Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning: The Case of Japan [1st ed.] 978-3-030-12566-0;978-3-030-12567-7

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xvi
The Scope of Innovation in Japanese Language Education (Hayo Reinders, Sachiko Nakamura, Stephen Ryan)....Pages 1-8
English in Japan in an Era of Global Uncertainty (Philip Seargeant)....Pages 9-22
CLIL in Comparison with PPP: A Revolution in ELT by Competency-Based Language Education (Makoto Ikeda)....Pages 23-45
Innovation in Elementary Classrooms: Integrating the Teaching of English, History and Peace Linguistics (Noriko Ishihara, Terumi Orihashi, Zachary Clark)....Pages 47-69
Inviting Children’s Views for Designing Digital Game Tasks (Yuko Goto Butler)....Pages 71-96
Learning Across Generations: A Small-Scale Initiative (Stephen Ryan, Kay Irie)....Pages 97-116
It’s Your Turn: EFL Teaching and Learning with Tabletop Games (James York, Jonathan deHaan, Peter Hourdequin)....Pages 117-139
What Does ‘Teaching English as a Lingua Franca’ Mean? Insights from University ELF Instructors (Ayako Suzuki)....Pages 141-160
Developing a Foreign Language Geragogy: Teaching Innovations for Older Learners (Danya Ramírez-Gómez)....Pages 161-184
Self-Access Learning and Advising: Promoting Language Learner Autonomy Beyond the Classroom (Jo Mynard)....Pages 185-209
An Insider’s View: Launching a University Program (Kay Irie)....Pages 211-232
Innovating with the ‘The Collaborative Social’ in Japan (Tim Murphey)....Pages 233-255
An Innovative Approach to In-Service Teacher Training for Teaching English at Japanese Public Elementary Schools (Maiko Ikeda, Hiroyuki Imai, Osamu Takeuchi)....Pages 257-282
Innovation in Japan: Looking to the Future (Stephen Ryan, Sachiko Nakamura, Hayo Reinders)....Pages 283-289
Back Matter ....Pages 291-295

Citation preview

NEW LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING ENVIRONMENTS

Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning The Case of Japan Edited by Hayo Reinders Stephen Ryan Sachiko Nakamura

New Language Learning and Teaching Environments

Series Editor Hayo Reinders Department of Education Anaheim University Anaheim, CA, USA Department of Languages King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi Bangkok, Thailand

New Language Learning and Teaching Environments is an exciting new book series edited by Hayo Reinders, dedicated to recent developments in learner-centred approaches and the impact of technology on learning and teaching inside and outside the language classroom. The series aims to: • Publish cutting-edge research into current developments and innovation in language learning and teaching practice. • Publish applied accounts of the ways in which these developments impact on current and future language education. • Encourage dissemination and cross-fertilisation of policies and practice relating to learner-centred pedagogies for language learning and teaching in new learning environments. • Disseminate research and best practice in out-of-class and informal language learning. The series is a multidisciplinary forum for the very latest developments in language education, taking a pedagogic approach with a clear focus on the learner, and with clear implications for both researchers and language practitioners. It is the first such series to provide an outlet for researchers to publish their work, and the first stop for teachers interested in this area. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14736

Hayo Reinders · Stephen Ryan Sachiko Nakamura Editors

Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning The Case of Japan

Editors Hayo Reinders Department of Education Anaheim University Anaheim, CA, USA

Stephen Ryan School of Culture, Media and Society Waseda University Tokyo, Japan

Department of Languages King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi Bangkok, Thailand Sachiko Nakamura Department of Languages King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi Bangkok, Thailand

New Language Learning and Teaching Environments ISBN 978-3-030-12566-0 ISBN 978-3-030-12567-7  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019930403 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Alex’s Pictures - Spring/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

The Scope of Innovation in Japanese Language Education 1 Hayo Reinders, Sachiko Nakamura and Stephen Ryan English in Japan in an Era of Global Uncertainty 9 Philip Seargeant CLIL in Comparison with PPP: A Revolution in ELT by Competency-Based Language Education 23 Makoto Ikeda Innovation in Elementary Classrooms: Integrating the Teaching of English, History and Peace Linguistics 47 Noriko Ishihara, Terumi Orihashi and Zachary Clark Inviting Children’s Views for Designing Digital Game Tasks 71 Yuko Goto Butler Learning Across Generations: A Small-Scale Initiative 97 Stephen Ryan and Kay Irie v

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It’s Your Turn: EFL Teaching and Learning with Tabletop Games 117 James York, Jonathan deHaan and Peter Hourdequin What Does ‘Teaching English as a Lingua Franca’ Mean? Insights from University ELF Instructors 141 Ayako Suzuki Developing a Foreign Language Geragogy: Teaching Innovations for Older Learners 161 Danya Ramírez-Gómez Self-Access Learning and Advising: Promoting Language Learner Autonomy Beyond the Classroom 185 Jo Mynard An Insider’s View: Launching a University Program 211 Kay Irie Innovating with the ‘The Collaborative Social’ in Japan 233 Tim Murphey An Innovative Approach to In-Service Teacher Training for Teaching English at Japanese Public Elementary Schools 257 Maiko Ikeda, Hiroyuki Imai and Osamu Takeuchi Innovation in Japan: Looking to the Future 283 Stephen Ryan, Sachiko Nakamura and Hayo Reinders Index 291

Notes on Contributors

Yuko Goto Butler is a Professor of Educational Linguistics at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the Director of the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Program at Penn. Her research primarily focuses on the improvement of second/foreign language education among young learners in the USA and Asia in response to the diverse needs of an increasingly globalizing world. She is also interested in identifying effective ways to use technology in instruction as well as in finding assessment methods that take into account the relevant linguistic and cultural contexts in which instruction takes place for young learners. Zachary Clark is a JHS Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Komoro City, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. He holds a B.S. in Business Administration, a Marketing Management option, and a Pre-law minor, with an emphasis in Communication Studies. Zachary’s teaching efforts and involvements have been noted by a Japanese national newspaper, prefectural news articles and several television news segments. Additionally, he does work for the Asahi Weekly Bilingual Paper for English Learners, which is published weekly on their e-zine website. vii

viii     Notes on Contributors

Dr. Jonathan deHaan (http://tinyurl.com/jonathanwdehaan) is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of International Relations at the University of Shizuoka in Japan. He studies the use of games in language and literacy teaching and learning. He blogs at http://www. japangamelab.org/. Peter Hourdequin is a lecturer in the Faculty of Foreign Studies at Tokoha University in Shizuoka, Japan. His research relates to the teaching of pragmatics, mutiliteracies, and participatory game design as transdisciplinary education for sustainable development. He blogs at http://www.japangamelab.org/. Dr. Maiko Ikeda is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies, Kansai University in Japan, where she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in TESOL. Her main research interests are L2 learner strategies, teacher education and collaborative learning. Her recent publications include Situated Willingness to Communicate in an L2: Interplay of Individual Characteristics and Context (2018), in Language Teaching Research, 22 (with T. Yashima and P. MacIntyre) and Situating Metacognition in Context (2018), in M. C. W. Yip (ed.), Cognition, Metacognition and Academic Performance: An East Asian Perspective. (Routledge) (with O. Takeuchi). Makoto Ikeda  is Professor of English Philology and English Language Education in the Department of English Literature at Sophia University, where he is currently serving as head of department. He has written various CLIL methodology books and articles for practitioners and researchers in Japan, and delivered numerous invited lectures, seminars and workshops for Japanese, Asian and European audiences. His recent publications include the co-authored CLIL: New Challenges in Foreign Language Education at Sophia University (Materials and lessons) (Sophia University Press, 2016) and the co-authored Introduction to Historical Sociolinguistics (Taishukan-shoten, 2015). Hiroyuki Imai is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies, Kansai University in Japan, where he teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students TESOL methodology courses. His research interests are in the area of development and assessment of

Notes on Contributors     ix

speaking skill and second language teacher education from a sociocultural perspective. His recent publications include Comparison of Syllable Counting Ability Between Second-Graders and Fifth-Graders in Elementary School (2015), in JESTEC Journal, 34. Kay Irie  is a Professor at the Faculty of International Social Sciences, Gakushuin University, Tokyo. She also teaches in the Graduate College of Education at Temple University Japan. Her current research interests include language learning psychology, learner autonomy, and research methods used in these areas, including Q-methodology. Noriko Ishihara  holds a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from the University of Minnesota and is Professor of Applied Linguistics/EFL at Hosei University. She also facilitates language teachers’ professional development courses at graduate programs in Japan and the USA with a special focus on linguistic politeness and intercultural communication. She serves as a researcher of L2 pragmatics and a teacher educator promoting its instruction, while also working to bridge peaceful language use and critical awareness in the language classroom and teacher development. She is a member of the Educational Team of the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies Network. Tim Murphey (Ph.D. Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Applied Linguistics)  TESOL’s Professional Development in Language Education series editor, co-author with Zoltan Dörnyei of Group Dynamics in the Language Classroom (CUP/2003); author of Music and Song (OUP/1991); Teaching One to One (Longman/1992); Language Hungry! (Helbling/2006), a novel about Japan’s entrance exam system; The Tale That Wags (Perceptia/2010); Teaching in Pursuit of Wow! (Abax/2012); and co-editor of Meaningful Action (CUP/2013), presently researches Vygotskian SCT in three graduate schools, and was a plenary speaker 22 times in 15 countries since 2010. Dr. Jo Mynard  is a professor in the English department, Director of the Self-Access Learning Center, and Director of the Research Institute for Learner Autonomy Education at Kanda University of International Studies in Chiba, Japan. She also teaches and supervises students on the

x     Notes on Contributors

M.A. program at Kanda University graduate school, supervises M.A. students at the University of Birmingham, UK, and teaches/supervises M.A. and Ed.D. students at Anaheim University, USA. Her research interests include advising in language learning, the psychology of language learning, and self-directed learning. Sachiko Nakamura holds an M.A. in TESOL from Anaheim University and is a Doctoral candidate in Applied Linguistics at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi in Thailand. Her research areas include the psychology of language learning and self-regulated learning, with her current studies focusing on emotions of language learners and emotion regulation strategy instruction. Terumi Orihashi is currently a leader of the Nagano English Education Promotion Committee and ‘English Major’ at Komoro City elementary schools. She is an author of the paper Improving English Education: Change the Focus from Repetition and Pattern Practice to Communication with Motivation, which explored the use of the story Japanese Blue Eyed Doll in a case study in English education. Since 2016, she has been a member of Komoro Board of Education specializing in English teacher development and teacher evaluation. She has an interest in English education practices being developed in Korea and has connections in the English education community there and continues to be involved with that community through her contributions at conferences. Dr. Danya Ramírez-Gómez  is Program Director of the Adult Tutoring Program at the Literacy Center of West Michigan, USA, a non-profit organization that works to improve literacy levels among native speakers of English, immigrants and refugees. Her research focus is the FL learning process of older adults, related methodology and strategies, and the introduction of theoretical linguistics constructs in the FL classroom. She is the author of Language Teaching and the Older Adult: The Significance of Experience, published in 2016 by Multilingual Matters. Dr. Hayo Reinders  (www.innovationinteaching.org) is Adjunct Professor of Applied Linguistics at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi in Thailand and TESOL Professor and Director of the doctoral

Notes on Contributors     xi

programme at Anaheim University in the USA. He is founder of the global Institute for Teacher Leadership (www.teacherleadership.ac). Hayo has published over 25 books and 100 articles in the areas of autonomy, technology, teacher education and out-of-class learning. He edits a book series for Palgrave Macmillan and is editor of the journal Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching. Stephen Ryan has been involved in English language education for over 25 years and for most of that time he has been based in Japan, He is currently a professor in the School of Culture, Media and Society at Waseda University in Tokyo. Philip Seargeant  is a senior lecturer at the Open University, where he specializes in language and communication. He has published several books on topics ranging from social media to linguistic creativity and English around the world. His most recent titles include the Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies and Taking Offence on Social Media (2017). Dr. Ayako Suzuki  is Associate Professor at the Department of English Language Education, Tamagawa University in Japan, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate students English for Academic Purposes, Sociolinguistics, and Multicultural Education. She has been researching English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in Japanese educational contexts and her articles on ELT and ELF appeared in ELT Journal and in The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca (2018, co-authored). Dr. Osamu Takeuchi (http://www2.itc.kansai-u.ac.jp/~takeuchi/) is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan where he directs M.A. and Ph.D. programs in language learning and teaching. His research interests are L2 learner strategies and L2 motivation. His recent publications include Situating Metacognition in Context (2018), in M. C. W. Yip (ed.), Cognition, Metacognition and Academic Performance: An East Asian Perspective (Routledge) and Toward a Modeling of a Prototypical Use of Language Learning Strategies with Decision Tree-Based Methods (2018), in R. Oxford and C. Amerstorfer (eds.), Language Learning Strategies and Individual Learner Characteristics (Bloomsbury).

xii     Notes on Contributors

James York  is a lecturer at Tokyo Denki University where he conducts research on the use of games in language learning contexts. York is also the founder of Kotoba Miners, an online Japanese learning community that used Minecraft as a domain for teaching. Finally, he blogs about games and pedagogy at http://www.japangamelab.org/.

List of Figures

Innovation in Elementary Classrooms: Integrating the Teaching of English, History and Peace Linguistics Fig. 1 An image of the dolls Fig. 2 Newspaper clippings displayed

49 55

It’s Your Turn: EFL Teaching and Learning with Tabletop Games Fig. 1 A game of Pandemic underway in class Fig. 2 The Kotoba Rollers framework Fig. 3 The “pedagogy of multiliteracies” structure and activities of the Game Terakoya project Fig. 4 A model for self-access learning around games Fig. 5 The student’s boardgamegeek.com review

119 123 125 127 131

Innovating with the ‘The Collaborative Social’ in Japan Fig. 1 Socially intelligent dynamic systems; Consciousness cloud in motion 238

xiii

xiv     List of Figures

An Innovative Approach to In-Service Teacher Training for Teaching English at Japanese Public Elementary Schools Fig. 1 A schematic representation of how the approach works (Ikeda, Imai, & Takeuchi, 2017) Fig. 2 Engeström’s model of activity theory Fig. 3 Activity system network of schools M, R and J Fig. 4 Activity system network of schools K and S

264 269 274 275

List of Tables

CLIL in Comparison with PPP: A Revolution in ELT by Competency-Based Language Education Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table 5

Conspicuous features of CLIL lessons 25 Comparison of traditional ELT and CLIL 26 General-purpose competences 27 Comparison of vocabulary in the PPP and CLIL lessons 32 Comparison of teachers’ questions in the PPP and CLIL lessons 34 Table 6 Comparison of students’ language production in the PPP and CLIL lessons 36 Inviting Children’s Views for Designing Digital Game Tasks Table 1 Game and learning elements identified by sixth-grade students Table 2 Post-game survey among fifth-grade students (n = 45)

82 90

Learning Across Generations: A Small-Scale Initiative Table 1 Profiles of the participants 106 Table 2 Active human project lesson schedule 109 xv

xvi     List of Tables

What Does ‘Teaching English as a Lingua Franca’ Mean? Insights from University ELF Instructors Table 1 List of informants 149

Developing a Foreign Language Geragogy: Teaching Innovations for Older Learners Table 1 Main features of the control and experimental Spanish courses 164 Table 2 Means, standard deviations (SD), t-test, and Cohen’s d scores for number of words, lexical density, variability, and accuracy per course 172 Table 3 Means, standard deviations (SD), confidence intervals, t-test and Cohen’s d values for interviews per course 173

Self-Access Learning and Advising: Promoting Language Learner Autonomy Beyond the Classroom Table 1 A typology of SALCs in Japan 193 Innovating with the ‘The Collaborative Social’ in Japan Table 1 At the end of social tests 245 An Innovative Approach to In-Service Teacher Training for Teaching English at Japanese Public Elementary Schools Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4

Details of each school selected Degree of satisfaction with in-service training (n = 102) Anxiety reduction after in-service training (n = 101) Possible renewal of the training in its present form in the following year (n = 99)

267 271 272 272

The Scope of Innovation in Japanese Language Education Hayo Reinders, Sachiko Nakamura and Stephen Ryan

Innovation is the driving force of progress. And innovation is hard— as anyone who has had even a passing acquaintance with the Japanese education system will attest. Yet, our innate desire to innovate, to find ways to improve things—even if only ever so slightly—for our learners and ourselves, is what keeps many of us excited throughout our careers, and it is what keeps our field from fossilizing. This has been evident

H. Reinders (*)  Department of Education, Anaheim University, Anaheim, CA, USA H. Reinders · S. Nakamura  Department of Languages, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok, Thailand e-mail: [email protected] S. Ryan  School of Culture, Media and Society, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7_1

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in the two preceding volumes in this series. The books on innovation in Thailand (Darasawang & Reinders, 2015), innovation in China (Reinders, Nunan, & Zou, 2017), as well as the forthcoming book on innovation in the Middle East (Reinders, Littlejohn, Coombe, & Tafazoli, forthcoming), unequivocally show that innovation is universal, necessary, and at times both exhilarating and frustrating. Yet, teachers—and in particular language teachers—in Japan are a resilient bunch and progress has been made and continues to be made. The historical developments are clearly laid out in the opening chapter by Philip Seargeant (Chapter “English in Japan in an Era of Global Uncertainty”), who explores the changed and changing contexts of English in Japan as the background against which innovative and engaging pedagogy for the language needs to exist. Taking into consideration the cultural and political contexts that have shaped people’s beliefs about and attitudes towards the language, he discusses the idea of world English upon which Japan’s education curriculum was built and covers practical issues related to its learning and teaching emanating from this. Following Seargeant’s contribution, the remaining contributions, loosely organized based on educational levels, from early childhood to adult learning, present innovative practices. Authors were asked to cover the following aspects: area of innovation in the literature, impetus for the innovation, the context in which the innovation was implemented, findings in terms of what worked as well as what did not work and why, and implications in the local context and the wider language education field. This structure reflects our primary interests in the process of innovation. We begin with Makoto Ikeda’s (Chapter “CLIL in Comparison with PPP: A ‘Revolution’ in ELT by Competency-Based Language Education”) exploration of content and language integrated learning (CLIL), based on an innovative undertaking at a primary school that introduced maths CLIL in its school-wide curriculum. He reports on a study that examines a CLIL lesson in comparison with a conventional presentation–practice–production lesson conducted by the same teachers. Based on materials evaluation, lesson observations, classroom discourse analysis, and teacher interviews, he concludes that CLIL can broaden the scope of language education by

The Scope of Innovation in Japanese Language Education     3

engaging students in content-rich and cognitively demanding tasks, all of which contribute to the development of learners’ general purpose competencies such as creativity, criticality, communication and collaboration. Next, Noriko Ishihara, Terumi Orihashi, and Zachary Clark (Chapter “Innovations in Elementary Classrooms: Integrating the Teaching of English, History, and Peace Linguistics”) consider peace linguistics instruction, where peace education content is integrated with the language of empathy from a peace linguistics perspective and linguistic politeness theory. They designed and implemented lessons that provided elementary school students with opportunities to study the history of dolls in the community that were gifted by US citizens as tokens of peace and friendship in the 1920s. They used these to have learners communicate with them in English in order to develop compassion through the language of empathy and an awareness of racial diversity. Their analyses of class documents, video recordings, and reflective writings by the students, teachers, and the teacher-researcher indicated the students’ development of compassion and awareness of diversity— although their formulation of questions in English needed to be scaffolded. They highlight potential advantages of collaboration between practitioners and researchers for advancing both educational practice and research in applied linguistics. Finally, in the elementary context, Yuko Goto Butler (Chapter “Inviting Children’s Views for Designing Digital Game Tasks”) considers digital games as a potential means for learning EFL among young learners. She reports on a task-based project in which primary school students, working in groups, designed digital computer game tasks for English vocabulary learning. The project elicited from the students a number of motivational and learning elements that can be useful in tasks designed for young learners while posing some challenges such as difficulty in going beyond their experience in task design and moving learning beyond the gaming context. Based on these results, she shares thoughts on those practices that allowed educators to use digital games to help children learn EFL.

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Moving into the secondary and tertiary context, Stephen Ryan and Kay Irie (Chapter “Learning Across Generations: A Small-Scale Initiative”) report on a cross-generational learning initiative instigated by a group of high school students who designed and taught a series of lessons to seniors in the community, with the goal of providing language guide services to international tourists to the city. They first consider contextual factors as the roots of the initiative and discuss how two apparently unrelated developments in Japanese society—demographic changes and the government’s attempts to reform primary and secondary education—uniquely promoted the innovation. Based on a series of retrospective interviews with the students, teachers, seniors, and others involved in the project, they describe how this dynamic group of people played key roles in the successful implementation of the project, providing lessons for educational innovation in the wider context of Japan. Next, James York, Jonathan deHaan and Peter Hourdequin (Chapter “It’s Your Turn: EFL Teaching and Learning with Tabletop Games”) explore the affordances of tabletop games for language development, based on three case studies from university contexts. In each project, they make explicit connections between their tabletop games (Kotoba Rollers, Tame Terakoya, and Game Lab) and specific pedagogical approaches, such as task-based language teaching and multiliteracies pedagogy, and illustrate how tabletop games can be used to promote students’ autonomy, engagement, and awareness of local and global cultural discourse. They also describe their ongoing process of trial and error as one of the essential factors to the success of all three projects. Next, Ayako Suzuki (Chapter “What Does ‘Teaching English as a Lingua Franca’ Mean? Insights from University ELF Instructors”) examines an innovative program at a university that adopted English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) as its pedagogical framework. Analyzing interview data with the program instructors, she illustrates how the instructors interpreted and applied ELF principles into their classroom and how managerial issues within the university created challenges, leading them to hold back from fully exploring avenues for teaching ELF. Based on the findings she discusses factors vital for an innovative project to be successful, such as a thorough consideration of its limitations, the impact of the innovation on the wider context, as well as the available professional and operational support from the institution.

The Scope of Innovation in Japanese Language Education     5

Moving from school-age to adult learners, in Chapter “Developing a Foreign Language Geragogy: Teaching Innovations for Older Learners”, Danya Ramírez-Gómez addresses the teaching of foreign languages to older Japanese adults by investigating the efficacy of a Spanish course that implemented a series of methodological and content-related innovations in comparison with a previous course. The innovation involved two stages: the first consisted of learner training sessions to teach vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) and the concept of lexical aspect of the language. The second stage involved Spanish lessons using materials created specifically for the students. The analyses indicated that the innovation enhanced the older learners’ learning experience. Based on the findings, Ramirez-Gómez questions the common notion that challenges experienced by older language learners are largely caused by age-related cognitive decline and highlights the importance of methodological approaches that are free of such preconceptions. In the next chapter, Jo Mynard (Chapter “Self-Access Learning and Advising: Promoting Language Learner Autonomy Beyond the Classroom”) considers language learning beyond the classroom by looking at self-access learning and advising. She discusses the key characteristics of approaches to self-access in Japan, categorizing them into three types of self-access facilities (Social-Supportive Self-access learning centers [SALCs], Developing SALC, and Administrative Center). She then provides examples of innovative practice in self-access that represent the most widely researched areas in the field and illustrates how institutions are operationalizing self-access and the challenges people involved experience. Kay Irie’s (Chapter “An Insider’s View: Launching a University Program”) provides a detailed account of the process of developing a new interdisciplinary degree program at an established university. Following the description of key factors that promoted the establishment of the program, she describes various financial and institutional restrictions imposed during the preparation stage from an insider’s point of view. These included: both internal and external tension in gaining institutional support; a significant amount of work required in obtaining the approval from MEXT (the Japanese education ministry); and conflicts between pedagogical considerations, such as support for students’ out-of-class learning, and various constraints, such as

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the program size and facilities. By elucidating the complexities of the Japanese education system and contextual factors that can affect creative initiatives, she helps readers, especially practicing teachers, understand possible restrictions involved in the attempts and the actual process of innovation. Next, Tim Murphey (Chapter  “Innovating with the ‘The Collaborative Social’ in Japan”) looks at ways to innovate and activate the collaborative social that seeks to empower students with the ability to ask, interact and help each other to learn, rather than isolating and individualizing them, with a particular focus on testing. He first discusses seven inspirations as the sources of innovative practice in the areas of teaching, researching, and in particular, testing, by autobiographically blending some of his earlier work. Following this, he discusses his concept of social testing while providing three examples of innovative testing; student-made tests, negotiated interaction, and scaffolding social testing. In each case, he provides detailed accounts of how the testing has developed and can be used in the classroom with actual sample tests provided in appendices. The final innovative project is described by Maiko Ikeda, Hiroyuki Imai, and Osamu Takeuchi (Chapter “An Innovative Approach to In-Service Teacher Training for Teaching English at Japanese Public Elementary Schools”). They developed an innovative in-service teacher training approach aimed at helping primary school teachers prepare to teach English as a formal academic subject. One of the innovative features of this approach is that it is tailored to individual school contexts by using each school’s framework for in-service teacher training that is also built on specific objectives. They evaluate the efficacy of the approach through quantitatively and qualitative analyzing the data collected from school administrators, primary school teachers, and postgraduate and undergraduate students. Based on the findings, they discuss key factors that contributed to the success of the implementation, such as positive and constructive relationships between administrators and teachers and their clear understanding of the purposes of the training, all of which can be applied to reforms and projects in the language educational contexts in Japan and elsewhere.

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From the above chapters—and despite the fact that progress sometimes seems slow and inefficient—there is ample evidence to show that a great deal of conviction, passion, and determination are being invested in many different ways, at all levels of the Japanese language education system, and that important successes are being achieved. The chapters in this book share with us several important lessons: ‘Innovation takes time’: in most cases, genuine innovation takes several iterations and requires sustained involvement to for it to organically integrate into the learning and teaching context. ‘Innovation is relational’: to paraphrase Michael Fullan (1999), it’s all about people and the relationships between them. It pays to invest time in building communities and in bringing people into them, so as to develop shared ownership. ‘Innovation happens on the ground’: policies and broad aspirations can and do help to create a context in which innovation emerges, but it is in the local context that innovation is operationalized and implemented, where it is real, and where—therefore—ultimate value resides (Murray, 2008). ‘Innovation is ongoing’: there is a theoretical debate about whether innovation is a product or a process (Waters, 2009). On reading the chapters in this volume, a strong case could be made that it is perhaps both, but that the real value lies in the process insofar as it brings people together in a genuine pursuit of improvement. The lessons learned (positive or negative) during this process are, one could argue, more important than their outcomes. The contributors to this volume—and those they have worked with in their projects—are to be admired for their conviction and their courage. In a sense, innovation is highly personal, both intra-personal and inter-­ personal, in that it requires several individuals to each commit to venturing into the unknown, to taking a risk, and then to collectively working out what that will look like. As editors, we are in awe of the energy and passion that each of them has brought to their projects and to this volume, sharing best practice and lessons learned. It is our sincere hope that their ideas and experiences will inspire and inform others to take on the rewarding challenge of innovating language education in Japan.

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References Darasawang, P., & Reinders, H. (Eds.). (2015). Innovation in practice: Lessons from Thailand. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Fullan, M. (1999). Change forces: The sequel. Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Murray, D. E. (Ed.). (2008). Planning change, changing plans: Innovations in second language teaching. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Reinders, H., Littlejohn, A., Coombe, C., & Tafazoli, D. (Eds.). (forthcoming). Innovation in language education: The case of the Middle East and North Africa. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Reinders, H., Nunan, D., & Zou, B. (Eds.). (2017). Innovation in language education: The case of China. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Waters, A. (2009). Managing innovation in English language education. Language Teaching, 42(4), 421–458.

English in Japan in an Era of Global Uncertainty Philip Seargeant

English as a Global Language A starting point for most recent educational policy and pedagogic practice around the teaching of English in Japan has been the language’s status as the pre-eminent channel for international communication throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As the language has come to be used as a primary means of communication by various transnational political and economic bodies, and as it has become the default global working language in domains ranging from science and technology to business and academia (Seargeant, 2012), the discourse of ‘English as a global language’ has become ever more embedded in popular imagination. In Japan, it was the Nakasone policies of the 1980s that marked the country’s modern investment in the idea of English. These policies firmly established the idea of English as an integral part of the

P. Seargeant (*)  Open University, Milton Keynes, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7_2

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nation’s willingness and ability to engage with the global community in economic, cultural and political terms (Seargeant, 2009). And this general ideology has continued as the context for much of the educational agenda towards the language ever since. As a policy document from the turn of the millennium puts it, “knowledge of English as the international lingua franca equips one with a key skill for knowing and accessing the world” (CJGTC, 2000, p. 10). English ability is thus seen by many as an essential part of the skillset that is necessary for productive engagement in the twenty-first century society and promoted as a resource that can enhance both personal, social and economic development. A great deal has changed in geopolitics since the 1980s, however, and these changes have been especially acute in the last few years. Anglophone nations such as the USA and the UK have begun pursuing policies with isolationist and nationalist overtones, and this has led to speculation about the effects this might have on the status and identity of English within the world (Seargeant, 2017). At the same time, theorizing within sociolinguistics has been moving in the opposite direction, highlighting the ways in which ideas of discrete languages are always ideological constructs, and exploring instead the actuality of people’s mixed language practices in a world of ever-increasing geographical mobility and online global networking (e.g., Makoni & Pennycook, 2006). Given, then, that a mixture of internationalizing aspiration and neoliberal ideals have been the traditional motivators behind Japan’s interest in English, how is this shift in global geopolitics and the emergent discourses around the ‘devalued’ nature of English likely to affect the context of ELT in Japan today? And how do recent sociolinguistic conceptualizations of English language practices such as translanguaging (Garcia & Wei, 2014) feed into the strategies and approaches that ELT practitioners may wish to adopt? In this chapter, I explore the changed and changing context of English in Japan at the close of the second decade of the third millennium as the background against which innovative and engaging pedagogy for the language now needs to exist. In doing so, I will ask whether the idea of English in the world today is the same as that upon which Japan’s ELT industry and secondary and higher education curriculum

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was built. And if not, what implications this has for teaching and learning the language in the country today. In addressing these questions, I will also lay out the cultural and political context that shapes people’s beliefs about and attitudes to the language, which thus underpins the practical issues related to its teaching and learning.

Content and Engagement Two of the fundamental facets to successful teaching are relevant and sound content (the knowledge to be imparted) and student engagement (the means by which this is conveyed). In an era of ever-evolving technological change, it is often the case that the medium rather than the message gets privileged in explorations of innovations in education theory and practice. While the ways in which teaching is delivered, and the environments and strategies that structure learning can of course have important implications for the learning experience, they always co-exist alongside these two key elements: content and engagement. So, what do these two fundamental facets mean for the teaching of English in Japan today? What is the knowledge base that constitutes the content to be taught, and how might this have changed in the last few decades? And how does one ensure that this knowledge base is both relevant and engaging to learners’ ambitions? The answer to the first question—what content is to be taught?— is, from one perspective, seemingly very straightforward: the English language. Having said this, the common-sense notion that English is an unproblematic category and that there is a clearly identifiable, stable thing called ‘English’ (or perhaps even ‘standard English’) has been effectively and systematically problematized by sociolinguistics over the last several decades, especially in areas such as World Englishes Studies (see Seargeant, 2012, for discussion). The global spread of English has resulted in ever-greater diversity in the forms and identities for the language. And an awareness of this—and especially of the idea that a native standard (particularly one related to the USA or UK) is not an exclusive or necessary criterion for successful communication—is one which,

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within sociolinguistics, is now the default framing for what constitutes the knowledge base of the English language. Yet, just because academic concepts of the nature of English acknowledge this diversity does not mean that policy makers or students also do—and when moving to the second part of the equation, student engagement, it is equally important to be aware of the beliefs and aspirations that learners bring to the language, and to ensure that a critical acknowledgment of this is part of the teaching experience (Dörnyei, 2005). In other words, an awareness of what people want and what they need in terms of their relationship to English will be relevant both to the content of the teaching and the extent to which this engages students. For this, an understanding of attitudes and beliefs about English becomes important context for the practical decisions about what and how to teach the language. In the next section, I therefore take a brief look at the state and status of English in Japan and consider the extent to which changes in global cultural politics may be having an effect on this.

English in Japan: Past and Present English’s status as a global language is based on history and politics. Interest in English among the Japanese population is related primarily to the status and power of Anglophone nations throughout the twentieth century, and the subsequent status of the language itself into the twenty-first century. As a country in what Kachru called the Expanding Circle (1992), the role of English in Japan is not the result of direct political coercion, as it is in many other Asian and African countries (Omura, 1978). Instead, it is primarily, at least at a policy level, a result of beliefs within the country about the functional advantages that may be provided by English language skills, given the standing the language has within international circles. Global politics are still of key importance here, however, and a short overview of some of the historical factors that have influenced the position of English in Japan in the modern period can thus offer important contextual background for an investigation of its current identity.

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Although, as noted, there was no colonial history with Anglophone countries in Japan, there was, of course, the seven-year American occupation at the end of World War Two. During the war itself, the learning of English was discouraged, and time devoted to its teaching was cut back in the school curriculum (Koike & Tanaka, 1995). Following the war, however, a number of reforms were introduced into the education system so that English once again became an important school subject. But it was not until the 1980s that the explicit focus on English as a core skill for Japan’s international status was articulated. Several educational reforms were proposed during Yasuhiro Nakasone’s administration (1982–1987), all of which were part of the broader program of kokusaika, or internationalization (Hood, 2001). The roll-out of these reforms took place over the next two decades, most noticeably in the Course of Study documents, which provide the syllabus for primary and secondary education. In the Reform Acts of 1989 and 2002, for example, a symbolic switch was made from the traditional grammar-translation method of teaching that had been practiced since the Meiji era to one focused more specifically on communicative methods. Whereas the grammar-translation method had been a means of accessing and accruing knowledge from Western sources (and thus a key part of Japan’s modernization efforts at the turn of the twentieth century), communicative methods were aimed more at facilitating interaction between international communities. As noted above, an important context for any understanding of discourses around global English in Japan is debates around the idea of kokusaika or internationalisation. A buzzword for Nakasone’s politics, the promotion of this idea was seen by many social historians as the government’s response to foreign pressure on Japan to open up its markets (Itoh, 1998). Indeed, commentators such as Itoh have argued that despite its outward stress on taking a strongly internationalist perspective, one of the main aims of kokusaika was in fact to enhance Japan’s national economic interest, which could be achieved by boosting the country’s status on the international stage. According to this perspective, embracing English as an international language would not challenge the position of Japanese as the national language; rather, it allowed Japan to better promote its national culture to an international audience, thus boosting its own sense of national cultural identity (Hashimoto, 2000; Kawai, 2007).

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The language education policy initiatives that have been implemented since the Nakasone era have continued to enhance the role of English in the country, increasingly stressing its role as an international language. For instance, in the 1989 Course of Study a subject called ‘Oral Communication’ was introduced into the secondary school curriculum, and from 1998 it became a compulsory requirement for junior high school students to take a foreign language, which in practice meant English. At the beginning of the new millennium, the government introduced its ‘Action Plan to Cultivate “Japanese with English Abilities,”’ and then in 2011 unveiled the ‘Five Proposals and Specific Measures for Developing Proficiency in English for International Communication.’ In 2008, the Course of Study introduced compulsory English language education in primary schools, while the following year advocating that English should become the medium of instruction for English classes at high school level. From 2020, further changes will be introduced, again with the aim of enhancing the country’s global competitiveness. These include starting some form of English education from the third grade in elementary school and making it a formal subject from the fifth grade onwards. The new curriculum also involves an increase in the number of classes, with grades three and four students having 35 hours of English lessons per year and grades five and six students having 70 hours (Carrigan, 2018). Additionally, the Department of Education is looking to increase the numbers of English teachers, with a target of hiring 20,000 assistant language teachers by the time the curriculum is fully implemented. For secondary education, the government has set a target that all high school graduates should achieve a level of English that is equivalent to B1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Language (which is described as “The ability to express oneself in a limited way in familiar situations and to deal in a general way with nonroutine information” [CEFR, 2018]). In terms of the pedagogic approach, over the last few years there has been a stress particularly on ‘active learning.’ According to Ito and Chan (2017), interest in this particular approach began at the beginning of the second decade of this century, and was emphasized in the MEXT-commissioned report on Qualitative Transformation of Undergraduate Education of the Central Council of

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2012. It stresses methods such as collaborative learning and task-based learning and again has a specifically practical and real-world emphasis. While educational policy has increasingly emphasized the importance of English as a core skill for life in the twenty-first century, the reality on the ground is rather different. Levels of fluency are relatively low, especially when considering the resources that have been invested into language education over the last few decades. Data from the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) in 2009, for example, had Japan second from bottom in the rankings of 30 Asian countries (Hongo, 2013). While in the EF English Proficiency Index, the level of English proficiency of Japanese is ranked 35th out of 72 countries, with nations such as Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and South Korea all placing before Japan (Tsuboya-Newell, 2017). As a policy document from the turn of the century notes, “The Japanese themselves are painfully aware of the inadequacy of their communication skills” (CJGTC, 2000, p. 4). For commentators such Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of internet company Rakuten, this speaks to a fundamental failing in the education system, as it appears that the 3000 or so hours of study devoted to English over the school career are a “major waste of time” if very few are able to speak the language proficiently when they graduate (quoted in Matsutani, 2012). Hiroshi Mikitani has himself attempted to change the culture for English in Japan by introducing it as the working language for his company, Rakuten, and one or two other companies have followed suit—Fast Retailing (owner of Uniqlo), for instance, while the car company Honda stipulated in 2013 that English would operate as the official language for global meetings (Japan Times, 2013). There is little suggestion at present, however, that English is likely to be adopted in broad terms as a working language in Japanese society, and for many people it is not a necessity of everyday life, either socially or professionally. As such, the language holds a somewhat paradoxical position in the country. For many education professionals, the stress on communicative language teaching continues to be incompatible with other elements of the education system, particularly the exam culture, which dominates secondary schooling and entrance into tertiary education (Sasaki, 2008). There are also on-going concerns about adequate

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training and expertise among teachers. For instance, when the 2020 plans were unveiled, there was a great deal of discussion in both the profession and the media that the planned changes would significantly add to the already heavy workload of teachers and whether or not teachers would have adequate training. From 2014, MEXT created a category of ‘English education promotion leaders’ for teachers who had taken government-held seminars, who in turn were going to train a cohort of ‘core teachers’ to work in primary schools across the country (Mainichi, 2016). But there were also reports that an increased number of elementary school teachers were seeking out courses at private English language schools because they lacked confidence in teaching the language (Kyodo News, 2018). Despite these various issues around education policy and the fact that fluency remains low and there is very little concrete need to speak the language in everyday society, there is still a hunger for English language education, especially in the private eikaiwa sector (Seargeant, 2009). In the private sector, however, the language is not only promoted as a vehicle for global communication but is also associated with Western, and particularly American, culture. This is perhaps most noticeable in the way that the ideology of the ‘native speaker’ teacher is still central to the industry. In this sense, English is being sold less as an international language and more in traditional EFL terms: as a means of accessing what are usually stereotyped cultural values from the Anglophone world. It seems reasonable to suppose that for the length of time that English continues to hold its position as the preeminent global language, the same arguments for its place in the education system and its relationship to beliefs about Japan’s international identity will continue to be voiced. Likewise, as long as the political and cultural ideology around its global status continues, with Western countries such as America viewed in aspirational terms, so too are people likely to desire to learn English (Piller & Takahashi, 2006). The question then is whether recent shifts in global politics, and especially the changes in outlook from Anglophone countries, are likely to alter this context and what this might mean for the teaching and learning of English in Japan.

