism and native-speakerism.
... The second key reason why English isn't more widely used in the workplace is low standards of English due to the way it is taught (Morita, 2010). In Japanese classrooms, English is still being taught using the grammar-translation method (Rosenkjar, 2015;Stewart & Miyahara, 2011). In this method, the main classroom activity is laborious word-by-word translation of English texts into Japanese. ...
... This method originated in the second half of the nineteenth-century, when Japan wanted to acquire knowledge from the West for its development. The method is still widely used in schools and universities (Rosenkjar, 2015;Stewart & Miyahara, 2011), neglecting the development of communicative competences, intercultural awareness and global perspectives (Whitsed & Wright, 2011). This is why the average total score on TOEFL in 2015 is 71 for Japan, the second lowest in Asia. ...
Like many global north countries, Japan has a rapidly aging and declining population. In order to maintain the size of its workforce as well as remain globally competitive, Japan needs to attract highly-skilled migrants. However, studies have shown that these migrants are dissatisfied with living and working in Japan in many ways. This paper focuses on two items on the list: Japanese-style human resource management (HRM) and the lack of use of English. This paper also identifies the predominance of Japanese-style HRM and lack of use of English as further manifestations of Japanese exclusionism and discusses them as such. Japanese-style HRM, which is characterised by long-term employment, seniority-based earnings and promotion, and teamwork orientation, among others, stands in sharp contrast to global standards in HRM. In addition, Japanese is the working language in the vast majority of companies. Unless Japan deals with these issues, it would not be able to compete with other global north countries for highly-skilled migrants on an equal footing. © 2018, © 2018 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.
... At the level of curriculum delivery in institutions, the "communication" promoted through government rhetoric fails to translate into congruent practices at the institutional level. The implicit assessment policies of the university entrance exam essentially serve as the de facto language policy in the classroom, further reinforcing the seisoku-hensoku divide, where native English speakers and JTEs work in what Stewart and Miyahara ( 2011 ) would refer to as "parallel universes". These authors similar divisions in their study of a large private university in Tokyo, in which foreign professors participate in a "taught in English programme" that develops academic literacy practices (presentation, debate) while Japanese professors handle the reading classes, with little collaboration between the two groups. ...
... These authors similar divisions in their study of a large private university in Tokyo, in which foreign professors participate in a "taught in English programme" that develops academic literacy practices (presentation, debate) while Japanese professors handle the reading classes, with little collaboration between the two groups. As Stewart and Miyahara ( 2011 ) state, "the very name of the English programme is an explicit positioning in contrast with the reading courses, which, it is taken for granted, are generally taught in Japanese" (p. 67). ...
Ever since 1989, there has been an intensification of efforts to reform English Language Teaching (ELT) in Japan. Policy initiatives such as “The Action Plan to Cultivate Japanese with English Abilities” launched in 2003, the implementation of “Foreign Language Activities” in elementary schools in 2011, the “Global 30” Project in higher education to promote English-medium learning in 2009 and the 2013 implementation of the revised national senior high school foreign language curriculum are all efforts initiated by the Japanese government to improve ELT practice and increase international awareness among Japanese learners. In spite of these initiatives, however, a continued disconnect between policy declarations and the realities of pedagogical practice has resulted in stasis in terms of policy implementation. We argue that the central agents of English language education policy in Japan – the teachers – are often left to their own devices to interpret and deliver policy initiatives that themselves may have conflicting messages, and may not provide teachers with specific educational tools to engage in meaningful, substantive pedagogical change. This disconnect must be addressed systematically in order to better empower teachers at the local level.
... The government has issued several policies corresponding to the discourse of "globalization-as-opportunity," highlighting the importance of English for the Japanese people, despite the fact that there has never been any clear explanation on the connection between globalization and the needs of English as opposed to other languages. According to Stewart and Miyahara (2011), these policies prioritize English "in the name of globalization, the shift to more communicative language teaching reflected in school teaching and testing" (p. 62). ...
... Language was a site of affective intensity in our study-the promotion of the English language as a signifier of internationalisation, the linguistic privilege of the migrant Anglophone communities and the challenges of being a non-Japanese speaker (Hashimoto 2007;Stewart and Miyahara 2011). Our research found that many migrant academics were of material and symbolic value to Japanese universities, as so many positive attributes stuck to the English language. ...
Positive attributes stick to higher education internationalisation, and it is a policy paradigm with performative effects. Internationalisation draws on imagined virtuous flows of knowledge production and exchange, and is presented as an assemblage of detraditionalisation, expansiveness and epistemic and cultural opportunity for individuals, organisations and nation states. Policies target bodies, minds and affect, yet are presented as an unquestionable good in an imagined genderneutral, borderless, meritocratic and benign global knowledge economy. This paper explores the affective economy of internationalisation drawing upon interview data gathered in fifteen private, five national and eight public universities in Japan with thirty-four migrant academics and thirteen international doctoral researchers. We aim to contribute to internationalisation theory by exploring the sticky micropolitics of internationalisation in relation to affective assemblages, and how the gendered, racialised, linguistic and epistemic inequalities constituting academic mobility are frequently disqualified from discourse. Our discussion includes consideration of the Japanese policy context, the concept of affective assemblages, navigating gender regimes, precarity and linguistic imperialism. We conclude that the immaterial or affective labour that is required to unstick, install and maintain an internationalised academic identity and navigate the translations and antagonisms from everyday encounters with difference is substantially under-estimated.
... Indeed, retrospectively, by the start of the second decade of the new millennium, the verbose claims made some 15 years earlier that English teaching should be founded on (native speaker) corpora were beginning to appear both unintelligent and presumptuous. Native speaker subjectivities had become the target of repeated questioning and ideological interrogation (Giri and Foo 2014;Kubota and Fujimoto 2013;Rivers 2013;Stewart and Miyahara 2011). The socio-communicative contexts in which ELF was being used for interaction and the language forms used in such interactions were, in the meantime, evolving quickly as "a function of its situation of accelerated language contact" (Jenkins 2014, p. 31). ...
The combined narrative of our struggle against the anomalies of inclusion and exclusion, diversity and essentialism, hybridity and monolithism, agency and cooptation, collusion and marginalization begins with a ‘chance’ encounter at a conference in Hong Kong. Pooling together five decades of teaching experience, our critical historical narrative probes at the inner workings of cultural-political ideologies bearing on our professional practice and ontology as English teachers as well as their deleterious effects on institutional behaviors, human intransigence, and (counter)educational outcomes. Specifically, we capture the nature of ongoing contestations and contradictions faced by English teachers in the quest for more humanizing pedagogies and discursive spaces. We argue that the accompanying struggles stem from powerful cultural-political discourses in ELT that legitimate a status quo of inertia, while perpetuating inequalities of access and asymmetries in power relations among learners, teachers and vested stakeholders. We conclude that the work of uncovering dissimulated ideologies in the struggle between monolithism and diversity, structure and agency, oppression and transformation will benefit not only the silenced and disenfranchised, but even the vocal, oppressive and self-unseeing, to boot.
... In spite of the improvements, the grammar translation approach is still common in schools and universities. ( Nishino, 2008;Stewart & Miyahara, 2011) Learners' motivation is an important factor in language learning. Research has shown that Japanese undergraduates' motivation to learn English is low in general ( Hayashi, 2005) and that the grammar translation method and entrance examinations have negative effects on motivation. ...
... A key factor in the lack of success in its English language education is the fact that English is mostly taught using the grammar-translation method, especially in Japanese middle schools and high schools (Rosenkjar, 2015;Stewart & Miyahara, 2011). In this method, the main activity in class is translation of English texts into Japanese. ...
This paper argues that Japan needs English, and better English than just knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. English is the main language of globalisation, and there are clear advantages to being proficient in it. For a long time, English has been taught through the grammar-translation method at Japanese schools and universities, which is inadequate to say the least. This has resulted in the inability to work in the English language at the workplace. With a rapidly aging and declining population, the Japanese need to be able to work with foreign co-workers. Being proficient in English would also help the Japanese form alliances and partnerships with foreign establishments in business, research, higher education, and science and technology. This paper also argues that stronger English language skills would help improve attitudes towards foreigners, since recent research has shown that Japanese individuals with stronger English conversation ability have more positive attitudes towards immigration. It would also mitigate discrimination against foreigners if the Japanese could communicate, interact and empathise with them. © 2017, © 2017 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.
... One way of acquiring such knowledge was by reading English documents and translating them into Japanese. The grammar-translation method is still widely used in schools and universities (Nishino, 2008;Stewart & Miyahara, 2011), to the neglect of the development of communicative competences, intercultural awareness and global perspectives (Whitsed & Wright, 2011). ...
In May 2012, Japan launched the Point-Based Preferential Immigration Treatment for Highly-Skilled Professionals system for highly-skilled migrants. This launch is a culmination of years of interest in attracting highly-skilled migrants. Although the incentives offered to highly-skilled migrants are attractive, incentives alone do not constitute the whole picture. Researchers such as Anthony D’Costa and Oishi Nana have written about why Japan is not attracting as many highly-skilled migrants as it could be. The present paper discusses Japanese exclusionary tendencies which diminish its attraction as a destination for highly-skilled migrants, focusing on its English language education, Nihonjinron influences, mistrust of foreigners, inequality between foreigners and the Japanese, and insistence on doing things the Japanese way. These issues need to be addressed if Japan is serious about attracting larger numbers of highly-skilled migrants. © 2017, © 2017 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.