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A Changing Geopolitical Landscape Within days of the UK’s referendum, which resulted in a vote in favour of leaving the European Union (EU), the head of the EU’s Constitutional Affairs Committee, Danuta Hübner, was suggesting that one of the implications of this would likely be the necessity to drop English as an official language of the Union (Goulard, 2016). Hübner’s comment about this being a possibility—both Ireland and Malta have English as their official languages and, therefore, even without the UK, English will remain—was factually wrong. But in aftermath of the vote, comments of this sort, based either on speculation or as a means of political maneuvering, were relatively frequent (Seargeant, 2017) and led in turn to conjecture about the impact that Brexit might have on English’s status as a global language. For instance, the president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, asserted in 2017 that “Slowly but surely English is losing importance in Europe.” And as means of illustrating this contention, he made the statement in English, before switching to French for the rest of his address (Rankin, 2017). More recently, he has seemed to reverse his position, arguing that: “English has become a daily working language within the EU institutions. Brexit won’t change anything to it” (Japan Times, 2018). And one of the key reasons he gave to back up this view was: “Because those who don’t come from the western part of Europe have become used to speaking in English” (Japan Times, 2018). As things stand at the moment it is far too early to say what actual impact the Brexit process will have on the place of English in global society, but debates such as these are a sign of the way that the symbolism around language and linguistic heritage are a significant element in the politics of cultural identity. There have been similarly important shifts around the status and culture of English in the USA. In this case, there has been renewed impetus for an ‘English only’ ideology. During the presidential election campaign, Trump himself adopted this type of ideological position in direct opposition to other presidential candidates when he explicitly asserted that, “This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish”

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(Goldmacher, 2016). As with so much of his rhetoric, the assertion was factually very wide of the mark—over 37 million US citizens now speak Spanish (Lopez & Gonzalez-Barrera, 2013)—but it is a line he continued to press after coming to office. In the first few days of his administration, for example, the Spanish language pages from the White House website were removed (Sharman, 2017). English is thus being promoted very specifically as an intrinsic part of American identity by this administration, and thus the ideological bond between language and national culture is being reinforced. What implications might shifts such as these have for English in Japan? The answer at the moment is: relatively little. Speculation about the effects that recent geopolitical events are likely to have on the status of English as a global language is inevitably based on very little evidence at present. In comparison to the long history of political processes that have created the current economy of world languages, it seems unlikely that significant shifts in the position that English currently occupies will occur in the immediate future. In terms of the language’s status as the pre-eminent international lingua franca, it is unlikely that, certainly in the short term, anything will really threaten this. Indeed, it could be suggested that Brexit may strengthen English’s identity as a global language (or at least a European language) in that it becomes a more ‘neutral’ vehicle once the nation with which it is most associated is no longer a member of the political community in which it has been adopted. Likewise, for the moment, the USA continues as a major world power, and its cultural values (heterogeneous as these are) still play a significant role in global cultural politics. Again, the stress on the language–nation relationship that results from the promotion of English-only agendas does, in fact, reflect both political and cultural ideologies that underpin Japan’s attitude to English (Kawai, 2007). On the political front, there continues to be a firm belief in the essentialist role that the Japanese language plays for Japanese identity, and Englishonly policies in English-dominant nations are thus a logical parallel to this. On the cultural side, as has been noted, English is still often promoted in the eikaiwa sector (and to some extent secondary and higher education) as intrinsically related to American, British, or Australian culture.

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How about current thinking within sociolinguistics, then, which is increasingly deconstructing the idea of discrete languages, and instead researching and foregrounding the way that people’s actual language practices involve drawing on a mixture of linguistic (and semiotic) resources, resulting in various forms of translanguaging (Garcia & Wei, 2014)? Although this is an idea that has little impact in terms of policy and mainstream linguistic ideology, it is in fact one that is of particular relevance for the way that English is most commonly used in Japan. From the creation of loanwords, to symbolic displays in advertising and popular culture, English’s actual existence in Japan is most usually in creative combination with Japanese language resources (Seargeant, 2009). There may be little if any acknowledgement of this in language education policy, but it remains, nevertheless, a significant element of most people’s daily experience of English in Japan. What does all this mean for the teaching and learning of English in Japan? One important aspect is the way the political events of the late 2010s act as a reminder about how language issues are pulled into political debates, and especially those around national identity. A utopian vision of a deterritorialized English, freed from its historical ties to the major Anglophone countries, clearly has a counter-discourse in contemporary politics. Yet at the same time the language continues to flourish in diverse contexts, with diverse forms and diverse identities. In other words, the prominent discourse espoused by populist or nationalist-tinged movements in the major Anglophone countries does not reflect the sociolinguistic realities of a globalized English. It may in fact be a reaction against the diversity inherent in English’s current global manifestations. As such, the context in which any language teaching and learning will be taking place is one marked by diversity—and an awareness of this, along with the sorts of communicative strategies that complement it, is an essential element of any modern-day English language curriculum. As has been discussed, the ideas and aspirations that students bring to the subject, the aims and rationales they have for studying and for learning, and the roles and identities the language has in the world all create the context in which the practical business of teaching takes place. As such, a critical awareness of these factors can act as a solid foundation for innovations in language education.

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References Carrigan, L. (2018, April 20). A new challenge: Changes to elementary school English education in Japan for 2020. Japan Today. Retrieved from https:// japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/a-new-challenge-changes-to-elementary-school-english-education-in-japan-for-2020. Accessed June 12, 2018. CJGTC [Prime Minister’s Commission on Japan’s Goals in the Twenty-First Century]. (2000). The frontier within: Individual empowerment and better governance in the new millennium. Retrieved from https://www.kantei.go.jp/ jp/21century/report/pdfs/index.html. Accessed June 17, 2018. Council of Europe. (2018). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: The CEFR levels. Retrieved from https://www.coe.int/en/web/ common-european-framework-reference-languages/level-descriptions. Accessed June 12, 2018. Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The psychology of the language learner: Individual differences in second language acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Garcia, O., & Wei, L. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Goldmacher, S. (2016, September 23). Trump’s English-only campaign. Politico. Retrieved from http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/donaldtrumps-english-only-campaign-228559. Accessed May 21, 2018. Goulard, H. (2016, June 27). English will not be an official EU language after Brexit, says senior MEP. Politico. Retrieved from www.politico.eu/ article/english-will-not-be-an-official-eu-language-after-brexit-senior-mep/. Accessed May 21, 2018. Hashimoto, K. (2000). ‘Internationalisation’ is ‘Japanisation’: Japan’s foreign language education and national identity. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 21(1), 39–51. Honda makes English official language for global talks. (2013, November 22). Japan Times. Retrieved from www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/11/22/business/corporate-business/honda-makes-english-official-language-for-globaltalks/#.Vd2hyJOCOrV. Accessed May 21, 2018. Hongo, J. (2013, March 25). Abe wants TOEFL to be key exam. Japan Times. Available at www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/03/25/national/abe-wantstoefl-to-be-key-exam/#.Vd2iUMR4WrU. Accessed May 21, 2018. Hood, C. (2001). Japanese education reform: Nakasone’s legacy. London: Routledge.

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Ito, H., & Chan, S.-J. (2017). Rethinking active learning in the context of Japanese higher education. Cogent Education, 4(1). Retrieved from https:// www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2331186X.2017.1298187. Accessed June 12, 2018. Itoh, M. (1998). Globalization of Japan: Japanese Sakoku mentality and U.S. efforts to open Japan. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Kachru, B. B. (1992). Teaching world Englishes. In B. B. Kachru (Ed.), The other tongue: English across cultures (2nd ed.). Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Kawai, Y. (2007). Japanese nationalism and the global spread of English: An analysis of Japanese governmental and public discourses on English. Language and Intercultural Communication, 7(1), 37–55. Koike, I., & Tanaka, H. (1995). English in foreign language education policy in Japan: Toward the twenty-first century. World Englishes, 14, 13–25. Lopez, M. H., & Gonzalez-Barrera, A. (2013). What is the future of Spanish in the United States? Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/05/what-is-the-future-of-spanish-inthe-united-states/. Accessed May 21, 2018. Macron says too much English spoken in pre-Brexit Brussels. (2018, March 21). Japan Times. Retrieved from www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/03/21/ world/social-issues-world/macron-says-much-english-spoken-pre-brexitbrussels. Accessed May 21, 2018. Mainichi. (2016, August 2). Proposed new English curriculum feared to add heavier toll on teachers. Retrieved from https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160802/p2a/00m/0na/021000c. Accessed June 12, 2018. Makoni, S., & Pennycook, A. (2006). Disinventing and reconstituting languages. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Matsutani, M. (2012, June 30). Rakuten’s English drive ready to take full effect, chief says. Japan Times. Retrieved from www.japantimes.co.jp/ news/2012/06/30/national/rakutens-english-drive-ready-to-take-full-effectchief-says/#.Vd2hQ5OCOrW. Accessed May 21, 2018. Native speakers in demand as Japanese schools step up English lessons. (2018, March 16). Kyodo News. Retrieved from https://english.kyodonews.net/ news/2018/03/486b6a277aad-feature-native-speakers-in-demand-asjapanese-schools-step-up-english-lessons.html. Accessed June 12, 2018. Omura, K. (1978). From the Phaeton Incident up to the Pacific War. In I. Koike (Ed.), The teaching of English in Japan (pp. 91–103). Tokyo: Eichosha.

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Piller, I., & Takahashi, K. (2006). A passion for English: Desire and the language market. In A. Pavlenko (Ed.), Bilingual minds: Emotional experience, expression, and representation (pp. 59–83). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Rankin, J. (2017, May 5). Brexit: English is losing its importance in Europe, says Juncker. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/05/brexit-english-is-losing-its-importance-in-europe-saysjuncker. Accessed May 21, 2018. Sasaki, M. (2008). The 150-year history of English language assessment in Japanese education. Language Testing, 25(1), 63–83. Seargeant, P. (2009). The idea of English in Japan: Ideology and the evolution of a global language. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Seargeant, P. (2012). Exploring world Englishes: Language in a global context. Abingdon: Routledge. Seargeant, P. (2017). The symbolism of English on the Brexit battleground. World Englishes, 36(3), 356–359. Sharman, J. (2017, January 24). Donald Trump’s administration takes down Spanish-language White House website. The Independent, 24. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trumpadministration-takes-down-white-house-spanish-language-website-civilrights-history-a7543121.html. Accessed May 21, 2018. Tsuboya-Newell, I. (2017, October 29). Why do Japanese have trouble learning English? Japan Times. Retrieved from https://www.japantimes.co.jp/ opinion/2017/10/29/commentary/japan-commentary/japanese-trouble-learning-english/#.WyKB1ObTWhA. Accessed June 12, 2018.

CLIL in Comparison with PPP: A Revolution in ELT by Competency-Based Language Education Makoto Ikeda

Introduction In a classic but still worthwhile reading on language curriculum innovation, Clark (1987) develops an insightful discussion about the relationship between mainstream educational ideologies and language teaching methodologies. To summarize Clark’s view, the Grammar Translation Method, which started in the Middle Ages as a means to learn classical languages (i.e., Latin, Greek), is a realization of ‘classical humanism,’ which aims to cultivate students’ intellectual capacities as well as transmitting knowledge and values from one generation to another by translating content-rich texts using grammatical and lexical knowledge. Swinging from the excessive focus on intellect and culture, general education turned its attention to social change and advancement in the early part of the twentieth century, and in language teaching, audiolingualism, which relies on phonetics, structural linguistics and M. Ikeda (*)  Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7_3

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behaviourism, and is characterized by rote memorization, oral drilling and pattern practice, came into being in order to train human resources to contribute to social reconstruction (hence ‘reconstructionism’). Then arrived Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in the late twentieth century, which reflects the most advanced view of education, the development of individual capacities and the promotion of natural learning processes (therefore ‘progressivism’), making use of communication-oriented English Language Teaching (ELT) techniques such as pair and group work, real-life activities, meaning-focused tasks, and so on. Thirty years on from the publication of Clark’s work, goals in education seem to be geared towards developing general purpose competences (e.g., communication, collaboration and critical thinking skills as seen in ‘21st century skills’ in the USA and ‘key competences’ in the EU, which students in this fast-growing, globalized information-based society are required to acquire). Following Clark’s logic, I would call this ideological trend globalism and argue that Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is the language education approach required for achieving these aims. Keeping such connections between educational goals and ELT methodologies in mind, this chapter outlines the basic principles and techniques of CLIL as an innovative approach to language learning and teaching, discusses the key factors that are attracting a growing number of ELT professionals in Japan to this approach, and then takes up a case study of a maths CLIL program at a primary school so as to share the experiences and insights gained through a specific longitudinal project.

Area of Innovation One of the most frequently cited definitions of CLIL is it “is a dual-focused educational approach in which additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language” (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010, p. 1). Although this simple definition succeeds in expressing the core feature of CLIL (i.e., integration of content and language learning), more explanation should be added to reveal its substantial principles and potentials. This is actually provided by one of the

CLIL in Comparison with PPP: A Revolution in ELT …     25 Table 1  Conspicuous features of CLIL lessons 1. Placing equal emphasis on content learning and language learning 2. Encouraging the use of authentic materials (e.g., webpages, newspapers) 3. Giving multimodal input (i.e., written/spoken texts, graphics, statistics, videos) 4. Using various levels of thinking skills (i.e., lower-order and higher-order thinking skills) 5. Giving many tasks 6. Making the most of cooperative learning (e.g., pair work, group work) 7. Providing scaffolding in content and language 8. Incorporating elements of cross-cultural understanding and global issues 9. Integrating the four skills 10. Instructing learning skills (Ikeda, 2012, p. 6)

authors of the above-cited book through the well-known framework referred to as “the 4 Cs” of CLIL (Coyle, 2007; Coyle et al., 2010): Content (subject matter, topics, themes), Communication (language knowledge, skills, interaction), Cognition (lower-order and higher-order thinking skills), and Culture (collaborative learning and global citizenship). This framework is crucial for CLIL practitioners as teachers’ intentional incorporation of the 4 Cs in their lessons is what differentiates CLIL from other content-based approaches such as Content-Based Instruction (CBI), English-Medium Instruction (EMI), and immersion. Turning our attention to more down-to-earth issues of pedagogy, CLIL teachers tend to conduct what is considered to be good practice in enhancing students’ motivation, engagement, and eventual learning outcomes. Table 1 is a list of CLIL teachers’ classroom practices and techniques collected from the literature and lesson observations. To convert this seemingly prescriptive checklist into a table contrasting traditional (i.e., form-focused teacher-centered) ELT tenets and their CLIL counterparts, the up-to-date aspects of CLIL appear to emerge in an admittedly oversimplified and yet distinguishable way (Table 2). However, CLIL is not only advanced in terms of learning experiences and processes, but also in terms of educational goals: The development of versatile competences required global citizens to be living in the twenty-first century. This is a matter of course, considering the

26     M. Ikeda Table 2  Comparison of traditional ELT and CLIL Traditional ELT practices

CLIL practices

Instruction (knowledge-oriented) Monologic (authoritative) Spoon feeding (excessive help) Unimodal input (mainly texts)

Interaction (communication-oriented) Dialogic (constructive) Scaffolding (adequate help) Multimodal input (texts plus audio and visual) Authentic (real-life materials and activities) Contextualized (direct link to content)

Artificial (invented materials and activities) Decontextualized (little attention to content) Segregation (separate training of each skill) Exercises (focus on form and function) Practice (for accuracy) Repetition (rote learning) LOTS (Lower-order thinking skills) Shallow learning (knowledge for its own sake)

Integration (combined use of different skills) Tasks (focus on meaning and content) Use (for fluency) Cognition (critical thinking) HOTS (Higher-order thinking skills) Deep learning (knowledge for application)

(Adapted from Ikeda, 2016, p. 20)

fact that CLIL has been conceptualized and practiced in European countries (e.g., Spain, Austria, the Netherlands), whose common educational aims include the acquisition of the “key competences for lifelong learning” including “learning to learn,” “social and civic competences,” “sense of initiative and entrepreneurship,” and “cultural awareness and expression” (European Communities, 2007). Curiously, this important aspect of CLIL has not been taken seriously as a research agenda, but Coyle et al. (2010) mention the interface between competency-based education and the CLIL principles in the following manner: In line with socio-economic priorities, there has also been a recent trend towards competence-based education. This has been long established in some countries, but the need to develop a 21st-century workforce has further stressed the importance of perceiving competence as an amalgamation of knowledge and skills. Indeed, the 4Cs principles actively promote both knowledge and skills development and are therefore suited to differentiated learning outcomes across a range of contexts. (p. 156)

CLIL in Comparison with PPP: A Revolution in ELT …     27 Table 3  General-purpose competences Cognitive skills

Social skills

Ethical skills

1. Knowledge use skills 8. Communication skills 11. Personal responsibilities 2. Critical thinking skills 9. Collaboration skills 12. Social responsibilities 3. Task-setting skills 10. Global citizen skills 13. International 4. Problem-solution skills responsibilities 5. Innovation skills 6. Decision-making skills 7. Meta-learning skills (Adapted from Ikeda, 2016, p. 15)

Here, competence is grasped as a somewhat vague notion of “an amalgamation of knowledge and skills.” The practical use of subject matter is, however, only part of overall competences. Below is an attempt at showing the whole picture of competences summarized from “21st century skills” (Partnership for 21st Century Learning, 2015), “Key competences” (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2005), and “Competences for the 21st century” (National Institute for Educational Policy Research, 2015), then rearranged and recategorized by the author (Table 3).

Impetus for the Innovation As to the motivations for the diffusion of CLIL across Europe, Coyle (2007, p. 546) highlights “‘bottom-up’ initiatives as well as ‘top-down’ policy”: the former implies diverse realizations of CLIL in various European countries while the latter refers to the promotion of CLIL pushed forward by the European Commission’s policy of “mother tongue plus two other languages.” In the case of Japan, if we follow this dichotomy, CLIL practices originated from grassroots endeavors with their major players being researchers, teachers and teacher trainers, and still are very much so, though some governmental research funds have recently become available as a result of the increase in CLIL interest and implementation.

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It is not an easy task to grasp who is practicing which type of CLIL and for what reasons, but inferences might be possible from some available datasets. In 2017, Japan CLIL Pedagogy Association (J-CLIL), the academic society for CLIL teachers and researchers based in Japan, was established with approximately 120 initial members. To classify them according to their affiliations, they include university teachers (55%), technological college teachers (4%), secondary school teachers (19%), primary school teachers (10%), graduate students (4%), and other (8%). Looking at this distribution in a different way, the majority of J-CLIL members are language teachers and/or applied linguists with only a few content specialists (engineering, social studies, mathematics). This disparity seems to well represent the CLIL situation in Japan: The main type of CLIL practiced in schools and universities is a weak version of CLIL (i.e., language-led lessons by ELT teachers) rather than its strong model (subject-driven classes by content teachers) as seen in Europe (Ball, 2009; Ball, Kelly, & Clegg, 2015; Ikeda, 2013; Lyster, 2018). Regardless of the types of CLIL, what attracts researchers and practitioners in Japan seems to be its innovative nature, fueled by widespread dissatisfaction with the traditional language-only approaches, which do not satisfactorily fulfill twenty-first century educational needs. The results of the questionnaire completed by J-CLIL members and seminar participants (N = 91) endorse this view. The survey was conducted in early 2018 to prepare for the J-CLIL symposium “Chances and challenges for CLIL program implementation in Japan.” One of the questions reads, “What aspects of CLIL are attractive or innovative for you?”, and the most popular responses can be broadly grouped and summarized as follows: • Student motivation: Students are more motivated by engaging in content. • Teacher development: Teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogical skills are enhanced. • Learning depth: Learning is deeper because of the emphasis on cognitive skills. • Language use: Language is used for real and meaningful purposes. • Theory practicality: The 4Cs framework is simple and useful.

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These perceived CLIL benefits seem to reflect some of the limitations and deficiencies experienced in the conventional language-oriented classroom: both students and teachers are not intellectually stimulated, overall learning and language use are superficial and artificial, and theories are not easily applicable to actual practice. The expectations for this novel methodology are also noticeable in the research projects adopted for Kakenhi (Grants-in Aid for Scientific Research), the largest-scale government research funds in Japan. In recent years (2015–2017), there were fourteen projects with CLIL in their titles, and as many as ten of them are about the adaptation of CLIL (curriculum design, pedagogical skills, materials development, teacher training) for implementation in the Japanese context. This indicates that CLIL in Japan is still in infancy. To locate its present position in the stages of innovation presented by White (1988, pp. 139–140), it has just left the initial stage (“a very small percentage of ­innovators decide to introduce the new idea”) and has entered the next stage (“the early adopters, who have noted that the innovation produces no harmful effects, take on the innovation”), but has not yet reached the subsequent phase (“the majority adopt quickly, influenced mainly by the innovators”). In the following section, one of the attempts by “the early adopters” in Japan is discussed to see how the innovative language teaching approach has taken root and bloomed in the actual school setting.

The Context In the previous section, it was pointed out that the soft version of CLIL incorporated in language lessons is the de facto norm in Japan. Here, however, a hard type offered as a curricular subject is to be explored as a case study not simply because the author has been involved in the longitudinal project but because it is considered to be a good example of successful educational innovation brought by CLIL in terms of teaching quality, learning outcomes and overall satisfaction. Besides, as CLIL in the narrowest sense of the term (i.e., subject teaching with language and content integration in mind) is very

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rarely practiced even at the secondary and tertiary levels, an example of genuine hard CLIL in Japanese primary education is particularly innovative. The context is an independent Catholic girls’ primary school in the suburbs of Sendai, the largest city in the north east region of Japan, with the population of 1 million. According to the head teacher, the reasons the school introduced the CLIL program are twofold: business and education. From the business perspective, the school is constantly seeking ways by which to “transcend” their rivals and, as a result, to be chosen by the parents of prospective students. CLIL serves their purposes for its progressive and international image. From the educational perspective, CLIL matches the school’s policy of prioritizing curricular learning as well as the requirements of the times for the next generation’s education. The school started the CLIL program in 2015 and accepts about 15 new pupils (aged seven) each academic year. They have specifically selected maths for their program because, informed by a similar maths program in another Catholic primary school, the English version of a government-authorized maths textbook is available, maths lessons are linguistically less demanding than other subjects, and maths concepts, they believe, help learners understand English better. The children receive four 40-minute maths lessons in English a week, totaling about 140 lessons a year. They also have two normal English lessons weekly and study all the other subjects in Japanese. The CLIL lessons are taught by a team of three teachers made up of the main American teacher (11 years of teaching experience) and two Japanese teachers (17 and 11 years as teachers, respectively), who assist the learners with their language and maths difficulties. They had initial CLIL teacher training by the author, who visits the school a few times a year to observe lessons, collect research data, and give pedagogical feedback.

The Lessons The sample CLIL lesson presented here is a maths class for Year 1 pupils (aged seven). In addition, a general ELT class for Year 4 students (aged ten) is analyzed in comparison. The reason for which these two lessons

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have been selected is that they were delivered on the same day by the same teacher with the same grammatical focus but for different curricular purposes in different subjects with different methodologies. In other words, by comparing these two contrastive lessons, some of the distinguishable attributes of CLIL learning are expected to emerge. In the following, after briefly describing the respective lesson content, learning goals and teaching methodology, classroom discourse will be examined in terms of word variation, teachers’ questions and pupils’ language production.

Overview of the Lessons The content of the ELT class using Everybody up 1 (Silesi & Jackson, 2011, p. 50) is ‘rooms’ with the lesson goals of learning household words (e.g., bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen, beds, clocks, chairs, sofas, bookshelves, tables ) and basic grammar (singular and plural noun forms; there is/there are …). By combining the target vocabulary and sentence structures the pupils are expected to describe how many of what exist in which rooms (e.g., There is one bed in the bedroom, there are two beds in the bedroom. ). The teaching method follows the typical PPP model (Hedge, 2000, pp. 164–167), ‘presenting’ new words and grammatical forms at the beginning of the lesson, ‘practicing’ the given words in the given sentences by oral substitution drills, and finally ‘producing’ language in the newly learnt structures to communicate with each other. This approach is the dominant and most recognizable iteration of the traditional ELT methodologies, especially as this is propagated by language teacher training and is very widely practiced in primary and secondary English language education in Japan. By contrast, the content of the CLIL lesson based on Study with friends: mathematics for elementary school 1st grade (Hitotsumatsu & Okada, 2015, p. 83) is ‘addition’ with the learning goals of adding two numbers (e.g., 5 + 6) and making word problems for the arithmetic (e.g., There are 5 doves. Then, 6 doves fly in. How many doves are there altogether? ). The teaching approach is, obviously, CLIL, in which the target content (addition of two numbers) and necessary language (maths terms such as ‘addition,’ ‘subtraction,’ ‘decompose’ [dividing a number into simpler components, e.g.,

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13 = 10 + 3] and sentence structures for making word problems such as ‘there are…’ and ‘how many …?’) are integrated. It is by mere coincidence that the key grammatical structures of the both lessons (i.e., there is/there are …) are exactly the same.

Word Variation Table 4 is a list of all the words used in each class. The PPP class uses roughly twice as many words as the CLIL lesson. It is not surprising, considering the fact that in PPP lessons students systematically learn a set of lexical items and grammatical forms that typically appear in specific situations (Byrne, 1986, p. 23). In fact, almost all the words in the PPP section are related to rooms (types of rooms or things in rooms), which represents the main content and context Table 4  Comparison of vocabulary in the PPP and CLIL lessons PPP lesson

CLIL lesson

Halloween: candy, costume, white cat, bats, strawberry, Jack-o-lantern, ghosts

Word problems: big, little, butterfly, bee, doves, apples, come, come in, fly in, find, give, take, bring, buy

Classroom: desk, blackboard, chair, girls, TV

Maths: plus, addition, subtraction, decompose

House: living room, bedroom, child/ Halloween: witches, jack-o’-lanterns, baby room, Japanese-style/tatami dragons, bats, ghosts room, dining room, Numbers: one … fifteen kitchen, toilet, shower room/ bathroom, storeroom/storage room, pantry, closet Living room: chairs, table, TV, rocking chair, sofa Bedroom: bed, lamp, alarm clock, sheets, dolls, pillow, blanket, futon Kitchen: refrigerator, pans, coffee maker, oven, microwave, knife, dishes Numbers: one … thirty-eight

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of the lesson, though Halloween words also appear because the lesson was conducted in late October. The words in the CLIL section are also all concerned with the lesson content, which can be grouped into two kinds: the first group is terms for mathematical concepts (plus, addition, subtraction, decompose ) and the second is everyday words to make word problems (dove, butterfly, bee, apples, come, come in, fly in, find, give, take, bring, buy ). This indicates that the pupils learn both academic terms and general words unconsciously while studying subject matter. To borrow Bernstein’s concepts (1999 cited in Llinares, Morton, & Whittaker, 2012, p. 39), the CLIL students are exposed to vertical discourse (knowledge learnt through formal education) and horizontal discourse (knowledge acquired through daily interactions) in the context and interaction authentic to them: curricular lessons in the classroom. Here, we can see a natural fusion of Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) and Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) (Cummins, 1979). As Barwell (2016, p. 118) puts it, “No instance of language is entirely academic or entirely informal: in some sense it is always a bit of both.” Indeed, this naturally mixed use of different levels of language in the classroom is one of the key innovational traits of CLIL, as some practitioners reported in the questionnaire mentioned earlier in this chapter.

Teachers’ Questions Noticeable differences between the PPP and CLIL lessons are also found in teachers’ questions. Table 5 lists all the questions given to the pupils and categorized by the author according to their content and purposes: Contrary to vocabulary, the CLIL lesson outnumbers the PPP lesson in the quantity of questions. A more important difference, however, lies in the quality of questioning. In the PPP class, apart from a couple of questions about grammar (e.g., “Why no s?”, “What about are?”) and for classroom management (e.g., “How long do you want?”, “What did we study?”), the teacher simply asks about real things: what; in which rooms; and how many? These questions are most appropriate to the PPP lesson because the final goal is to have the learners produce sentences that include the specific grammatical points (e.g., there is one bed in the bedroom, there are two beds in the bedroom ).

34     M. Ikeda Table 5  Comparison of teachers’ questions in the PPP and CLIL lessons PPP lesson

CLIL lesson

About room types and things in rooms What do you see in this room? What room is this? What’s the dining room? What rooms do you have in your house? In your house, is there an English room? What is there in your house? What’s in your living room? What is in your bedroom? What do you have in your bedroom? What’s this? Anything else?

About things in a picture What are the pictures here?

About numbers How many? How many clocks? How many ghosts? How many TVs are there? How many chairs are there? How many clocks are there in your house? How many pillows are there in your house? About language (grammar) Why no s? [referring to a singular noun] What about are? For classroom management How long do you want? Who wants one minute? Who wants sambyo [three seconds]? What did we study?

About numbers How many? How many people? How many here? How many fly in? How many are there? How many apples are there all together? About language (vocabulary) What does fly in mean? For classroom management Who wants to have some fun? Who wants to make a Halloween story? Who wants to make the next sentence? About maths Can you show me? Any other way to do it? Do we need a plus word, addition words or subtractions? Eleven what? How do you decompose eight? How else can you decompose? Is that correct? Is there a different way to do it? Six became what? What can we count? What did she do? What did you do next? What do we do? What do you have here? What does that make? What kind of word do we need? What’s the other way to do it? Where did she take one block from? Where does this come from? Which is the best? Who can tell me where this comes from? Who says this one?

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In the CLIL lesson, while giving only a few questions for language clarification (e.g., “What does fly in mean?”), classroom management (e.g., “Who wants to have some fun?”), and fact checking (e.g., “What are the pictures here?”, “How many?”), the teacher gives quite a few challenging questions in order to enhance pupils’ maths understanding and learning. For example, at one point in the lesson, the teacher tries to have the pupils explain how they get the answer to the word problem made by themselves: “There are seven apples. I take [bring, buy, get] eight apples. How many are there altogether?” After one student says the answer is fifteen, the teacher continues: 1. T1: How do you make fifteen? Dareka setsumei dekiru? [Can anyone explain?] 2. How do you make fifteen? 3. S1: Seven plus eight. 4. T1: Seven plus eight is fifteen, okay. 5. S2: Ten plus five. 6. T1: Ten plus five. How do you make ten? 7. S3: Decompose seven. 8. T1: Decompose seven. Really cool English. How do you decompose seven? 9. S3: Two and five. 10. T1: Two and five, okay. I see. This makes ten. Ten and five, fifteen. 11. Is there a different way to do it? What’s the other way to do it? Note T1: the main teacher; S1, S2, S3: identified students At the beginning of the excerpt (turns 1–5), the teacher simply elicits from the students different ways to make fifteen. Then, he goes on to ask how the second student gets ten and successfully has the third student explain with the maths term decompose (turns 6–7), making it possible to separate seven into two and five, add two and eight to make ten, and finally reach the answer fifteen by adding ten and five together (turns 8–10). He does not, however, stop here but continues to invite other solutions to decompose seven and eight to get fifteen (turn 11). What is observed here is that the teacher intentionally gives cognitively demanding questions to have the pupils think about maths problems and calculations from various angles. To put this another way, he does

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not only give display questions (of which presupposed correct answers are expected) for learner involvement and concept checking (Walsh, 2011, p. 12), but also referential questions (to which various responses are welcomed) for deeper understanding, thinking, and learning. This deliberate and purposeful activation of students’ mental capacity gives CLIL another innovational value, which is represented by the third C (i.e., cognition) in the 4Cs framework and, in fact, frequently appeared in the questionnaire comments mentioned earlier.

Pupils’ Language Production Towards the end of the respective lessons, the pupils were encouraged to produce language based on what they had learnt. Again, let us compare the two lessons in a contrastive Table 6. In the PPP class, as anticipated, the learners just say the sentences using the target structure ‘there are.’ In the CLIL lesson, the pupils create their own word problems following the model in the textbook (“There are 5 doves. Then, 6 doves fly in. How many doves are there altogether?”  ). The language used by the CLIL students is both quantitatively and qualitatively different from the language produced by their PPP counterparts. As the end product of maths and English mixed learning, the CLIL learners make maths stories in English, which are in the discourse level defined as “a stretch of language” recognized as “unified and meaningful” (Cook, 1989, p. 9). More importantly, as a process of acquiring new language form, the CLIL learners naturally use the structure ‘there are ’ as a means to maths learning, not as an end in itself. Besides, in order to make word problems, which are verbal representations of numerical formulas, the Table 6  Comparison of students’ language production in the PPP and CLIL lessons PPP lesson

CLIL lesson

There are 6 pillows. There are 7 witches. 6 witches come in. How many There are 13 pillows. witches are there all together? There are 23 pillows. There are 8 jack-o’-lanterns. *5 jack-o’-lanterns make. There are 9 chairs. How many jack-o’-lanterns are there altogether? There are 13 suits. Note *Ungrammatical sentence

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CLIL pupils need to operationalize maths concepts, integrating not only content (maths) and language (English) but cognition (thinking) as well. This multi-layered learning process and language production make CLIL particularly innovative in language education, where, in general, form and function are predominantly highlighted while overall subject matter and learners’ intellectual power are treated peripherally.

Findings In the previous section, the CLIL class and the PPP lesson were compared in terms of word variation, teachers’ questions, and students’ language production. The results were threefold: (1) The CLIL learners were exposed to more varied vocabulary; (2) They were asked more challenging questions; and (3) They produced a longer stretch of meaningful language. To reformulate these differences using the 4Cs framework, CLIL students learn new subject knowledge, but PPP students do not (content); CLIL students acquire new language forms by using them as a tool to study curricular content, but PPP students learn the target language structures by practicing them as a lesson goal (communication); CLIL students are engaged in activities that require deeper thinking skills while PPP students are not expected to make the most of their brain (cognition); CLIL learners are co-­constructors of content knowledge, whereas PPP students are mere conversation partners (culture). In short, to copy the exact wording by the main teacher who conducted both of the lessons, “CLIL allows for a lot more depth, a lot more discovery; it also allows for a lot more incidental learning.” Going back to the issue of competency-based education discussed earlier, the CLIL students, although in the very first year of school education and therefore not supposed to perform full-spec competences listed in Table 3, still develop versatile competences such as “knowledge use skills” (applying maths knowledge to real life situations), “critical thinking skills” (thinking maths problems from different perspectives), and “communication skills” (using English to learn maths). When the teacher who gave the lessons was asked if he intentionally tried to develop these skills in his CLIL classes, he answered, “of course, absolutely.” What must be emphasized here is that the pupils are likely to

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execute these skills in English when they grow up and go out into the world. This aspect of CLIL learning is best explained by the notion of “transfer appropriate processing” defined as follows: Remembering what we learn is easier when we are in a situation that is similar to the one in which we learned it in the first place or when using the kinds of cognitive processes that we used during learning. (Lightbown, 2014, p. 57)

In the CLIL context, this means that students are used to acquiring new knowledge by studying, considering, and using it in another language with their peers, so that the same cognitive skills may be activated when they search, process and utilize job-related information with their future colleagues from diverse linguistic environments.

Implications The case study described above is a typical example of what Rogers and Shoemaker (1971) call “selective contact change,” where “the recognition of the need for change” comes from internal members but “the new idea” to be selected and adopted for change originates from an external source (Henrichsen, 1989, p. 3). In the case of the school, the head teacher needed “something new” to recruit more students (see the chapters by Irie and Suzuki, this volume) as well as to offer up-to-date global-standard education. As a solution, his colleagues (the CLIL teaching members) proposed CLIL, which they first encountered through an ELT textbook and later became more familiar with through the author. Regarding the evaluation of the program, it is too early to make a decisive conclusion as it is only in its second year, but the school is satisfied with the achievements recorded so far. Quantitatively, the CLIL program constantly accepts about 15 new students every year on top of those applying for the school’s mainstream non-CLIL strand. Qualitatively, in the interview for this chapter, the main CLIL teacher remarked: “The program, in my opinion, is very effective—I have not

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seen any other program that reaches the goals that we set so efficiently”; “The students are very surprising, especially with how quickly they adapt and grow, and how quickly they seem to learn new vocabulary and structures since they have to use it so much”; “Personally I feel I’ve become a much better teacher overall after having studied more and more CLIL and worked with it.” These success indicators might not be conclusive, but nonetheless the innovation is at least perceived to be beneficial by the school and the teachers. If so, what has caused the positive change? From the author’s perspective, there seem to be three factors that have made major contributions. The first is the head teacher’s initiative and support: it is he who assumes all responsibilities, assigning as many as three teachers to as few as fifteen pupils, permitting supplementary maths lessons in Japanese, organizing in-house training sessions and continuously trying to create supportive culture involving parents and other teachers. The second and most crucial factor is the teachers, who are approachable in personality, skilled in teaching, and eager to improve their lessons continuously. What is particularly noticeable in this school is the teamwork of the three teachers, with the Japanese content teacher helping the other two CLIL teachers with maths subject matter, lesson planning, materials production, and pupils’ learning evaluation. The third and last factor is collaboration with specialists outside the school who provide the teachers with theoretical, practical and sometimes psychological support. If any of these felicity conditions for successful innovation is absent, no program will last for long; as Waters (2009, p. 448) puts it: “One of the conditions necessary for sustainability of ELE [English Language Education] innovations is that they are designed and implemented in such a way that there is as thorough an understanding as possible of the factors likely to affect long-term take-up.” The factors mentioned here include causes for success as well as reasons for failure. The CLIL maths program has also faced challenges and difficulties. In general, CLIL experiences reported in the literature pose some common issues in CLIL implementation: lack of teaching materials, teacher training, collaboration between language and content specialists, and lesson preparation time (Camarata & Tedick, 2012; Morton, 2013; Pérez-Cañado, 2012). The school in focus has largely

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overcome these problems (and hence implementation is considered to be successful): government-authorized maths textbooks in English are available and the accompanying worksheets are produced by the teachers for their students; occasional opportunities for in-service training (INSET) are provided by the author; and a team of language and maths teachers closely work together, which contributes to lessened individual workload. However, they still have a few contextualized obstacles that they need to address. One is psychological resistance within the school to innovation in general and to CLIL in particular (i.e., not all the teachers are convinced by the English-medium content education, which sometimes deviates from conventional approaches to maths concepts and problems). As a means for lowering this affective barrier, the CLIL teachers find it necessary to ‘enlighten’ their colleagues by offering more input sessions for detailed explanations and seek further collaboration with the maths department. A more fundamental issue relates to students’ language proficiency and use, which might interfere with content learning outcomes. Below is a selective list of language-related problems identified by the main native-speaker teacher: • Language instruction: It is not certain how to explicitly teach new vocabulary and grammar and how to correct errors in language without interfering with content learning. • Discourse production: Saying ideas in a stretch of language tends to be impeded by learners’ insufficient English proficiency level as well as a hesitancy in expressing opinions in public to be observed in Japanese students in general. • Content understanding: Content learning might be affected by learners’ low language ability, though high content ability may compensate for language deficiency. • Assessment validity: Students may get a problem wrong in testing of content, not because of their lack in content knowledge but because of their lack in language processing. Also, how to assess students’ ability in both content and language without favoring one or the other needs thorough consideration. • Later learning in L1: Students may not be able to learn maths in their own language because they are not taught content-specific language in their first language (L1).

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In order to cope with these linguistic constraints on the part of the learners, the CLIL teacher utilizes various teaching skills, each of which is theoretically explored and pedagogically recommended in the literature. For the first type of problems (i.e., teaching new linguistic elements and correcting mistakes in language), the teacher employs language-enhancement techniques such as ‘corrective feedback’ (e.g., recast, explicit correction, metalinguistic clues), ‘noticing’ (i.e., making the target lexical and grammatical features salient by board-writing, repetition, gestures), and ‘guided practice’ (i.e., extra controlled language practice), all of which constitute the important components of ‘the counterbalanced approach’ (in-tandem instruction in content and language) proposed by Lyster (2007, 2018). For the second type (i.e., eliciting discourse-level content production), the teacher frequently gives small group activities where students discuss maths problems before presenting ideas and solutions to class. This coconstructive work is one of the myriad scaffolding strategies for oral fluency explained thoroughly by Gibbons as “collaborative group work” (2015, pp. 49–78). And for the rest of the problems (i.e., promoting content comprehension, evaluating content and language achievements, and ascertaining content learning in L1), the teacher draws heavily on the emerging concept of translanguaging (“planned and systematic use of two languages for teaching and learning in the same lesson”, Lewis, Jones & Baker, 2012, p. 643), providing explanations in English and Japanese, checking students’ ability to describe ideas, solutions and answers in Japanese, and giving tests and homework done in both languages (separate materials for each language). To quote the main teacher’s words again, “L1 and L2 are partners in learning the content. I find translanguaging to be an invaluable tool for teaching and a perfect fit for my CLIL classroom.” These antidotes for the obstructions to learning that arise from learners’ linguistic limitations are typical examples of Lewin’s famous claim that, “There is indeed nothing so practical as a good theory” (1951, p. 169), arguing for the importance of teacher development and empowerment ­conducted collaboratively by school-based practitioners and universitybased researchers/trainers.