... English is taught in a de-contextualized way by focusing on grammar and translation and excluding the communicative aspects in order to preserve Japanese values, traditions and cultural independence (Whitsed and Wright, 2011). In spite of criticisms, the grammar translation method is still common in schools and universities (Nishino, 2008;Stewart & Miyahara, 2011). ...
... In spite of the improvements, the grammar translation approach is still common in schools and universities. (Nishino, 2008;Stewart & Miyahara, 2011) Learners' motivation is an important factor in language learning. Research has shown that Japanese undergraduates' motivation to learn English is low in general (Hayashi, 2005) and that the grammar translation method and entrance examinations have negative effects on motivation. ...
... English is taught in a de-contextualised way by focusing on grammar and translation and excluding the communicative aspects in order to preserve Japanese values, traditions and cultural independence (Whitsed and Wright, 2011). In spite of criticisms, the grammar translation method is still common in schools and universities (Nishino, 2008;Stewart & Miyahara, 2011). ...
... English is taught in a de-contextualised way by focusing on grammar and translation and excluding the communicative aspects in order to preserve Japanese values, traditions and cultural independence (Whitsed and Wright 2011). In spite of criticisms, the grammar-translation method is still common in schools and universities (Nishino 2008;Stewart and Miyahara 2011). ...
... Teachers teach by means of explaining grammar rules, translation, vocabulary lists, exercises, memorisation and correcting errors. This method is still common and deeply entrenched in Japanese schools (King, 2013;Stewart & Miyahara, 2011). The method is less effective because it emphasises the memorisation of grammatical rules over the learning of what is spoken or written (O'Donnell, 2003) and its repetitive and monotonous nature contributes to learners' low motivation (Hayashi, 2005;Kikuchi & Sakai, 2009). ...
... The teacher hardly gives grammatical explanations in Japanese and English (Morita, 2010). This method is said to have harmful effects on language learning since the learning of authentic language is less valuable than the memoriation of language rules (O'Donnell, 2003).Nishino, 2008; Stewart & Miyahara, 2011). Learners' motivation is an important factor in language learning. ...
The educational quality of textbooks as the main source of input for English as foreign language (EFL) learners is of paramount importance. The evaluation of these books, therefore, is highly crucial to
examine if they meet the objectives they are aimed for. Since the “Total English” series, as one of the most widely taught textbooks, have never been evaluated from cultural perspectives, the present investigation sets
out to fill this void. The purpose of the study was to probe the cultural content of these series from the learners’ point of view and explore that content across the three proficiency levels of pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper-intermediate. To this end, Litz’s (2005) checklist, designed for students, was administered to 60 students, 20 in each level. The descriptive and one-way ANOVA analyses revealed that the textbooks are of satisfactory balance in terms of all the focused aspects in the questionnaire particularly the cultural content from students’ perspectives. Nonetheless, the analyses of the items in the culture sub scale of the checklist yielded some notable shortcomings such as not providing adequate materials to
familiarize students with the target culture, deficiency of presenting and introducing a variety of countries where English is spoken, and lack of activities asking learners to discuss the perspectives and practices of
foreign cultures such as family, games and school.
This case study explores two Japanese college English majors' second language identity formation in becoming confident English users via notions of adequation/distinction, authentication/denaturalization and authorization/illegitimation (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005). The study is particularly unique in that perspectives of not one but two instructors teaching the same students were brought together in identifying these three dimensions of their students. Data were collected predominantly from an end-of-the year online interview, triangulated with other sources including questionnaires, writing samples, and reflection papers in the course of one academic year.
The analysis revealed how Japanese students can easily succumb to public mainstream hegemonic discourse in which returnee students (those with prolonged sojourn abroad) are glorified compared to those educated in Japan. The two students displayed such ideologies at the beginning of the year but then their identity transformed, gaining more confidence, and improving their English skills. The major reasons that the students attributed for the shift were 1) exposure to returnee students; 2) exposure to other non-native English speakers; 3) creation of amicable class atmosphere, and surprisingly 4) demanding course content. The study illuminates how hegemonic language ideologies can be challenged in an EFL classroom.
In this chapter, ideologized conventional understandings of Japanese monoculture and uniformity are seen to have an influence on the ways in which social relations are reproduced and approaches to education uncritically structured and standardized. Schooling and its collaborating structures become channels for reinforcing essentialized understandings of identity and social norms with implications for corresponding ways in which Japanese people living overseas conduct their lives and businesses. Set patterns in which children are schooled within a nihonjinron (tenets of Japaneseness) ideology reveal normalizing tendencies that promote uniformity in its most culturalist of forms. The significance of corresponding acts of regularization is found in the way children are put through regimes of cram tutoring, ‘banking’, drilling, and overlearning as largely unquestioned aspects of their education.