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Conclusion In this chapter, the word innovation is used to discuss the possible changes that could be brought by CLIL. Cook (2010, pp. 20–36) uses the more radical word ‘revolution’ to trace the development of ELT methodologies. According to him, there were two revolutions in the methodological history of English language education. The first revolution was triggered in the first quarter of the twentieth century by the Direct Method (i.e., teaching English in English) against the Grammar Translation Method (i.e., teaching English through students’ first language). The second revolution was caused in the last quarter of the century by CLT, which shifted the focus of language teaching from form to meaning. If we follow Cook’s analogy, it might become possible in retrospect from the future to see CLIL as a third revolution in ELT because of its intention to broaden the scope of language teaching to the extent that it envisages global education (i.e., holistic competences required in the whole world) by purposefully integrating Content (knowledge), Communication (language), Cognition (thinking), and Culture (companionship). At the moment, the innovation brought by CLIL in Japan remains at the ‘classroom’ or ‘institutional’ context level (Kennedy, 1988, p. 332), but it has, in theory and actual practice, the potential to spread into the ‘educational’ and ‘administrative’ contexts, and eventually come to be regarded as a third revolution in language education by future ELT professionals. In order to reach that point, classroom practices and empirical studies in search of success factors, impeding obstacles and effective solutions should be accumulated, as is the case of any innovative endeavors.

References Ball, P. (2009). Does CLIL work? In D. Hill & A. Pulverness (Eds.), The best of both worlds?: International perspectives on CLIL (pp. 32–43). Norwich: Norwich Institute for Language Education. Ball, P., Kelly, K., & Clegg, J. (2015). Putting CLIL into practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barwell, R. (2016). A Bakhtinian perspective on language and content integration: Encountering the alien world in second language

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mathematics classrooms. In T. Nikula, E. Dafouz, P. Moore, & U. Smit (Eds.), Conceptualising integration in CLIL and multilingual education (pp. 101–122). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Bernstein, B. (1999). Vertical and horizontal discourse: An essay. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20(2), 157–173. Byrne, D. (1986). Teaching oral English. Harlow: Longman. Cammarata, L., & Tedick, D. (2012). Balancing content and language in instruction: The experience of immersion teachers. The Modern Language Journal, 96, 251–269. Clark, J. (1987). Curriculum renewal in school foreign language learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cook, G. (1989). Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cook, G. (2010). Translation in language teaching: An argument for reassessment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coyle, D. (2007). Content and language integrated learning: Towards a connected research agenda for CLIL pedagogies. The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 10(5), 543–562. Coyle, D., Hood, P., & Marsh, D. (2010). CLIL: Content and language integrated learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cummins, J. (1979). Cognitive/academic language proficiency, linguistic interdependence, the optimum age and some other matters. Working Papers on Bilingualism, 19, 121–129. European Communities. (2007). Key competences for lifelong learning: European reference framework. Retrieved from https://www.erasmusplus.org.uk/ file/272/download. Gibbons, P. (2015). Scaffolding language scaffolding learning: Teaching English language learners in the mainstream classroom (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Hedge, T. (2000). Teaching and learning in the language classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Henrichsen, L. (1989). Diffusion of innovations in English language teaching: The ELEC effort in Japan, 1956–1968. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Hitotsumatsu, S., & Okada, Y. (Eds.). (2015). Study with your friends: Mathematics for elementary school 1st grade. Tokyo: Gakko Tosho. Ikeda, M. (2012). CLILの原理と指導法 [CLIL principles and pedagogy]. In S. Izumi, M. Ikeda & Y. Watanabe (Eds.), CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning): New challenges in foreign language education at Sophia University, Vol. 2. Practices and applications (pp. 1–15). Tokyo: Sophia University Press.

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Ikeda, M. (2013). Does CLIL work for Japanese secondary school students?: Potential for the weak version of CLIL. The International CLIL Journal, 1(5), 31–43. Ikeda, M. (2016). CLIL活用のための新コンセプトと新ツール [New concepts and new tools to activate CLIL]. In M. Ikeda, Y. Watanabe, & S. Izumi (Eds.), CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning): New challenges in foreign language education at Sophia University, Vol. 3. Materials and lessons (pp. 1–29). Tokyo: Sophia University Press. Kennedy, C. (1988). Evaluation of the management of change in ELT projects. Applied Linguistics, 9(4), 329–342. Lewin, K. (1951). Problems of research in social psychology. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Field theory in social sciences: Selected theoretical papers by Kurt Lewin (pp. 155–169). New York, NY: Harper and Row. Lewis, G., Jones, B., & Baker, C. (2012). Translanguaging: Origins and development from school to street and beyond. Educational Research and Evaluation, 18(7), 641–654. Lightbown, P. (2014). Focus on content-based language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Linares, A., Morton, T., & Whittaker, R. (2012). The roles of language in CLIL. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lyster, R. (2007). Learning and teaching languages through content: A counterbalanced approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lyster, R. (2018). Content-based language teaching. New York: Routledge. Morton, T. (2013). Critically evaluating materials for CLIL: Practioners’ practices and perspectives. In J. Gray (Ed.), Critical perspectives on language teaching materials (pp. 111–136). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. National Institute for Educational Policy Research. (2015). Summary of report 1: Study on the curriculum to develop competencies—Nurturing competencies for the 21st century. Retrieved from http://www.nier.go.jp/English/ research/2016/pdf/Report+1.pdf. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. (2005). The definition and selection of key competences: Executive summaries. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/pisa/35070367.pdf. Partnership for 21st Century Learning. (2015). P21 Framework definitions. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/docs/P21_ Framework_Definitions_New_Logo_2015.pdf.

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Pérez-Cañado, M. (2012). CLIL research in Europe: Past, present, and future. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 15(3), 315–341. Rogers, E., & Shoemaker, F. (1971). Communication of innovations: A crosscultural approach (2nd ed.). New York: Free Press. Silesi, S., & Jackson, P. (2011). Everybody up 1: Student book with CD. Tokyo: Oxford University Press. Walsh, S. (2011). Exploring classroom discourse: Language in action. Oxford: Routledge. Waters, A. (2009). Managing innovation in English language education. Language Teaching, 42(4), 421–458. White, R. (1988). The ELT curriculum: Design, innovation and management. Oxford: Blackwell.

Innovation in Elementary Classrooms: Integrating the Teaching of English, History and Peace Linguistics Noriko Ishihara, Terumi Orihashi and Zachary Clark

Area of Innovation In language teaching, what would be the deepest way to innovate? Always challenging our students to elevate their dignity, justice, and peace. —adapted from Gomes de Matos (2012; 2013, p. 103)

As today’s globalization binds the world closer together, we need to cultivate openness to diversity and learning to communicate respectfully across boundaries through language, especially in the international language of English. To this end, innovative instruction was implemented in elementary schools in Japan through collaboration ranging N. Ishihara (*)  Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan T. Orihashi  Board of Education, Komoro Higashi Elementary School, Komoro, Japan Z. Clark  Board of Education, Komoro Higashi Junior High School, Komoro, Japan © The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7_4

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from elementary to university educators (see a brief video1 featuring this instruction). The features that enabled this innovation include: (1) localized history and peace education content; (2) specific attention given to the Language of Empathy grounded in interdisciplinary theory and research; and (3) instruction developed, implemented and reflected upon collaboratively. Let us explain each of these features below.

Localized Peace Education Content Since 2012, co-author Orihashi, a district educational leader, has been teaching special lessons in a few elementary schools in Central Japan by making use of the historical assets treasured in the region. Back in 1927, over 12,700 dolls representing 48 states were gifted by US citizens to Japan as a token of friendship and peace and distributed to kindergarten and elementary schools across Japan. These dolls attracted children’s attention and were appreciated by the communities. During World War II, following a top-down military command, many of these dolls were destroyed, often cruelly, being burned or speared as they had turned into a symbol of the enemy. According to a media report, only about 240 dolls have survived thanks to brave protectors (Asahi Shimbun, 1927, 1988). In fact, a survivor doll existed in one of the schools where Orihashi taught, along with another doll sent later in 2007 (see Fig. 1, for an image of these dolls). Despite further doll exchanges that occurred more recently between the two countries, and the original and additional media coverage (e.g., in 1927, 1978, and 1988), the historical background is hardly known to the children in the school and to the local residents. Orihashi thus designed instruction both to address this local history as part of peace education and to stimulate students’ willingness to communicate in English. Students were asked to interact with the dolls, whose voices were represented by co-author Clark, an American Assistant Language Teacher (ALT), hiding behind a curtain (see Orihashi, 2016, for details).

1The

video (edited by Bo Wang) is accessible at: https://youtu.be/Kld11FuRZpU.

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Fig. 1  An image of the dolls

Specific Attention Given to the Language of Empathy To further expand the instruction by Orihashi and her colleagues in the fall of 2016, Ishihara, a university researcher and teacher herself, suggested modifications to incorporate the perspective of peace linguistics (Friedrich, 2013; Gomes de Matos, 2014) as well as research in and theories of face and linguistic politeness (e.g., Brown & Levinson, 1987; Goffman, 1967). Peace linguistics is a relatively recent perspective that connects (socio)linguistics and peace studies, and dates back to the

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1990s (Friedrich, 2007). The third edition of the Penguin Dictionary of Language defines peace linguistics as follows: A climate of opinion which emerged during the 1990s among many linguists and language teachers, in which linguistic principles, methods, findings, and applications were seen as a means of promoting peace and human rights at a global level. The approach emphasizes the value of linguistic diversity and multilingualism, both internationally and intranationally, and asserts the need to foster language attitudes which respect the dignity of individual speakers and speech communities. (Crystal, 1999, pp. 254–255)

According to Crystal, peace linguistics goes far beyond building peace (i.e., the absence of war and violence), to encompass the protection of human rights, linguistic diversity, and multilingualism. Most prominently researched by David Crystal and Francisco Gomes de Matos (Friedrich, 2007), peace linguistics has been actively supported by various applied linguists, including Dell Hymes (see Gomes de Matos, 2000), Robert B. Kaplan, and Patricia Friedrich. What makes the link between peace linguistics and linguistic politeness salient is the view expressed by Whitney and Troston-Bloom (2010, pp. 51–53) that “words create worlds,” meaning that, socially, we create subjective reality through language. Friedrich (2013) further explains that our conscientious linguistic choices can make a difference in building peaceful relationships and avoiding conflicts in the world. Moreover, theories of linguistic politeness and face (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Goffman, 1967) from pragmatics research can be used to reveal how a degree of (im)politeness is co-constructed by participants in the interactive context and how their mutual face is constructed, protected, maintained or threatened in discourse. The notion of face-threat relates to the constructs of humiliation and dignity (e.g., Lindner, 2009, 2016) as central concepts in fostering peace, human rights and conflict resolution. Research in pragmatics also strives to document pragmatic variation, or linguistic diversity, with regard to linguistic politeness. Pragmatic variation includes cross-cultural differences in expressions of face and politeness and variation in rhetorical styles.

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Understanding and embracing pragmatic variation requires intercultural awareness and cultural sensitivity as well as interest in and appreciation of linguistic and cultural diversity. This idea also overlaps with the peace linguistic concepts of openness, compassion, empathy, respect (LeBlanc, 2016) and dignity (Gomes de Matos, 2013), key ingredients of peace making. Accordingly, we called this respectful, conscientious use of language the Language of Empathy (やさしいことば ) in introducing a meta-linguistic awareness (i.e., awareness about language) to Japanese elementary students in this study.

Collaborative Instruction The initial collaboration between Orihashi and Ishihara evolved to include other educators once instruction began in the fall of 2016. The incorporation of the Language of Empathy first involved Clark, who was to represent the dolls’ voices in interacting with students in the English class. In communicating with Ishihara regarding the teaching of the Language of Empathy through frequent emails, Clark aptly adapted the suggested lesson plan based on his knowledge of the students, which mediated students’ learning effectively (see below). Moreover, Orihashi frequently updated Ishihara on the status of the instruction by describing students’ reactions and sharing students’ classroom writings. This further mediated Ishihara’s subsequent lesson ideas on the Language of Empathy and diversity, which were passed on to Orihashi and the two homeroom teachers, who further adjusted them for classroom use. Several cycles of such collaborative dialogue assisted in developing instruction and materials that we see best catered to the students’ needs. Collaborative learning between educators (as well as all student learning, described below) can be interpreted by the sociocultural theory of learning (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Vygotsky, 1978) in which inter-mental (interpersonal) activity through interaction gives rise to intra-personal learning through the mediation of language and other cultural artifacts. Because the goal of the instruction was multi-faceted, going beyond just the learning of English, Orihashi succeeded in involving elementary

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teachers to teach across the English, social studies (history), and dotoku [moral education] curricula. Understanding local war-time history was dealt with in social studies. Appreciation of diversity required meta-linguistic discussions at a high cognitive level, and dotoku instruction was conducted in the students’ first language. The students were also introduced to poems and music created about the bilateral doll exchange and painted images of the dolls in an art class. The interdisciplinary learning culminated in student presentations in kamishibai2 format at their sixth-grade graduation3 ceremony. Through collaboration, teachers’ local knowledge of the students as well as of curricula from several subjects were reconciled with theoretical resources from interdisciplinary research in peace linguistics and pragmatics.

Impetus for the Innovation In a world of globalized communication and conflicts, it is critical for future generations in Japan to learn to build international connections constructively and maintain respectful communities in English, including the ability to communicate tactfully and to resolve conflicts peacefully in the language classroom and beyond. Research and practice in peace linguistics and pragmatics can provide valuable insights for fulfilling this. Particularly in today’s climate of world politics, some national leaders, who are highly positioned native speakers, use language that incites violence and represents values that are opposed to human rights and cultural and linguistic diversity. Addressing openness, respect and empathy has become an increasingly important component of curriculum at all educational levels, along with critical thinking about such behavior to which students are exposed daily. 2Kamishibai is a traditional Japanese form of storytelling with large illustrated cards and voice performance. 3In a Japanese context, finishing elementary school (at age 11–12) is referred to as ‘graduation’ and celebrated through a formal ceremony.

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Yet, too often there is insufficient interaction between language-related research and classroom practice. Language teachers are known to be highly aware of grammar but sometimes neglect to pay attention to the social and cultural appropriateness of learners’ language (BardoviHarlig & Dörnyei, 1998; Niezgoda & Röver, 2001; Takahashi & Beebe, 1986). In fact, instruction and instructional materials can be a source of confusion, sometimes inducing inappropriate language use (Ishihara & Cohen, 2010). Let us illustrate this in the context of the instruction described above (Orihashi, 2016), which is grounded in local history and concerns for global peace. When sixth grade students were composing questions to ask the doll ‘friend,’ despite their level of engagement, the social appropriateness of the questions did not seem to matter to either students or teachers. While some were friendly questions commonly used to become acquainted with someone (e.g., “Where are you from?” “What do you like to do?”), others were potentially face-threatening (e.g., “Why is your face so dark?” “Why does your skin break and fade?”), especially for young women (dolls) on their first encounter. Perhaps as these students are only beginning to learn basic English, many teachers tend to overlook or tolerate grammatical errors, and even pragmatically questionable statements. However, if used in authentic contexts, even by children, this type of tactless language may be a source of embarrassment, dismay and humiliation (Ishihara, 2017), especially for someone who has supposedly experienced traumatic war-time atrocities. Although both native and non-native English speaking teachers supported students’ grammar, pronunciation, and word choice to make the questions intelligible, social appropriateness was overlooked (as with many other teachers in Bardovi-Harlig & Dörnyei, 1998; Niezgoda & Röver, 2001; Takahashi & Beebe, 1986). Ironically, peace education defeats its purpose if students are misled into producing language that can be perceived as disrespectful or offensive. This realization prompted the collaboration described in this chapter to further refine the instruction from the meta-linguistic perspectives of peace linguistics and linguistic politeness.

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The Context In the fall and spring of 2016–2017, the instruction was implemented in two sixth grade classrooms in an elementary school in a small town in central Japan. There were a total of 57 students. Most of them were beginning-level English learners from monolingual Japanese families, with the exception of five children from international marriages with varied levels of exposure to English, Korean and Thai. Although English or another foreign language became a required subject in the fifth and sixth grades (age 10–12) in 2011 in Japan, there has been no fixed curriculum or requirement for formal assessment for these classes. Although the dearth of guidance is often criticized, this flexibility opens up possibilities for innovation. More specifically, the lessons were designed based on the following four themes for students to: (1) learn about the local history of the dolls gifted by US citizens as tokens of friendship in the 1920s; (2) communicate with those dolls in English; (3) develop compassion with their ‘friends’ who experienced war-time hardships via the Language of Empathy; and (4) develop an awareness of racial diversity through images of historical and contemporary dolls. As mentioned earlier, the instruction was collaboratively developed, implemented and reflected upon by Orihashi, Clark, elementary homeroom teachers (Teachers A and B), and Ishihara. The first instructional phase was taught in December 2016, in which students learned about the dolls and the historical background from the 1920s to the 1940s in social studies classes. To facilitate this, Orihashi displayed the community dolls in the classroom as well as newspaper clippings about the international friendship published in the 1920s, 1970s and 1980s (see Fig. 2). In the second phase, students were encouraged to come up with English questions to ask the dolls named Mary and Cathy. Orihashi and Clark supported the students in this process by translating and having students use dictionaries. In the following class, Clark represented their voices behind a curtain, answering the students’ questions in English. The third phase of instruction was implemented in January 2017 by Orihashi in dotoku classes in which the Language of Empathy and racial

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Fig. 2  Newspaper clippings displayed

diversity was addressed. Students reflected on the interaction with the dolls, especially their language use in light of the dolls’ responses. Issues of diversity and the importance of inclusiveness was also discussed. The instruction culminated in students’ production of bilingual kamishibai based on the sequence of lessons, which was presented at their sixth-grade graduation in March 2017. The performance was shared with parents and fifth graders. The data for this ethnographic case study were collected in English and Japanese over five months in 2016–2017 and consisted of: (1) documents (i.e., lesson plans, records of lesson activities, photos, worksheets completed by students at four different points, students’ kamishibai ); (2) video recordings of some of the instruction (i.e., interaction between the students and the ALT, kamishibai presentation); (3) reflective writings by Orihashi, Teachers A and B, and Ishihara; and (4) emails between the co-authors. Specific data collection instruments varied slightly between the two classes due to different student reactions and

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instruction tailored to their needs (see below for each stage of instruction). Consent from students, parents and teachers was obtained by Orihashi prior to data collection. The data were first coded by Ishihara according to the four themes explained earlier that corresponded to the instructional objectives, with her interpretation confirmed and further developed by her co-authors. Original data collected in Japanese were back-translated4 to ensure consistency in meaning.

Findings Below we report our findings according to the instructional objectives, which addressed: (1) understanding of the local history and development of compassion; (2) communication in English; (3) awareness and use of the Language of Empathy; and (4) awareness of racial diversity.

Understanding of Local History and Development of Compassion As mentioned earlier, the instruction involving the dolls was implemented across several academic subjects beyond English. The historical background was taught in social studies in which students researched relevant facts following their interests. Initial student reflections in one of the classes indicated that nearly half were confused by the fact that some blue-eyed dolls had their eyes blackened during the war. They stated that it was a terrible thing to do and did not understand why this cruelty occurred. The next class offered more information about military orders to destroy the dolls, war-time mentalities, and the protective intention behind the blackening of eyes in an attempt to save the dolls. The reflective writing prompts in this lesson provided opportunities for the students to think and feel for others, including those who burned 4The English translation was first crafted by Ishihara, then translated back to Japanese by Orihashi without referring to the original data.

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and destroyed the dolls, the doll hidden alone for three decades, and those who blackened the dolls’ eyes. For example, in response to the prompt, “How did the person who burned or destroyed the dolls feel? Write as if you were that person,” one student wrote: (ある人は) 敵の人形なんて焼いちゃえと思う気持ちで焼いた。( また別の人は) 戦争中だけど、いくらなんでも人形が悪いわけ じゃないんだから焼きたくない。でも焼かなくちゃろうやに入 れられると悲しい思いでやいた。 [Some people] burned them as they were enemy’s dolls. [Others] didn’t want to burn them because even during the war, dolls can never be at fault. But they burned the dolls in sadness thinking they’d be put into jail otherwise. (Student #27)

Many others showed a similar understanding of different opinions and emotions about the destruction of the dolls. The prompts effectively encouraged students to feel for others given the historical context, and the students expressed compassion with all parties who underwent hardships during the war. This experience led to their confirmed belief that the war was harsh and cruel. 戦争はとてもひどいものだったんだなと思った。ほかの小学校 の青い目の人形は青い目だったのに炭で黒くぬりつぶされてか わいそうだなと思った。戦争をしている時は人形にまでもひど い事をするほど仲が悪かったんだと分かった。 I thought the war was a really terrible thing. I felt sad [and sorry] for the other blue-eyed dolls who had their eyes blackened with black ink. I learned that when they were at war, things became so bad that even dolls had terrible things done to them. (Student #53)

Several students expressed admiration for the courage of those who hid the dolls, risking imprisonment or even their lives. They expressed thanks to their predecessors who protected the dolls they can enjoy today. A few hoped to be as brave, and felt inspired to make efforts in their own lives. Orihashi observed that the students saw themselves connected to the good will of this community and gained self-worth:

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子どもたちの驚きや、子どもたちの内面からわき起こる平和に 対する思いが、紙芝居をつくって、後輩達に伝えていきたい、 この学校や地域の良さを伝えたい、その良さを自分たちがもっ ていることを一つの自信として(自己肯定感として)これからを 生きていきたいという、いろんな願いをこめて、授業がすすん でいるような気がします。 Students’ amazement and wishes for peace arising from inside have urged them to want to create kamishibai and pass the wishes down to younger students. They wanted to communicate how good this school and community are, and they want to continue to live with this confidence (self-affirmation) that they have that goodness within themselves. This class seems to be proceeding with these various wishes coming from students. (January 12, 2017)

Through these lessons, the students gradually achieved a comprehensive understanding of the history, a range of war-time mentalities, and developed compassion with their ‘friends’ who experienced war-time hardships.

Communication in English Students’ communication in English was driven by a genuine desire to learn more about the dolls by interacting with them. Most were innocent questions, such as “What do you like to do?” and “What kind of dogs do you like?” Even though most students were complete beginners in English and unable to formulate questions in English alone, their efforts in preparing questions were scaffolded by Orihashi, Clark, and Teachers A and B. The interaction with the dolls in English was the highlight for the majority of students, who had hardly ever used English for meaningful communication. They were instructed to greet the dolls and introduce themselves before asking their question. As they tended to look down at their notes, the teachers also encouraged looking up and using eye-contact. These speaking behaviors were part of the students’ learning, which was occasionally mentioned in the reflective

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writing they conducted in one of the classes. They also indicated that they learned how to translate and pronounce English words (Student #28) and how to use dictionaries (#36). Some expressed delight at being able to communicate in English (#29, 38), take notes on others’ questions and answers (#47), and learn to communicate in English by interacting with the dolls (#48). The following quote shows that students scaffolded each other and co-constructed meaning in this learning: 質問する時に最初自己紹介をした。そこから全てが英語で、質 問の答えが何を言っているのかわからない時もあり、友達に教 えてもらい、教え、メアリーとキャシーのことを覚えるのが楽 しかった。 We introduced ourselves when we asked questions. Everything was in English, and sometimes I didn’t understand responses to questions. My friends helped me, I helped them, and it was fun to learn about Mary and Cathy. (Student #39)

Both homeroom teachers A and B felt that creating and asking English questions presented a great challenge for the students. Teacher B recalled in his reflection (December 21, 2016) that many of the questions as well as the responses from the dolls included new words, which was overwhelming (also in Clark’s reflections, December 26, 2012), and detailed the painstaking process of bilingual kamishibai-making, which also required a great deal of assistance from the English teachers. However, with Orihashi meshing English and Japanese and bridging interactional gaps between students and dolls, the students appeared to focus more on communication and celebrated their success in negotiating meaning. Although Clark initially doubted that students, especially boys, would be interested in this lesson about friendship dolls, the students’ “willingness and desire to speak and use real English” with the dolls proved him wrong (December 26, 2012). It appeared that students were completely transported in the reality imagination as they engaged in conversations with Clark speaking in dolls’ voices behind the curtain.

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Awareness and Use of the Language of Empathy During the student–doll interaction described above, five questions were potentially offensive or hurtful to the dolls: Why do you have blue eyes? Why is your skin white? Why are your shoes broken? Why does your skin break and fade? Why is your clothes different from Mary[sic]? Such questions sometimes arise from children’s innocent curiosity and were also found in Orihashi’s earlier study (2016). In planning the instruction, Clark suggested showing the consequences of these questions directly to students, such as dolls starting to audibly cry, feeling offended, and discouraging students from asking the same questions again in the future. We imagined that dramatic reactions would teach students the potential impact of their language use effectively. The following is the first of these instances: 1. Student #47 (S): Why do you have blue eyes? 2. Doll Mary (M): (pause) That’s an interesting question. Why do you have brown eyes? 3. Orihashi (O): [explains in Japanese, encouraging S to answer] 4. S: [long pause] I’m Japanese. 5. M: That’s interesting. I’m a little hurt by the question. Because, this is who I am. This is, this is me. 6. O: [explains that M is hurt. S feels bad. O asks S if he wants to apologize] 7. S: [takes up the offer immediately by nodding] I’m sorry. 8. M: It’s okay. Thank you. 9. O: [explains she is okay]

As some of the students reflected later, the student’s question in Turn 1 could be interpreted as an accusatory remark (i.e., Why don’t you have brown eyes; everyone has those here ). Mary pauses and asks a rhetorical question Why do you have brown eyes? in Turn 2. S is puzzled but finally replies, equating her nationality with the eye color in Turn 4. Mary responds in Turn 5 that she is slightly hurt by the question and explains that the eye color is part of her identity. Encouraged by Orihashi in Turn 6, S issues an apology, which is accepted in Turn 8, modeling a process of repair. The entire interaction was scaffolded bilingually by Orihashi.

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When the second question about skin color comes along, Mary begins to sob and says, “Not a nice question. Everyone is different in this world,” pointing to racial diversity, thus implicitly asking the students to accept people with a different appearance. The student (#49) spontaneously apologizes in closing the interaction. For the third potentially offensive question, Clark and Orihashi became able to turn these questions around in a positive direction. In discussing the broken shoes and clothes (asked by Student #49), Clark says, they “look great for my experience,” which Orihashi translates as “I’m proud of them as I survived many challenges wearing them” in Japanese. To the question about the skin condition and faded color (Student #28), Clark responds, “Simply, it’s because somebody loved me,” which is interpreted as “someone hid her in a pile of coal, so the dark marks on her face is a proof of love.” Here we see how Clark, Orihashi, and the students gradually co-construct the positive emphasis. Much as hurting someone’s feelings appeared to leave a strong sense of guilt in students’ young minds, Mary’s resilience greatly impressed the students, which was often mentioned in their reflection. Both homeroom teachers also stated in their reflection (dated December 21, 2016, April 19, 2017) that students’ direct experience of offending someone with careless language use was valuable in learning the importance of respectful language. Teacher A mentioned that sometimes we learn greatly from a serious mistake, and this is a perfect example of just that (April 19, 2017). Two additional meta-linguistic lessons specifically and explicitly focusing on the Language of Empathy were implemented in early 2017 in both classes. The lesson plan was proposed by Ishihara and adapted and implemented by Orihashi in two dotoku [moral education] classes in Japanese. Following up on the interactional challenges above, the first class addressed possible strategies in dealing with potentially face-threatening questions. Informed by research on face and politeness, these meta-linguistic strategies included strategies of asking politely or indirectly via the Language of Empathy as well as giving up asking (opting out to ask someone else or explore another means or timing). As mentioned earlier, instruction on respectful language is also compatible with the perspective of peace linguistics that fosters the protection of human rights and linguistic diversity applicable in this context.

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More specifically, the Language of Empathy included the strategies of alerting the listener to an upcoming question (e.g., variations of “Can I ask you a personal question? May I ask you about …?”) and asking indirectly through non-threatening language (e.g., “Where are you from?” rather than “Why is your skin so fair?”). While we attempted to give alternatives in simple English, the goal was not for students to memorize those English phrases but for them to gain an awareness of the importance of respectful language for communication across cultures regardless of the language used. The students’ reflective writings showed that all of them understood the message and agreed on the importance of the Language of Empathy. They were able to articulate the above strategies by using ­meta-linguistic terms (e.g., maeoki [alerters or preemptive warnings], kokorono junbi [mental preparation]) as well as demonstrating such awareness through a variety of language samples evoking empathy (e.g., Japanese equivalents of “It may be a difficult question to answer, but may I ask…?”, “You don’t have to answer, but …, I’d be happy to hear if you could tell me” [and, retrospectively] “I’m sorry for asking [such a difficult question]”). The students also demonstrated an understanding of the imagined impact of disrespectful language use on Mary as well as the readiness to apply their learning to new situations to communicate internationally: 自分がメアリーと同じ人生を歩んできたとして、そのまんま言 葉にして (Why did you lose your friends?) 聞かれると心をえぐられ た気分になったりしたと思うから、今日このことを話し合って いろいろかんがえられてよかった。 If I had the same life as Mary has and were asked the direct question (Why did you lose your friends?), I would have felt as if my heart were hollowed out, so it was good to discuss and think about various things today. (Student #28) 世界には一人一人ちがう人たちがいるから話を聞く時にも相手 の事を考えて聞かないと人を傷つけてしまうからこれからはこ の勉強をいかしていきたいと思いました。 Because there are people different from one another in the world, I’d end up hurting them unless I show consideration for the people I’m listening to. I hope to make use of the lesson from this class from now on. (Student #4)

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To further solidify the learning, Orihashi led another session in both classes discussing application. More specifically, by showing the photo of a feature film character, a teenage surfer with no left arm, Orihashi asked how one could ask about her arm. The students demonstrated a sophisticated ability to use an array of expressions representing the Language of Empathy. In addition to preemptive warnings and apologies, they used a range of cost-minimizers (e.g., if possible ), disclaimers (e.g., you don’t have to tell me ), keigo honorific usages (e.g., hanashite itadakenai deshoka [couldn’t you please tell me, humble and polite forms]), and a focus on the positive along with paying attention to the sequential organization of their messages. The reflective writing showed that a group activity further provided a collaborative opportunity to notice and learn from each other’s language strategies. Moreover, a few isolated cases were recounted in Orihashi’s follow-up reflections with regard to the observed impact of this instruction written after the students became junior high school students (April 27, 2017). In one case, with regard to a particular student (Student #7), his former classmate (Student #15) reported to Orihashi that S7 no longer used offensive language after entering junior high school—behavior he occasionally used before. According to S15, after the students’ questions made the doll Mary cry, S7 seemed to have come to regret his linguistic behavior. In another case, one of the few visibly inter-racial students indicated an enhanced awareness of the care to be taken in intercultural communication, which she said she will utilize next time she takes a family trip overseas (Student #9). Her classmate (#11) commented that she and her classmates did not particularly mind this friend’s outward differences and that she had been treated just the same “because humans are humans.” On the other hand, the same student (#9) later consulted Orihashi revealing that she had been greatly pressured to conform but that the class discussion on diversity liberated her, affording her self-confidence in looking and acting in the way she believed in. After entering junior high school, she wished to “become able to enjoy diverse values” (reported in Orihashi’s reflection, April 27, 2017).

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Awareness of Racial Diversity While the implicit instruction on racial diversity occurred during the student–doll interaction, the explicit component was implemented briefly toward the end of the instructional sequence in both classes. Based on the visual and statistical information provided by Ishihara (Cadet, 2013; Funderburg, 2013), Orihashi introduced images of contemporary dolls representing different racial groups. Only a few students commented in their reflection that they learned about racial diversity in America, which changed their preconception (Student #10, 27). 色々なアメリカ人の人がいるとわかった。目の色がちがったり しても、人のかちはかわらない 。 I learned that there are various Americans. Even if eye colors differ, human values are the same. (Student #10)

As Teacher B pointed out, students may be less aware of bias associated with skin color as they are exposed to celebrities with different racial profiles through the media. The final component of the dotoku lesson made the point that the majority of Americans have a mixed racial/ethnic profile by showing four pictures demonstrating diverse backgrounds. Unfortunately, this message was misinterpreted by a few students, who took the four examples to be fixed racial categories among contemporary Americans (Students #27, 37). However, this additional component of the instruction was delivered in a rather hurried manner. To convey the nuanced message accurately, more time and exploration would have been necessary; or perhaps this component is more suitable for a higher educational level.

Discussion Because Orihashi visits the junior high school that most of these students joined upon finishing elementary school, she was able to remain in contact and continue to observe them informally. At the end of the first month of junior high school, they mentioned that the instruction

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on the Language of Empathy had “proved useful in building new friendships” with classmates from other elementary schools. They felt that they were better able to think of “how to phrase their ideas to convey them effectively” or “what would hurt others’ feelings” before they spoke (Orihashi’s reflective writing, April 27, 2017). It is this awareness and skill that we hope students will continually draw upon in their future encounters especially across cultural borders. The students’ learning described above can be attributed to fruitful collaboration across multiple subject areas and academic fields, as well as between educators across various branches of education. Orihashi reflected that it was crucial to have homeroom teachers’ personal and professional connection to the community and commitment to peace education (April 29, 2017). In addition, Clark’s knowledge of the local history expanded over the years, even through correspondence with the descendants of the original Dolls of Friendship coordinator (email dated December 12, 2016). This enabled him to answer students’ questions truthfully and facilitated the team-teaching with Orihashi. The local historical resources and knowledge on the teachers’ part sparked students’ curiosity and interest. Since the lessons on the dolls were followed up in multiple school subjects, the students were recursively exposed to the content in an integrated manner. Their background knowledge of the history and further quest for exploration fueled their motivation to communicate in English. Their communicative use of English was scaffolded by their teachers, who bridged linguistic and cultural gaps through the use of both English and Japanese (see Kang, 2008 for how code-switching [or translanguaging] can support the learning of English in a Korean elementary school). The instruction further proceeded at a meta-linguistic level by analyzing the respectful language use grounded in research and theory of face and politeness and peace linguistics. Because peace education cannot be completed without empathy and compassion with others, instruction on the Language of Empathy was a necessary meta-linguistic component of reflecting on the interaction with the dolls. The direct experience of hurting the dolls’ feelings through language or witnessing the offense shaped critical awareness in the students, which became useful in the retrospective critical analysis of language use. As Teacher A

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observed, the lesson was learned that successful intercultural communication encompasses not only knowledge of an international language but also awareness of diversity and respectful language use. Our results indicate that respectful language use and its meta-linguistic awareness may be amenable to instruction at a young age.

Implications and Conclusion Similar lessons are directly applicable to communities in Japan and possibly the USA in which these friendship dolls survive. Various aspects of this friendship are recursively covered in the media, thus enabling the development of authentic materials in English and Japanese (see comprehensive coverage and university projects on this topic in an academic newsletter, Cates, 2017). To facilitate the instructional sequences across multiple subjects, we are currently in the process of making adaptable materials available online. Such instruction will not only require and enhance collaboration between teachers and integration of academic content but also assist in fostering linguistic and cultural identities rooted in local and global communities. Such community-based instruction grounded in peace linguistics can be highly generalizable in other contexts especially in ­collaboration with other subject areas. For example, teachers and students can collaboratively research historical figures who contributed to local social justice with attention paid to the language used for peace-building. Alternatively, students can also be periodically encouraged to use their L1 and L2 in a respectful and compassionate manner, which can be instructed in coordination with moral education content. Prerequisites for such peace linguistics education would include strong leadership— that is, a motivating teacher or group of teachers willing to become experts in the subject matter, who can set clear goals, and coordinate and communicate with colleagues and students effectively. Teacher education would also be crucial, which would foster an awareness of linguistic politeness and its impact on intercultural interactions, as well as some flexibility in the curriculum.

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Finally, we would emphasize the potential advantages of collaboration between practitioners and researchers for advancing both educational practice and research in applied linguistics. Although the importance of respectful language use has been emphasized in many fields and publications (e.g., Rosenberg, 2015; Whitney & TostenBloom, 2010), there is little research on the effectiveness of peace linguistics instruction (Gomes de Matos, 2014). Collaboration gives a chance to bridge this gap. Moreover, research insights from applied linguistics and relevant fields that remain underused or are used in isolation can gain greater value in systematic application, namely the classroom, where they truly belong. In fact, Ishihara’s reflective writing for this study shows how collaboration enabled her research-informed messages to be conveyed promptly to the students (January 13, 2017). It is hoped that this cross-fertilization will be become part of our regular educational routine, not only to reap academic benefits but also to support respectful communication at all educational branches.

References Asahi Shimbun. (1927, March 17). 皆さんこんにちは　きのふ箱から出 た青い目のミス.アメリカ [Hello everyone: Blue-eyed Miss America who came out of the box yesterday], p. 17. Asahi Shimbun. (1988, February 27). 「青い目の人形外交」60年 [Sixty years of “blue-eyed doll diplomacy”], p. 29. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Dörnyei, Z. (1998). Do language learners recognize pragmatic violations? Pragmatic versus grammatical awareness in instructed L2 learning. TESOL Quarterly, 32, 233–262. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cadet, D. (2013, October 1). Striking photos will change the way you see the average American. Black Voices. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/01/national-geographic-changing-face-of-america-photos_n_4024415.html. Cates, K. (2017, October). The 1927 US-Japan friendship doll exchange. Global Issues in Language Education Newsletter, 16–21.

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Crystal, D. (1999). The Penguin dictionary of language (2nd ed.). London: Penguin Books. Friedrich, P. (2007). Language, negotiation and peace: The use of English in conflict resolution. London: Continuum. Friedrich, P. (2013). Teaching language for peace. In C. Chappelle (Ed.), The encyclopedia of applied linguistics [online resource]. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Funderburg, L. (2013). The changing face of America. National Geographic, 224(4), 76–91. Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. New York: Pantheon. Gomes de Matos, F. (2000). Harmonizing and humanizing political discourse: The contribution of peace linguists. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 6(4), 339–344. Gomes de Matos, F. (2012). Innovation in language teaching: A checklist. ABA Poster Series. Recife: ABA Global Education. Gomes de Matos, F. (2013). Dignity: A multidimensional view. Lake Oswego, OR: Dignity Press. Gomes de Matos, F. (2014). Language, peace, and conflict resolution. In P. T. Coleman, M. Deutsch, & E. C. Marcus (Eds.), The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice (pp. 182–202). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Ishihara, N. (2017). Teaching pragmatics in support of learner subjectivity and global communicative needs: A peace linguistics perspective. Idee in Form@ zione: Periodico per la formazione degli insegnanti: Professionalita docente ed efficacia educative. Organo Ufficiale dell’ Associazione Nazionale dei Formatori Insegnanti Supervisori (ANFIS), Italy, 6(5), 17–32. Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. D. (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. Harlow: Pearson Education (Republished 2014, Abingdon: Routledge). Kang, H.-S. (2008). Teaching in two languages: An elementary English language program in South Korea. In S. Dogancay-Aktuna & J. Hardman (Eds.), Global English teaching and teacher education: Praxis & possibility (pp. 131–145). Alexandria, VA: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. Lantolf, J. P., & Thorne, S. L. (2006). Sociocultural theory and the genesis of second language development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. LeBlanc, J. (2016). Compassionate English communication for diplomatic purposes. In P. Friedrich (Ed.), English for diplomatic purposes (pp. 42–74). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

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Lindner, E. (2009). Emotion and conflict: How human rights can dignify emotion and help us wage good conflict. Westport, CT: Praeger. Lindner, E. (2016). The journey of humiliation and dignity, and the significance of the year 1757. Retrieved from http://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/evelin/Significanceof1757.pdf. Niezgoda, K., & Röver, C. (2001). Pragmatic and grammatical awareness: A function of the learning environment? In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 63–79). New York: Cambridge University Press. Orihashi, T. (2016). 語らせる言語活動から語り出す言語活動へ　―青 い目の人形を題材にして―　 [Improving English education: Change of focus from repetition and pattern practice to communication with motivation using ‘Japanese blue eyed doll’ story as a case study]. JES Journal, 16, 4–17. Rosenberg, M. (2015). Nonviolent communication: A language of life (3rd ed.). Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press. Takahashi, T., & Beebe, L. M. (1986). ESL teachers’ evaluation of pragmatic vs. grammatical errors. CUNY Forum, 12, 172–203. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Whitney, D., & Troston-Bloom, A. (2010). The power of appreciative inquiry: A practical guide to positive change (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Inviting Children’s Views for Designing Digital Game Tasks Yuko Goto Butler

Area of Innovation The question of how best to teach English to young learners has taken on new urgency as primary schools in many countries implement English-as-an-international-language education. Despite these widespread educational initiatives’ emphasis on developing young learners’ communicative abilities in English, we actually have a very limited understanding of both how children develop such skills in a foreign language and how best to teach foreign languages communicatively. At a very practical level, there is a great need for theoretically and pedagogically sound communicative tasks for young learners. When developing communicative tasks for children, careful attention should be given to their specific developmental needs. Moreover, because of the increasing prevalence of digital technology, it is likely Y. G. Butler (*)  Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7_5

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that children today are developing learning characteristics, such as learning by doing, learning by collaborating with others, and learning by playing, that differ from older generations (e.g., Prensky, 2001; Reinders, 2012). Indeed, one could argue that such learning characteristics may be part of a new learning paradigm in the digital world. Although this assumption needs to be empirically warranted, it is nonetheless worthwhile pursuing innovative, technology-based language learning and teaching that fit children’s learning characteristics. Toward that end, this chapter focuses on digital games as potential tasks for learning English among young learners in Japan. As a leading center of digital games and animation, Japan provides an interesting case study. I begin this chapter with a brief background on the current policy and practice of primary school English education in Japan as well as an overview of previous studies concerning digital game-based language learning. I then introduce a recent project in which I asked Japanese primary school students, working in groups, to design digital computer game tasks for English vocabulary learning (Butler, 2015a, 2017a). The aim of this project was to design effective and motivating tasks based on the children’s points of view. Inviting learners’ input into task designs appears to be critical and yet relatively unexplored in task-based language teaching (TBLT) research, especially among young learners. In essence, this project is innovative in three distinct ways. First, it focuses on young learners (defined as primary school children)—a relatively understudied group in second language acquisition (SLA) research. A second innovation is the focus on digital games as learning tasks. And third, it includes children’s perspectives in task design.

Impetus for the Innovation Policy and Practice of Primary School English in Japan In order to prepare Japanese citizens to meet the needs of a globalizing, competitive world, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) is undertaking a series of English language educational reforms from the primary school to post-secondary

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school levels (MEXT, 2016), with the goal of developing stronger English communicative skills among its citizens. As one of the key components of this reform, MEXT is making English language a compulsory academic subject in primary school starting in 2020. More specifically, ‘English activities,’ an English exploratory program currently conducted in fifth and sixth grades (ages 10–12), will be moved down to grades three and four (ages 8–10), and newly implemented English language education for grades five and six will have specified learning goals and approved textbooks and will require evaluation as a formal academic subject. A number of concerns have been expressed about introducing English in primary school in Japan. One of the most serious concerns is teachers’ lack of sufficient professional knowledge and pedagogical skills for implementing communicative-based English teaching. MEXT tasks homeroom teachers (generalists) with primarily responsibility for teaching English along with other academic subjects even though they were not originally trained to do so.1 Similarly, these teachers’ English proficiency is likely to fall short of an adequate level. Although their actual proficiency level has not been objectively captured, their lack of confidence adds an extra challenge for successful implementation of English education (e.g., Butler, 2004, 2015b; Ikeda et al., this volume; Kusumoto, 2008). In order to train primary school teachers to take on this new duty, MEXT employs a top-down, multilayered cascade model where a handful of teachers (called ‘English education promotion leaders’) participate in a week-long training session offered by a foreign agency, and then these leaders are expected to transmit the information to lower layers of teachers at local levels (MEXT, 2016). We do not know the effectiveness of cascade professional training among Japanese primary school teachers. However, judging from the unfavorable findings of previous studies conducted in other Asian countries (e.g., Baker, 2016 in Thailand; Ping, 2013 in China; Vu & Pham, 2014 in Vietnam), there is little reason for optimism. A critical issue is that, since the initial training is rather generic (i.e., it can be applied to wider contexts), teachers need to

1To respond to the concerns that this has generated, MEXT also plans to recruit approximately 4000 English-teaching specialists by 2020.

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modify the pedagogy that they learn to fit local contexts and students’ needs. To do so, they need more expertise and resources.2 Another major challenge to implementing primary school English education stems from the fact that we, as a profession, do not sufficiently understand how young learners develop foreign language proficiency or how best to assist their learning. This lack of understanding is primarily due to the fact that the field of SLA has been largely developed based on older learners. Young learners differ from older learners in that they are still in the process of developing their cognitive, social and affective abilities as well as their first language. Moreover, it is possible that early use of technology may affect children’s cognitive processing and strategies such as memory and information-processing speed (e.g., Prensky, 2001), but we do not understand the precise ways that technology uniquely influences (or does not influence) young learners’ language development. Yet another challenge is that primary school children tend to lose their motivation to learn English relatively quickly (e.g., Carreira, 2006). Taken together, these concerns and challenges related to implementing English education at the primary school level suggest three task-­ related needs. Specifically, we need (1) effective tasks that match children’s age-related characteristics; (2) tasks that are aligned with the digital generation’s learning/cognitive styles and strategies; and (3) tasks that account for young learners’ affective factors such as motivation and emotion (e.g., enjoyment).

Digital Games as Tasks for Foreign-Language Learning A growing number of young learners are immersed in technologically rich environments from an early age, potentially with digital games at the “heart of [their] learning and teaching processes” (Reinders, 2012, p. 2). While games have been conceptualized differently by various scholars, they can be considered a form of play with goals and rules (Butler, 2018). 2This is based on the author’s personal communication with a couple of teachers who were involved in the initial training in 2017. In addition, a number of studies on teacher training question the efficacy of such a knowledge-transmitted model of professional development (Butler, 2019; Nguyen, 2017).

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A number of theorists have acknowledged that play serves an important function in the development of children’s sense of self (Mead, 1934), communication and metacommunication (Bateson, 1972), and abstract thinking (Piaget, 1962). Vygotsky (1978) considered play “a leading factor in development” (p. 101) of children because it creates social interaction, which is the very foundation of learning. It has also been suggested that certain characteristics of games, such as challenge, fantasy and curiosity, might enhance learners’ intrinsic motivation to learn (Malone, 1981). Research has found that, compared with traditional nongame-based learning such as through lectures, learning based on digital games is more effective for learning in general and for language learning in particular. The advantage of digital game-based learning has been found not only in serious games (i.e., games primarily designed for learning; Wouters, Van Nimwegen, Van Oostendorp, & Van Der Spek, 2013) but also in commercial games (i.e., games primarily developed for entertainment; Boyle et al., 2016). However, the relationship between game enjoyment and learning is not yet totally clear (Iten & Petko, 2016). Researchers in language learning consider that multimodal interactions afforded by digital game-playing would provide learners with rich input of the target language and opportunities to use the language in an authentic fashion (e.g., Peterson, 2012; Reinders & Wattana, 2012; Thorne, 2008). Digital game spaces can also support learners’ socialization by immersing them in the target culture and community. Additionally, playing games through avatars allows learners to form new identities, which may help reduce anxiety about using the target language and also foster sociocultural competency when using the target language (e.g., Thorne, Black, & Sykes, 2009). It is important to note, however, that most studies have been based on adolescents and young adults rather than children of primary school age. Relatively speaking, research on digital games among young language learners is in its infancy (see Butler, 2018, for a review of this topic). Despite early evidence of some positive effects on children’s language learning for both serious games (e.g., Aghlara & Tamjid, 2011; Sadeghi & Dousti, 2013) and commercial games (e.g., Shu, Kim, & Kim, 2010), we still have scarce information about the extent to which

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game-based learning is effective for young learners and, if it is effective, how best to incorporate it into educational contexts. More critically, we know little about how age-specific factors (e.g., learners’ age and agerelated characteristics, task features related to age) interact with the effectiveness of digital games in children’s learning and motivation (Butler, 2018).

Searching for a Child-Centered Approach to Task Designs In order to develop effective and motivating communicative tasks, we need to incorporate learners’ perspectives. While we have substantial research on cognitive features in tasks that influence learners’ performance, the role of engagement and other affective elements has not been sufficiently examined. Lambert (2017) stressed the importance of learners’ control over their engagement and performance. In practice, however, it is overwhelmingly common among teachers (as well as material and curriculum designers) to develop tasks and to ask learners to perform them with little input from learners themselves. Similarly, Pinter (2014) pointed out that researchers working with children in applied linguistics have for the most part treated children merely as objects of research (e.g., measuring children’s performance in experimental studies) or subjects of research (e.g., interpreting children’s behaviors from an adult’s perspective). Instead, she advocated a more child-centered approach, namely, research with children—research that considers children as social actors or co-researchers. When it comes to digital game-based learning, it makes sense to invite young learners— major agents of the new digital learning paradigm—to participate in designing tasks for their own learning. At the same time, we can expect this approach to pose some challenges. By asking sixth-grade students to design English vocabulary learning tasks for slightly younger students (fifth graders), the present project sought to answer the following questions:

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(1) How do young learners conceptualize effective learning and motivating elements in their designs of game-based tasks? (2)  What are the potential merits and challenges in asking children to design their own game-based tasks?

The Context Participants The game-designing project was conducted among Japanese sixth-grade students (ages 11–12, n = 82): all students from three intact classes at a public primary school located in a middle-class neighborhood in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The school was a typical public school in that it did not receive any special funding from MEXT or the local government to carry out any educational experiments. A survey to students distributed prior to the project indicated that approximately 75% of the students had some experience with digital learning (in any subject, both in and outside of the school), and 55% of those who had experience with digital learning preferred digital learning to traditional, nondigital learning. All but four of the students had some experience playing computer games (whether serious or commercial). The mean number of hours per week these students played computer games was 11.1 for boys and 2.2 for girls; however, there were substantial individual differences. When the study was conducted in 2014, participating students had taken part in English activities at school twice per week since fifth grade. The game evaluation was carried out by fifth graders (ages 10–11, n = 48) enrolled in the same primary school as the sixth-grade participants. In the fifth-grade group, a student background survey indicated that 36.4% of them played computer games on a regular basis (on average, 2.9 hours per week), and 54% of them had some experience with digital learning.

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In addition to the students, others involved in this project were the students’ classroom teachers, the author of this chapter, two curriculum-development specialists, and a professional computer game designer (referred to hereafter as the project team members).

Procedures The project was introduced during the ‘integrated studies’ period in the Japanese national curriculum, during which teachers are allowed to implement multidisciplinary lessons to enhance students’ autonomy and problem-solving abilities through active and experiential learning. The current project was built upon the author’s previous research (Butler, Someya, & Fukuhara, 2014), and the same project members continued to work on this project. We first explained the purpose of the project and our plan to the principal and select teachers at the participating school. After obtaining permission from the school, in consultation with the sixth-grade classroom teachers, the project team spent three months developing a plan which involved five steps, as described below (a 45-minutes class period was designated for each of the first four steps).3

Step 1: Identifying Game Elements That Engage Learners After having an opportunity to play serious games during class, students were asked to identify game elements that motivate players to engage in games. They first identified game elements as a small group and then discussed these elements as a class. The identified elements were recorded on the blackboard by a participating teacher. At the end of the class, the teacher introduced 35 new English words (nouns) to the students using flash cards. Although flash cards are very popular in Japanese English classes, our intention in using them here was to motivate the students to come up with a more enjoyable and effective way to learn vocabulary: namely through a digital game task. As homework, 3Detailed

lesson plans can be found in Butler (2015a).

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the students were told to learn (i.e., to be able to connect sounds and meaning) five words of their choice (out of the 35 words introduced) while paying attention to strategies for learning them.

Step 2: Identifying Learning Elements That Promote Vocabulary Learning The students discussed strategies they used to learn the five words, first in small groups and then in whole-class discussions. After these strategies were listed on the blackboard, students were asked to consider how such elements are incorporated in serious games by playing some games on classroom computers. For the remaining class period, the professional game designer taught the students how professionals draw storyboards (ekonte in Japanese) detailing their game plans. The storyboard was introduced so that the students could create simple storyboards as part of Steps 3 and 4.

Step 3: Designing a Digital Game Task Groups of five or six students were asked to develop a plan for a digital game for learning English vocabulary. Each group was given an ‘Idea Sheet,’ which was meant to assist the children in brainstorming ideas and recording their designing processes. Each group organized their plan in a storyboard for their presentation.

Step 4: Presenting Game Tasks and Conducting Peer- and Self-Evaluation Each group presented their game plan using a storyboard and then answered questions from their peers. After each presentation, the students conducted a peer evaluation based on the criteria that they came up with; they evaluated and made open-ended comments on the extent to which their self-identified game and learning elements were effectively incorporated in their peers’ game task designs. The students also

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self-assessed their own designs using the same criteria they used on their peer assessments. Immediately after the class, the students were asked to write a short description of their experience participating in the project.

Step 5: Making a Digital Game and Inviting Children to Evaluate It The project team created a digital game based on the children’s game designs. The developed game was an imaginary sequel to a famous Japanese fairy tale and contained major elements that were identified by the students (see more details in the finding section). In total, 48 fifthgrade students were invited to play the game and evaluate its effectiveness through a survey.

Analysis All classroom discussions in Steps 1, 2 and 4 and the group interactions in Step 3 were recorded and transcribed. The students’ game-playing behaviors in Step 5 (when the game was introduced to them in class) were videorecorded and transcribed (the children exhibited verbal and non-verbal behaviors during the game-play). The content of these discussions and group interactions, as well as the students’ peer- and self-evaluation sheets and reflection notes, were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. See Butler (2015a, 2017a) for detailed procedures for the analyses.

Findings What Worked #1: Identifying Task-Based Game and Learning Elements from the Children’s Point of View The project elicited from the students a number of motivational and learning elements that, from their point of view, would be useful in tasks designed for young learners. The project results indicate that the children not only seemed to have very sophisticated knowledge about

Inviting Children’s Views for Designing Digital Game Tasks     81

what game elements would motivate players and what learning elements would facilitate learners’ vocabulary learning, but that they also could incorporate these elements in their task designs, often in very creative ways. Through group and whole-class discussions, students identified 16 game elements (motivational elements) and 8 learning elements (see Table 1). Of the 16 game elements, 14 (all except the last two) overlapped to varying degrees with elements identified by adult experts (e.g., Garris, Ahlers, & Driskell, 2002). Similarly, the 8 learning elements identified by the students also corresponded well to major vocabularylearning strategies addressed by applied linguists such as Gu (2005). Table 1 shows the number of games that incorporated respective elements (out of 15 game plans developed by the students) as well as the frequency of positive comments on their peer- and self-evaluation sheets. The game elements identified by the students as motivating engagement included (1) facing challenges in tasks (e.g., the task becomes increasingly difficult); (2) situating tasks in stories (e.g., rescuing a kidnapped snowman); (3) having control over their own learning (e.g., setting their own learning goals, choosing the difficulty level and pace of the game); (4) visible outcomes and instant feedback and applause (e.g., fireworks appearing on the screen when reaching a goal); and (5) having obstacles (e.g., a monster disturbing the player). With respect to learning elements, the students valued (1) the role of repetition, imitation, and reviewing in vocabulary learning; followed by (2) the option of using multiple modalities and means; (3) being able to choose which words to learn; and (4) controlling their own learning. By inviting the children to participate in the task-design process, we could clearly see that they wanted to have autonomy and control over their own learning. Interestingly, although many existing games (commercial games in particular) that are popular among children incorporate the element of competition among players, the participating children preferred not to have competition in their game tasks for vocabulary learning. Qualitative analyses of the students’ game-task designs revealed several important issues that need to be considered for designing tasks for young learners. First, when it comes to learning elements, the students perceived what are often thought of by adults as mechanical aspects of language learning, such as repetition, to be fun, especially if done in

57 9

66 1

15

4

8

1

15

9

0

3. Outcome and feedback 4. Competition

5. Obstacles

6. Collaboration

7. Challenge

8. Controlling own learning 9. Interaction

164

3

56

35

15

2. Goals and objectives

41

15

Total frequencies Number of game plans incorporated valued by peersa (out of 15 plans)

1. Clear rules

Game elements

1. Repetition, imitation, and reviewing (R)b 2. Imaging and making stories (E) 3. Grouping similar words (E) 4. Association with existing knowledge (E) 5. Using multiple modalities and means (E) 6. Learning with other people (S) 7. Choosing to learn most interesting words (M) 8. Controlling own learning (M)

Learning elements

Table 1  Game and learning elements identified by sixth-grade students

8

5

1

51

52

0

116

23

3

9

21

10

142

6

3

15

(continued)

Number of game Total frequencies plans incorporated valued by peers (out of 15 plans)

82     Y. G. Butler

17 50 69 92 27 NA NA

15

15

11

5 12

NA NA

Total frequencies Number of game plans incorporated valued by peersa (out of 15 plans)

Learning elements Number of game Total frequencies plans incorporated valued by peers (out of 15 plans)

bFor

responses were allowed learning elements, (E) refers to encoding/memory strategies, (S) refers to social strategies, and (M) refers to metacognitive strategies cIt was not possible to judge the extent to which these elements were incorporated into the students’ designs and evaluations

aMultiple

10. Sound and visual effects 11. Speed and time limitations 12. Fantasy and unreality 13. Stories 14. Repetition and recovery 15. Conveniencec 16. Relaxing, stress-releasingc

Game elements

Table 1  (continued)

Inviting Children’s Views for Designing Digital Game Tasks     83

84     Y. G. Butler

slightly different contexts and manners and if the learners can control the repetition. For example, one of the groups came up with a game design composed of a main game (encountering new vocabulary in a series of fairy tales) and three subgames. The three subgames, which had different formats, were designed to allow learners to encounter the same targeted words in different game contexts as well as to strengthen learners’ knowledge of the targeted words regarding the sound-andmeaning relations, meaning–form (spelling) relations, and form–sound relations. In their peer evaluations, students positively evaluated this repeating variation, as can be seen in a comment from a peer that “it is interesting that the same words appear in a little bit different way every time.” According to dynamic theory, what the students valued in this design is iteration rather than simple repetition (Larsen-Freeman, 2012). From this perspective, there is no such thing as exact repetition; every time a word or utterance is repeated, its meaning is altered to adapt to a new context, and this is considered to be the very process of learning. Importantly, the ‘repetition’ function in the children’s task designs in this study was almost always incorporated along with the learners’ control over the repetition. In the design described above, for example, learners can choose which words to repeat, what aspects of words to repeat (sounds, meaning, or form) and how many times to repeat them. This appears to be different from the traditional and common classroom practice of teachers asking their students to ‘repeat after me.’ Similarly, teachers and material designers for young learners usually first identify target vocabulary and forms to teach and then create dialogues and texts that include these targeted words and forms. Children may perceive such dialogues and texts as less exciting and less authentic. The participating children’s strong emphases on stories in their game designs reminded us how important stories are to language learning; children are motivated to learn the target language because they want to understand stories and dialogues, not the other way around. A group in this project proposed a game in which the mission was to rescue a kidnapped snowman. We can easily imagine that most learners would be curious to know why the snowman was kidnapped in the first place (i.e., understanding the story) and identify clues for rescuing him (i.e., problem solving). It is likely in this case that learners would be highly motivated to listen to the

Inviting Children’s Views for Designing Digital Game Tasks     85

background story carefully in English and to keep listening to it until they could guess and understand the meaning. Rather than simple repetition, this would be iteration with a clear purpose. The students’ game task designs also remind us that an individual’s motivation is situated in social and cultural contexts. We could tell, for example, that making and maintaining a cool-looking player avatar was important for many participating children, judging from their frequent discussions of avatars during game design and class presentation. Some groups effectively utilized players’ desire to be viewed as ‘cool’ by fellow players by including as task rewards devices to allow players to design their avatars (e.g., allowing to dye their hair a color of their choice). Other groups used social pressure in their designs. For example, in a game called “company president’s commute,” the player, a company president, has to get to his/her office on time while solving English problems on the way. If the president fails to arrive at the office on time, the company will go bankrupt. Company employees cheer for their boss as he/she arrives at the office. In this particular case, by tying others’ livelihoods to the fate of the player, the children seem to conceive of learning English as part of the player’s social responsibility and not simply an individual act in this specific cultural context. Unexpected or accidental elements also appeared to be an important source of motivation for the children. In the “company president’s commute” game, when the president faced difficult items, he/she was allowed to ask an employee of his/her choosing for help by cashing in some points. Interestingly, a young new employee might have a correct answer, while the vice president might be clueless—even though the player needs to cash in many more points for the vice president’s assistance. It turns out that such elements of surprise were rather common in the students’ game designs even though they were not mentioned during the initial discussions in Steps 1 and 2. This could be due to the fact that the serious games that we used as examples during Steps 1 and 2 did not contain such unexpected elements. Most critically, the children viewed an imperfect linear relationship between one’s game scores and one’s actual English vocabulary learning as not only enjoyable but also motivating, especially for players who are not good at English because they still have a chance to win. This view was clearly indicated in the children’s discussions in Step 4.

86     Y. G. Butler

What Worked #2: Providing Children with Opportunities for Self-Reflection Asking the students to design their own English learning tasks provided them with opportunities to reflect on and discuss what it means to learn a foreign language, as well as to feel accomplishment and ownership of their own task designs. The sixth graders’ after-project notes overwhelmingly indicated their positive response to the project as well as their reflections on the design process. For example: I think it was very important to discuss games using storyboards. By drawing storyboards, we could build up with better ideas. It was easier to exchange opinions because we had a chance to think about game elements in the first class. (S. S.)4 It was really fun to collaborate in group and to create a game by ourselves while drawing storyboards. When I listened to other teams’ presentations, I realized that people created games with different genres. It would have been more helpful and enjoyable if the teachers had shown us example games from different genres beforehand. (K. K.)

Other students commented on the value of having a chance to take a designer’s and learner’s perspective in their designs: I felt a sense of accomplishment even though it was a small game and we designed it in a short period of time. I realize that it is important to design games that both designers and users can enjoy. (K. U.) I became a game designer from a simple game player. (E. N.)

A number of students said that joining this project was an enjoyable and satisfying experience:

4The

students’ initials are used. The original notes were written in Japanese.

Inviting Children’s Views for Designing Digital Game Tasks     87

It was fun to think about how to learn English enjoyably. It was exciting to imagine what the final product would look like while we were planning a game. (Y. I.) It was my first experience to design an English game for our own learning and it was fun to know that we could actually do it. In doing that, I found such enjoyment that I have never felt before. (S. K.)

It is reasonable to assume that these learners’ positive feelings and sense of ownership of their task designs would facilitate their engagement in the tasks, although this assumption has to be empirically proven. In addition to these potential merits, the project posed some challenges as well, which I discuss next.

Challenge #1: Difficulty Going Beyond Their Experience in Task Designs One of the potential advantages of gaming is that players are able to interact with one another, thereby providing learners with authentic contexts in which to use language and converse with others (e.g., Peterson, 2012; Reinders & Wattana, 2012). But students did not fully employ interactive elements in this project, although, as noted above, they did incorporate some social aspects. And yet when we developed a game based on the participating students’ ideas (a noninteractive game) in Step 5, the feedback that we received most frequently from the fifth graders who evaluated the game was “it would be better if the game allowed learners to play it with others.” It is likely that the sixth graders also would have preferred an interactive game task, but they might have not known how to realize it in their game design. In addition, types of game designs that the students came up with were largely quiz based. This might be due to the fact that the majority of serious games that they were familiar with did not allow learners to interact with other learners and were primarily quiz based. In other words, it appeared to be difficult for the children to come up with ideas that were beyond their experiences. This finding aligns with child development

88     Y. G. Butler

researchers’ suggestion that in order to succeed in working with children as co-researchers, “‘capacity building’ through training children” is necessary (Horgan 2016, p. 251); however, how best to do so—and how such training would affect their views and behaviors—is largely unknown.

Challenge #2: Moving Learning Beyond the Gaming Context After we developed a game based on the sixth graders’ designs (named as “Momotaro 2 ”), we observed how the fifth graders played the game. We also analyzed their survey responses. Momotaro is a well-known fairy tale in Japan, and the newly developed game is an imaginary sequel to Momotaro. Momotaro 2 incorporated motivation elements that were used and valued by the sixth graders’ game designs: namely, having incrementally more difficult challenges, basing the game on a story/ fantasy, allowing learners to choose the level of difficulty (controlling own learning), challenging players with monsters (obstacles), and providing instant and visible outcomes. The game also incorporated some learning elements identified and valued by the sixth graders, including repeated opportunities to encounter/review the targeted words (repetition, imitatio, and reviewing); using visual and sound effects (multiple modalities), allowing learners to choose which words to learn at their own pace (learner control and autonomy), and situating the game in an imaginary story5 based on a familiar fairy tale (making associations with the children’s knowledge). Each participating fifth-grade student was given a password to access to the game through the school’s website, and we could trace their log-in information and game-playing behaviors (e.g., time spent playing the game, scores, log-in frequencies, etc.). After being introduced to the game in class, the fifth graders were given

5The game has some flexibility in that each child can develop a slightly different storyline depending on how they perform.

Inviting Children’s Views for Designing Digital Game Tasks     89

two weeks to freely play it (both at school and outside of the school).6 Results of the survey, conducted in Japanese after the two-week trial period, are summarized in Table 2; the survey included one open-ended item inviting suggestions for improving the game. One significant caveat about the survey results is the very small sample size; we need more systematic evaluations of multiple games using much larger samples of students. From the survey results, we learned that the players generally responded positively to the game tasks. However, as suggested by their lower positive response to the item, “I have used the words that I learned in the game elsewhere” (only four students responded “Yes” to this item), the students’ learning seemed to be largely isolated to the game space, which suggests that the students needed opportunities outside of the game space to use the words that they had learned through the game. A recent meta-analysis (Wouters et al., 2013) indicated that game-based learning works better when combined with other instruction, including explicit instruction and follow-up discussions. In other words, game-based learning is not a replacement for instruction. A question, then, is how best to combine game-based learning with instruction to maximize students’ learning and motivation. In addition, it is important to note that game-based learning may not be an effective pedagogical format for everybody. In this project, there were substantial individual differences in the fifth-grade students’ frequency of play and total time spent playing the game.

6Due

to a copyright issue, Momotaro 2 is not publicly available; only the participating students in this project were given access to the game.

90     Y. G. Butler Table 2  Post-game survey among fifth-grade students (n = 45) Section 1: Students’ experience with Momotaro 2 Items 1 2 3 (1) I played Momotaro 2 game at school and at home (2) It was enjoyable to learn English words through Momotaro 2 game (3) I think I could learn English words well through Momotaro 2 game (4) I want to learn English through games

Not played at all (9)

Not played So so much (10) (10)

Not enjoy- Not enjoya- Neither ble (1) (1) able at all (0)

4

5

Played Played very much (10) much (9) Enjoyable (23)

Very enjoyable (20)

Could not learn much at all (0)

Could not learn much (1)

Neither (12)

Could learn Could learn well (20) very much (12)

Not at all (0)

Not (1)

Neither (8)

Yes (20)

Yes, very much (16)

Section 2: Students’ strategy use when learning English vocabulary through Momotaro 2 Items 1 2 3 (5) I played the game Yes (29) a number of times until I learn the words (6) When I learned the Yes, all the time (12) words, I sounded out after the computer’s pronunciation (7) When I learned Yes, all the time (20) the words, I thought about how the letters correspond to sounds

__

No (16)

Yes, sometimes (30)

No (3)

Yes, sometimes (23)

No (2)

(continued)

Inviting Children’s Views for Designing Digital Game Tasks     91 Table 2  (continued) Section 2: Students’ strategy use when learning English vocabulary through Momotaro 2 Items 1 2 3 (8) When I typed the words in the game, I thought about the meaning in the story (9) I used the words that I learned in the game elsewhere

Yes, all the time (14)

Yes, sometimes (25)

No (6)

Yes (4)

__

No (41)

Section 3: Students’ suggestions for improving Momotaro 2 (multiple responses were acceptable) Number of affirmative response (out of 45) (a) I wish the game had a greater variety of stories (b) I wish I could choose to learn a greater variety of words (c) I wish the game had more difficulty levels (d) I wish the game set a limited time to finish the game (e) I wish I could play the game with others

32 (71.1%) 11 (24.4%) 30 (66.7%) 7 (15.6%) 36 (80.0%)

Note The numbers in parentheses show raw frequencies of responses. There were missing responses: n = 45

Implications and Conclusions Because young learners may have unique learning styles suited for our increasingly digitized world, it is important to understand their perspectives when designing communicative tasks. The project discussed in this chapter was innovative in that it (1) focused on young learners (who are under-represented in SLA research); (2) dealt with digital game-based tasks, which are promising learning/teaching tools; and (3) solicited learners’ perspective in task designs, an approach that has not been exercised sufficiently in language education, especially with young learners. It is also worth keeping in mind that this project was conducted at a typical local public school in Japan; it had no special resources at its disposal.

92     Y. G. Butler

The project yielded a number of valuable insights from young learners with respect to both motivational and learning elements in task designs. The young learners in this project exhibited very sophisticated concepts about foreign-language learning through their task designs. The young learners also clearly indicated that they want a great deal of autonomy and control over their own learning. Judging from available materials and textbooks (e.g., Butler, Kang, Kim, & Liu, 2018) as well as classroom observations (e.g., Deng & Carless, 2009), it appears that primary school English education in East Asia, including Japan, has been largely conducted in a teacher-led manner, and that activities commonly employed in classrooms are mainly exercises and drills rather than communicative tasks. It is often the case that target words and forms are pre-identified by teachers and others (e.g., material and curriculum developers), often without consulting the children’s communicative wants and needs; the result is that children are instructed to use the prescribed language mechanically. As educators, we need to consider children’s communicative needs more carefully and grant them more autonomy in using English in the classroom. It is often reported from different parts of the world that students’ motivation to learn wanes by the end of their primary school years (e.g., Butler, 2017b; Carreira, 2006; Djigunović & Krajnović, 2015; Nikolov, 1999). Although there are likely a number of reasons for this decline in motivation, the task-based game and learning elements identified by the children in this project should be very insightful for educators and material designers. Creating an attractive avatar, for example, appeared to be a strong motivational element that may drive young learners to communicate with others. For the participating children, excitement, enjoyment, and curiosity seemed to be critical for learning a foreign language. The children knew that unexpected or surprising element in tasks evoke excitement and motivation. Again, we, as educators of young foreign-language learners, should pay closer attention to such affective factors in task designs (and implementation). Although the project elicited a number of useful elements of motivation and learning from young learners, this outcome is only a first step in identifying effective task-based communicative instruction for young learners. How best to use learners’ perspectives in practice remains a

Inviting Children’s Views for Designing Digital Game Tasks     93

serious challenge. In reality, different elements influence learners’ learning in complicated ways, and simply combining isolated elements does not promise positive results. Cornillie, Thorne, and Desmet (2012) warned us that we should avoid “an overly positivistic view of discrete game elements and a corresponding lack of attention to the broader ecology and ‘alchemy’ of professional game design and player experiences” (p. 249). To make use of the learner-identified elements for designing tasks, teachers must constantly negotiate with learners while situating tasks among larger instructional goals. Game-based learning can be a powerful tool for young language learners, but it should be implemented along with other types of instruction. In this project, young learners did not apply what they learned while playing the game outside of the game itself, suggesting that they need assistance connecting game-based learning and other types of learning. In implementing game-based learning, the role of teachers appears to be critical. There is some evidence from other studies that teachers of young learners, including those who are very open to innovative instructional approaches, tend to be skeptical about using digital games for instruction (e.g., Meyer, 2009). We also know that game-based approaches would not work effectively without sufficient support from teachers and parents (Butler, 2018). It seems to be important for teachers to be aware of both the potential and the limitations of game-based learning so that they can best utilize this new means of learning.

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Boyle, E. A., Hainey, T., Connolly, T. M., Gray, G., Earp, J., Ott, M., … Pereira, J. (2016). An update to the systematic literature review of empirical evidence of the impacts and outcome of computer games and serious games. Computers & Education, 94, 178–192. Butler, Y. G. (2004). What level of English proficiency do elementary school teachers need to attain in order to teach EFL? Case studies from Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. TESOL Quarterly, 38(2), 245–278. Butler, Y. G. (2015a). The use of computer games as foreign language learning tasks for digital natives. System, 54, 91–102. Butler, Y. G. (2015b). English language education among young learners in East Asia: A review of current research. Language Teaching, 48(3), 303–342. Butler, Y. G. (2017a). Motivational elements of digital instructional games: A study of young L2 learners’ game designs. Language Teaching Research, 21(6), 735–750. Butler, Y. G. (2017b). The dynamics of motivation development among young learners of English in China. In J. Enever & E. Lindgren (Eds.), Early language learning: Complexity and mixed methods (pp. 167–185). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Butler, Y. G. (2018). Gaming and young learners. In S. Garton & F. Copland (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of teaching English to young learners (pp. 305–319). London: Routledge. Butler, Y. G. (2019). How teachers of young learners of English are educated in East and Southeast Asia: Research-based lessons. In M. S. Zein & S. Garton (Eds.), Early language learning and teacher education (pp. 17–38). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Butler, Y. G., Someya, Y., & Fukuhara, E. (2014). Online games for young learners’ foreign language learning. ELT Journal, 68, 265–275. Butler, Y. G., Kang, K., Kim, H., & Liu, Y. (2018). ‘Tasks’ appearing in primary school textbooks. ELT Journal, 72(3), 285–295. Carreira, J. M. (2006). Motivation for learning English as a foreign language in Japanese elementary schools. JALT Journal, 28(2), 135–158. Cornillie, F., Thorne, S. L., & Desmet, P. (2012). Digital games for language learning: From hype to insight? ReCALL, 24(3), 243–256. Deng, C., & Carless, D. (2009). The communicativeness of activities in a taskbased innovation in Guangdong, China. Asian Journal of English Language Teaching, 19, 113–134. Djigunović, J. M., & Krajnović, M. M. (2015). Early learning and teaching of English: New dynamics of primary English. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

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Garris, R., Ahlers, R., & Driskell, J. E. (2002). Games, motivation, and learning: A research and practice model. Simulation & Gaming, 33, 441–467. Gu, Y. (2005). Vocabulary learning strategies in the Chinese EFL context. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Academic. Horgan, D. (2016). Child participatory research methods: Attempts to go ‘deeper’. Childhood, 24(2), 245–259. Iten, N., & Petko, D. (2016). Learning with serious games: Is fun playing the game a predictor of learning success? British Journal of Educational Technology, 47(1), 151–163. Kusumoto, Y. (2008). Needs analysis: Developing a teacher training program for elementary school homeroom teachers in Japan. Second Language Studies, 26(2), 1–44. Lambert, C. (2017). Tasks, affect and second language performance. Language Teaching Research, 21(6), 657–664. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2012). On the roles of repetition in language teaching and learning. Applied Linguistic Review, 3, 195–210. Malone, T. W. (1981). Toward a theory of intrinsically motivating instruction. Cognitive Science, 5(4), 333–369. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. MEXT. (2016). Shogakko-ni okeru gaikokugo kyoiku-no jujitsu-ni muketa torikumi [Plans for effective foreign language education at primary school]. Retrieved from http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/chukyo/chukyo3/ 074/siryo/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2016/03/22/1368720_5.pdf. Meyer, B. (2009). Designing serious games for foreign language education in a global perspective. In A. Mendez-Vilas, A. Solano Martín, J. A. Mesa Gonzalez, J. Mesa Gonzalez, & M. A. Solano (Eds.), Research, reflections and innovations in integrating ICT in education: Vol. 2 (pp. 715–719). Badajoz, Spain: Formatex. Nguyen, H. T. M. (2017). Models of mentoring in language teacher education. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Nikolov, M. (1999). ‘Why do you learn English?’ ‘Because the teacher is short’: A study of Hungarian children’s foreign language motivation. Language Teaching Research, 3(1), 33–56. Peterson, M. (2012). Language learning interaction in a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. In H. Reinders (Ed.), Digital games in language learning and teaching (pp. 70–92). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Piaget, J. (1962). Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton.

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Ping, W. (2013). Perspectives on English teacher development in rural primary schools in China. Journal of Pedagogy, 4(2), 208–219. Pinter, A. (2014). Child participant roles in applied linguistics research. Applied Linguistics, 35(2), 168–183. Prensky, M. (2001). Digital game-based learning. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Reinders, H. (Ed.). (2012). Digital games in language learning and teaching. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Reinders, H., & Wattana, S. (2012). Talk to me! Games and students’ willingness to communicate. In H. Reinders (Ed.), Digital games in language learning and teaching (pp. 156–188). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Sadeghi, K., & Dousti, M. (2013). The effect of length of exposure to CALL technology on young Iranian EFL learners’ grammar gain. English Language Teaching, 6(2), 14–26. Suh, S., Kim, S.-W., & Kim, N.-J. (2010). Effectiveness of MMORPG-based instruction in elementary English education in Korea. Journal of Computer Assisted learning, 26, 370–378. Thorne, S. L. (2008). Transcultural communication in open Internet environments and massively multiplayer online games. In S. Magnan (Ed.), Mediating discourse online (pp. 305–327). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Thorne, S. L., Black, R. W., & Sykes, J. M. (2009). Second language use, socialization, and learning in Internet interest communities and online gaming. Modern Language Journal, 93, 802–821. Vu, M. T., & Pham, T. T. T. (2014). Training of trainers for primary English teachers in Viet Nam: Stakeholder evaluation. The Journal of Asia TEFL, 11(4), 89–108. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind and society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wouters, P., Van Nimwegan, C., Van Oostendorp, H., & Van Der Spek, E. D. (2013). A meta-analysis of the cognitive and motivational effects of serious games. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(2), 249–265.

Learning Across Generations: A Small-Scale Initiative Stephen Ryan and Kay Irie

Introduction There is a tendency for discussions on language education to revolve around the assumption that learning takes place among people of the same age or age group. Indeed, this tendency is reflected in the organizational structure of this book and it is a perfectly understandable one, as this is how most people learn languages in formal situations. There is, however, very little discussion about what happens when people learn a language between and across generations. This chapter reports on a small-scale cross-generational learning initiative that, somewhat

S. Ryan (*)  School of Culture, Media and Society, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] K. Irie  Faculty of International Social Sciences, Gakushuin University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7_6

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fortuitously, emerged as part of a broader project looking at the wellbeing benefits of language learning for older people in Japan. What makes this project of special interest is that it blurs not only generational divides, it also blurs distinctions between formal and informal learning, and it even blurs teacher and learner roles. One of our fundamental aims in writing this chapter is to give voice to those who are not often heard in the academic literature. By definition, most academic work is written by professional academics, whose experiences, concerns and perspectives may be very different from those involved with education in other capacities. Similarly, people involved in education in other capacities—learners, teachers, administrators—rarely have the means, opportunity or motive to contribute to an academic discussion of what they are doing every day. We were neither directly involved in the planning of the project described in this chapter as researchers, nor were we involved in its practical implementation as teachers. Instead, our role as authors is to interpret and share the story of this unique project as told to us in interviews with some of the key players. In the first part of the chapter, we consider some of the contextual factors prompting an innovative approach to English learning, paying particular attention to the local effects of demographic change and ongoing national attempts to reform education in Japan. In the next part, we describe the key features of this innovation before moving on to consider some of the wider implications and possibilities suggested by the project.