The purpose of this study is to explore the main challenges facing full-time international faculty at Japanese universities based on relevant findings from a national survey of them which was carried out from June to August 2017. The study suggests that despite differences in degree, international faculty believed that they experienced many challenges at national, institutional and personal levels. This is especially true in the cases of their responses to the survey questions about the closed nature of Japanese academic market to international faculty and institutional atmosphere. Further, differences in their attitudes toward large numbers of survey questions by academic rank, discipline and nationality are noteworthy and extremely relevant as well. Finally, the American and British junior faculty from the Humanities seem to encounter more difficulties such as unstable employment, uncertain career prospects and serious competitive survival situation than any other categories of international faculty.
Guided by critical educator Paulo Freire’s vision for conscionably humane forms of education, this chapter examines the nature of power asymmetries, oppressions, fragmentations and imprisoning discourses operational within educational domains, in particular, English teaching. Discourses of neutrality, accountability and utilitarianism are problematized, discourses which undermine otherwise more humanizing ideals, while educators are seen variously to be professionally and subjectively collusive or complicit with regimes of oppression where hegemonies and mythologies are routinely nourished around ‘enlightened’ research or pedagogical practices which are empowering (alas only) in appearance, but decidedly oppressive in reality. The case of certain aspects of second language acquisition (SLA) research is highlighted as an example of presumption and oppressiveness in the way the learner is interpolated and invoked as a subject-object of scrutiny.
In this final chapter, an important observation is made that English-speaking Western TESOL, its outworkings and underlying ideologies are a formidable nemesis to any transformative effort that might be gallantly undertaken to make English teaching more humanizing and equitable. Superimposed on a Japanese ethos, English-speaking Western TESOL operates hand-in-hand with nihonjinron to preserve a status quo that invariably upholds Japanese nationalistic culturalist ideologies. Japan, for all its hawkishness and resistance against matters foreign seems to have few qualms about welcoming English-speaking Western TESOL to its culturally well-fortified shores. With its native speakerist beliefs in tow, it serves as a subtle yet sardonic way of reinforcing Japaneseness, furnishing and humoring conservative Japan with the semblance of internationalization it covets while parading a tokenized form of diversity.
In describing the cultural politics of language education in Japan, this chapter paints a compelling picture of the particularized manner in which English teaching finds its right of place within the nation’s (seemingly) timeless cultural motifs and hawkish political ethos. The geographical reality of Japan being an island nation is counterposed with the need for it to be repeatedly reinforced rhetorically in official discourse, linked ideologically to monochromatic one-truth understandings of culture and identity. The myth(ology) of Japanese homogeneity sustained by essentialized framings of Japaneseness is seen to be epitomized in an influentially inward-looking genre of literature known as nihonjinron literature. Given its pervasively nationalistic flavor, nihonjinron exerts its influence on tokenized conceptualizations of foreigner subjectivities and reductionist treatments of a non-Japanese language like English.
This project explores racial tokenism in the Japanese academy. It grows out of concerns regarding the low status of foreign university faculty in Japan along with a need to evaluate recent government initiatives aimed at fostering “internationalization” of Japanese higher education. In this three-year case study, I investigated the work conditions of faculty hired as full-time instructors for an English as Medium of Instruction (EMI) programme created as part of the internationalization initiatives at one Japanese university. Results indicate that the work of these faculty entailed strong elements of tokenism: all non-Asians, they were highly visible minorities; they lacked professional agency; and the institution sought and derived “propaganda” benefits from their visibility. In addition, these faculty themselves perceived the situation as unfair. Although frustrated, they had access to no institutional mechanisms to alter their status. Ideological underpinnings sustained this situation via a nexus of beliefs surrounding English studies, English native speakers, internationalization, and race. These findings illustrate how policy statements touting internationalization were depleted of transformative moment at the ground level.