The Background and Impetus for Innovation We know very little about older language learners, why they learn languages or how they benefit from language learning. Research into language learning for older people is undoubtedly one of the least developed areas in our field. It is undeveloped in terms of theory, research and practice. While the bulk of SLA research presupposes language learners to be younger people, often of school age, the effort to understand older language learners in earnest has only just begun (Gabryś-Barker, 2018; Murray, 2011; RamírezGómez, 2016; see Ramírez-Gómez, Chapter “Developing a Foreign Language Geragogy: Teaching Innovations for Older Learners”, this

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volume). It was in the process of investigating older language learners that we serendipitously encountered a highly innovative project led by a group of five high-school students in a rural area of Japan. This is a project that provides a fascinating insight into changes occurring both within mainstream formal education and outside of that formal curriculum. It is also a project that suggests new possibilities for links between schools and the local community within the context of an aging society. The roots of the initiative described in this chapter can be traced to two apparently unrelated developments in Japanese society. Firstly, there are the profound demographic changes associated with a rapidly ageing society. While this a major national issue, it is one with its own specific local manifestations, and the project described in this chapter is very much a local response to local conditions. Secondly, there are ongoing top-down governmental initiatives to reform primary and secondary education, both specific to English learning and across the whole curriculum. In this chapter, we focus our attention on the introduction and application of a subject known as Period for Integrated Study (sogoteki na gakushu no jikan ), which can be regarded as the flagship for a particular direction of educational reform. Our aim in doing so is to consider the possibilities of this new subject as a base for innovative practice, and, specifically, the potential it offers for expanding understanding of what constitutes English education.

Educational Reform Observers of the Japanese educational system are often struck by the discourse of permanent crisis that seems to envelope discussions, and this is certainly the case with respect to English education (Ryan, 2009, p. 407). One key concern underlying recent discussions of education in Japan has been the need to strike a balance between purely academic achievement and personal development. There is not the space to go into a detailed historical discussion, but a brief outline may help us to understand the contextual background for the innovation being described in this chapter. In the latter decades of the twentieth century, there was a perception of a breakdown in discipline, increased bullying,

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and a general lack of order in Japanese schools, and much of this was attributed to the high-pressure, narrowly academic nature of Japanese education. As a consequence of these concerns, a number of reforms were introduced into Japanese compulsory education resulting in what became known as yutori kyoiku—a difficult term to translate directly into English, but roughly corresponding to something like ‘low-pressure education.’ Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a powerful counterreaction to the new approach, with the fears about bullying and serious disciplinary issues that had been considered a by-product of more traditional approaches to education being replaced by concerns about lazy, spoilt young people and dramatically falling academic standards. This ongoing debate between a narrowly academic version of education and one in which personal growth is prioritized is a crucial part of the background informing the innovation described in this chapter. In response to calls for a move away from traditional exam-oriented study to a greater focus on developing the ability to apply classroom learning to real-life situations, the Ministry for Sport, Education and Culture (MEXT) introduced what is known as the Period for Integrated Study as part of its revision to the binding Course of Study (MEXT, 2002) in 1999. This subject was to become gradually compulsory in high schools starting from 2013 (MEXT, 2009). The Period for Integrated Study was aimed at “giving schools and teachers greater freedom in selecting topics and areas of study. By drawing links between different topics, phenomena and outcomes, the intention was to strengthen student competency and cultivate creative thinking” (Pearson Foundation, 2013). As with many controversial and sensitive issues, compromise is often achieved through vagueness and a lack of specificity. Therefore, the aims and content of the Period for Integrated Study are intentionally fuzzy and loosely defined. As one of the participants remarked in a retrospective interview, in the project described in this chapter there was little in the way of syllabus or concrete instructions given at the start of the year and students had a sense of developing their own aims as they went along. In contrast to most of the micro-managed curriculum in Japanese schools, the Period for Integrated Study presents a loose framework with the potential for innovation from both teachers and students.

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It is important to note that the Period for Integrated Study is operationalized in different ways at different educational levels. At the primary level, the subject is closely associated with English learning as it was introduced into primary schools under the umbrella of ‘foreign language activities.’ The teaching of English to younger learners has been a political minefield in Japan, with a strong ‘earlier the better’ camp, pushing to introduce English learning into the curriculum at an early age, encountering fierce resistance from groups opposing, for various reasons, the teaching of English to children in Japanese schools. In a typically fudged compromise, English was introduced through the back door, on the condition that it was not referred to as English, but as Foreign Language Activities. The particular back door used for easing the teaching of English into primary schools was the Period for Integrated Study. One of the ‘suggested’ uses of the new subject was Foreign Language Activities, but this ministerial ‘suggestion’ has been widely interpreted as a binding instruction, with Period for Integrated Study becoming synonymous with Foreign Language Activities, which in turn is synonymous with English. In effect, this Period for Integrated Study has been employed as a stepping stone for the official introduction of English as a required subject for grade five and six in all elementary schools in 2020. First, English was introduced as a ‘suggested’ use for the new subject, then Foreign Language Activities became a required subject for grade five and six students in 2011, and finally the introduction of English will be made explicit as a required subject from 2020. At the primary level, the connection with English has always been strong, but this has never been the case at the upper secondary level. However, later in this chapter, we will argue that this loosely defined subject offers the potential for real innovation relating to both the aims and nature of English education at the upper secondary stage. Currently, a minimum of three credits (one credit  = 50 minutes × 35 = 1750 minutes of class time) is required for a high school diploma. At high school, one credit is allocated for each of the three grades (Grade 10, 11, and 12). In an education system characterized by a high level of top-down micro-management, schools and teachers can be unfamiliar with the degree of autonomy offered by the guidelines for

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the Period for Integrated Study. The official guidelines describe a course of study based on “international understanding, information, environment, welfare/health, learning activities about tasks based on pupils’ interests and concerns, and learning activities about tasks depending on characteristics of the local community” (MEXT, 2011, p. 2). Given this somewhat nebulous framework, it can be a challenge for schools and teachers to operationalize these goals in manner consistent with the wider curriculum. This challenge can be even more pronounced in schools where teachers, students and parents have high expectations of academic success as measured in terms of examination success and entrance to prestigious universities.

The Demographic Shift The issue of an aging society is common to most economically developed nations, but Japan has been at the forefront in experiencing these major demographic upheavals. The scale and implications of these changes are so profound that they extend into numerous areas of public discourse, from politics to leisure, from economics to health care, and, of course, into education (see Irie, Chapter “An Insider’s View: Launching a University Program”, this volume; RamírezGómez, Chapter “Developing a Foreign Language Geragogy: Teaching Innovations for Older Learners”, this volume). The details of Japan’s incredibly low fertility rate and increased life expectancy have been widely documented (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, Statistics Bureau, 2018) and discussed (Karasawa et al., 2011), but our concern in this chapter is not so much with the broader national picture as with a single local snapshot. While these developments are important at a national level, their impact is most clearly visible, and most keenly felt, in rural areas far away from the major population centers.

The Matsue Context The learning innovation described in this chapter takes place in the city of Matsue in Shimane prefecture, located at the western extreme

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of Japan’s main island and one of the nation’s least populous areas. This area also has one of Japan’s oldest populations, with the ratio of elderly increasing as the number of young people choosing to live in the area decreases. Shimane’s aging population rate in 2017 was 32.5%, the third highest after Akita and Kochi (Cabinet Office, 2017). For the few young people growing up in this environment, the aging population and issues connected to aging are a constant background presence. One of the participants described a childhood where she was very close to her grandmother and spent a lot of time learning traditional arts such as calligraphy and tea ceremony from elderly people in the area. In the interview, she also talked about feelings of sadness at the lack of communication and contact with that elderly community in the narrowly academic high-school environment geared towards university entrance examination. Although this is only the view of one, sensitive, young person, it does give some indication of how the presence of such a large elderly community, and constant contact with that community, impacts on the thinking of young people. Areas such as Shimane can get trapped in a vicious circle in which, as the population gets older, economic conditions worsen, making the area less attractive for younger people to settle, further contributing to the generational imbalance. A key challenge for areas looking to attract younger people is to provide employment opportunities outside the narrow base of agriculture-related occupations. A recent development in this regard has been the growth in the Japanese tourist industry.

The Growth in Tourism The number of foreign visitors to Japan has been growing in recent years and exceeded 28 million in 2017, an increase from the previous year of 19% (“Increasing Inbound Tourism,” 2018). This is partly a result of a concerted governmental strategy to promote Japan as a tourist destination and partly a result of favorable economic conditions that have made Japan an attractive and affordable place to visit, especially for East Asian tourists. The Japanese government is further aiming to raise the annual number to 40 million by 2020, when Tokyo will host

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the Olympic Games. The apparently booming national tourism industry is even having an effect on cities like Matsue, far away from the major tourist centers such as Tokyo and Kyoto. According to a survey conducted by the city, a total of 92,380 international visitors stopped at various designated sites within the city (Matsue City, 2017), representing a 5.8% increase from the previous year. Matsue, as the capital city of Shimane Prefecture, was officially designated an International City of Culture and Tourism in 1951 and is well positioned to benefit from a growth in tourism. The city is known for its strong connections with the feudal period, and with Lafcadio Hearn, one of the first Westerners to become a Japanese citizen and a key cultural figure associated with Japan’s period of transformation into a modern industrial society. It also has several popular and well-preserved tourist sites, such as Matsue Castle, samurai mansions, and temples. As part of its strategy to further increase the number of tourists, Matsue aims to develop its hospitality infrastructure, including the provision of language—primarily English—assistance for visitors. In order to realize these plans, the city intends to utilize its aging population, which represents a valuable resource with an unparalleled knowledge of the town, as well as availability and a willingness to contribute to the city. And, of course, this strategy is partly borne out of necessity as there are simply not the young people available to work in this burgeoning tourism industry.

Matsue Kita High School Matsue Kita High School is a public school under the authority of the Shimane prefectural education board. It is a school with a long history and an excellent local reputation. The school sits directly above the castle and the city hall on a hill overlooking the city. This prominent geographical position reflects not only its academic stature but also the importance of the school within the cultural and historical development of the city. Matsue Kita High School was established in 1876 as part of a teachers’ training school and perhaps its best-known member of

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staff was Lafcadio Hearn, who was employed as an English teacher from 1890. It is a relatively large school with 320 students per cohort and within the local context a prestigious one. It is also a school that prides itself (http://www.matsuekita.ed.jp/) on its involvement with issues in the local community and is keen to be regarded as a key player in the events of that community.

The Project The innovation featured in this chapter began life in the students’ first year at school, originating in a project connected to the Period for Integrated Study described earlier in the chapter. It would be misleading to represent the project as a highly coordinated long-term venture, as the reality was much more of an evolving, improvised response to situational demands. At the initial stages, the students involved had nothing more than a vague interest in doing something related to English and education. Unsurprisingly, given the dominant discourse of language education, there was little interest in older learners at this initial stage. The focus was very much on teaching children. Nevertheless, some discussion of this stage of the project will provide contextual background for understanding its subsequent development and offer some insight into how the vaguely defined subject, Period for Integrated Study, operates in practice.

The Participants The account presented in this chapter is not a conventional research study following a group of participants through a carefully designed instrument with the aim of investigating specific research questions. It is very much a post hoc interpretation of events as recounted in a series of retrospective interviews conducted with some of the key players. Brief profiles of the participants are provided in Table 1. (Permission to use their names has been obtained.)

106     S. Ryan and K. Irie Table 1  Profiles of the participants Teachers Mr. Tanaka

Mr. Izumi (Principal)

Students Takako Kanai 1st year homeroom teacher the teacher with the overall responsibilities for the cohort Keigo Nakai The new principal joined the high school with the cohort

Mr. Muto

Project supporter active Takumi learning specialist Tsunomori

Mr. Katsube

2nd year English teacher

Ayane Endo

Sayane Endo

Project leader strong interest in English, affinity with the elderly Materials development strong interest in English and education Team coordinator strong interest in English and education Supporting member (contacting the local organizations, printing and distributing the fliers) Supporting member (contacting the local organizations, printing and distributing the fliers)

Stage One: The Seeds of Innovation As we learned from our interviews, this was a trial year for the teachers and students at this school to develop a framework for the new subject, and there was a strong awareness on both sides that their decisions would serve as a base for future practice. At the beginning of the school year, the students in each of the eight first-year homeroom classes at Matsue Kita High School—around 40 students per class—were divided into six to eight groups by their teachers. Each group was then asked to choose a topic from a list of issues relating to Shimane Prefecture decided upon by the teacher. Although education was not one of the specified topics, the group of students in question drew up their own proposal, under the heading of “Others,” to teach English to elementary school students. The idea emerged in their initial discussion largely

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fueled by one student’s interest and enthusiasm for learning English, and two other students’ aspirations of becoming teachers. According to the students, a further factor in the decision was the perception of Shimane’s low academic ranking, based on the results of the National Assessment of Academic Ability (National Institute for Educational Policy Research, NIER, 2017). This national test of Japanese and Mathematics, which started in 2007, is administered annually to all grade six and grade nine students and is regarded as a measure of general academic standards, often used for comparisons across regions. Furthermore, in addition to these intra-national comparisons, students were also aware of the discourse surrounding falling academic abilities in Japan in comparison with other countries, as suggested by international measurements such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests. The idealistic students believed that working on English education could improve Shimane’s academic ranking. Their reasoning was that since English was not yet a formal subject taught in elementary schools, nor was it included on the nationwide achievement assessments, developing effective English education for elementary schools could give Shimane a head start for when English becomes a formal subject measured nationwide. Through the cooperation of teachers, permission was obtained to conduct classes at two local elementary schools, a single lesson for grade three students at one school and grade five students at the other. The preparation of teaching materials was overseen by one student, Keigo, who had a particularly developed interest in education, but all students contributed based on their individual interests and abilities. This work was done in cooperation with foreign language activity coordinators in two elementary schools. One illustration of the kind of materials used is a sing-along activity designed to combine target vocabulary with a popular cartoon theme song of the time, which they adapted and recorded for use in the classroom. One of the students—Takako—observed how the experience of collaborating with others to produce teaching materials enabled her to learn and understand the joy of “pooling our talents”; although English was the subject matter, the actual learning related to key issues of personal development, such as collaborating and cooperating with others.

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At the end of the academic year, a total of over 50 groups from all eight classes gave poster presentations in the school auditorium, and the English lessons in elementary schools was chosen as the best project. Reflecting on this first project, the students recalled that most of the other projects were research-based rather than actively doing something in the community. The group was subsequently given an opportunity to present their project again with students from other high schools at the city community center. This obviously gave a great sense of accomplishment to the first-year students, which sowed the seeds for the innovative project of teaching seniors in the community in the following academic year.

Stage Two: ‘Active Human Project’ The next stage of this project centered on the Annual International Senior High School Students’ Forum held in early August, an event organized by students at another high school in a neighboring city to which second-year students at Matsue Kita high school are invited to submit a proposal. (As a reminder to readers less familiar with the Japanese academic calendar, August represents the summer break during the middle of the academic year.) The ambitiously stated goal of the forum is to develop creative thinking and leadership among high school students by providing an opportunity for them to share projects that tackle social issues. It was in May—early in the academic year—that the call for proposals reached the second-year students at Matsue Kita high school. Only five students out of over 300 second-year students raised their hands to participate in the forum. According to the teacher in charge, it was due to a lack of competition more than anything else that all of those who volunteered were automatically selected to represent the school at the event. Three out of these five students had worked together on the project described in the previous section, and it was this experience, together with the success and recognition the project garnered, that provided the foundations for the new challenge. Prompted by the call for papers for the Annual International Senior High School Students’ Forum, based on the lofty theme the Future of

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Our Communities, the students focused on two key issues: the aging community and the need to promote the city to international tourists. It was here that the idea emerged of teaching English to senior learners to help them become active in communicating with foreign visitors to the city. We learned from the interviews that, according to Keigo, an early model for the project was a venture in Tokyo to organize volunteers for the upcoming Olympic games. Using the Tokyo project as a base, they began to formulate a plan of building on the previous year’s experience to take English education out of the school and into the local community by offering classes for older people looking to serve as guides for overseas tourists. The students began to develop a unique cross-generational language teaching and learning program they named Active Human Project. The aim of the project was for the high school students to design and conduct a series of roughly monthly English lessons to help seniors become confident in communicating with international tourists. As outlined in Table 2, the project started in July 2015 and ended in March 2016, culminating in a tour of the historical city of Matsue involving a total of 40 people. The people included the high school students, the older learners and locally based Assistant Language Teachers (ALT)— non-Japanese personnel recruited from overseas to provide ‘authentic,’ ‘native’ models of English in Japanese classrooms. In our interviews with the student participants, we learned that the they had not originally intended to carry out their entire plan. It was initially envisaged more as a theoretical proposal as to how to deal with a major social issue within the community. In the early stages of this Table 2  Active human project lesson schedule Lesson (month)

Topic/content

Lesson 1 (July) Lesson 2 (November) Lesson 3 (December) Lesson 4 (January)

Self-introduction, giving directions Offering help to tourists Giving information about the sightseeing sites Asking for directions, explaining how to use the public transportation Practice tour of Matsue Castle, the inner moat, and samurai mansions in 10 groups (1 senior learner, 1 ALT as a tourist, 2 high school students as support)

Lesson 5 (March)

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project, the students believed that representing the school and working on the presentation outside of their school curriculum was the challenge. For them, at the outset, simply presenting the plan at the forum was enough. However, it was the intervention of the principal, new to the school, that encouraged the students to be more ambitious and to attempt to implement their ideas. Harnessing his organizational skills and position within the local community, the principal pushed the students to conduct at least one lesson before the forum. In our interviews, it was acknowledged that this actual trial lesson was probably the most significant factor behind the project being awarded the grand prize at the forum. Furthermore, even after the forum was over, the principal further challenged the students to continue with the project and to put more of their ideas into practice. On reflection, one of the students confided that it was the enthusiasm and belief of the principal that ignited their commitment to the project. The role of the principal, together with other teachers, in offering support and giving momentum to this student-led project was crucial. Young people often lack the resources or experience to realize their visions. In this case, teachers were able to encourage and push the students towards a more ambitious goal and to offer guidance on how to implement their own ideas. Innovation requires both ‘will’ and ‘skill’; in this case, the skill of the teachers served to enhance the will of the students. As with almost all cases of educational innovation, institutional cooperation and support is as much a key to success as any burning desire or vision.

Teachers and/or Learners It is important to recognize that the students leading this project were young, with unsophisticated, unidirectional views of teaching and learning. The initial conceptualization of the project placed them— the high-school students—in the teaching role, with the older people clearly in the ‘learner’ seat. They essentially planned to transfer their successful model of teaching young children directly to the context of older learners. However, these plans soon changed once they

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encountered the reality of the teaching situation. As part of their preparations, and aware of their lack of teaching experience, the students decided to visit various English classes offered to older people in the local area to find out what kind of lessons were being used. A repeated point made in our interviews was just how impressed the high school students had been by both the enthusiasm and the language proficiency of the older learners. For example, encountering an older learner who happened to be a retired English teacher forced the students to rethink some of their basic assumptions about the nature of older learners and how they learn; put simply, they knew that they would not be comfortable employing the earlier materials and methods with people more experienced in the classroom and more proficient in the language than themselves. After these observational visits, the high school students were able to imagine their lessons more clearly. Instead of the conventional approach they had initially envisaged, they became aware of the importance of accommodating the needs, experiences and talents of the older learners towards the development of a much more collaborative approach to teaching and learning. In one of the interviews with Mr. Tanaka, the teacher with a long-term relationship with the students, he mentioned how the high-school students—the teachers— were often learning from the learners—the older people—and how impressed he had been by the spirit of collaboration he observed in the classes. He also referred to the non-linguistic benefits of inter-generational interaction (see Kessler & Staudinger, 2007), such as the older learners thriving as active collaborators with the young people in the classroom rather than being treated as passive students, or the value for the young people in taking leadership roles in communication with older members of the community. The project hints at some of the possibilities when distinctions between teachers and learners are challenged and also at some of the rewards of language education that go beyond mere linguistic gains. Of course, this was only a very small-scale project, but it was one that managed to generate considerable recognition and plaudits. Following an article in a well-known educational publication (Koureishamuke eigo kyoshitu, 2016), the school began to receive interest from educators in

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other regions of Japan looking to embark on similar initiatives. This suggests that both the themes and implementation of the project carry a resonance that extends beyond the local Shimane context.

Implications One of the lessons of this project is that innovation can be fortuitous. Rather than careful planning or a driving vision, a benign combination of circumstances and individuals can be key to the successful implementation of innovation. The success of the project discussed in this chapter is largely due to an exceptionally dynamic group of young people, supportive teachers, and an enthusiastic new principal keen to make his mark in a new appointment. The individuals concerned and the ways in which they worked together were crucial, and such productive groupings are very rare indeed; therefore, it is impossible to generalize many of the features of this project to other situations or contexts. Nevertheless, it is possible to generalize the need for cooperation between the various players in an innovative undertaking. In the Matsue project, there were high school students providing the energy, ideas and initiative to drive the innovation; there were experienced teachers ready to support and guide the innovation; there was a new school principal willing to encourage and facilitate the innovation. Without this level of cooperation, the project was unlikely to have ever left the ground, and this is probably a lesson that can be applied to almost any attempt at educational innovation. The Matsue project came together on an ad hoc basis. There was never any guiding vision or plan. Instead, events developed through a mix of enabling circumstances. There was a new subject on the curriculum that neither teachers nor students fully understood, which in some ways represented a blank slate for innovation, free from established practice. As seen in the previous paragraph, there was a very special group of dedicated, enthusiastic individuals voluntarily coming together. There was the general lack of enthusiasm for participation in the international forum that resulted in this particular group of students being selected to represent the school. There was the growing discourse

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of Japan as a booming tourist destination. And, there were the realities of an aging society. The lesson we can learn from all of these factors is that it is not always people who drive innovation; there are times when the context seems to seek out people ready to carry out the necessary innovation. Contextual factors are key in both driving and facilitating innovation. One issue that the project raises concerns the fundamental purpose of English education in Japanese formal education. The explicit, widely accepted aims of English education relate to developing both knowledge of the language and the ability to use it. If we do a raw calculation of the number of class hours weighed against meaningful gains in proficiency, the value and efficacy of this use of time must be questioned. However, the Matsue project reveals some of the possible benefits of English learning when detached from a narrow linguistic framework. English education presented the young people with challenging opportunities for personal development through intergenerational interaction. All the participants in the project, though they would be too modest to say so in such explicit terms, seem to have regarded the project as a great success. Yet, there was actually very little language learning, as defined by gains in linguistic proficiency. The perceived success revolved around the opportunities for interaction and personal development that ‘language learning’ presented. The loose framework offered by the Period for Integrated Study was key to enabling this, and it is perhaps crucial that this is a framework that allows teachers and students to move beyond the ‘lingualist’ (Block, 2014) constraints of the formal English curriculum. In addition to questioning ‘what’ is learned in an English class, the project challenges assumptions of ‘where’ and ‘how’ languages are learned. In line with a growing interest in language learning in informal contexts (Benson & Reinders, 2011; Nunan & Richards, 2015; Richards, 2015), the collaboration between young high school students and older retired learners hints at some of the ways in which the site of language learning can be re-imagined, and the Period for Integrated Studies offers a means for teachers to do this. Tying the teaching and learning of English to the local community, extending it beyond the classroom walls, giving it a purpose beyond language, all of these

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contributed to a learning experience centered around development as a person, as an active member of a community, rather than mere development as a language learner. Of course, these are benefits that cannot be measured by standardized, quantitative assessment instruments, but they are likely to be of more long-term value to students than the ability to distinguish between /l/ and /r/ sounds. A further lesson to be drawn from the project concerns older language learners. The rapid aging of Japanese society presents numerous challenges and opportunities. Language learning and its attendant rewards of opportunities for communication and interaction with others offers great potential for increased well-being in older people often lacking such chances to simply talk, meet new people, and do things together with those people. In an aging society, language learning has a vital, yet relatively untapped role to play in contributing to the well-being of older people. On the other hand, the teaching of older people presents new and under-researched challenges (Ramírez-Gómez, Chapter “Developing a Foreign Language Geragogy: Teaching Innovations for Older Learners”, this volume). As the young high school students found out, applying the methods and assumptions of an educational approach designed for children did not work with the older learners. Older learners brought their own experiences, interests and learning issues into the classroom. There is surely a pressing need for more work focusing on a pedagogy seeking to maximize the language learning experience for older learners, particularly in a society with Japan’s demographic balance. Furthermore, the project resonates with growing international scholarly interest in the benefits of intergenerational learning, both in schools and outside (Sánchez, Whitehouse, & Johnston, 2018). Exploiting the “unique psychological potential” (Kessler & Staudinger, 2007, p. 701) of the intergenerational encounters described in this chapter suggests a new perspective on the purpose of language education, one that does not revolve around gains in linguistic proficiency. The high school students have shown the way, but it is time that established researchers and practitioners approached this area more enthusiastically. As a footnote, it may be pertinent to consider what happened to the high school students after the project. It seems somewhat ironic that the core members, with such an apparently strong bond to their local community, have since left the area. It is inherent in the nature of the

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Japanese education system that high-achieving, ambitious students are often required to leave their local communities in order to study at the more prestigious universities in either Tokyo or the Kansai area. For the long-term prosperity of the area, it is hoped that some of them will return to share their new-found skills with both older and younger generations.

References Benson, P., & Reinders, H. (Eds.). (2011). Beyond the language classroom. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Block, D. (2014). Moving beyond ‘lingualism’: Multilingual embodiment and multimodality in SLA. In S. May (Ed.), The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education (pp. 54–77). London: Routledge. Cabinet Office. (2017). Heisei 29-nendoban koreisyakai Hakusho (gaiyoban). Dai issho: Korei-ka no jokyo [2017 White paper on aging society, Chapter 1: The status report on aging]. Retrieved from http://www8.cao.go.jp/kourei/ whitepaper/w-2017/html/gaiyou/s1_1.html. Gabryś-Barker, D. (Ed.). (2018). Third age learners of foreign languages. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Increasing Inbound Tourism. (2018, January 16). Japan Times. Retrieved from https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2018/01/16/editorials/increasing-inbound-tourism/#.WpzUK4LLjMK. Karasawa, M., Curhan, K. B., Markus, H. R., Kitayama, S. S., Love, G. D, Radler, B. T., & Ryff, C. D. (2011). Cultural perspectives on aging and well-being: A comparison of Japan and the U.S. International Journal of Aging & Human Development, 73(1), 73–98. Kessler, E., & Staudinger, U. M. (2007). Intergenerational potential: Effects of social interaction between older adults and adolescents. Psychology and Aging, 22(4), 690–704. Koureishamuke eigo kyoshitu: Menba ga sasaeai chiiki eno omoi wo katachi ni shiteiku. [English language class for seniors: Members supporting each other to realize their concern for the local community] (2016, June). View 21, 28–31. Retrieved from http://berd.benesse.jp/magazine/kou/booklet/?id=4904. Matsue City. (2017). Matsue-shi Kanko Hakusho [Matsue City Tourism White paper]. Retrieved from http://www1.city.matsue.shimane.jp/shisei/keikaku/ kankousinkoubu/kankou_hakusho/index.data/h28hakusho-honpen.pdf.

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Matsue Kita High School. http://www.matsuekita.ed.jp/. MEXT. (2002). Chapter 2 towards advancement of “academic ability”, Section 3. The new courses of study 1. In The new courses of study which aims to develop “academic ability”. Retrieved from http://www.mext.go.jp/b_ menu/hakusho/html/hpac200201/hpac200201_2_015.html. MEXT. (2009). Kotogakko gakushu shido youryo kaisetu: Sogoteki na gakushu no jikan hen [Guide for the period of integrated study in high school course of study]. Retrieved from http://www.mext.go.jp/component/a_menu/education/micro_detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2010/01/29/1282000_19.pdf. MEXT. (2011). Courses of study: Chapter 5 the period for integrated studies. Retrieved from http://www.mext.go.jp/component/english/__icsFiles/ afieldfile/2011/03/17/1303755_012.pdf. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, Statistics Bureau. (2018, July 13). Japan statistical yearbook, chapter 2: Population and households. Retrieved from http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/nenkan/67nenkan/1431-02.html. Murray, G. (2011). Older language learners, social learning spaces, and community. In P. Benson & H. Reinders (Eds.), Beyond the language classroom (pp. 132–145). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. NIER. (2017). Heisei 29-nendo zentoku gakuryoku gakusyujyokyo chosa chosa kekka shiryo todofuken-betsu [The course-prefectoral results of the 2017 national assessment of academic ability]. Retrieved from http://www.nier. go.jp/17chousakekkahoukoku/factsheet/17prefecture-City/. Nunan, D., & Richards, J. C. (Eds.). (2015). Language learning beyond the classroom. New York: Routledge. Pearson Foundation. (2013). Strong performers and successful reformers in education. Retrieved from http://learningisopen.org/oecd/japan.html. Ramírez-Gómez, D. (2016). Language teaching and the older adult: The significance of experience. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Richards, J. C. (2015). The changing face of language learning: Learning beyond the classroom. RELC Journal, 46, 15–22. Ryan, S. (2009). Ambivalence and commitment, liberation and challenge: Investigating the attitudes of young Japanese people towards the learning of English. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 30(5), 405– 420. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434630902928447. Sánchez, M., Whitehouse, P., & Johnston, L. (2018). Intergenerational learning and education in schools and beyond. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, 16(1–2), 1–4.

It’s Your Turn: EFL Teaching and Learning with Tabletop Games James York, Jonathan deHaan and Peter Hourdequin

In recent years, popular discourse has begun to treat the term ‘games’ as largely synonymous with digital or video games. Indeed, industry estimates suggest digital games are currently the highest grossing media globally, with an estimated $100bn USD in sales in 2017 (SuperData, 2017). The popularity of digital games in the public domain is echoed in academia, where game research has often come to imply the use of video games for educational purposes (see, e.g., Gee, 2007; McGonigal, 2011; Prensky, 2001; Schrier, 2016). But amidst continuing growth in the global digital games industry, there has been a less conspicuous J. York (*)  Tokyo Denki University, Tokyo, Japan J. deHaan  University of Shizuoka, Shizuoka, Japan e-mail: [email protected] P. Hourdequin  Tokoha University, Shizuoka, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7_7

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but nevertheless noteworthy renaissance in tabletop game design and culture (ICv2, 2015; ICv2 & Griepp, 2017). In recent years, designers have been creating innovative new tabletop games with novel mechanisms and a broad range of themes. In this chapter, though we will at times draw upon the rich research tradition that has grown around digital games, our primary focus will be tabletop games and their affordances for language learning in EFL contexts. We are at the same time cautious of overreaching claims that would imply technological determinism or the kind of ‘hype’ that some have argued surrounds digital games research (e.g., Cornillie, Thorne, & Desmet, 2012). Like any pedagogical tool or technology, tabletop games alone do not represent any kind of leap forward or ‘solution’ to contemporary language teaching and learning challenges. We have thus focused on how games can be used in specific contexts for specific purposes, on specific pedagogical approaches and models, on using materials and dialogic mediation to guide learning in addition to gameplay, and on connecting learners to communities of game players and language learners in local and online ‘affinity spaces’ (Gee & Hayes, 2012). In the three projects we describe below, we have made explicit connections to pedagogical approaches such as those of task-based language teaching methods (TBLT), multiliteracies pedagogy, and related learning objectives and practices rooted in contemporary applied linguistics and educational research.

Contemporary Tabletop Games Tabletop games are characterized by physical components such as boards, cards, dice, tokens and rulebooks. Rules must be understood before play, and interaction typically occurs between two or more players either during the game or about the game. Contemporary tabletop games are characterized by a lack of player elimination, more player interaction, less luck-driven play, multiple paths to victory, and thus, more replayability (Nicholson, 2008). A good example is the cooperative game Pandemic (Leacock, 2007) in which players are given differing

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professional roles and called to mitigate and ultimately solve an expanding global crisis. With the unique skill sets that their roles entail, players must work together to share information, coordinate movements, and strategize to stop the spread of diseases on a global map (Fig. 1). As should be clear, contemporary tabletop games such as Pandemic afford unique opportunities for experiential and participatory language learning and the development of critical thinking practices associated with progressive approaches to literacy. For example, in Pandemic students can playfully appropriate the language of a certain genre and develop critical awareness about how this language might be deployed in the real world. There are close parallels between well-designed games and language learning pedagogy. For example, Sykes, Reinhardt, Liskin-Gasparro, and Lacorte (2012) have noted a parallel between gameplay and the practices of TBLT (see the third section for more details on the links between gameplay and TBLT). The cooperative game mechanism in Pandemic closely resembles that of a jigsaw task: each player must communicate information about her character’s abilities and intentions

Fig. 1  A game of Pandemic underway in class

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to the other players and then together plan the best course of action. Additionally, the immediacy of face-to-face interaction and the rich chatter that surrounds gameplay in non-digital contexts affords language development in multiple genres (Xu, Barba, Radu, Gandy, & Macintyre, 2011). There are many ways for teachers to support students’ additional participation around games: for example, the pedagogy of multiliteracies asks that students critically and creatively apply their experiences (New London Group, 1996), and discussions and debriefings may also be used to prompt students to think about how to implement their knowledge and skills (Nicholson, 2012). Language-connected participation around tabletop games can take many forms, depending on teacher skills, student goals, and the learning context.

Impetus for the Innovation Our integration of tabletop games with language learning is situated in the broader context of Japanese educational policies and practices. We are particularly mindful of Japanese government initiatives in education such as the push for “Active Learning” (Central Council for Education, 2012), for “The Promotion of Global Human Resources” (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, 2010a, b), and the The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s (MEXT, 2003, 2014) goal of the improvement of ‘practical’ communication skills, especially speaking and writing in the context of global commerce and communication, so that students will be able to “assertively make use of their English skills, think independently, and express themselves” (2014, p. 3). Our projects illustrate how reflection and analysis can be connected to active learning to help students find agency in school and as a bridge to finding their places in society. Giving students choices regarding which games to explore, which topics to discuss in debriefings, and how to extend their learning through participatory projects can further engage and connect students to important local and global issues.

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Tabletop games, or other experiences, can be connected to broader reflective, analytic and participatory pedagogical activities to fully accomplish what the Japanese government aims to achieve with its current policy directives. In the models we introduce below, we have used stronger models and methods of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) together with the affordances of games, gameplay and game ecologies to fill in various gaps in language teaching and learning in Japanese higher education (see Johnson, Lyddon, Nelson, Selman, & Worth, 2015). Games can be used to connect students with peer-, teacher-, and online community-centered discussions, thereby bridging language and cultural domains. The language of the various texts in and around gameplay can be analyzed and transferred to other contexts. Games also provide opportunities for students to connect language and higher-order thinking skills (Filsecker & Bündgens-Kosten, 2012; Mayer & Harris, 2010); for example, students can collaboratively practice critical thinking by analyzing gameplay strategies, or practice innovation and creativity by remixing game mechanics or themes to new contexts or by appropriating communication genres (e.g., tweets) to express experiences and ideas in authentic communicative contexts. And, importantly, we believe that for game-based language education to be fully realized, the role(s) of the teacher must be rethought. Many CLT-influenced authors (e.g., Rixon, 1985, as an early example) direct teachers to be a mere manager of gameplay or facilitator of game chat. However, we argue that the teacher should require students to analyze specific language in texts, discuss particular aspects of gameplay, and take on certain participatory post-game projects to ensure that students operate in the zone of proximal linguistic and cognitive development (Lantolf, 2000). The projects we describe in this chapter illustrate how teacher mediation, a clear reason for language learning, and additional tasks around gameplay can give students what has been missing in language education in Japanese higher education: agency, competency with academic work and social action, and holistic language development.

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Innovation in Three Contexts Classroom Context: ‘Kotaba Rollers’ The first context we consider is that of compulsory English communication classes of 20–25 students at a private science and technology university. ‘Kotoba Rollers’ (KR; kotoba meaning ‘word’ in Japanese) is the name given to a game-based language learning curriculum designed for low-level EFL learners. The innovation was a gradual process of development spanning the course of several years and iterations. Key takeaways from this endeavor are the notions of iterative design and teacher expertise. Humphries and Burns (2015) introduce three major hurdles to innovating curriculum reform: teacher expectations, external constraints, and internal constraints. Teacher expectations refer to the experiences teachers have had as both learners and teachers. They continue to explain that in the case of Japan, many language teachers have also experienced English as a subject, rather than means of communication in teacher-led, grammar-translation classes (p. 239). This leads to such teachers rejecting change, such as progressive approaches to language development (including CLT). KR was introduced into the context as an experimental t­eaching method based on the teacher’s experience as a language learning gamer who had used games in their own language learning journey. For instance, the author increased his proficiency in Japanese by actively participating in a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG guild comprised of Japanese players. In other words, the teacher (as learner-gamer) investigated the feasibility of using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) games as a mediating tool for language learning in classroom contexts. There is consensus that experiential learning can help promote language development if coupled with instructional support (Miller & Hegelheimer, 2006). Therefore, teachers should consider how gameplay may be supported by relevant SLA research findings. This consideration is key to all three contexts introduced in this chapter. The first iteration of the game-based curriculum was devised based on TBLT literature (for more detail see York & deHaan, 2018). Students

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were asked to choose a game to play (evoking agency), read the rules as an extracurricular activity (pre-play), and play the game in class (main task). Following gameplay, students were asked to write a report of their play session; again, as an extracurricular activity (post-task). This concept was therefore based on the notion of increasing student talk time in class. There were a number of problems with this approach. The extracurricular portion of the framework was too intense. Students did not read the rules in English, they relied on the L1 during gameplay, and had little chance to reflect on their gameplay experiences. This step in the development of the innovation was, however, extremely valuable, leading to the current model. Currently, the teaching framework exploits the strong parallel between how players learn, interact with, and progress a tabletop game and the pedagogical considerations of TBLT. Each 90-minute lesson is dedicated to a particular activity, as depicted in Fig. 2. Learners initially engage in a pre-play rule learning activity. Here, learners self-direct the learning of rules from multiple sources such as the included rulebook, YouTube videos, and teacher-created presentations. The second class session was focused on gameplay. During this session, learners made audio recordings of gameplay, which were used as content to be analyzed during the third class. Self-transcription was therefore used as a post-play means of encouraging mistakes in their output to be noticed (see Lynch, 2001). In the case of the current study, the cognitive demand of gameplay was found to leave learners with little attentional resources for noticing to occur during the play session; therefore, a strict transcription and analysis phase was incorporated as a post-play activity. Learners were asked to divide and transcribe the recording for homework. During the third class, they corrected

Fig. 2  The Kotoba Rollers framework

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common errors, found translations for Japanese utterances, and finally comparde their performance with that of native speakers on YouTube. After equipping themselves with additional linguistic resources from the first transcription analysis session, learners repeated the Play and Analyze phases. The second analysis phase required learners to compare their performance over the two Play sessions with the goal of looking for any improvements in performance. Finally, the sixth class was designated as a Report phase. Learners worked either individually or as a group to answer various questions regarding the game they played. Questions related to the experience, learner emotion and performance, and perceived learning gains. These questions were collated with reference to various models for debriefing gameplay (such as Nicholson, 2012).

An Extracurricular Project: “Game Terakoya” The ‘Game Terakoya’ project, which appropriated the name and goal of ‘Terakoya’—Edo period private schools for reading and writing instruction—was developed at a liberal arts department at a public university. This school’s English curriculum exemplifies the ‘weak CLT’ model found in many Japanese universities (Johnson et al., 2015): speaking skills are prioritized, there are few classes where language and content or culture are connected, and, besides mandatory tests such as the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC), students have few opportunities for applying their language skills. Institutional political constraints made it difficult to experiment with progressive pedagogies inside of regular classes; the extracurricular context gave the teacher and students freedom to explore alternative teaching and learning activities. An extensive literature review was conducted to select a teaching approach to provide the missing needed language and literacy activities. Ultimately, the “pedagogy of multiliteracies” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; New London Group, 1996) was selected because of its purposeful connecting of student experiences, idea generation through discussion, analytical research and then participation in society. The pedagogy necessitates transformation and innovation, encourages real-world

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interaction, and guides students through examination and appropriation of language and literacy skills. Though similar to the Plan— Do—Study–Act industrial model (Deming, 2000) so familiar in Japan, the multiliteracies pedagogy is more comprehensive, student-centered, oriented to social change, and connected to academic inquiry. Sykes and Reinhardt’s Explore–Examine–Extend framework (Sykes, 2013), Thorne and Reinhardt’s bridging activities model (2008), and Buckingham’s (2013) media analysis questions acted as related guides. The project and materials were developed based on the theoretical and practical literature and students were recruited at pre-term orientation sessions and via an email invitation to all first and second year students in the department. Ten students attended a briefing session, two students completed the lengthy application package, and one student completed the full year of extracurricular study (27 meetings; 40 contact hours) with the teacher. Figure 3 provides further details.

Fig. 3  The “pedagogy of multiliteracies” structure and activities of the Game Terakoya project

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Self-Access Learning: Tokoha Game Lab The third context considered here is that of a university “game lab” that began in 2016 in a foreign language self-access center (SAC) on the campus of a regional, commuter university in central Japan. Though originally set up as a foreign language study support center serving all of the university’s faculties, the SAC developed into a resource hub primarily used by students in the university’s Faculty of Foreign Studies. The campus where the SAC is located also houses a Faculty of Design and an undergraduate and graduate Faculty of Education, but before the start of the Tokoha Game Lab (TGL), students from these faculties rarely visited the center. The SAC was used mainly as a space for sustained silent reading, listening to audiobooks, and checking out and returning graded readers—easy books specifically designed for foreign language readers. These activities mostly related to curricular requirements imposed on students of the university’s English department, making it an important locus of activity for them, but perhaps creating barriers to entry for students from other faculties. Games were seen as a potential catalyst for diversifying the pool of students participating in English-language activities at the SAC, and also as a means of enriching that activity through the affordances for vocabulary development and critical thinking offered by contemporary tabletop games. Simply put, the introduction of TGL was an attempt to create a multidisciplinary (language) learning community of practice centered around games. TGL was started with the permission of the faculty member who then served as the SAC’s assistant director with the additional support of the center’s administrative staff person. These people appreciated TGL as an innovative way to bring a more diverse range of students into the space. Though this assistant director and other faculty members were not initially aware of the underlying learning goals (described below) that TGL sought to advance, no one opposed the innovation, and the lab was thus able to evolve naturally based on expanding student interest. Later, when evidence of broad-based student involvement in TGL was presented to the SAC’s director, that faculty member offered financial support in the form of a small budget for games to be used in the following year.

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Based on readings in cultural–historical activity theory and the pedagogy of multiliteracies, TGL was formed around a model (Fig. 4) that distinguished two primary categories of action: thinking together and doing together. These categories were further divided into TGL’s main types of activity: preparing to play games, playing games, reflecting on game-play, and making materials and modifying games. Each of these four activities is meant to be able to ‘produce’ something. Preparing should produce understanding, readiness, motivation and curiosity. Playing should produce enjoyment (fun), engagement and community. Reflecting is meant to produce insight/growth, critical understanding, and discourse analysis. Finally, making/modifying is meant to produce tangible outcomes like flash cards, how-to videos, game reviews, new games, translations and more. The graphical representation of the TGL activities has been used to introduce TGL to students at the beginning of each semester and to newcomers who join throughout the term in weekly 90-minute sessions.

Fig. 4  A model for self-access learning around games

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Findings Kotoba Rollers Results of a questionnaire given to 115 university students suggested that participants relied on multiple resources to aid them through the pre-play sequence, including YouTube videos, the game rulebooks and English and Japanese websites. However, students seemed to rely on the L1 too much during gameplay. A number of reasons for this are put forward: students’ low-level of English, the difficulty of the text in the rulebooks, and in some cases the lack of any guidelines in the framework regarding the use of the L1. Indeed, prohibiting L1 usage during certain phases of the framework was suggested by a number of participants. ボードゲームをする上で日本語で話したことによるペナルティ をゲームに慣れてき たら設けるべきだと思った。 I think there should be a penalty for speaking Japanese put in place once players become familiar with how to play the game.

By providing learners with non-linguistic goals (i.e., the goal of the class is not “finish chapter six” but “figure out which one of your group is the betrayer within eight minutes”) seemed to have a positive effect on their attitudes towards the class. This suggests that the implementation of a theoretically grounded pedagogical intervention (in this case TBLT) in conjunction with the use of a playful-yet-authentic domain for target language use (tabletop games) may help to rekindle interest and motivation towards studying English for low-level learners. Similar results were found with the TGL model (in the section above). Students also seemed to recognize that the class was an opportunity to practice English for authentic purposes and that they were not forced to engage in ‘English conversation practice’ exercises. As found with the Game Terakoya below, the degree of authenticity for oral communication provided by gameplay was mentioned in multiple questionnaire responses and was therefore considered a strong positive element of the model, promoting participants to speak in their ‘own voice’ during class interactions:

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遥かに他の講義 よ り も 英 語 で 話 す 機 会 が 自 然 に 与 え ら れ る  点です。 Compared to other classes, this class provided us with much more opportunities to speak English naturally.

The addition of the self-transcription and post-play analysis was considered beneficial in acquiring language items that were not available during gameplay. This backs up the claim that gameplay may be too cognitively demanding for learners to focus on meaning as well as form, and that pedagogical interventions are essential in helping to divide and conquer the task of language acquisition (Miller & Hegelheimer, 2006). One response emphasized this point succinctly: プレイしていてわからなかった言い回しを調べるなど身につく ことが多いと思った。 I gained a lot of new vocabulary by researching things that I couldn’t say during play time.

When considering the implementation of games in language learning contexts, one caveat for success, which is echoed in the Game Terakoya below, is the instructor’s expertise with games. In this context, although learner-agency was fostered by providing choice and promoting student-centeredness, the teacher’s role is expanded to that of rule-expert, conflict-solver, and tech-guru. Finally, the biggest issue for this low-level context is that authentic materials (rulebooks, native English speaker YouTube videos) were too difficult for the students’ level, meaning that teacher-led activities, discussions and the L1 were relied upon to check comprehension.

Game Terakoya The extracurricular nature of this project allowed the teacher to explore and change activities and materials during the project without having to ask for formal permission from administrators. Innovation was able to continue after the project began: The one-to-one pilot program allowed the teacher and student to explain and share and revisit goals for

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teaching and learning and to linger on or leave activities as they liked. Materials developed organically in the project. For example, though early analyses of games and texts were mostly dialogic, paper worksheets with specific questions were later created by the instructor to scaffold deeper intellectual engagement. Free of curricular constraints and working with only one student, the teacher developed dialogic instructional skills such as listening more carefully and asking more critical questions during post-play discussions in order to guide a deeper concept building and understanding. By the end of the year, the teacher had created a complete sequence using the pedagogy of multiliteracies to teach language and literacy skills around tabletop games. The sequence included exemplary student work for each pedagogical task. The multiliteracies pedagogy was an effective framework for language and literacy development. The student conceptualized her “magic circle” experience of playing the tabletop games UNO and Railways of the World (Drover & Wallace, 2005), explored them through academic readings and analytical writing, and then finally applied her deep understanding and experience of them in her review. She effectively appropriated and applied lexical, pragmatic and stylistic elements from early analyses of online texts into her own game review. The student reflected that she learned more from the “supplemental” (Miller & Hegelheimer, 2006; Ranalli, 2008; Sykes et al., 2012) texts and discussions and worksheets than from the game itself. Play and learning can inform each other in a well-designed and implemented pedagogy. The pedagogy allowed both the student and the teacher to select and explore texts and activities that might rarely surface in the Japanese EFL classroom. One student dropped out to focus on club activities, but the other student that persisted performed beyond initial expectations. At the end of the project, she posted a written review of the game Railways of the World (Fig. 5) to boardgamegeek.com, which received 32 ‘likes’ from that community, five comments, and was briefly featured as a “hot review.” This outcome was possible because 18 of the 27 sessions included participatory project work. Outcomes also included postproject recall of 35% (55/157) of new vocabulary, a threefold increase in knowledge about games, and a 0.34 point overall increase in “new media” skills (using Literat’s [2014] 5 point instrument).

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Fig. 5  The student’s boardgamegeek.com review

Tokoha Game Lab At the time of writing this chapter, TGL is mid-way through its second full year of operation in the university’s foreign language SAC. Data about what has ‘worked’ at TGL and the challenges that remain come from participant-observation and field notes, a written survey of participants that was carried out after the third semester of TGL activity (August 2016), semi-formal interviews with participating students, and casual discussions with co-researchers who joined the lab at the beginning of the third semester of TGL’s existence. First, what worked: as mentioned above, fostering interdisciplinarity and the wider use of the SAC by students outside of the university’s English department was one important mission that inspired the development of TGL. Data show TGL to be succeeding at ‘pulling’ students from the university campus’ various disciplines and levels into the SAC for engaged learning around games. Though the English department is still over-represented, the use of games has attracted a wide variety of students who bring varying perspectives to the lab; for example, we now

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have multiple students from our university’s Art & Design department who are focused on game and materials design. These students are able to work collaboratively with students from the Education department who join our activities with an interest in how games can be used in the classroom for different learning outcomes. Another successful aspect of TGL’s operation to date has been its ability to create affordances for richer conversations between instructors and students based upon shared experiences. TGL evolved from a legacy structure in the SAC of “conversation practice with native speakers.” In this model, students would sign up for a time-block (usually 20–30 minutes), then chat freely in the target language with the ‘native speaker’ teacher ‘on duty.’ The quotation marks used in the previous sentence point to the fact that native speaker is a concept with less and less meaning in our globalized world, and so is the idea that students are well-served by the mere presence of such speakers for unstructured interaction during set blocks of time. One might also wonder what would constitute the difference between ‘conversation practice’ and actual ‘conversation.’ In reality, in the ‘conversation practice’ model, most students arrived unprepared to converse about anything but anodyne topics such as their weekend or holiday plans or what they had for lunch. TGL’s focus on gameplay and critical, reflective discussions about common gameplay experiences solved this problem in a way and also created affordances for the production of knowledge around game-play. For example, students collaborated with each other and the instructor on vocabulary lists and remixes of games. They also contributed instructive feedback on the design and redesign of support materials such as a game-play placemat. Despite these successes, a significant area where further innovation remains possible relates to student agency. TGL is envisioned as an active learning space where games focus language learning, critical discussion and collaboration. And while student feedback and our own observations have evidenced significant strides in most of these areas, the collaborative element appears in some ways to be largely unrealized. Collaboration implies agency in determining the direction of joint efforts, and it also implies an ability to shape one’s

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own contribution. And while TGL members have contributed to the design of materials such as the gameplay placemat, and a Japan-centric version of the popular party game Monikers, they have generally not taken opportunities to spearhead their own projects, nor have they had full autonomy in choosing the games to be researched, played, play-tested and analyzed on a weekly basis. With the idea of playing and discussing games front and center, the main instructor-leader of TGL has taken responsibility for growing the lab’s game library, and setting a schedule for gameplay in particular genres (e.g., cooperative games). In collaboration with professors from the university’s Art & Design and Education faculties, the lead instructor is currently experimenting with new pedagogical practices and materials that we hope will lead to a greater sense of student agency and ‘ownership’ of TGL activities.

Implications In this chapter, we have described some of the opportunities and challenges that exist in three different contexts where tabletop games have been used as a centerpiece for language learning and development. We have shown that while tabletop games are by no means a ‘cure-all’ solution to the pedagogical challenges faced in each of our contexts, they do provide certain unique affordances that can enhance different kinds of educational settings. In this section, we describe some of the key takeaways for educators from our research and experiences using tabletop games in three different contexts. For language (or any other) teachers interested in exploring the affordances of games in their own contexts, three implications emerge from our research: (1) teachers who want to effectively integrate tabletop games into their learning contexts need to themselves cultivate their own (new) literacies around games; (2) access to a curated library of tabletop games creates unique affordances for learner autonomy and agency; and (3) the use of tabletop games should be rigorously connected to sound, contextually relevant pedagogical approaches.

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Game Literacy for Teachers Our research and experience as teacher–researchers reveals that a ­crucial first step to using tabletop games in language learning contexts is the development of one’s own literacy around games and gaming culture. What this means in practice is that teachers must gain familiarity with resources and communities that exist around tabletop games by learning, playing and play-testing a wide variety of games. Though perhaps overwhelming to some at first, www.boardgamegeek.com is a hub for information about board games that serves as a centralized global games database and as well as what Gee and Hayes (2012) would call a “passionate affinity space” for interaction around games. It is a place where users categorize and rate games, upload text and video reviews and explanations, provide their own expansions and other materials, and discuss a wide variety of topics in a diverse range of forums. The resources on this and other sites can help teachers find games that suit their pedagogical goals. A pedagogically focused blog maintained by the authors of this chapter (www.japangamelab.org) also provides guidance and a growing list of additional online resources that can help teachers as they combine their game literacies with language pedagogy.

Curated Game Libraries The abovementioned game literacy that teachers who use games in pedagogical contexts need to cultivate is ideally a precursor to the growth of a game library suitable to the needs of students in the teacher’s context. In some cases, this could mean a large library of games from many different genres, and in others this could mean just a few games that could be usefully played, analyzed, and/or remixed with learners. As illustrated by the Game Terakoya project, even one game that piques student curiosity can act as a springboard for the development of a very broad range of literacies. All of our projects revealed, however, that student agency at the outset can be an important motivator. We thus recommend that students be given at least some degree of freedom to choose the games to be explored, and for this teachers need to have access to at least a few different games that might appeal to different student tastes and preferences.

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Connecting to Pedagogy Though different teachers will favor different approaches, we argue that it is the conscious integration of games into an approach (or mesh of multiple approaches) that serves to maximize their learning affordances. For example, in the Kotoba Rollers model, games form the centerpiece of a TBLT framework that emphasizes authentic input, noticing, task repetition, and the development of learner autonomy. The Game Terakoya project uses insights from multiliteracies pedagogy to create rich learning affordances around games: tabletop games provide an entry point for discussions about spoken and written genres, styles and associated values. This knowledge is put to use via real-world participation in the affinity space of a game-focused website, showing an example of how teachers can exploit the affordances of games and global gamer culture to allow for “multiple entry points” to developing students’ new literacies. The Tokoha Gamelab model also draws upon pedagogy of multiliteracies and a broader sociocultural ethos of language learning as participation (Swain & Deters, 2007) to create a unique interdisciplinary space for students with varied backgrounds and skill sets to critically engage in learning through and around games.

Innovation Journeys The three innovations described in this chapter grew out of different institutional and curricular contexts, but shared much in common in terms of process. Though planning was and continues to be essential to the success of all three projects, all three teacher–researchers have found ways to innovate through an ongoing process of trial and error. In gamer parlance, this is known as ‘iterative design’—a repetitive process whereby designers ‘fail fast’ to discover what works and what doesn’t, then introduce small ‘tweaks’ that are tested again. As avid gamers, it seems clear that we brought this mentality to our pedagogical experiments using games. Another key factor that allowed innovation to happen was the fact that we all could find different spaces within our contexts where we could experiment with a spirit of openness and, of course, ‘play.’ In the

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Kotoba Rollers project, this space was the classroom, where games were seen as a favorable alternative to textbook-based learning that had become stultifying for student and teacher alike. Game Terakoya was implemented as a voluntary teacher–student ‘affinity space,’ which allowed for a deep dive into the vast possibilities of a pedagogy of multiliteracies. Finally, TGL was implemented in a SAC space where the instructor had significant freedom and support to remix his voluntary ‘conversation practice’ time into a robust model for interdisciplinary learning around games. A final factor, which is probably the most important, but also the most difficult to reproduce, is the community of practice that the three of us have formed around games and language learning. We have built our own ‘passionate affinity space’ through the blog we formed at www. japangamelab.org, a group that we manage on the team collaboration platform, SLACK, and face-to-face meetups whenever possible (Gee & Hayes, 2012). These activity spaces have allowed us to explore ideas about theory and practice through rich and supportive discussions. We have play-tested games together, offered feedback on each other’s academic work, and shared resources on a regular basis. These interactions, which continue today, have given us the confidence to try new things in our respective contexts, leading to what we hope are better and better outcomes for our students over time.

References Buckingham, D. (2013). Media education: Literacy, learning and contemporary culture. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Central Council for Education. (2012). Qualitative transformation of undergraduate education. Retrieved August 31, 2017 from http://www.mext. go.jp/component/b_menu/shingi/toushin/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2012/ 10/04/1325048_1.pdf. Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2009). “Multiliteracies”: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4(3), 164–195. Cornillie, F., Thorne, S. L., & Desmet, P. (2012). ReCALL special issue: Digital games for language learning: Challenges and opportunities. ReCALL, 24, 243–256.

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Deming, W. E. (2000). Out of the crisis. Cambridge: MIT Press. Drover, G., & Wallace, M. (2005). Railways of the world. Leitchfield, KY: Eagle-Gryphon Games. Filsecker, M., & Bündgens-Kosten, J. (2012). Behaviorism, constructivism, and communities of practice: How pedagogic theories help us understand game-based language learning. In H. Reinders (Ed.), Digital games in language learning and teaching (pp. 50–69). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. http://doi.org/10.1057/9781137005267_4. Gee, J. (2007). Good video games and good learning. New York: Peter Lang. Gee, J. P., & Hayes, E. (2012). Nurturing afinity spaces and game-based learning. In C. Steinkuehler, K. Squire, & S. Barab (Eds.), Games, learning, and society: Learning and meaning in the digital age (pp. 129–153). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139031127.015. Humphries, S., & Burns, A. (2015). In reality it’s almost impossible: CLToriented curriculum change. ELT Journal, 69(3), 239–248. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccu081. ICv2. (2015). Six straight growth years in hobby games. Retrieved September 6, 2017 from https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/30959/ six-straight-growth-years-hobby-games. ICv2, & Griepp, M. (2017). Hobby games market over $1.4 billion. Retrieved September 6, 2017 from https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/38012/ hobby-games-market-over-1-4-billion. Johnson, N. H., Lyddon, P. A., Nelson, M. E., Selman, A., & Worth, A. (2015). JALT forum: Reimagining contemporary EFL curricula. In P. Clements, A. Krause, & H. Brown (Eds.), JALT Conference Proceedings. JALT: Tokyo. Lantolf, J. P. (Ed.). (2000). Sociocultural theory and second language learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leacock, M. (2007). Pandemic. Mahopac, NY: Z-man Games. Literat, I. (2014). Measuring new media literacies: Towards the development of a comprehensive assessment tool. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 6(1), 15–27. Lynch, T. (2001). Seeing what they meant: Transcribing as a route to noticing. ELT Journal, 55(2), 124–132. Mayer, B., & Harris, C. (2010). Libraries got game: Aligned learning through modern board games. Chicago: American Library Association. McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world. New York: Penguin.

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Miller, M., & Hegelheimer, V. (2006). The SIMs meet ESL Incorporating authentic computer simulation games into the language classroom. Interactive Technology and Smart Education, 3(4), 311–328. Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. (2010a). 100 actions to launch Japan’s new growth strategy: Maximize the market’s function through reimagined public-private cooperation. Retrieved from http://www.meti.go.jp/english/aboutmeti/policy/2011policies.pdf. Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. (2010b). Develop global human resources through industry-academia-government collaboration. Retrieved from http://www.meti.go.jp/english/press/data/20100423_02.html. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. (2003). Regarding the establishment of an action plan to cultivate “Japanese with English Abilities.” Retrieved from www.mext.go.jp/english/topics/03072801. htm. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. (2014). On integrated reforms in high school and university education and university entrance examination aimed at realizing a high school and university articulation system appropriate for a new era. Retrieved from http://www.mext.go.jp/ en/news/topics/detail/1372628.htm. New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66, 60–93. Nicholson, S. (2008). Modern board games: It’s not a Monopoly any more. Library Technology Reports, 44(3), 8–10. Nicholson, S. (2012). Completing the experience: Debriefing in experiential educational games. In Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on society and information technologies (pp. 25–28). Winter Garden, FL: International Institute of Informatics and Systemic. Prensky, M. (2001). Digital game-based learning. New York: McGraw Hill & Paragon House. Ranalli, J. (2008). Learning English with The Sims: Exploiting authentic computer simulation games for L2 learning. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 21(5), 441–455. Rixon, S. (1985). How to use games in language teaching. London: Macmillan. Schrier, K. (2016). Knowledge games: How playing games can solve problems, create insight, and make change. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. SuperData. (2017). Trends and insights on games and interactive media 2017. Retrieved August 22, 2017 from https://www.superdataresearch.com/ market-data/market-brief-year-in-review/.

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Swain, M., & Deters, P. (2007). “New” mainstream SLA theory: Expanded and enriched. The Modern Language Journal, 91(s1), 820–836. Sykes, J. M. (2013). “Just” playing games? A look at the use of digital games for language learning. The Language Educator, October, 32–35. Sykes, J. E., Reinhardt, J., Liskin-Gasparro, J. E., & Lacorte, M. (2012). Language at play: Digital games in second and foreign language teaching and learning. New York: Pearson. Thorne, S. L., & Reinhardt, J. (2008). Bridging activities, new media literacies, and advanced foreign language proficiency. Calico Journal, 25(3), 558–572. Xu, Y., Barba, E., Radu, I., Gandy, M., & Macintyre, B. (2011). Chores are fun: Understanding social play in board games for digital tabletop game design. Proceedings of DiGRA 2011 Conference: Think design play, 1–16. York, J., & deHaan, J. (2018, in press). A constructivist approach to gamebased language learning: Student perceptions in a beginner-level EFL context. International Journal of Game-Based Learning (IJGBL), 8(1), 19–40.

What Does ‘Teaching English as a Lingua Franca’ Mean? Insights from University ELF Instructors Ayako Suzuki

Introduction In many Japanese universities, English language teaching (ELT) programs are organized around the concept of an ‘international language,’ and they aim to equip their students with a native-like ability. The view that the English used by native speakers of English (NESs) is the international language usually remains unchallenged. This chapter focuses on a university ELT program that has challenged this view and adopted ‘English as a Lingua Franca’ (ELF) as its target language (hereafter ELF program). Although the adoption of this unconventional concept of ELF was to better prepare students for the demands of global communication, its fundamental motivations often seemed mainly managerial: Japan’s rapid demographic changes urged the university to make the radical pedagogical choice in order to avoid under-enrollment. This chapter attempts to describe the tension between the academic and A. Suzuki (*)  Tamagawa University, Machida, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7_8

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managerial aspects of this innovation and what difficulties it brought to instructors who were in charge of day-to-day teaching on the ELF program. The first part of the chapter looks into the academic aspect of the adoption by examining differences between the conventional concept of English as an international language and ELF. Then, the chapter moves on to background reasons for the adoption of ELF and details of the program in order to scrutinize the managerial aspect. The latter part of the chapter investigates the instructors’ interpretations of the adoption of ELF: how they responded to and tried to adapt to this ostensibly radical pedagogical decision is examined based on their interpretations of the experience. The final part attempts to draw lessons from their voices for language education programs that take on unprecedented challenges.

Area of Innovation: EFL vs. ELF This section, based on the ELF literature and research, looks into why the adoption of ELF as a target language can be pedagogically innovative by explaining some key differences between conventional ideas of teaching English as an international language and ELF. Today, many university ELT programs state on their webpages that they are set up to teach English as a language of international communication. One commonly used strategy is to center NES instructors in their programs, so as to develop students’ language ability with NESs as the unquestioned model for successful global communication. An idea underpinning these programs is that English as an international language is the same as the English used by NESs (native English). This condition can be described as a ‘conceptual gap’ (Seidlhofer, 2001) because the programs’ surface has changed from ‘English as a Foreign Language’ (EFL), but the content has remained unchanged from conventional EFL approaches. The ELF program started from a very different premise to these EFL-based undertakings. As the program name represents, English is conceptualized as a lingua franca, namely, the language used for communication among people who do not share the same mother tongue(s). Since the great majority of present-day English users are

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non-native English speakers (NNESs) (e.g., Graddol, 2006), the ­program aims to equip students with English that they can use to interact with a variety of people including NNESs. That is, the ELF program is centered on the premise that English for international communication differs from native English. Jenkins (2015) clearly explains the differences between EFL and ELF as follows. For EFL communication, NNESs are assumed to be motivated to learn English in order to successfully interact with NESs. Because of this assumption, native English is regarded as the norm against which NNESs’ use of English is measured. Therefore, NNESs’ success in learning EFL depends upon how close they can bring their English to native English. On the other hand, the assumption for ELF communication is that NNESs learn English for intercultural communication, which does not involve NESs in many cases. Accordingly, whether or how well NNESs can mimic NESs is not considered important (p. 45). Indeed, the growing body of empirical research on ELF has revealed that NES-like English does not always ensure basic mutual understanding in intercultural communication (see Smith, 1983 for one of the earliest arguments). Different linguistic forms from native English, including phonological and lexicogrammatical forms, such as substitutions of the TH sounds (e.g., ‘thing’ pronounced [tɪŋ]) and the zero-marking of the third person -s (e.g., he talk ), are often used in ELF communication, but they rarely hinder mutual understanding (Jenkins, Baker, & Dewey, 2018). Also, it has been found that because users of ELF usually have different multilingual backgrounds and they utilize them as resources for communication (Jenkins, 2017), linguistic forms of ELF are variable. Instead of shared forms of English, what helps ELF users to co-construct mutual understanding is their proactive use of pragmatic skills. These, according to Cogo and House (2018), include accommodation skills, negotiation of meaning, self-initiated repair, and use of interactional elements and multilingual resources. These findings about the forms and pragmatics of ELF led Jenkins (2017) to define “a skilled English (ELF) user” as “someone who has acquired, not the forms of a native English variety, but the pragmatic skills to adapt their English use in line with the demands of the current interaction” (p. 560). Therefore, in theory, an ELT program aiming

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at ELF is supposed to foster the ability for students to flexibly choose pragmatic skills according to interlocutors and situations, regardless of whether their English is NES-like or not.

Impetus for the Innovation: University’s Choice of ELF As discussed in the previous section, the adoption of ELF was an academic choice, but its fundamental reasons seemed to stem from the university’s managerial issues. The first and foremost reason appeared to be fears of falling enrollment because of Japan’s rapid demographic change (see Irie, this volume). Because of the shrinking younger population, attracting students has become a critical issue for many universities, particularly for private ones that are not so large, famous or prestigious. The university has tackled with this problem by downsizing its admission capacity and reorganizing internally over the past decade, and the introduction of the ELF program was part of this strategy. The university decided to centralize the ELT programs that were run by each of its faculties; for example, the Colleges of Agriculture, Humanities, and Business. Now, the ELF program as a campus-wide program is carried out by the university’s newly established English language center (details of the program will be discussed in the next section). Centralizing each of faculties’ programs in the center was seemingly an economically sound move because the center could then be managed by a smaller number of teaching staff. Another background reason was an external factor—the promotion of the cultivation of ‘Global Human Resources’ by Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT). MEXT started the promotion actively around 2010 by distributing competitive budgets to tertiary education institutions. For these funding schemes, improvement of students’ English ability was regarded as an important key (Yoshida, 2014), and thus many universities started to reform their ELT programs. This undoubtedly motivated the university to introduce the new ELT program, which advocates “fostering true global human

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resources” as its goal. The introduction of the new programme was also considered to be an effective promotion of the whole university’s reputation as an international university. Although these two motives led to the launch of the ELF program, the new ELT program did not have to be ‘ELF.’ Rather, choosing this would seem radical because ELF represents a cutting-edge theory on English language use and learning, developed rapidly in the wake of Jenkins’s pioneering work on ELF phonology (2000). However, ELF was chosen, probably for two chief reasons, by the university’s special committee organized to set up an all-campus program. First, the centralization of all faculties’ ELT programs required the university to come up with a type of English that could be useful for every student. When each faculty organized its own program, they offered classes according to their students’ needs: for example, the College of Agriculture provided English for science, and the College of Business focused on business English. As a type of English that had high practicality for all students, ELF seemed to be appropriate because many students were expected to become working professionals in international society after graduation. Second, adopting the latest theory of English language use could differentiate the university’s program from other universities: the ELF program was believed to be likely to attract more prospective students. Therefore, the launch of the innovative program was primarily a managerial strategy designed to prevent the decrease in enrollment.

The Context Although the background reasons for the innovation were chiefly managerial, the ELF program is, of course, run for students’ education. This section details the program, including the student population and the program components. Before looking at the details, a brief explanation of the process of this program’s implementation through time would be useful in order to understand the current conditions. In early 2011, the university decided upon the centralization of ELT programs, and for this the special committee whose members were appointed by the

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president was established to discuss and decide on an overall structure of the new program. Following this, in the fall of 2011, some full-time faculty members who specialized in ELT and related fields were called upon to put the committee’s decision into practice: This working group set up a variety of operational details, including not only curriculum and syllabus but also teaching materials and assignments. Then, the ELF program was officially started in April 2013, after one preparatory year. Today, it is independently administrated as a campus-wide program by the English language center (hereafter called the center), which was established in 2014. The following sections detail the program. The ELF program is hosted at a middle-sized private university with about 7500 undergraduate students in a suburb of Tokyo. According to the center, the program is designed for Japanese students who use English as an international lingua franca to interact with a variety of English users. Its stated aim is not the achievement of NES-like proficiency but the acquisition of proficiency in English that students can use according to their individual purposes, and “fostering true global human resources” through the program is its goal. For this goal, currently the center employs 13 full-time instructors and over 40 part-timers comprising 14 different nationalities and 11 different mother tongues including Italian, Thai, and Korean, as well as Japanese and English. Their relatively diverse linguacultural backgrounds are a result of the center’s recruitment policy: Instructors should: (1) hold at least a Master’s degree in TESOL or related area; (2) have teaching experience with Japanese-speaking students and/or in Japan; and (3) have experience in learning a second/foreign language to the advanced level. According to the director of the center, what the program emphasizes is not instructors’ nativeness of English but their ‘expertise’ (Rampton, 1990) in language teaching, language learning, and language use—and they are expected to make use of their expertise to teach ELF. There are no set requirements related to research and teaching experiences of ELF, probably because ELF is still a new field of research and pedagogical applications of the research only started to be discussed in depth after 2010 (e.g., Dewey, 2012), and thus requiring this is regarded not quite realistic. Therefore, even among fulltimers there are few instructors who specialize in ELF. In addition,

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the university provides no special training for teaching ELF to both full-time and part-time instructors, although the full-timers themselves hold several workshops for their self-improvement. With these instructors, about 2700 undergraduates from all eight faculties of the university—the Colleges of Agriculture, Humanities, Engineering, Business, Education, Art, Liberal Arts, and Tourism— study on the ELF program. They take classes for 200 minutes a week (four 50-minute classes or two 100-minute classes depending on the colleges they belong to). The majority of them are first- and second-year students because the colleges usually require them to acquire from 4 to 16 credits on the ELF program by graduation. To gain four credits, they have to take classes for 15 weeks, so they stay in the program between six months and two years. The 2700 students were divided into groups of about 20 people according to their proficiency in English from high-beginner to advanced, and therefore there were about 130 groups. Most first-year students start from high-beginner or low-intermediate level (A2 in CEFR), and their starting levels are decided according to their scores on a standardized English proficiency test that all first-year students are required to take upon entry to the university. They usually proceed to a higher level every semester. To do so, they have to earn a certain grade at the current level. As for grades, the students are assessed based on four skills (listening and speaking account for 20% of the grade, writing 20%, reading 20%) as well as on classroom work including participation and homework (20%). Along with these, a Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) Listening and Reading institutional program (IP) score—a test that all students on the ELF program take every semester—accounts for 20%. The TOEIC is one of the most widely implemented standardized English proficiency tests in tertiary institutions in Japan, particularly for enhancing students’ chances to enter quality companies. However, the use of this test as part of assessment on this program seems to be contradictory to the ideas of ELF (Lowenberg, 2012; McNamara, 2012). It is because the test is made on the basis of NESs’ use of English in business contexts, and it only assesses test takers’ language techniques in such contexts (Abe, 2017). However, the integration of TOEIC was a decision from the top

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down—that is, from the university’s president and board of trustees— as it is believed that using the widespread standardized test can externally show measurable outcomes of university education. High scores of the test look good on students’ resumes, and having a good number of high-scoring students can be an appealing point to prospective students as well as future employers of the students (see Aspinall, 2013 for the business sector’s lead on the spread of TOEIC in Japanese universities and its drawbacks). Although ‘ELF’ has been adopted as the target language of the university’s ELT program, there seem to be many constraints on the actual implementation of the program, such as the large number of students, the lack of instructors who are experts on ELF, and the use of TOEIC as an assessment tool. In this context of teaching, what interpretations do the instructors have of the adoption of ELF, and how do they respond to it in the classroom? The next two sections offer a snapshot of the ELF program instructors’ attempts in the third year of its formal implementation based on interviews with some of them.

Interviews with ELF Instructors The launch of the ELF program stimulated me to find out what experiences the instructors had had with the program because I witnessed the process of its implementation at close hand as someone who had long been interested in the field of ELF. In order to learn about their experiences, I decided to ask some full-time instructors to talk about their ideas on ‘teaching ELF’ and their practices in the classroom.

Informants In the spring 2015—when I decided to conduct interviews—the center had 11 full-timers and 33 part-timers. Of these, I asked four full-time instructors to talk with me. These four were the most deeply involved in the day-to-day teaching of the program. Some other full-timers had just started to teach the program, and the others had moved internally

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to the centre because of the reorganization and thus were still mainly working for their old colleges. Also, at this time, I decided only to focus on the full-timers because they were typically expected to guide part-timers with regard to the program—from its aims through to classroom activities to assessments—and thus they were expected to be more integral to the program’s operation than the part-timers. The four instructors I talked with were Jonathan, Eric, Monica and Tony (Table 1). As for their language background, Jonathan, Eric, and Tony were NESs while only Monica was an NNES: she acquired English at elementary school in the Philippines. Yet, she herself said English could be one of her L1s as she had used it extensively throughout her life, and in terms of writing it was definitely her L1. In this sense, Monica should be considered as a ‘functional native speaker’ of English (Kachru, 2005): her purpose of acquisition and main use of English was a second language (ESL) for internal communication in her home country. She was multilingual as she could understand other local languages in the Philippines and also had an experience of being taught in Japanese for her graduate degree. Similarly, Tony was an NES but had widely used Chinese throughout his life, and he was competent in some other Asian languages. All informants were proficient in Japanese, had lived in Japan for several years, and taught English at higher education before moving to the university. Other than Monica, they also had Table 1  List of informants Age

Second First language languages (L2s) (L1)

Homeland ELT experience

Jonathan Male

Late 40s

English

Japanese

Australia

Eric

Male

Mid 30s

English

Monica

Female Late 30s

Tony

Male

Japanese, Indonesian English, Japanese Chinese, Thai, Lao, Indonesian, Japanese

Name (pseudonym)

Sex

Tagalog

Early 50s English

Over 10 years Over Australia 10 years Philippines Over 10 years Singapore, Over 30 years Australia

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experiences of ELT outside their homelands and Japan: Tony especially had rich experience in several Asian countries. Jonathan had taught in Korea and Eric in Indonesia. In terms of their involvement in the ELF program, Tony was most deeply involved as he helped to set up the program from the very beginning in 2011. The next most involved was Jonathan: he started to be involved in it in 2012, the preparatory year. Eric and Monica were employed at the formal launch of the program in 2013. None of them were specialists of ELF: they had worked in traditional EFL programs before they came to the ELF program, although Tony seemed to have a sound understanding of ELF because of his own research interests, critical pedagogy and language ideology, and his extensive experiences of teaching in different contexts. Also, Jonathan seemed to be genuinely interested in ELF. He told me that he only started to learn about ELF after he was employed for the program in 2012, but he had been enjoying reading the ELF literature and attending related conferences and workshops. For Eric and Monica, ELF seemed to be ‘just a job’ and they appeared to be less invested in the concept: they told me that they were more interested in different fields, though they had read some of major works of the ELF literature. These four instructors’ knowledge of ELF was largely self-taught. Although they and other full-timers themselves had held regular in-house study meetings, several workshops that invited international scholars, and annual forums that were open to the public, no one had any intensive or specific instruction on ELF. Indeed, as far as I know as someone who is interested in ELF, intensive courses to learn ELF in Japan at this time had been unavailable. Therefore, how to teach ELF in the classroom depended on each instructor’s depth of knowledge and individual interpretations of ELF.

Interviews and Analysis The interviews were carried out in June and July 2015. With Jonathan, Eric and Monica, I talked with them individually. Our talks lasted between 60 and 100 minutes, and they were audio-recorded with their permission and then transcribed by me. The interview with Tony was carried out via email because of his health. As I could not talk with him

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directly, in this chapter I mainly focus on the other three’s interviews, while Tony’s talk is referred to as additional information. All informants’ answers were looked at thoroughly and repeatedly, and prominent topics were identified. These topics were sorted into groups by topic’s nature, and then three major themes came to stand out: (1) awareness of own teaching; (2) classroom practices of teaching ELF; and (3) skepticism towards teaching ELF. The next section discusses these themes in turn.

Findings Awareness of Own Teaching ELF’s view of English users as a linguaculturally diverse group appeared to be easily accepted by the instructors and this seemed to have raised their self-awareness about students’ needs and their own ways of teaching. For example, reflecting on his teaching role in the past, Eric stated that the adopted concept of ELF let him think about what his students would need in the future: I now realized more strongly how students are going to be using English in the future, and I realized I need to prepare them to be more flexible to deal with different English speakers effectively.

He remembered that his previous universities expected him only to teach listening/speaking classes because of the nativeness of his English. Although assigning listening/speaking classes to NES instructors while reading/writing to Japanese ones is a common practice in university ELT (Rivers, 2013), on the ELF program all instructors were required to cover all skills regardless of whether they were NESs or NNESs. Eric implied that this equal treatment of all instructors made him more conscious of how his students were going to be engaged in English. Similarly, Monica made a comment relating to “more self-awareness” about her own teaching. She stated that she came to realize that dealing with different varieties of English in her teaching would help her

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students to work with various English speakers in the future. She admitted that before she “just focused on how to teach language” and “how I learnt [English],” but she came to be more interested in how NNESs use different expressions in other countries. Another informant, Jonathan, made a comment on his changed ideas from a different point of view. He maintained that the concept of ELF made him “feel much more relaxed” because he knew that making students like NESs was not his duty on the program. He alluded to his former belief that an English instructor’s role was to develop their students’ language proficiency into near that of NESs and this put him under pressure. These three informants’ remarks indicate that the concept of ELF brought about some cognitive shifts within their teaching (Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2018, pp. 462–463). For instance, Eric and Monica came to locate their teaching in the wider picture of the global use of English and consequently to focus more on their own teaching contexts. They became more aware that Japanese students’ communication partners were likely to be NNESs and thus teaching one particular linguistic form of English might not help them to have successful communication with NNESs. This awareness might have encouraged all the instructors, including Jonathan, to re-appraise their own teaching in light of their immediate teaching contexts.