文部科学省が教員養成系と人文社会科学系に対し「組織の廃止や社会的要請の高い分野への転換」を要請した通知素案に関するニュースが、2015
年5月28日にメディア各社によって一斉に報じられた。ただこの素案内容は決して晴天の霹靂ではなく、同文言は昨年の国立大学法人評価委員会部会資料の中で既に使われている（『「国立大学法人の組織及び業務全般の見直しに関する視点」について（案）』、第48回資料2-1、2014年8月4日） 。本稿では文部科学省によって「社会的要請の高い分野」ではないとされた「人文社会科学系」教員と学生にとっての「海外留学意義」について考えてみたい。
This article examines a case of what Olssen et al. (2004) call 'managerial oppression' set in a faculty of international studies of a Japanese university. Japanese universities have, in recent times, been facing the financial pressures of a falling birthrate and dwindling enrolments. To remain solvent, some universities have had to reinvent their curriculum in the hope of attracting students. Institutional renewal, as will be noted, does not occur without accompanying complications relating to power and politics. In the present case, these complications are attributable to tensions created within an ideological dialectic of openness and closedness (Peters and Roberts, 2012) as universities face the dilemmas of globalization alongside the endurance of conservative mercantilist philosophies traceable to policies set during Japan's post-war occupation by Allied forces. Through a critical examination of a series of instances of bullying and coercion, I seek in this article to argue that bullying and coercion are not random or idiosyncratic but are instead embedded in larger socio-political epistemologies that impinge on education and influence the way institutional agendas and managerialist decisions can adversely affect or defile human behavior. In this way, I seek not only to make a contribution to current understandings of language policy, ideology, power and higher education in Japan, but more uniquely, to establish a connection between ideological closed mindedness, corporate managerialism and acts of institutionalized bullying and coercion.
My overarching goals in this book are to observe how EFL education is conducted at four Japanese JHS, explore how ICC-oriented content and education actually unfold, and interrogate the presence and importance of
nihonjinron and native-speakerism, two ideological discourses
said to impede foreign language education. I have argued for the need to conduct this type of inquiry from a stratified perspective
, which essentially looks at constitutive ‘layers’ of a particular social process or event—in this case, EFL education in Japanese JHS. In adopting a stratified approach, my intention is to reveal points of convergence and divergence across data collected at different strata, thus hopefully gaining insight not only into ideological processes in situ but also the relationship between, and the distinct features of structural
cultural and agentive
forces at play in Japanese JHS English classrooms
. I devote this chapter to an interrogation of the presence and importance of nihonjinron and native-speakerism in recent Japanese policy documents on EFL education. Doing so allows for an initial glimpse into Japanese JHS English education from the angle of structure
and culture. A source of inspiration for the exploration of the potential links between nihonjinron, native-speakerism and EFL policies includes critiques
made by analysts such as Tollefson and Tsui (2007: 260–261), who suggest that “policies promoting the acquisition and use of English may be linked […] with discourses that seek to reinvigorate nationalism
, national languages
, and national cultural identities […] as part of nation-building and nation-preserving processes.” The critical analysis of classroom discourse
, or spoken text
, in the following chapter includes a discussion on the consumption
aspect of policy discourse (i.e., how the MEXT
policies are interpreted, implemented, and/or appropriated at the four JHS where ethnographic data was collected). The study in this chapter, on the other hand, begins with a summary of Japanese government policies on EFL education over the past four decades, including a discussion on The MEXT Plan of 2003, henceforth referred to as Section 9
(MEXT 2010), and The Five Proposals
(MEXT 2011a), the two main policy documents under scrutiny in this chapter. This is followed by a thematic CDA of Section 9 and The Five Proposals. Finally, I look at how the findings gathered in this chapter inform our understanding of educational policy, and explore implications for ICC-oriented contents in secondary school EFL education policy.
Operations of ideology and power are dissimulated in current changes in higher education language policy. The quest to understand this rather anomalous (and tenuous) position of EMI in Japanese institutions attracts an examination of the nature of operative ideologies and power relations within institutional portals. This chapter examines the nature ideology and domination as they are theorized by social theorists and philosophers. Society, community and human interface are borne of relations of power which are not static but dynamic in nature where ideology is wielded strategically and discursively to sustain relations of domination. Strategy and ideology, while subject to counter discourses, bear strongly on enactments of Self and Other or inclusion and exclusion, while often dissimulated within seemingly natural or neutral ?educational? practices.
The doubts and incongruities highlighted in Chap. 7 (and earlier) are fleshed out in this chapter where the workplace narrative begun in Chap. 1 is resumed. This workplace narrative enables realistic scrutiny of the way different conceptualizations of academic literacy, knowledge and meaning making are dramatized in a real-life situation. Drawing on professional discussions that validate narratives, counter-storytelling and professional praxis as a way to document untold realities toward uncovering institutional beliefs and epistemologies, the reader is provided with a candid in situ narrative that captures EMI and EAP in a Japanese higher education situation. EAP and EMI are reduced to parodic or caricaturized terms in the way decision makers (re)define, (mis)recognize and (mis)apply meanings of ?academic? to achieve their own purposes.
For EMI and EAP to be tenable, one issue is whether there has been enough depth of thought into the matter of having Japanese mother-tongue students study for degree courses conducted in English. Along with this question, Chap. 7 examines related matters like whether EMI and EAP are merely knee-jerk reactions to the need to increase enrolments to shore up university finances, whether EMI and EAP in Japan in fact contribute to student knowledge acquisition and personal growth as people or whether they are part of the cosmetics of poorly conceived attempts at internationalization. By examining real-life instances of the way both English and EAP are trivialized, misunderstood or misappropriated, serious doubts are raised as to whether EMI and EAP are tenable, institutionally speaking.