Classroom Practice of Teaching ELF Then, what kind of teaching did the instructors employ to teach ELF? Some of them mentioned that their teaching moved away from EFL because of an awareness of ELF. Their changes appeared to be closely intertwined with their understanding of ELF, whilst their main focus of teaching seemed to remain unchanged. Their emphasis was on students’ productions of English, not on the development of pragmatic skills. Jonathan was the one who admitted that the ideas of ELF greatly affected his teaching. He maintained that after having been made familiar with the ideas, he came to experience difficulty in conducting his teaching in the same way as before. He stated that his teaching came

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to be “selective” because “my sense of ELF helps me immediately discard the things I don’t think would be important in international communication”—this echoes the recent argument in the ELF literature (e.g., Seidlhofer, 2011, pp. 196–198). As examples of his selectivity, he described how he skipped idiomatic expressions peculiar to NESs in a textbook and did not pick up “small errors” such as articles and prepositions when marking students’ writing (for a similar case, see Sifakis & Bayyurt, 2015). Consequently, Jonathan described ELF as his “guiding principle” in his teaching. In a similar vein, Tony wrote in his email that he was always reminding himself that his ELF classes had to be “less prescriptive” than ordinarily in EFL classes. Whilst Jonathan and Tony were conscious of the ELF ideas when teaching, the other two seemed not necessarily so. Monica stated that she was trying to apply the ideas to her teaching, but it was “more like subconsciously doing ELF”: Yeah, because when look back how I learned English, it’s a kind of ELF. Because I started with Filipino teachers, I wasn’t taught by native speakers. … I guess I speak ELF itself, how was my English, it worked, so I think it’s going to be effective.

She adduced some instances, including how she learnt vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation at school in the Philippines. Her words “subconsciously doing ELF” seemed to mean that applying her learning experiences of English to her teaching. This implied that in her understanding learning ELF and learning ESL were not very different, and thus her experiences could be automatically applied to her students’ learning, although this is not the case (Jenkins, 2006). The case of Eric was interesting. He plainly told me that he did nothing special in order to teach ELF. As part of his usual classroom activities, he named problem-solving and gap-filling activities, and he tried to “expose my students to different speakers or contexts,” which thus required them to interview some instructors of the ELF program. Eric saw these activities helpful to improve students’ “linguistic skills,” including “paraphrasing, rephrasing, expressing something you don’t understand, so you have to ask for clarification, reintroduction,

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or simplifying messages.” These skills are identified as important in the ELF literature, but he did not say these activities were especially for the purpose of teaching ELF. This is probably because these skills—as well as error correction, as mentioned by Jonathan—have long been emphasized in the Communicative Language Teaching and are not specific to ELF (Illés 2016, p. 412), and thus it is no wonder that, for Eric, the activities were nothing special and he did not see any need to change his usual way of teaching. As discussed in this section, how to teach ELF appeared to largely depend on how the individual instructors interpreted ELF and how far they were familiar with the ELF literature. Indeed, Jonathan told me that each ELF instructors were “on different stages of understanding of ELF,” and therefore, it can be assumed that “teaching ELF” could mean different things from one instructor to the next. In other words, there was no explicit coordinated articulation of the pedagogy of ELF within the program.

Skepticism Towards Teaching ELF The interviews revealed that some instructors were not fully convinced of the value of teaching ELF, even though it was the program’s policy. For example, Eric explicitly showed his skepticism: I’m questioning how far it [ELF] really influences on pedagogy, or I understand that we can, maybe, we can get texts with non-native speakers or concept of … present contents of these texts with sort of non-native speakers, [non-] Inner Circle1 contents, but I don’t really know how far, I can’t see how far this is going to go, sort of thing. … I think I’m wondering whether it really can go much further.

Eric admitted that he doubted if ELF could change ELT pedagogy and did not think that the adoption of ELF for the program was a clever 1Inner Circle is the pioneering World Englishes scholar, Kachru’s (1992) term to indicate courtiers where English is used as a first language by the majority of people, such as the USA and the UK.

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idea because he saw interest in ELF in the world of language teaching as transient. He also believed that the use of TOEIC, which accounts for 20% of the grading, hindered the development of students’ awareness of ELF because they were very worried about their scores and wanted to prepare for the test in the ELF classes. This issue seemed to be quite serious because it was picked up by Jonathan and Monica in their interviews. Another factor that Eric was not fully convinced by was the lack of dedicated teaching resources, such as textbooks. Jonathan who regarded ELF as his “guiding principle” also showed his uncertainty about teaching ELF. When talking about what “proficiency” in English meant, he himself realized that he was regarding it as equivalent to the ability to “use the grammar of an Inner Circle variety.” Although he mentioned his changed way of error correction, he still viewed proficient users of English as having NES-like grammatical ability. Furthermore, he questioned if the adoption of ELF as a target language would be beneficial for students. He considered that ELF would allow them to have more “freedom” and “autonomy,” but these might not facilitate their language acquisition. Jonathan’s skepticism seemed able to be ascribed to, in his view, the difficulty of ELF. He thought that “ELF is difficult” because it “has several dimensions” and thus “understanding ELF can be a slow process”: What is difficult is… put all the things [what ELF is] together and decide what it means in your classroom and then making changes. And I didn’t understand even in [the name of place where he listened to lectures on ELF], hmm, I don’t fully appreciate ELF…?

Jonathan told me that he was in the process of internalizing what ELF was. Indeed, during the interview, he often mentioned the work of several famous ELF scholars, including Jennifer Jenkins, Barbara Seidlhofer and Henry G. Widdowson. His frequent reference to them exposed his puzzlement about and lack of confidence in teaching ELF because he appeared to want to have some endorsement of what he was doing in the classroom. Because of his view of ELF as a difficult subject matter, he believed that ELF instructors needed more time to learn it. However, at the same time, he appeared somewhat embarrassed because it had

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been difficult for them, particularly those who had managerial positions on the program, including Jonathan himself. As the ELF program with a large number of students had to be managed by a small number of full-timers, they were burdened by the heavy workload of teaching and paperwork. Unlike Eric and Jonathan, Monica did not show much skepticism about teaching ELF. Rather, she stated that she liked the idea of adopting ELF as an aim of the program from the point of view of a NNES. She thought that hiring NNESs as instructors could make students understand that English teachers could be NNESs. Her approval of ELF should be attributed to the issue of identity as an NNES English instructor: the ideas of ELF could secure NNES English instructors’ identity (Blair, 2017). Tony was also supportive from the perspective of identity, but in his case not from the perspective of instructors, but rather of Japanese students, writing “ELF allows for assertion of students’ own identity and locality.” The question of whether the instructors approved of the adoption of ELF or not seemed to be closely intertwined with what standpoint they took to see the value of teaching ELF. Eric and Jonathan argued the value from the view point of pedagogy, while Monica and Tony argued from the view of identity of the people concerned. In addition, various managerial issues, such as the use of TOEIC and the limited number of personnel to operate the program, could hold the instructors back from fully exploring their ways of teaching ELF. Judging from these problems, it is easy to imagine that there would have been more ELF instructors, both full- and part-time, who were reluctant to accept the task of teaching ELF.

Implications What this chapter has revealed about the ELT program that has adopted the cutting-edge theory of language use as its pedagogical principle was that classroom practices were largely dependent on individual instructors’ interpretations of the subject matter and their standpoints towards it, and managerial aspects of its operation could hinder their attempt to

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adapt fully to the innovation. It is difficult to generalize these findings because this study focused on only four instructors in a very specific context, but some lessons for innovations in language teaching can be drawn. First, as Seargeant (2016), who considers standard US and UK varieties, local varieties and ELF, argues, when making a decision regarding the appropriate teaching model, there are various factors that need to be taken into account. For example, the suitability and attainability of the model in the context of teaching, and implications of the choice for the practice of teaching in that context, including learning processes, students’ motivation, the availability, and cost of teaching resources, as well as the qualifications of teachers. In the case of the ELF program, it seems many factors were not well thought out at the time of deciding on the adoption of ELF. For instance, as ELF is one of the latest theories of English language use, few teaching resources are available. This consequently requires the instructors to commit more time and effort to planning and preparing their teaching. Therefore, when an innovation is decided upon, a thorough simulation of its limitations and impacts, not only on academic but also practical aspects of its operation, is crucial. Second, as language instructors become key mediators of the innovation, they need to be supported in terms of their knowledge, skills, resources and time. As for the ELF program, the university should provide the instructors intensive and systematic training for teaching ELF (see Bayyurt & Sifakis, 2017 for detailed ideas of ELF teacher training). As I mentioned before, few opportunities to learn about ELF teaching are available in Japan. Also, language instructors usually are honed to teach language, not the pragmatic skills that are emphasized in ELF teaching. Therefore, it is desirable that the university prepares training for the instructors if it is serious about the program’s success. Through training, the instructors can get acquainted with the ideas of ELF, try them out in their teaching, and share ideas of how to develop students’ pragmatic skills with others. This kind of training would remove the instructors’ uncertainty about doing an unprecedented, unfamiliar practice because they could see what they are doing on the program is based on informed pedagogical decisions. Once the instructors finish the training, they should be encouraged to constantly engage with

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professional development to critically reflect on their own thinking about ELF and its implications in practice (Dewey & Patsko, 2018). For this, the instructors probably need to be given quality time. In this way, the host institutions should holistically support instructors who stand in front of students in the classroom.

Concluding Remarks The experience described in this chapter shows that managerial issues can lead educational innovation and that they can result in various challenges for those people charged with implementing educational practice. What is perhaps most remarkable about the ELF program described in this chapter is that it was put into practice at all, despite the existence of many constraints. Innovative ideas are often discarded without ever seeing the light of day because of practical issues, such as money and time. Even innovations that are put into practice can take a long time to effect substantial changes. From another perspective, innovation does not have to occur instantly and, rather sometimes it has to be slow and even vague at the beginning to gain any momentum. If it is too specific in the early stages, it would never get off the ground. Therefore, the lack of specificity and concrete guidance could be a realistic approach to innovation. The case of the ELF program described here represents a snapshot of an innovation at a specific point of time in its development. Today, the program is in its sixth year, so if I were to return to interview the instructors now, perhaps a very different picture, more optimistic picture may emerge.

References Abe, Y. (2017). Shijo-saiaku no eigo-seisaku: Uso-darake no yonginou kamban [The worst-ever ELT policy: Promotion of four skills with all the lies]. Tokyo: Hitsuji-shobo. Aspinall, R. (2013). International education policy in Japan in an age of globalisation and risk. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

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Bayyurt, Y., & Sifakis, N. (2017). Foundations of an EIL-aware teacher education. In A. Matsuda (Ed.), Preparing teachers to teach English as an international language (pp. 3–18). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Blair, A. (2017). Standard language models, variable lingua franca goals: How can ELF-aware teacher education square the circle? Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 6(2), 345–366. Cogo, A., & House, J. (2018). The pragmatics of ELF. In J. Jenkins, W. Baker, & M. Dewey (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English as a Lingua Franca (pp. 210–223). Oxon: Routledge. Dewey, M. (2012). Towards a post-normative approach: Learning the pedagogy of ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1), 141–170. Dewey, M., & Patsko, L. (2018). ELF and teacher education. In J. Jenkins, W. Baker, & M. Dewey (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English as a Lingua Franca (pp. 441–455). Oxon: Routledge. Graddol, D. (2006). English next. London: British Council. Illés, E. (2016). Issues in ELF-aware teacher education. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 5(1), 135–145. Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (2006). Current perspectives on teaching world Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 157–181. Jenkins, J. (2015). Global Englishes: A resource book for students (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. Jenkins, J. (2017). English as a Lingua Franca in the expanding circle. In M. Filppula, J. Klemola, & D. Sharma (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of world Englishes (pp. 549–566). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J., Baker, W., & Dewey, M. (Eds.). (2018). The Routledge handbook of English as a Lingua Franca. Oxon: Routledge. Kachru, B. (1992). Teaching world Englishes. In B. Kachru (Ed.), The other tongue: English across cultures (2nd ed., pp. 355–365). Oxford: Pargamon. Kachru, B. (2005). Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press. Lowenberg, P. (2012). Assessing proficiency in EIL. In A. Matsuda (Ed.), Principles and practices of teaching English as an international language (pp. 84–102). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. McNamara, T. (2012). English as a Lingua Franca: The challenge for language. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1), 199–202. Rampton, B. (1990). Displacing the “native speaker”: Expertise, affiliation and inheritance. ELT Journal, 44(2), 97–101.

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Rivers, D. (2013). Institutionalized native-speakerism: Voices of dissents and acts of resistance. In S. A. Houghton & D. Rivers (Eds.), Native-speakerism in Japan: Intergroup dynamics in foreign language education (pp. 75–91). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Seargeant, P. (2016). World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca: A changing context for ELT. In H. Graham (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of English language teaching (pp. 13–25). Oxon: Routledge. Seidlhofer, B. (2001). Closing a conceptual gap: The case for a description of English as a Lingua Franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 11(2), 133–158. Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sifakis, N., & Bayyurt, Y. (2015). Educating the ELF-aware teacher: Insight from a teacher training project. World Englishes, 34(3), 471–484. Sifakis, N., & Bayyurt, Y. (2018). ELF-aware teaching, learning and teacher development. In J. Jenkins, W. Baker, & M. Dewey (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English as a Lingua Franca (pp. 456–465). Oxford: Routledge. Smith, L. E. (Ed.). (1983). Readings in English as an international language. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Yoshida, A. (2014). ‘Grobaru-jinzai no ikusei’ to nihon no daigaku-kyouiku [“Global human resource development” and university education in Japan: From the perspective of “localism” in discussion among actors]. Kyouikugaku Kenkyu, 81(2), 164–175.

Developing a Foreign Language Geragogy: Teaching Innovations for Older Learners Danya Ramírez-Gómez

Area of Innovation The present chapter centers on the teaching of foreign languages (FLs) to Japanese older adults (60 years old and above) in Japan. Specifically, it addresses how implementing comprehensive modifications to various common techniques—thus addressing these individuals’ needs—may enhance FL learning. The innovations discussed here focus on three main issues: (1) the pertinence of enhanced learner training activities— or learner re-training (Ramírez-Gómez, 2015, 2016b); (2) the efficacy of tasks aimed at leading older learners to reassess their abilities and transform their preconceptions regarding learning in old age; and (3) The study discussed in this chapter was introduced in two previous reports (Ramírez-Gómez, 2015, 2016b), which presented a variety of analyses. Nonetheless, the issues and analyses presented here have not been included in any other publication.

D. Ramírez-Gómez (*)  Literacy Center of West Michigan, Grand Rapids, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7_9

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the effects of implementing adjustments of content and presentation of content, among others.

Impetus for the Innovation Japan faces a complex demographic situation. The proportion of adults over the age of 60 is increasing dramatically due mainly to an increase in lifespan and a reduction in the birth rate. This situation has led local governments and organizations to create policies that assist older adults to stay healthy and active. In line with this, community centers all over Japan offer various educational programs for the adult population. It is not unusual to find centers that offer English, Spanish, French, Italian and other language courses to adults of all ages, many of whom are over 60 years old. FL courses at community centers, however, display a common view: Many older adults experience important challenges when studying an FL, and most instructors believe that the origin of these challenges is generally the aging process. This assumption, however, is an oversimplification: The studies on older adults’ learning process in the L1 community are still limited (for a review, see Ramírez-Gómez, 2016b), and there is no evidence-based methodology—and related materials—to teach FLs to older adults who live in their L1 community. The absence of a concrete FL geragogy (i.e., FL education directed to older adults) has important consequences. First, most FL instructors use tools such as their own experience and intuition to adjust their teaching tactics. The shortcoming of this modus operandi is that, although exceedingly useful in some cases, these tools may also be a source of biases and misestimations (cf. Ramírez-Gómez, 2014, 2016b). Another consequence is the tendency to lower expectations in these courses, which creates a vicious cycle: FL lessons for older adults are often viewed as recreational activities that lead mostly to entertainment and, only if possible, to learning (Ramírez-Gómez, 2016b; Sanz Yagüe, Escandón Godoy, Romero Díaz, Ramírez-Gómez, & Civit i Contra, 2015). Thus, community centers and businesses frequently offer FL courses as a product to be purchased, so prospective students

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often expect a smooth path to learning an FL (Ramírez-Gómez, 2016a). This is far from what the learning of a language entails. FL learning is a complex process that requires effort, time, skillful strategic behavior, and a competent methodology adapted to the learners’ needs. The mismatch between expectations and the reality of the classroom generates tension, nervousness, a sense of incompetence, and frustration in many students (Alvarado Cantero, 2008; Ramírez-Gómez, 2015, 2016a, 2016b), which in turn leads them—as well as the instructors and administrators—to consider entertainment and socialization as the most realistic outcome (cf. Ramírez-Gómez, 2014, 2016b). All these assumptions may obstruct older adults from experiencing a satisfactory learning process and receiving the benefits entailed by studying FLs—benefits that include acquiring a sense of purpose, social interaction, cognitive conservation (Bialystok & Craik, 2010; Bialystok, Craik, Klein, & Viswanathan, 2004; c.f. Ramírez-Gómez, 2016b), and enhancement of quality of life. Based on this situation, the intention of this chapter is twofold. First, this work seeks to examine the effects of a series of innovations implemented jointly in lessons for older learners. Specifically, these effects are measured in terms of the learners’ overall oral performance, written vocabulary use, and the manner in which they experience FL instruction. Second, this chapter suggests a shift in the view of FL courses for older adults. Following the principles of critical foreign language geragogy (CFLG; Ramírez-Gómez, 2016a), FL learning should be considered an empowering activity for this cohort for several reasons. First, it provides an opportunity for learning a new linguistic system and staying active, and learning a new language gives older adults a means to engage with—and know more about—the international community. Second, this activity encourages older adults to begin a process of self-acknowledgement and learning-strategy development that may contribute not only to their FL learning process but also to their lives outside the classroom. Finally, learning an FL grants learners the opportunity to retool and acquire a skill that may be put to use in society (cf. RamírezGómez, 2016b). This requires that administrators of educational institutions and instructors acknowledge FL learning as an activity that has the potential to enhance older learners’ lives dramatically.

164     D. Ramírez-Gómez Table 1  Main features of the control and experimental Spanish courses Control course Duration Number of hours Location Participants Female participants Male participants Mean age (years) Median age

Experimental course

17 weeks 16 weeks 30 hours 26 hours Community center in central Kobe, Japan 9 19 8 9 1 10 63.33 66.78 63 66

The Context The discussion in this chapter is built on the observations of a Spanish course for Japanese older adults (Experimental course), who in this context are defined as individuals who are 60 years old and over.1 As mentioned above, a series of methodological and content-related innovations are implemented in this course, and the observations are compared with the outcomes of a previous Spanish course (Control course2)—also directed at Japanese older adults, that did not implement any of the innovations proposed here. Table 1 presents the main features of these courses. Both courses were advertised through pamphlets and posters distributed throughout the city in churches, train stations, among others, and published in government webpages. All participants registered voluntarily, and only after attending an orientation offered once before each course. In the orientation, potential participants received a detailed explanation regarding the objectives of each course, research-related activities, expectations of instructors and researchers, and the need for the learners’ commitment. Finally, to avoid prior knowledge of Spanish influencing the results of the study, only individuals who had no prior 1This age was selected mainly because 60 is at the earliest end of the range of retirement ages in the world. Selecting this age would allow the inclusion of more individuals of this cohort and the application of the results to FL learning in other countries. 2Although there are many aspects that may cast doubts on the characterization of this course as a ‘control’ group, this term has been opted for just as a denomination.

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knowledge of this language were selected to participate. Additionally, individuals who reported experiencing a level of cognitive decline that obstructed regular functioning were also excluded from the final participating groups. The objective of the control course was to provide Spanish instruction as offered by most institutions and to identify what Japanese older adults’ most common challenges were when learning a foreign language (in this case, Spanish). Thus, it employed a well-established textbook, Etapas A1, from the publishing company Difusión. This textbook is directed at adults, has a functional approach, and follows the parameters of the Common European Framework of Reference (Council of Europe, 2009). Subsequently, the experimental course—the focus of this study—was aimed at exploring whether a variety of innovations would contribute to improving the learners’ experience in the classroom and their ultimate FL level (i.e., to overcoming the challenges experienced by these learners). The innovations implemented in the course involved adjusting existing teaching materials/techniques to address the needs of older learners, and entailed the development of two instructional stages: The first stage consisted of six hours (two sessions of three hours) of learner re-training, i.e., learner training sessions that addressed the characteristics and needs of learners of this cohort by training the learners in vocabulary learning strategy (VLS) use, introducing the concept of the lexical aspect (Sanz Yagüe, Ramírez-Gómez, & Romero Díaz, 2015), and addressing issues such as the learners’ views on memorization, prior experiences and beliefs regarding VLSs, and language learning in general. The second stage of the experimental course comprised Spanish lessons that followed a set of materials created specifically for these students. Drawing from Ramírez-Gómez (2014, 2016b), the course innovated in the following issues:

VLS Training As mentioned above, learner re-training sessions were aimed at helping older learners develop awareness regarding VLS use and memorization.

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Additionally, the Spanish lessons included tasks aimed at assisting learners to develop a metacognitive, analytical approach to their learning behavior, and to identify strategies that suit their personal characteristics and their objectives. These tasks involved experimentation with tactics such as the Keyword method,3 organizing and labelling new vocabulary, guessing meaning from context, creation of preposition notebooks, flashcard elaboration, among others. More importantly, the students were encouraged to interact, exchange ideas, and support and teach each other.

Social Interaction An important aim of the course was to strike a balance between a relaxed environment (an aim of most instructors for adults in Japan) and a demanding, non-patronizing atmosphere that encouraged learners to dedicate time and effort to the process. Also, all learners shared their contact information with the instructor at the beginning of the course and were gradually encouraged to share it with close classmates. This is because a smooth communication conduit was deemed essential to maintain engagement during the week or in case of an absence. Finally, the instructor was required to take notice—as much as possible—of the learners’ cognitive/learning characteristics, and to keep these characteristics in mind when creating groups, planning activities, among others.

Visual/Audio Accessibility Material creation for this course involved a conscious effort in producing audio tracks that excluded atmosphere noise, and in which the speakers had low pitches and a clear enunciation. Additionally, the instructor was required to inquire and/or identify which learners 3The Keyword method, proposed by Richard Atkinson & Michael Raugh in 1975 (see Sagarra & Alba, 2006), involves two steps: (1) selecting an L1 word that sounds similar to the target word and (2) creating a mental image that joins the meaning of both words, so when the learner hears the target word, s/he can recall the meaning.

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suffered from any relevant hearing or visual impairment, and to somehow accommodate these learners’ needs in this regard. Lastly, the minimum font size and in-between line space for all written materials was 14 pts. and 1.4 pts., respectively.

Execution of Activities The following aspects of class execution were emphasized: First, the instructor attempted to adopt the habit of conducting one action at a time to avoid taxing the learners’ processing resources with an excessive amount of new information (e.g., talking and writing at the same time). Also, the instructor made an effort to simplify activities where many tasks occurred simultaneously, to use simple-structure sentences both in the L1 and L2 as much as possible, to speak at a low rate, and to include discourse pauses only between phrases (e.g., nominal, verbal). In addition, kinesthetic activities (i.e., activities that involve movement) were allotted slightly more time than the average time allotted when teaching younger adults. Finally, although the learners were allowed to choose their own seats during the first part of the lesson, the seating was modified for the second part in order to promote interaction.

Materials The materials for the experimental course comprised two sets of written activities created specifically for the course: a set used in class (the textbook ) and another set provided for additional grammar practice (the workbook ). Both the textbook and the workbook were distributed gradually and only as far as it was pertinent for each lesson. This rendered the learners able only to review what had already been studied in class and unable to prepare the contents of forthcoming lessons. The textbook included 13 lessons: ten lessons were aimed at developing proficiency in Spanish at the elementary level and three lessons focused on functional tasks such as self-introductions, shopping, and giving directions. The content in the ten lessons mentioned above

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differed from most Spanish textbooks regarding four main aspects: tenses, vocabulary, topics and pace. 1. Tenses: After one lesson on self-introductions, the course focused on preterit indefinite tense (e.g., fui, estuve, estudió ), then imperfect preterit tense (e.g., era, estaba, estudiaba ), and present tense (e.g., soy, estoy, estudia ). This is because, according to a study by RamírezGómez and Sanz (2017), there is no linguistic argument in the literature that warrants starting an initial-level FL course from the present tense. Indeed, the authors have indicated that—being the canonical tense—teaching the indefinite preterit forms first (particularly, the third person singular) may provide learners with a clearer view of the structure of Spanish. Furthermore, both present and imperfect preterit tense structures convey the imperfective aspect, and mastering the morphological changes associated with this aspect entails great challenges for speakers of languages without a marked aspectual system, such as Japanese and English. Thus, starting the instruction of initial level learners from a tense associated with the imperfective aspect may be unnecessarily convoluted and result in missing the opportunity to establish a strong structural foundation of the target language. 2. Vocabulary: Drawing from Ramírez-Gómez and Sanz’s (2017) work, the vocabulary in the course textbook was mainly highly frequent vocabulary. This decision was aimed at increasing the probability that learners encounter these lexical items in other contexts and thus also the possibility of memorization. From the vocabulary words offered in the textbook, 62.85% were included in the 300 most frequently used words of Spanish (Davies, 2002), 13.19% were included in the next 700, 16.03% constituted units between the following 1000 and 5000 words, and the remaining 7.93% were among the next 5001 and 100,000 words. All these words were constantly encountered throughout the textbook and the workbook. Finally, the activities in the textbook required learners to search for and use vocabulary items that were relatable to them. 3. Topics: The selection of topics was content-based; in other words, it was aimed at providing grammar and lexical L2 resources to which

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the learners could resort to in a variety of contexts, both within the L1 and the L2 communities. Specifically, the lessons focused on biographies of adult celebrities from the Hispanic world. Additionally, in order to respond to the participants’ interest in learning vocabulary and expressions used when travelling, the textbook included three lessons aimed at developing functional skills (namely self-­ introductions, giving directions, shopping). Lastly, drawing from Ramírez-Gómez (2015), who discussed the common absence—in textbooks—of content with which older adults could identify, and their common portrayal under a negative light, special attention was paid to including photographs or texts that portrayed older adults in either a positive or neutral manner. 4. Pace: The pace of the course (i.e., the rate at which tenses and vocabulary were covered) was mixed. Each tense was introduced one person at a time: For example, the second lesson covered the third person singular of the indefinite preterit tense, while the third lesson focused on the first person singular of the same tense. Similarly, the first/third person singular forms of the imperfect preterit tense were introduced in the fourth lesson, and the first person singular of the present tense was introduced in the sixth lesson. Subsequent lessons covered the use of the same tenses but in their plural forms. This, added to the fact that most vocabulary was repeated throughout the textbook, resulted in a moderate progress rate that could be deemed slow if compared with the progress rate in courses with younger adults. However, to promote engagement, every lesson involved a variety of activities that practiced similar content in various ways. Three short tests were administered with no warning to both groups of learners throughout each course. These tests were aimed at measuring the learners’ written competence regarding vocabulary use, morphology, and grammar. In this regard, although the results are not discussed in this chapter, the test-taking experiential effects were addressed. Finally, the learners from the experimental course were required to answer one homework sheet every week, in addition to the exercises in the workbook. Each homework sheet included two questions: the first

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was in Spanish, and it was related to the content studied in the lesson. In order to answer this question, the participants were instructed to review the material, to use learned vocabulary, and to limit dictionary use to the bare minimum. The second question was in Japanese, and it was related to the participants’ learning experience. The following are seven questions that addressed topics relevant to this discussion and that will be approached in the next section: 1. Mention something negative or difficult and something positive about our lessons. 2. What differentiates the techniques you used to study an FL in the past and the techniques you use now? 3. What do you think about the atmosphere of the class? 4. Do you feel that you have progressed in your strategy use? Explain. 5. Were you able to achieve your objectives in this course? 6. Please evaluate your time and general effort invested in this course? 7. Please share your thoughts regarding the course. One of the premises of this work is that, although analyzing the effects of one particular innovation in a controlled environment may be necessary in some cases, the complexity of the FL classroom cannot be entirely appreciated in a controlled experiment. Thus, this study attempted to simplify the experimental process and to measure—as realistically as possible—the effects of the modifications presented above. Consequently, as performance evaluation, all participants were individually interviewed at the end of each course. This interview included a list of questions elaborated according to the parameters of the CEFR (Council of Europe, 2009), which indicate what kind of competence is expected from learners at the beginners’ level. In addition to the interview, the learners also had to complete a composition task. In this composition, the participants were required to write about three topics: a self-introduction, their last New Year celebration, and their childhood. Vocabulary memorization is reportedly one of the most concerning aspects of learning an FL for older adults (Gómez Bedoya, 2008; Ramírez-Gómez, 2016b). Thus, the objective of this task was to measure the level of mastery of the vocabulary studied in

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the course. The time allotted to each interview was 15 minutes, and the time allotted to the composition was 30 minutes (cf. Ramírez-Gómez, 2015, 2016b). Lastly, although older learners may be viewed as one cohort, it is crucial to keep in mind that each one of these learners has decades of experiences that have made an impact on their cognition, psyche, physicality, on their attitude toward this life stage, and on how they approach new challenges (Ramírez-Gómez, 2016a). This heterogeneity requires the instructor to pay greater attention to identifying individual problems. Therefore, the number of participants accepted in this experimental course was approximately half of the number of participants in the control course.4

Data Analysis The first step in the analysis was to determine the effects—if any—of the innovation regarding targeted vocabulary on the experimental group. This analysis involved the evaluation of the composition task in terms of four variables: number of words produced, lexical density (i.e., proportion of content words; Laufer & Nation, 1995), lexical variability (i.e., proportion of content words that are unique; Laufer & Nation, 1995), and lexical accuracy (i.e., ratio of content words that were used correctly over those used incorrectly). Means, standard deviations, t-tests and Cohen’s d analyses were calculated. Subsequently, each participant’s overall performance in the oral interview was assessed on a scale of 1–100, and after excluding the outliers, means, standard deviations and confidence intervals were calculated and compared through a t-test and a Cohen’s d calculation.

4The

author is aware of the fact that the difference in sample sizes restricts statistical reliability. However, for the reasons explained above, this aspect of the course was considered fundamental not only for the exploration of the effects of the innovations implemented, but also for the detection of potential additional challenges for FL learning among these learners.

172     D. Ramírez-Gómez Table 2  Means, standard deviations (SD), t-test, and Cohen’s da scores for number of words, lexical density, variability, and accuracy per course

Number of words Lexical density Lexical variability Lexical accuracy

Control course

Experimental course

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

59.11 45.19 85.45 16.05

29.29 6.86 9.64 9.62

54.11 38.65 93.25 14.11

24.65 5.33 7.82 9.02

p value

Cohen’s d

0.84 0.01 0.06 0.77

0.19 − 1.28 0.21 0.18

aDue

to the small sample sizes, this complementary measure for effect size was also implemented. It is important to clarify that the sample size of the experimental group renders reliability issues. Thus, although some Cohen’s d calculations did produce significant results, all conclusions should be considered with caution.

Findings According to the analysis of the composition task (see Table 2), both groups of learners produced a similar number of words and scored similarly in terms of lexical variability and lexical accuracy. However, the control group’s lexical density was significantly higher. These results indicate that both groups produced a similar number of words, but that the control group produced more content words (i.e., nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives) than the experimental group, which suggests that the former had a wider active vocabulary, at least in written tasks. Nonetheless, both groups scored equally in terms of accuracy and variability. This shows that although limiting the number of content words targeted during the course might have restricted the vocabulary growth of the experimental group with regard to content words, this innovation did not obstruct them from expressing themselves accurately in the written task. Regarding the participants’ overall performance, the experimental course scored higher in the oral interview (see Table 3). Although this result was not confirmed as significant through the t-test and CI analyses, the Cohen’s d calculation did yield a large effect. Even if considered only as trends, these two sets of outcomes—composition task and interview—are noteworthy. This is because they support the notion set forth in this chapter that exposing older learners to fewer

Developing a Foreign Language Geragogy …     173 Table 3  Means, standard deviations (SD), confidence intervals, t-test and Cohen’s d values for interviews per course Mean SD CI p value Cohen’s d value

Control course

Experimental course

51.74 27.24 ±11.19 0.13 − 0.43

61.33 17.13 ±12.35

vocabulary items does not necessarily hamper their performance, as long as this vocabulary is highly frequent and relatable. Furthermore, the higher score of the experimental course in the interview suggests that focusing the learners’ attention and efforts on the memorization and practice of fewer but highly frequent vocabulary may lead to better consolidation and oral performance. As a shift from traditional views on vocabulary treatment in classroom materials, where large amounts of vocabulary—many times, exceedingly infrequent—are presented to learners (see Ramírez-Gómez & Sanz, 2017), this innovative criterion for targeting vocabulary is even worthier of consideration if it is acknowledged that the control group followed a syllabus that was consistent with the content of the final interview, and that a higher performance score in this group was thus expected. The better performance of the experimental group may also result from how they experienced other innovations implemented in the course. The following sections present the main findings in the learners’ answers to the homework questions. The discussion has been organized according to the different areas of the course wherein innovations were implemented (see previous sections).

Focus on Highly Frequent Vocabulary and VLS Training Consistent with observations in previous studies (Gómez Bedoya, 2008; Ramírez-Gómez, 2016b), a few learners reported that memorizing new vocabulary was one of the most challenging aspects of learning a foreign language. In line with this, some learners in this study considered that the activities aimed at acquiring new learning strategies had been beneficial because they had offered strategy ideas (e.g., associating words

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and concepts in novel ways, using flashcards, imagery, and rhymes) that in turn had helped the learners enhance their vocabulary learning. Nonetheless, many learners struggled to develop an appropriate VLS use. According to them, memorizing new vocabulary at home had required more time than expected—particularly compared with learning at a younger age, and that devoting such an amount of time to studying had been impracticable. Similarly, other learners indicated that they should have invested more effort, and others considered it challenging to connect conscious VLS use with any effect on their vocabulary learning. In other words, they believed that any improvement in their vocabulary had resulted from mere luck. Additionally, the learners reckoned that studying frequently used vocabulary had been helpful. This is because learning critical words had—reportedly—enabled them to produce simple sentences naturally even from the first stages of the course, which had allowed them to carry out more practice. These observations, in addition to the results in the analyses above, suggest that—contrary to what might be assumed—targeting fewer vocabulary items is not necessarily detrimental to the learning process of older adults, and that this innovation may actually lead to higher consolidation and overall proficiency.

A Course Specifically for Adults Over 60 Years Old, Seating Arrangements, and Class Size The learners reported feeling comfortable studying with individuals of their own cohort. According to them, it allowed them to speak openly and straightforwardly, and also to ask questions without feeling embarrassed.5 In addition, although the lessons were demanding,

5A feeling of incompetence—usually associated with age-related cognitive transformations—is common among older individuals. This feeling is reinforced when these learners study with younger adults (Alvarado Cantero, 2008; Andrew, 2012).

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the pace seemed appropriate for the group. Some learners reported feeling anxious before starting the course and unsure of their abilities to learn. However, this anxiety gradually disappeared. As one learner indicated: In time, I relaxed and was able to enjoy the class. Now I feel encouraged by my classmates and my instructor.

Many learners reported feeling motivated by others’ participation and enthusiasm. More importantly, they indicated feeling that they belonged in the class. One learner wrote: I received by email the copies used once I was not able to attend, and my classmates were very kind and explained things to me before the lesson started. It’s great. It’s like high-school but without the bullying!

Time limitations hindered the exploration of what exactly might have generated this sense of ‘belonging.’ However, based on the comments of the learners and their attitude during the lessons, it is possible to hypothesize that contextualizing the course as a course for older adults that would address and help them overcome their learning challenges, might have generated in the learners a sense of camaraderie and empathy that moved them to support each other. Generally speaking, the learners indicated that the pleasant atmosphere in the classroom eased communication. Furthermore, they pointed out that the seating modifications enforced by the instructor for the second part of the lesson facilitated socialization for shyer individuals. Lastly, the small class size was deemed intimidating by a few learners because—according to them—it was easy to identify who ‘was good’ and who struggled more with the learning process. In this regard, some students reported that it was challenging to resist the habit of comparing themselves with others, and thus feeling less capable. Nonetheless, it was also reported that the class size allowed the learners to focus on their own goals and improve, which elevated their self-confidence.

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Execution of Activities The learners viewed as positive several aspects of the course related to execution. For example, the lessons were considered relatively easy to follow and the constant repetition of vocabulary in various ways facilitated memorization. Also, the learners indicated that they had felt no complacency toward them from the instructor, which pushed them forward. Finally, having weekly homework and workbook assignments helped the learners keep the learning process on track during no-lesson days. Other aspects considered favorable included the allocation of significant time exclusively to questions. This may be the result of two factors: first, the learners reportedly tended to avoid asking questions in class out of embarrassment, not because classmates or the instructor reacted in a disapproving manner, but rather because learners tend to feel that their inability to understand a particular issue may be confused with general incompetence. Second, as pointed out by previous studies, many older adults experience the slowing down of their processing speed. Thus, allotting more time for learners to think about the information provided increases the possibility of them asking questions. Another issue that was deemed beneficial was also used with the control group and was not part of the innovations implemented in this study: the learners pointed out that highly frequent pair work was particularly engaging. In this regard, it is important to clarify that most older adults in Japan have not been exposed to a communicative approach to language teaching (Ramírez-Gómez, 2016b), thus this teaching method is likely to be perceived as an innovation.

Innovations in Textbook Content and the Introduction of Theoretical Constructs The learners reported that the course materials had been interesting and easy to understand. Also, according to them, the course had provided an appropriate combination of grammar guidance and communicative activities. The learners mentioned that materials from previous

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FL courses had tended to focus either on grammar explanations and exercises, or exclusively on conversation. In this regard, the learners reckoned that grammar instruction was essential to know how the L2 works, but that extensive communicative practice was also necessary. In addition, some learners pointed out that starting the practice of verb forms from the third person singular of the indefinite preterit tense had been surprising and unique. One student mentioned that many older adults often desire to discuss their past and the people in their lives, thus practicing with this tense and conjugation provided them with the opportunity to do so from the beginning. Also, many learners indicated that, unlike previous FL courses, which tended to cover content quickly, the rate at which new content was introduced in this course had been appropriate. Lastly, grasping the concept of the lexical aspect—addressed in the learning re-training sessions—was considered difficult. In this regard, although some learners were able to subsequently associate this construct with the use of indefinite and imperfect preterit tenses in Spanish, some reported not understanding why they had studied this topic. A re-assessment of the moment at which this construct is introduced—as well as defining the follow-up process—is necessary. In order to have a positive effect, the concept of lexical aspect and its related terminology should be embedded in future activities and explanations, similarly to how terms such as ‘intransitive,’ ‘transitive,’ ‘plural’ and ‘singular’ are introduced at initial learning stages and used throughout the learning process. Although these limitations rendered this innovation an inefficient use of time, the introduction of linguistic theoretical concepts does have the potential to enhance the learning process of adult Spanish learners if offered appropriately.

Testing and Homework Some learners mentioned that taking tests had been positive. In their experience, although tests are a common practice in high-school and college, they are less so at community centers or other educational organizations for adults. In these institutions, tests—if administered at

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all—are scheduled once or twice in the course, usually at the beginning or the end, to measure progress. In this regard, the learners mentioned that having frequent tests had been nerve-racking at the moment of the test, but that it had been exceedingly useful to learn about their weaknesses when there was still time to make changes and ask questions. This suggests that the popular notion that FL courses for older learners should not be demanding (Gómez Bedoya, 2008; see Ramírez-Gómez, 2014) misses out on a productive learning opportunity. I believe that although distress should be absent in any classroom, a measured, positive kind of stress—or eustress—may be a valuable tool to encourage learners to try their best. Homework, in turn, entailed challenges for some students mostly due to two factors. First, many learners were unable to find enough time and space to study at home. Despite being retired, many individuals were caregivers for an older relative, a spouse or grandchild, they participated in other activities, they were easily distracted at home, or they lived in environments where privacy and tranquility for an extended period of time were hard to achieve. Second, many learners indicated that the instructor’s request to avoid using the dictionary had entailed some difficulties. Indeed, some learners reported feeling “addicted” to the dictionary, which may stem from the learners’ prior experiences studying FLs under the yakudoku method.6 An important aspect of teaching Japanese older adults should thus be to lead them to develop strategies that help them detach from the constant use of the dictionary.