This book sets out to uncover and discuss the curricular, pedagogical as well as cultural-political issues relating to ideological contradictions inherent in the adoption of English as medium of instruction in Japanese education. Situating the Japanese adoption of EMI in contradicting discourses of outward globalization and inward Japaneseness, the book critiques the current trend, in which EMI merely serves as an ornamental and promotional function rather than a robust educational intervention.
This chapter describes the formidable challenges involved in an effort to anglicize a Japanese university campus, even a comparatively small campus like the one in question. Given a predominantly non-English-speaking Japanese hinterland, the amount of regimentation and contrivedness involved in creating a supposedly anglicized campus on Japanese soil renders the undertaking practically unrealistic. Part of the problem is seen to lie in the matter of administrator naivety or a lack of understanding of not only the symbolic and semiotic but also the dynamic nature of language, which would have made campus anglicization look like a deceptively simple administrative matter decidable top-downward. This scenario sets the stage for EMI initiatives in Japanese higher education institutions to be examined critically in the rest of the book.
Japan’s struggles with English and other things foreign are not innocuous figments of cultural prudery. Instead, the equivocation among Japanese politicians, the business elite and other stakeholders about English are symptomatic of struggles over ongoing dilemmas about the cultural politics of being Japanese. The onset (onslaught) of global forces bearing on local domains began at approximately the same time as the economic changes that augured the bursting of a hyper-inflated bubble. Conservative political elements put in place during the occupation by the Allied forces stepped into the subsequent economic vacuum (and social void) to reassert an inward-looking social and educational agenda, reemphasizing insular notions of Japaneseness, amidst opposite pressures for the country to internationalize. This resurgence of conservatism continues into the present, making efforts to teach in English a highly questionable move.
While Japanese had all along been the sole medium of instruction in Japanese education, there has been a trend lately for Japanese universities to have various offerings of their academic programs conveyed in English. As a nation with little historical reminiscence of English-medium classroom instruction and one which had adopted closed-door policies to things ‘foreign’ at various points in its history, the emergence of English as a medium instruction (EMI) is more than a matter of academic curiosity. What (benefits) do Japanese policy makers and administrators have in mind when content courses in English are introduced? What good reasons are there for EMI at such a time as this? As an uncharacteristic undertaking, there exists an entire weldmesh of ideological implications and complexities loaded onto EMI.
For a country that has tried earnestly to preserve its cultural borders from the perceived ills of foreign influence, the readiness (perhaps audacity) with which certain Japanese institutions have resorted to EMI to bolster their finances with equivocal remonstrations of internationalization is viewed with incredulity. This final chapter extrapolates from important reasons for the failure of EMI and EAP in the institution concerned as part of its pessimistic prognosis of what may be to come in terms of EMI. At best, attempts at internationalization are opportunistic, superficial and tokenistic, and if English teaching in the guise of EAP is interpolated into such facile and fragile attempts at internationalization, both will stand to lose credibility. Japan’s national language-based higher education regime leaves little space for EMI to subsist.
This chapter threads together the socio-historical and structural inequalities and contradictions inherent in the meanings, practices, realizations, and appropriations of English in Japan, a language (as will be seen) that the Japanese are not entirely comfortable with for historical and ideological reasons. I will argue that various realizations, enactments, vacillations, and indecisions concerning English and Englishes in Japan can be traced to Japanese conceptualizations of socio-cultural space in turn closely tied in to a political economy and cultural politics that can be traced back, at least, to the traumas of Japan’s post-war occupation by English-speaking Allied powers led by the forces of the United States. Put simply, the matter of unequal Englishes in Japan defies simple explanations and needs to be understood alongside intricacies to be found in both politics and history. In the course of my discussion, I will address the following issues and how they are linked to the matter of unequal Englishes: (1) the question of whether there is a variety of English which can be called ‘Japanese English’; (2) factors that influence the positioning of a Japanese English vis-à-vis essentialist views of American English as well as formalized and regulatory practices regarding English language education in the country. This chapter concludes that structural and ideological inequalities, inhibitions, prohibitions, and prejudices linked to the presence and treatment of English in Japan are not easily surmountable and are therefore unlikely to go away any time soon.
In this chapter, I examine ideological inconsistencies and contradictions I have encountered in the course of my work as an English for academic purposes teacher in a Japanese higher education institution. Beginning with a short preamble about financial derivatives, much maligned since the catastrophic fall of a well-known Wall Street giant in 2008, I will proceed to discuss my experiences of the workings of language, ideology and power relations teaching English in a Japanese institution. In the course of this discussion, I will draw parallels between my lived experience as a teacher and the workings of the financial derivative, which I will allude to as an enactment of inauthenticity, artificiality and contrivedness. It is not my intention in this discussion to be overly technical about derivatives per se, but to use them as a way of plumbing the phenomenal nature of illegitimate and inauthentic work-related practices. After a preamble on the workings of the financial derivative, I will illustrate how analogous situations can be found in: (1) practices relating to the dominance of standardized proficiency testing; (2) the latest move in Japanese institutions to deliver faculty content courses in English; and (3) practices and particularized enactments of native-speakerist ideologies in the employment and deployment of English teachers. Drawing on the work of critical literacy and critical pedagogy, I then examine two existential conditions confronting English language teachers, namely, what I call the ‘reflexive condition’ and the ‘derivative condition’, before concluding with a critical examination of why English teaching in Japan may persist with the inauthenticities and anomalies of a ‘derivative condition’.
This book uses a narrative-oriented approach to shed light on the processes of identity construction and development among Japanese university students of English. The research highlights the instrumental agency of individuals in responding to and acting upon the social environment, and in developing, maintaining and/or reconstructing their identities as L2 users. The study offers unique insights into the role of experience, emotions, social and environmental affordances in shaping their personal orientations to English and self-perceptions as English learner-users. It also examines individuals’ responses to these factors and discusses fluctuations in their motivations. The additional value of this book lies in its detailed account of methodological procedures, challenges and ways to overcome obstacles encountered when undertaking qualitative longitudinal studies. .
Japan is known to be a country that manicures its socio-cultural borders. In this article I will examine discourses regarding openness, closedness and cultural diversity in relation to policies and practices that draw heavily on mythologies of English language as an inroad to greater openness and diversity. To do this I will examine two English language programs at two different Japanese universities where I have worked as an English teacher. My analysis will be done within a larger backdrop of discourses, histories and epistemologies depicting: (1) Japan as a monolingual and monocultural nation where cultural diversity has been systemically and strategically resisted (Befu, 2001; Lee, 2006); (2) contestations over claims, meanings, renditions and suppressions of internationalization and cultural diversity in contemporary Japan; and (3) current practices surrounding English teaching, recent changes at policy level enabling content courses to be taught in English, and their implications for understandings of cultural diversity given the plurality of cultures and canons identifiable with English. Through critical observations of English as a Foreign Language and English as a Lingua Franca programs, I will demonstrate how different epistemological assumptions and ideological agendas behind the programs influence understandings, renditions and enactments of what I call open(closed)ness and cultural diversity. I will also observe how subtleties, inconsistences and incongruities related to such open(closed)ness can in turn exert a wash back effect on policy decisions.
This article is about exposing and countering racism through critical pedagogy in the context of a Japanese EAP (English for academic purposes) program. Relevant issues are first raised through: (a) a review of academic work concerning Japanese constructions of language, race and culture commonly found in nihonjinron writings, a genre of literature concerned with depictions of Japanese uniqueness or Japaneseness; and (b) an examination of important historical developments in post-war Japan beginning with its occupation by the Allied forces after the nation’s unconditional surrender, which is conducted with a view to demonstrating how the empowerment of a conservative politics has contributed to discourses that reify Japan as a “monolingual” and “monocultural” nation. Following this, the article focuses on how critical counter-storytelling can be combined with a critical pedagogy aimed at exposing and dialogizing prevailing discourses and practices relating to nihonjinron. The article concludes with a reiteration of the importance of denaturalizing and destabilizing racialized and racist practices extant in socio-educational spaces and a prognosis of what the future may hold with regards to ongoing contestations surrounding Japanese constructions of race and culture.
This article examines issues pertaining to content instruction in English in a Japanese higher education institution. It notes that Japan's economic success in the latter part of the twentieth century was achieved with Japanese as the medium of instruction and observes that in terms of ideology and cultural politics at least, there are inherent contradictions with recent moves to have academic courses taught in English. Dominant motifs marking attitudes and practices relating to language, culture and to Japan's dealings with the world beyond Japanese shores are initially examined vis-à-vis the larger situ of a Japan that continues to live down the consequences of post-war occupation and the conservative politics that ensued, circumstances that have bolstered narratives of Japan as a predominantly monolingual and monocultural nation. This is followed by a discussion on how various ideological as well as macro- and micro-political forces bear on the use of English for content instruction. Finally, it will be noted that the present state of affairs calls for deeper thought and critical scrutiny – if recent initiatives towards having more English in higher education are not to be found for superficiality or even a lack of sincerity.
The most common social phenomenon of Western societies is the organization, yet those involved in real-world managing are not always willing to reveal the intricacies of their everyday muddles. Barbara Czarniawska argues that in order to understand these uncharted territories, we need to gather local and concrete stories about organizational life and subject them to abstract and metaphorical interpretation. Using a narrative approach unique to organizational studies, Czarniawska employs literary devices to uncover the hidden workings of organizations. She applies cultural metaphors to public administration in Sweden to demonstrate, for example, how the dynamics of a screenplay can illuminate the budget disputes of an organization. She shows how the interpretive description of organizational worlds works as a distinct genre of social analysis, and her investigations ultimately disclose the paradoxical nature of organizational life: we follow routines in order to change, and decentralize in order to control. By confronting such paradoxes, we bring crisis to existing institutions and enable them to change.
Three orders of simulacra: 1. counterfeits and false images: from renaissance to industrial revolution, signs become mode of exchange, these signs are obviously flase. 2. Dominated by production and series: mass produced signs as commodities, signs refer not to reality but to other signs (money, posters). 3. Pure simulacra: simulacra mask over the idea that there is no reality, reality is an effect of simulacra (disneyland masks simulacra of LA, Prison masks nonfreedom outside the walls).
In Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching a growing emphasis on the social aspects of language teaching and learning has shifted research inquiry away from methodology to focus instead on the specific contexts in which these activities take place. Within these contexts, a prominent role is occupied by the teacher. Teacher identity is particularly significant in language teaching, where the teacher's Relationship and attitude to the target language could have important pedagogical implications. Nevertheless theoretical frameworks for understanding teacher identity have all too often been marred by cultural stereotyping or a reluctance to admit that identity matters at all. This thesis proposes a methodology for researching teacher identity which derives from a poststructuralist conceptualisation of identity as a form of 'strategic positioning'. According to this concept, identity is never fixed but people do signal temporary affiliation with particular social categories or groups from which insights can be inferred concerning the social world that they experience and their values and beliefs about that world. An analysis of strategic positioning in the transcripts of long interviews with eight English teachers in Japanese higher education permits a richer understanding of the multiple ways in which identity and practice are intertwined. The findings support a critique of current thinking about professionalism and expertise, and offer an original challenge to a number of critical linguistic arguments associated with English as an International Language such as linguistic imperialism, intercultural spaces and post method pedagogy.
This book is an exploration of the processes of change in English language teaching. In Part I the principles and strategies of change and factors affecting educational change are presented. Part II focuses on implementing change and looks at key implementation strategies and systemic and behavioural change, before introducing a new interpersonal model of change. Part III presents various ways in which change can be measured and evaluated with reference to contemporary research in English language teaching.
This collection of essays and reflections starts from an analysis of the purposes of foreign language teaching and argues that this should include educational objectives which are ultimately similar to those of education for citizenship. It does so by a journey through reflections on what is possible and desirable in the classroom and how language teaching has a specific role in education systems which have long had, and often still have, the purpose of encouraging young people to identify with the nation-state. Foreign language education can break through this framework to introduce a critical internationalism. In a ‘globalised’ and ‘internationalised’ world, the importance of identification with people beyond the national borders is crucial. Combined with education for citizenship, foreign language education can offer an education for ‘intercultural citizenship’. .
Recent work in applied linguistics has critiqued the discursive construction of essentialized cultures of ESL students as the Other. Also discursively constructed are the images of the Self compared with the Other. This article focuses on the images of U.S. classrooms in terms of the goals of education, the characteristics of teaching, and student characteristics, and aims to reveal their discursive nature by reviewing literature in applied linguistics, studies on instructional practices in U.S. schools and colleges, and a revisionist critique of the educational crisis in the United States. This literature review demonstrates that the applied linguistics and revisionist discourses that emphasize cultural differences convey positive, idealized images of U.S. classrooms whereas research on classroom instruction in mainstream contexts portrays negative images of U.S. classrooms quite similar to applied linguistics' images of Asian classrooms. This disparity indicates that a particular representation of the Self as the ideal norm is produced in contrast with the Other. Discursive practices of Othering, dichotomization of the Self and the Other, and legitimation of power relations between the Self and the Other echo a past-present continuity of the discourses of colonialism. The article discusses the effects of the essentialization of cultures on students and teachers, and suggests an alternative cultural critique.
Incluye bibliografía e índice
Homo clauses and the civilizing process
- N Elias
Globalization and history of English education in Japan
- N Fujimoto-Adamson
Japan’s globalization project stalls as some criticize focus on elite universities
- D Mcneil
What is Kokusaijin?: a 10-year study
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Qualitative research (London: Sage)
- T Wengraf
An inquiry into the social aspects of language teacher expertise (eds) Readings in second language pedagogy and second language acquisition
- A Stewart