General Comments A few learners of the experimental course considered that they had failed to reach their objectives. This is because they had not studied enough or they had been unable to develop efficient learning strategies, which generated dissatisfaction with their own performance.

6Popular learning method in Japan that relies heavily on translation and dictionary use (Hino, 1988; for a contrast between the yakudoku method and the grammar-translation method, see Ramírez-Gómez, 2016b).

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Nonetheless, they indicated that they had started the course without any expectations regarding FL accomplishment and that, ultimately, they had learned many things. This encouraged them to continue to study Spanish. As one learner pointed out: I started from ‘zero,’ and I think that it was an accomplishment of this course that a person like me was able to attend and follow the lessons.

Other learners reported not having set clear objectives when they had started the course, which had led them to behave rather passively. Regardless, their classmates’ attitudes had kept them motivated. Additionally, a couple of learners reported having accomplished their goals; they were able to develop a sense of the structure of Spanish and practical vocabulary knowledge. Regarding effort and engagement in the classroom, all learners reported feeling satisfied with their performance. Nonetheless, they also acknowledged that starting learning a new language at this age takes more time and effort than in the past, and that most of their shortcomings in this course were rooted both in their inability to organize their time and in their lack of knowledge regarding how to approach the learning process. Two learners reported the following: I couldn’t do much at home. My mother needed me. I think I should have studied a bit every day, but it was impossible. I paid attention during the lesson. I also made the effort to learn and use the new words I was learning. But I was not good at reviewing and organizing after class.

In summary, the learners had a general positive view of their participation in the experimental course. Nonetheless, many of them felt dissatisfied—to different extents—with their performance, albeit not with the course itself. Some innovations implemented in the course that need improvement include the introduction of theoretical linguistic issues, particularly the time and manner in which they are presented. Also, based on the researcher’s observations, although all activities were modified to be more paused and structured, some activities did cause

180     D. Ramírez-Gómez

certain nervousness in learners who felt momentarily overwhelmed by the apparent complexity of the tasks. Thus, more scaffolding may be pertinent with this cohort. One accomplishment of the experimental course was inducing learners to view age not as a halt in language learning, but as a challenge to overcome through strategy development. In this regard, all learners seemed to have started the course with an underlying self-defeating attitude that often emerged in comments such as, “Well, at our age things are difficult. ” However, no learner mentioned age as a negative factor in their final self-evaluations and evaluations of the course. This suggests that the learners believe that although the aging process is not necessarily inconsequential, it is rather a characteristic that may be prevailed upon with effort, time, appropriate strategy use and an adequate methodology.

Implications Older adults face a variety of challenges in the FL classroom. Many of these challenges may originate in issues such as the learners’ age-related cognitive transformations, psychological barriers (such as self-defeating attitudes toward their ability to learn an FL), and low strategic expertise. Now, the research on education for older adults, as well as the literature on older adults’ learning of an L2 in the context of the L2, is broad (for a summary, see Ramírez-Gómez, 2016b). However, the limited research on the process by which older adults learn an L2 in the context of their L17—and the consequent absence of a methodology tailored to meet these learners’ needs, suggests that part of those challenges may be largely caused by the materials used in class and how these materials are presented (cf. Ramírez-Gómez, 2016b; Ramírez-Gómez & Escandón, 2017). Regardless, the combination of these factors often affects older

7For a discussion on the fundamental differences between L2 learning in the L1 and in the L2 environment, and on why these two areas of second language acquisition should be considered as two separate fields, see Ramírez-Gómez (2016b).

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learners negatively. It leads them to frequently experience feelings of incompetence, frustration and demotivation (Alvarado Cantero, 2008; Gómez Bedoya, 2008; Ramírez-Gómez, 2016a, 2016b; RamírezGómez & Escandón, 2017) and to appear to progress exceedingly slowly in their language learning process (Ramírez-Gómez, 2014). In order to counteract this situation, it is crucial to implement teaching techniques and tools that address older learners’ common challenges when learning an FL. It is important that these techniques avoid taxing the learners’ cognitive resources, focus on relevant vocabulary and grammar structures, and center on developing strategies that are appropriate for these individuals’ current cognitive and psychological characteristics. This chapter presented the results of a small-scale study that examined the implementation of several innovations that follow this line. Although inconclusive from a quantitative perspective, the qualitative data suggested that combining these innovations, which cover various aspects of FL learning/teaching, indeed enhanced older adults’ learning experience and started a re-assessment process that may be conducive to better learning. Due to the characteristics of the study, it was not possible to identify whether all the innovations—or only a few of them— had a positive effect in terms of performance. However, according to the participants of the study, the innovations were jointly conducive to a pleasant learning experience that challenged and encouraged them to accomplish their linguistic goals. Thus, it is possible to hypothesize that, in studies that allot a more extended time frame for the implementation of these methodological innovations, an enhancement on the participants’ learning experience may lead to an improvement in ultimate attainment, as well. The outcomes of implementing the innovations described in this chapter have relevant implications. First, these outcomes call into question the notion—common among older and younger adults—that age-related cognitive transformations restrict older learners’ ability to accomplish high levels of an FL. Indeed, the discussion here suggests that part of the struggles that older learners face in FL learning may be due to methodological inadequacy. This is significant because it contributes to modifying the negative preconception that older learners and instructors often have regarding learning a new language in old age

182     D. Ramírez-Gómez

(cf. Ramírez-Gómez, 2016b). This in turn may have an impact on the goals and dynamics of FL courses directed at older adults. Second, the need for a methodological shift creates a new area in the field of FL learning that—for a variety of reasons—has been neglected. Furthermore, the development of a foreign language geragogy not only opens up a path to the re-examination of various tactics used in the classroom, but it also fosters the consideration of learner re-training as a crucial aspect of teaching FLs to older adults—an aspect that should receive more attention and time allocation. I believe that although the sessions of learner re-training proposed here were brief, they did encourage older learners to question their assumptions and to think about their learning process more meta-cognitively. Thus, instructors and administrators of educational organizations should consider implementing courses that comprise more sessions of learner re-training. This would be a solid innovation to assist older learners deal with the process of learning a new language at this life stage. Innovations such as those implemented in this study, fine-tuned, complemented with others, and embedded in a broader FL-related geragogical narrative, may thus improve older learners’ experience and attainment learning an FL. However, there are many cases in which instructors are able to make modifications only to a certain extent. Therefore, it is also crucial that administrators of educational institutions recognize that providing competent, evidence-based FL courses is fundamental for older learners to experience a better learning process. Moreover, implementing evidence-based programs is also essential if older learners are to receive the benefits of learning an FL, benefits sought by them when joining these very courses (Gómez Bedoya, 2008; Ramírez-Gómez, 2016b). FL learning can be both a gratifying and successful process in old age only if it can be experienced through a methodology that addresses the learners’ shortcomings. This needs to be guaranteed by instructors and administrators. Many specific innovations have been proposed in this chapter. However, the main innovative notion that should be taken away from this discussion relates to modifying the status-quo regarding how and why we teach FLs to older adults. As the population in Japan and in many other countries ages and HALE (healthy life expectancy) extends, researchers, instructors and administrators need to adjust their

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preconceptions of old age and develop an approach to geragogical education that is conducive to a satisfactory and productive learning process in this cohort, a learning process that does not deny these learners of their sense of purpose. This is a crucial factor to the psychological well-being of the older population. Evidently, much more research is required on this topic, including confirmatory studies. Future research should also focus on issues such as the structural effects of exposing older learners to fewer, highly frequent vocabulary items, among other topics. Additionally, it is important to identify the most efficient methodology to address important issues in learner re-training sessions. Finally, future studies should also account for the reconciliation of all these adjustments and individual differences, such as orientations, trajectories (Ramírez-Gómez & Escandón, 2017), motivations, abilities and the interaction of all these variables in the older learner’s classroom.

References Alvarado Cantero, L. (2008). Enseñanza de español como segunda lengua a adultos mayores: Algunas consideraciones [Teaching Spanish as a second language to older adults: Some considerations]. Filología y Lingüística, 34, 89–105. Andrew, P. (2012). The social construction of age: Adult foreign language learners. Bristol: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Bialystok, E., & Craik, F. I. M. (2010). Cognitive and linguistic processing in the bilingual mind. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19, 19–23. Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., Klein, R., & Viswanathan, M. (2004). Bilingualism, aging and cognitive control: Evidence from the Simon task. Psychology and Aging, 19(2), 290–303. https://doi.org/10.1037/0882-7974.19.2.290. Council of Europe. (2009). Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment (Council of Europe, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [u.a.]. Retrieved from http://www.gbv.de/dms/ bowker/toc/9780521803137.pdf. Davies, M. (2002). Corpus del Español: 100 million words, 1200s–1900s. Retrieved from http://www.corpusdelespanol.org. Gómez Bedoya, M. (2008, March). El aprendizaje en la tercera edad. Una aproximación en la clase de ELE: Los aprendientes mayores japoneses en el

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Instituto Cervantes de Tokio [Learning in the third age. An approach to the classroom of Spanish as a second language: Older learners at the Cervantes Institutes in Tokyo] (MA thesis). Universidad Antonio de Nebrija. Hino, N. (1988). Yakudoku: Japan’s dominant tradition in foreign language learning. JALT Journal, 10(1), 45–55. Laufer, B., & Nation, P. (1995). Vocabulary size and use: Lexical richness in L2 written production. Applied Linguistics, 16(3), 307–322. https://doi. org/10.1093/applin/16.3.307. Ramírez-Gómez, D. (2014). Older-adult foreign language learning: Instructors’ beliefs and some recommendations. In N. Sonda & A. Krause (Eds.), JALT2013 Conference Proceedings (pp. 229–239). Tokyo: JALT. Ramírez-Gómez, D. (2015). Self-regulation and experience in foreign language learning: A comprehensive analysis of the older-learner classroom (PhD thesis). Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, Japan. Ramírez-Gómez, D. (2016a). Critical geragogy and foreign language learning: An exploratory application. Educational Gerontology, 42(2), 136–143. https://doi.org/10.1080/03601277.2015.1083388. Ramírez-Gómez, D. (2016b). Language teaching and the older adult: The significance of experience. Bristol and Buffalo: Multilingual Matters. Ramírez-Gómez, D., & Escandón, A. (2017). Validating learning profiles as an alternative approach to the study of the effects of learning experiences. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 14(1), 37–52. Retrieved from http://e-flt.nus.edu.sg/v14n12017/ramirez.pdf. Ramírez-Gómez, D., & Sanz, M. (2017). Corpus-based foreign-language textbooks for older adults: Using cognitive resources efficiently. Linguarum Arena, 8, 33–48. Sagarra, N., & Alba, M. (2006). The key is in the Keyword: L2 vocabulary learning methods with beginning learners of Spanish. The Modern Language Journal, 90(2), 228–243. Sanz Yagüe, M., Escandón Godoy, A., Romero Díaz, J., Ramírez-Gómez, D., & Civit i Contra, R. (2015). Enseñar español en Japón: Guía sobre algunos aspectos de la enseñanza a japoneses [Teaching Spanish in Japan: Some aspects of teaching to Japanese students] (Vol. 89). Kobe, Japan: Research Institute of Foreign Studies, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies. Sanz Yagüe, M., Ramírez-Gómez, D., & Romero Díaz, J. (2015). Allanando el camino de la adquisición: De la lingüística a la gramática [Smoothing the path to acquisition: From linguistics to grammar]. Cuadernos Canela, 26, 107–126.

Self-Access Learning and Advising: Promoting Language Learner Autonomy Beyond the Classroom Jo Mynard

Overview This chapter will look at self-access learning and advising, which are two interconnected areas of innovation taking place in language education in Japan. The focus is on language learning beyond the classroom, which does not receive enough attention in the literature (Reinders & Benson, 2017). I begin with a brief summary of some key points related to learner autonomy and learning beyond the classroom in order to situate the paper in the current literature. I then give a general overview of self-access and advising before discussing how and why they are being introduced in Japan. I make a case that self-access and advising are considered examples of innovative practice in Japan. I will show how institutions are approaching self-access and how colleagues are innovating or experiencing challenges in seven key areas. I include a ‘lessons learned’ section after each of these descriptions of innovative practice in order to indicate where future directions for the field lie. J. Mynard (*)  Kanda University of International Studies, Chiba, Japan © The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7_10

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Learner Autonomy As a starting point, I take the view that in order for a language learner to become a successful, lifelong language learner, he or she will need to be autonomous (Benson, 2011; Holec, 1981; Little, 1991). Broadly speaking, learner autonomy is the capacity to take charge of one’s own learning (Little, 1991). Autonomous learners have a high degree of awareness about their learning and also have the opportunities and willingness to exercise control over how they learn. In addition, they cooperate with others as part of a social process (Dam, Eriksson, Little, Miliander, & Trebbi, 1990). The development of autonomy will involve individualizing the learning process, including managing the content, pace, strategies and resources, and this requires being able to engage in ongoing reflection and self-evaluation. Training and opportunities for learners to exercise control over their learning can be incorporated into language classroom instruction. However, in order to support individual learners appropriately, it is necessary to provide opportunities and support for learning outside the classroom as well.

Definitions and Theoretical Underpinnings of Self-Access Recent discussions about where language learning might best take place have adopted a holistic view, which considers multiple environments. We might view self-access facilities,1 classrooms, other outside-class locations, and online locations as among many that students might use for language learning and the development of their autonomy (Benson, 2017). Self-access facilities are “person-centred social learning environments that actively promote language learner autonomy both within and outside the space” (Mynard, 2016b). This and similar definitions

1The term ‘self-access facility’ is a catch-all expression, which incorporates all types of spaces— physical and virtual, large and small—for self-access learning. Some self-access facilities are referred to as Self-Access Centers (SACs) or Self-Access Learning Centers (SALCs) in this chapter.

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(e.g., Gardner, 2011; Reinders, 2012) highlight the importance of ­factors such as support for language learning: the provision for resources and facilities ideal for different kinds of language learning and opportunities for language skills development through target language use. In practice, self-access facilities are normally physical spaces that become centers for autonomous learning to develop. Drawing on social constructivist learning theories, we can see how rich and stimulating social environments such as self-access facilities help people to make sense of new information by allowing opportunities for the negotiation of meaning in order to incorporate it into their existing schemata (Adelman Reyes & Vallone, 2008; Von Glasersfeld, 1989). Knowledge construction is facilitated by dialogue with others (Lantolf, 2000; Vygotsky, 1987) and is enacted in self-access through one-to-one advising sessions and interactions with peers, teachers and other people.

Self-Access: Origins and Shifts Since the first documented self-access center at the University of Lorraine in Nancy, France in 1969 (Holec, 2000), there have been several developments that have influenced the field. Firstly, our understanding of language learning has deepened and this has had an impact on the ways in which SACs operate. Secondly, people are learning languages for different reasons and in different ways. Thirdly, technological advances have had a huge impact in at least three ways: (1) we now have access to resources that were typically only previously available in a library or self-access facility; (2) the ways in which people communicate and how they are connected influences language learning; and (3) the expectations people have for language learning normally include technology. As a result of these changes, SACs have been forced to re-evaluate their purpose with the provision of resources becoming less relevant, and the social affordances becoming the driving force behind innovative self-access (Allhouse, 2014, 2015; Murray & Fujishima, 2013, 2016; Murray, Fujishima, & Uzuka, 2014; Mynard, 2016a, 2016b; Thornton, 2016). As we will see in this chapter, much of this innovation has occurred in Japan.

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Advising in Language Learning (ALL) Advising in language learning (ALL) is the intentional use of oneto-one dialogue to promote deeper thought with the aim of promoting language learner autonomy (Carson & Mynard, 2012; Kato & Mynard, 2015). In practice, ALL normally takes place outside the classroom, is optional, and focuses on learning processes (rather than specifics about language, such as grammar). A self-access facility is an ideal place for advising to take place due to the proximity of resources and access to other language users. ALL dialogue helps learners think deeply and reflect on their learning process and ultimately direct their own learning (Carson & Mynard, 2012; Kato & Mynard, 2015). The starting point for any advising session should be the needs of the individual learner, taking into account their degree of metacognitive awareness, their previous experiences of learning languages, their interests, preferences, motivations, goals, identities, and so on. Although good language teachers may attempt to cater for individual preferences in language classrooms, it is often harder to do so inside the classroom due to class size and the priority given to covering a language syllabus. In addition, a teacher and/or advisor is often conflicted about how to balance the role. It is often difficult to ignore the requirements of a curriculum when working with learners, especially if their personal goals do not align with the goals of the curriculum. The role of a learning advisor in a self-access facility normally incorporates the following: • Advising learners on a one-to-one basis with a focus on the development of autonomy. • Paying attention to the cognitive, metacognitive, and affective aspects of learning. • Giving feedback (oral and/or in writing) on self-directed work. • Facilitating opportunities for community-based learning and language practice. • Assisting in the provision of appropriate resources suitable for selfdirected language learners.

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A learning advisor also needs to engage in action research and ongoing professional development.

Why Are Advising and Self-Access Considered to Be Innovations in Japan? Although elsewhere in the world, notably in Mexico, the UK, France, Thailand, New Zealand and Hong Kong, self-access and advising have had a place in language education for decades, why are they still considered to be innovations in Japan? A partial answer to this is that typically there has been very little focus given to outside-class support for language learning in Japanese educational institutions. In general, Japanese university students spend less time on learning activities outside of class compared with students in the USA (Yamada, 2014), and this is evident from the apparent lack of support and opportunities for language learning. There are around 800 universities in Japan, yet at the time of writing only 35 had registered a self-access facility on the Japan Association for Self-Access Learning (JASAL) registry (https://jasalorg.com/lls-registry/). In comparison with Mexico where all high schools have SALCs, only a handful are known to exist in high schools in Japan. It is possible that some Japanese institutions have a conversation lounge or a resource library for self-study materials not registered with JASAL, which may be considered to be self-access facilities in a very narrow interpretation of the term. However, even having such a facility would be unusual. There are a few reasons why Japan may have missed out on the widespread introduction of self-access that other countries experienced mainly in the mid-1990s, and this section will touch on three. The first reason is that, traditionally, Japan has treated language study as an intellectual endeavor rather than a communication tool. For example, grammar-translation approaches are still used in some places. Although a communicative language teaching (CLT) approach has been mandated in Japanese schools since the 1990s, teachers still question its appropriateness in Japanese schools (Tanaka, 2009), and CLT methods are not always adopted (Otani, 2013). Although shifts are underway (Torikai, 2001), self-access may not be deemed necessary with this mindset.

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Another reason for the lack of uptake of self-access and advising in Japan is the obvious required financial and time investments. As selfaccess often requires a significant and ongoing investment, decision makers need to first be convinced of the benefits. The third reason is the belief that most learning takes place inside the classroom with the role of the teacher being to deliver content to the learners. Although these views are changing, institutions are slow to respond in providing support for autonomous language learning outside the classroom. Self-access and advising are both considered to be innovations in Japan mainly because of their relative novelty but also due to the fact that they challenge traditional roles of educators in very noticeable ways. Although uptake so far has been minimal, there is currently a rapid growing interest in ALL and self-access in Japan. Interestingly, much of the recent research in the field is being conducted in Japan and this, in turn, is having an international impact.

Why Are Institutions Finally Investing in Self-Access Facilities in Japan? There are three main reasons as to why Japan is finally investing in facilities for promoting language learning outside the classroom. Firstly, with the declining birth rate, institutions are looking at ways to attract students and stay ahead of the competition. Whereas a few decades ago, universities were guaranteed sufficient new student enrolment, now there is no such guarantee (Torikai, 2001). A visible facility (regardless of whether or not it actually supports learners or functions as a space that promotes language learner autonomy) is one ‘solution’. The second reason is related to the current push for the development of practical English skills in Japan. This push is driven partly by the upcoming Tokyo Olympics and partly by the awareness of how poorly Japanese perform on global measures of English (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2015). In addition, top-down mandates from the government and ministry of Education in Japan promote

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active learning (Mizokami, 2014). Although the term ‘active learning’ has been criticised for lacking a coherent definition (Ito, 2017), the Central Council for Education (CCE) (2012), which acts as an advisory board to the Japanese Ministry of Education, states that active learning is a collaborative and problem-based approach that requires critical thinking skills. Others have interpreted the term to mean proactive learning (Ito, 2017) or autonomous, lifelong learning (Mynard, 2016a). The main reason for the push toward active learning is to improve the employability potential for school leavers. It is unclear how the ministry of education expects this mandate to be implemented, but one of the most visible responses an institution can make is to create some kind of visible, physical facility for the promotion of active/autonomous learning. The third reason that institutions may be creating new self-access facilities in the coming years in Japan, is the understanding that language learners need support and opportunities for target language use outside the classroom. A new generation of Japanese university administrators seems to be taking note of trends in education in order to improve language learning outcomes. More self-access facilities may be developed in the future due to changing nature of the workplace in Japan. Whereas, traditionally, company workers were guaranteed a job for life, the situation now is that short contracts and temporary work are becoming more common (Takeuchi-Okuno, 2010). In order to renew their contracts, company workers are required to demonstrate how they are continuing to enhance knowledge and develop skills (e.g., English language skills) to cope with changing jobs. Educating future generations of company workers in how to learn and re-learn throughout their lives is one way in which selfaccess and advising can prepare individuals after they finish formal education. Providing self-access facilities and support for company workers during this process could be another growth area for the field. Although the movement towards building self-access facilities this decade may be driven more by competition, marketing, or government compliance rather than pedagogy, this has provided opportunities for innovation. In cases elsewhere in the world, SALCs have provided the impetus for educators to develop an interest in learner autonomy and they “continue to serve as a focal point for research” (Benson, 2011, p. 129).

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Having looked at some of the reasons why self-access facilities are being developed and could be developed in Japan, I will turn to the specific features and practices and then examine how they have become centers for innovation.

What Do SALCs in Japan Look Like? There are a range of approaches to self-access in Japan, and these can be broadly categorized into three types: Type 1, or ‘Social-Supportive SALC,’ is a specially dedicated, (often) purpose-built facility with an institutional mission to promote language learner autonomy. It has learner development goals and provides facilities, spaces, resources, community, and support for learning. Specialist and dedicated staff are hired to work in a Social-Supportive SALC and engage in constant action research in order to ensure the facility meets the needs of its users. Many of the SALCs listed on the JASAL directory fall completely or partially into this category. Innovation in Type 1 SALCs is likely to be driven by research due to the resources available. Type 2, or a ‘Developing SALC,’ is a facility such as a spare classroom or an unused office that has been informally or only semi-formally appropriated. Such a facility is normally run on a part-time basis by enthusiastic staff and students, often on a semi-voluntary basis on a low or non-existent budget. University faculty members working in such environments often rely on resource donations or use their personal research budgets to purchase materials and equipment for the center and pay student staff. Sadly, developing SALCs often receive little recognition from their institution, but this often has the effect of promoting innovation as they operate outside the official structure of an institution allowing staff and students unusual freedom. Type 3, or an ‘Administrative Center,’ is a dedicated, (usually) purpose-built facility that might have been constructed using a substantial budget, perhaps by means of a grant. It is heavily promoted in the university PR brochures and normally occupies a prominent position on campus. It partially satisfies the definition of a SALC in that it provides facilities, spaces, and resources. However, an Administrative Center

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lacks several vital components: (1) an institutional mission related to the promotion of learner autonomy; (2) the provision of adequate (or any) learner support; (3) opportunities for community-based learning or language use; and (4) dedicated staff to support learners, conduct research, and ensure the center meets changing students’ needs. Administrative Centers are unlikely to be centers for innovation as not enough ongoing investment is made, particularly in terms of staffing. Type 1 is the ideal in terms of learner support, but with sufficient investment and institutional support, Types 2 and 3 could shift to be more like a Type 1 SALC. In fact, this could be argued to be an appropriate evolution of a SALC. Whereas a large SALC might be a considerable investment, institutions could start by re-purposing an existing facility in order to observe and systematically research how learners engage with the opportunities provided. A purpose-built SALC meeting students’ needs might follow several years later. In terms of innovation, ideally there must still be opportunities for growth, creativity and ownership by students and staff when transitioning to a Type 1 SALC (Table 1). Table 1  A typology of SALCs in Japan Type 1 Social-Supportive SALC

Type 2 Developing SALC

✓

✓

Type 3 Administrative Center

Philosophy A commitment to promoting autonomy in the language learner Resources Funding for language-related materials (print, media, digital) Funding for general materials (in the target language) of interest to users

✓

✓

✓

Facilities Provision of furniture, rooms, ✓ spaces, and equipment needed to work on different kinds of language-related activities (including some quieter places)

✓

(continued)

194     J. Mynard Table 1  (continued) Type 1 Social-Supportive SALC

Type 2 Developing SALC

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

Type 3 Administrative Center

Communities Availability of social spaces for users to engage in community activities Opportunities to use the target languages with other language users Opportunities for learner involvement in the running of the SALC Support Availability of learning how to learn (materials, courses, posters, leaflets, workshops) An advising service Teachers and/or teaching assistants available for language support and practice A help desk and/or information counter Administrative support

✓ ✓ ✓

✓

✓

✓

Innovation Freedom for innovation Support for research

depends ✓

✓

Encouraging Innovation The degree of innovation will vary from SALC to SALC. Generally, much of the innovative practice is normally found in Type 2 SALCs as they are often run by individuals who are passionate about the field on a volunteer basis. Japanese universities are highly systematized institutions with carefully defined roles, processes and budget controls. Decisionmaking is often slow, and it is not unusual for several levels of staff in the hierarchy—including the chairman or president—to have to sign off on relatively routine operations. As running a self-access facility often falls outside the institutional structure in a Type 2 SALC and does not

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necessarily require a budget, many decisions can be made in a more informal and spontaneous manner by the staff and students actually working in the space. Before a SALC becomes too established, it is recommended that there are systems built into ensure that it continues to innovate. Whereas Type 1 SALCs may not always have the freedom to innovate in the same way as a Type 2 SALC, the fact that they are wellstaffed and support research means that their activities are perhaps more likely to gain traction, be sustainable and influence the field in general. The ideal situation would be a Type 1 SALC that retains a degree of freedom that allows innovative practice to flourish, but also engages in evaluation, research and dissemination. In order to create this situation, an important place to start is by choosing appropriate staff. Appointing a director with an appropriate background and a proven track-record for innovation may seem like an obvious point, but this does not always happen. It is far more likely that tenured professors—regardless of their suitability for the position—are often automatically given responsibility for overseeing a SALC as part of their duties in a department, and they often lack the background, skills, interest and time to dedicate to the additional demanding role. In fact, administrative staff may be the only full-time staff members working in a SALC. Whereas they may excel at systematizing, they often lack the pedagogical knowledge, interest, skills and authority needed to research and innovate in the areas of self-access and advising. Interestingly, SALC leadership positions in Japan are often held by people with international experience and/or by non-Japanese nationals. Successful SALCs often operate as independent departments designed to serve all students in an institution. This independence removes self-access staff from the potential restrictions imposed by traditionally minded academic departments and allows them the freedom to innovate. Some other ways to ensure that a SALC continues to innovate might include the following: • Rotating responsibilities; for example, having one-year appointments for coordinator positions to allow for new ideas to be incorporated. • Building action research expectations into staff job descriptions ensuring everyone contributes to the development of a SALC.

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• Visiting other SALCs regularly in order to learn about what ­colleagues in the field are doing. • Encouraging autonomy among staff as well as students. • Challenging established processes and systems regularly; for example, seeking alternative evaluation approaches and inviting outside auditors to give feedback.

Seven Examples of Innovation in SALCs Japan There are many examples of innovative practice in self-access in Japan, but in this section I will examine seven such examples. These examples represent the most researched areas or the ones that are particularly topical in the field at the moment. Although most of the published research features success stories, a few authors explore less successful interventions, enabling us to learn from their experiences.

Example 1. Staff Development Running a self-access facility, promoting learner autonomy outside the classroom, and advising language learners are likely to be skills that fall outside the usual expertise of language instructors (Gardner & Miller, 2014). An example of innovation in staff development is for educators to embrace the new role, develop expertise, and in turn contribute to the development of the field. Professionals who have made a switch from teaching to working in a self-access facility experience a learning curve, and developing expertise in a wide range of skills may take years. Although most language educators with an MA in TESOL will now be familiar—at least in theory—with the field of language learner autonomy and the importance of promoting it, many will not have explicitly implemented it in practice. In addition, the role of advising may be unfamiliar to experienced teachers. Carson and Mynard (2012) define advising by examining its aims, practices, skills, locations and discourses, which are all distinct from teaching (although may overlap slightly). Kato and Mynard (2015) suggest an education program for

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learning advisors2 that follows a learning trajectory. Other innovations in staff development in Japan are evidenced through its visible research and publications and have included the following areas: • Exploring the dynamics of advisor mentorship (Kato, 2017), • Understanding and categorizing advising discourse (McCarthy, 2010; Rutson-Griffiths & Porter, 2016), • Examining advising dialogue and uncovering the role of emotions (Yamashita, 2015), • Understanding identity construction through advising sessions (Yamamoto, 2017), • Drawing on case study evidence, which shows how advising dialogue impacts learning (Mynard, 2017), • Understanding how new advisors negotiate their shifting roles (Lammons, 2011; Morrison & Navarro, 2012; Yamamoto, 2018). Lessons learned: Innovation in this area can only be achieved if there in an investment in staff development and a willingness to provide support for initial training and ongoing professional development. Without this, staff working in SACs may focus on shallow ‘advice giving’ rather than being skilled in the promotion of learner autonomy through reflective dialogue. Another point to keep in mind is that although staff development for professionals working in self-access is a leading area of innovation, helping colleagues not directly involved in running a SALC understand its role and functions remains an ongoing challenge. Mayeda, MacKenzie, and Nusplinger (2016) recommend ensuring that communication is effective and feedback is sought and that ongoing professional development is offered for non-SALC staff.

2An

advisor education program is offered by the Research Institute for Learner Autonomy Education (RILAE) at Kanda University of International Studies (https://kuis.kandagaigo.ac.jp/ rilae/).

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Example 2. Attracting Student Users Providing a dedicated facility for self-access learning does not automatically mean that learners will use it or become autonomous. This may be due to a number of socio-cultural, motivational or logistical factors (Gillies, 2010). Examples include: students not knowing about the existence of the facility, being too insecure about their language skills to enter, having low motivation for learning English in general, or simply having very full schedules (for a summary of other reasons for participation and non-participation, see Gillies, 2010). Mynard, Lyon, Kushida, and Sampson (2017) researched reasons why students chose not to frequent an English conversation lounge, which is a key feature of the SALC in their institution. The reasons differed somewhat from their pre-study assumptions. The researchers assumed that the reasons for students not to use the lounge were due to language insecurities, but actual reasons for non-participation varied in each case they investigated. The reasons included factors related to students’ beliefs about learning, students’ identities as members of other communities, their unwillingness to join an established group, and not having a need to use such a lounge as they had already found other more effective ways of learning. Another study conducted at the same institution (Hooper, Burke, Taw, & Mynard, 2017) revealed that other students highly valued the community that they were able to create within an English conversation lounge and that membership of this group had become an integral part of their identity. The lounge not only facilitated rapid progress in English language skills but also led to an increase in confidence and developed a sense of responsibility for helping other students. Lessons learned: It is important to make efforts to understand learners’ needs and preferences when providing a learning space. Each context will have specific challenges, and learners within a context will vary, so a needs-analysis is a good first step to take. Once a greater understanding of students’ needs and preferences has been reached, some interventions can be planned and documented as part of an ongoing action research project.

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Example 3. Developing a Social Learning Community The community aspect of a self-access facility is crucial (Bibby, Jolley, & Shiobara, 2016; Kimura, 2014; Murray & Fujishima, 2013, 2016; Murray et al., 2014; Thornton, 2016). Hughes, Krug, and Vye (2011) found that whereas the initial reason that learners seek out a self-access facility might be because of a learning need, the reason people return is for the social environment. Similarly, one of the most important draws may be that it is a place to make friends (Murray & Fujishima, 2013, 2016; Murray et al., 2014). As several studies (e.g., Burke et al., 2018; Hughes et al., 2011; Murray & Fujishima, 2013, 2016; Murray et al., 2014; Mynard et al., 2017) have reported that Japanese students benefit from an introduction to a social learning space, it is recommended that efforts be made not only to cater for linguistic goals but also social needs. On the surface, events such as parties may not seem to fit within the purpose of an academic program, but large social gatherings provide opportunities for legitimate peripheral participation (Bibby et al., 2016), which is a first step for joining a community (Lave & Wenger, 1991). The role of students in developing the social community is key. Leading work by Murray and colleagues (e.g., Murray, 2017) has emphasized the role of other students within a social space where students can learn from each other. Findings from a longitudinal study in Japan involving multiple case studies indicated that groups came together in the space in pursuit of a common goal: language learning. Murray and colleagues (Murray, 2017; Murray & Fujishima, 2013, 2016) ensured that students were empowered to make decisions about the running of a self-access space and even included chapters contributed by students in a volume dedicated to the project (Murray & Fujishima, 2016). Lessons learned: SALCs that do not address learners’ social needs are likely to have limited impact on language learning and may simply become quiet, individual study places. Empowering students to take ownership of a social space promotes ownership and engagement in the space.

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Example 4. Advocating Voluntary SALC Participation The issue of whether or not self-access participation should be optional or required has not been fully resolved (Thornton, 2016). Many colleagues in Japan maintain that optional use of a SALC is key (Bibby et al., 2016; Cooker, 2010). The exception to this rule tends to be for compulsory orientation activities. In order to encourage rather than enforce SALC usage, some institutions have: (1) introduced activities in class that may ideally be completed in a SALC (e.g., Thompson & Atkinson, 2010), but where students might still make that active choice; (2) enrolled learners in extensive reading programs where the materials are available in the SALC, thus creating a ‘need’ and opportunity for students to engage in self-access learning in other ways (e.g., Shibata, 2016); and (3) provided homework assignments such as interview tasks that require students talk to other people in the target language. As other target language users can often be found in a SALC, it may be the perfect location for completing such assignments (Croker & Ashurova, 2012). Some projects in Japan have incentivized SALC attendance through class grades or stamp cards (e.g. Mayeda et al., 2016; Taylor et al., 2012). However, this might not be a suitable approach for all institutions, and caution is advised. As we know from the self-determination theory (e.g., Ryan & Deci, 2000), rewarding something that was previously motivating for its own sake can undermine the original intrinsic motivation once the reward is removed. In the case of Mayeda et al. (2016), there was only a moderate increase in uptake after the introduction of stamp cards. In the study by Taylor et al. (2012), SALC participation increased dramatically when the stamp cards were used but dropped again when the students were no longer required to use the system. Lessons learned: The degree to which encouragement, requirement or incentives are appropriate will depend upon the context, but for self-access to truly promote autonomy, students should be able to make the choice about whether to use a SALC for themselves (Cooker, 2010).

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Example 5. Discussion About Language Policy Language policy is a difficult policy to agree on as the issue is so complex and context-specific. On the surface, providing an environment where students can use the target language seems positive, especially in Japan where there are few places to use other languages. However, the ways in which the environment is constructed may be inauthentic, overly prescriptive, or simply outdated in today’s plurilingual and multicultural world. In some cases, users are attracted by a space where they are forced to interact in the target language as it provides the push they need. On the other hand, being forced to use the target language may be off-putting for some and may be an overly controlling position to take as a SALC aiming to encourage learner autonomy. Imamura (2018) reports on a study in which a majority of students indicated a need for an English-only space when asked on surveys and when interviewed. However, follow-up observations of the designated ‘Englishonly’ space clearly showed that students were not making much effort to use English. This observation led Imamura and her colleagues to initiate several interventions in order to raise awareness of language choice and to encourage the use of English. Lessons learned: On the whole, students claim to want opportunities to practice the target language but are unlikely to make these opportunities for themselves without support. Creating opportunities for learners to practice speaking the target language requires interventions and active involvement on the part of the staff in collaboration with students.

Example 6. SALC Space Design Creating a motivating and optimal space for learning is something that many colleagues within and outside of Japan have advocated as a way to attract users and make them feel comfortable in the space. Edlin (2016) outlines six principles for self-access design by looking outside the narrow field of self-access. Drawing on fields of psychology, neuroscience,

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instructional design, ecology and architecture, Edlin makes a case for ‘informed eclecticism.’ The following underlying principles for space design have all been proven to enhance learning in some way: 1. Creating welcoming environments that stimulate positive emotional responses. 2. Providing low-stress and safe environments. 3. Facilitating and enhancing social interaction through the space design. 4. Making a space comfortable. 5. Removing barriers to learning and increasing accessibility. 6. Making sure the environment is flexible to change. Ideally, learners should be involved in ongoing decisions about space design. One example of this is reported by Chen and Mynard (2018) who conducted interviews with student users of a space after a layout change. The layout changes were made based on recommendations by students and the interviews indicated how invested the students were in such decision making. Lessons learned: Edlin’s (2016) principles provide a useful starting point for planning a self-access space, but, unfortunately, many initial design decisions are made without consulting the educators and learners who will be working in the space. Nevertheless, the principles can guide the process of subsequent customization—ideally in collaboration with the students.

Example 7. Materials With technological development, materials development has been another area for innovation. Although increasing numbers of digital language learning resources are available, physical materials are still valued by learners in Japan, but collections are now being carefully curated (Edlin & Imamura, 2018). Although not much has yet been published

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in this area, and research is in its infancy, we are seeing improved SALC websites in recent years with accompanying iBooks and apps. In addition, social media posts from a SALC are an excellent way to not only inform users of events and language support opportunities, but also engage learners in dialogue which may strengthen a SALC community. As SALCs incorporate a wider range of spaces and materials, more comprehensive orientations are needed in order help students to navigate the space and make the most of the opportunities. Recent experiments with Augmented Reality (AR) also show a promising avenue for future practice (see Bonner & Frazier, 2018, for a description of a SALC tour app using AR). Lessons learned: More research is needed to understand how technology can support self-access learning, but the focus should be on how it can enhance learning rather than simply replace print materials.

Conclusions This chapter has made a case that institutions need to plan for constant investment in self-access support for language learning. This includes investment in adequate staffing, ongoing training, and support for research in order to innovate and continue to explore ways in which we can support students. A facility well-stocked with resources may look good in institutional brochures, but as we have seen, resources— although necessary—are only one aspect of a SALC. Fostering a social learning community, with room for innovative practice, will be key to promoting thriving and relevant facilities for our learners. The interconnected fields of self-access and advising are likely to gain more traction in Japan in the coming years, and this will have a role to play in not only providing learning opportunities beyond the classroom but also in shifting the responsibility of learning onto the learners. Providing support and opportunities for languages outside the classroom will do much to address the low levels of language proficiency that Japan currently experiences.

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Discussion Questions • In your experience, why are institutions investing in self-access facilities in Japan? • In what ways do you think that self-access can continue to innovate in Japan in the coming years? • How are students’ needs changing in Japan? • How can staff ensure that a SALC continues to meet the needs of its users over time? • In your view, how can advising take a greater role in language development in Japan? Acknowledgements   I am grateful to feedback, suggestions and references from Curtis Edlin, Huw Davies, Satoko Kato, David McLoughlin and the editors of this volume on earlier drafts of this chapter.

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An Insider’s View: Launching a University Program Kay Irie

A few weeks after the launch of an entirely new faculty, I was attending a seminar held at another university in the vicinity. After the seminar, I was introduced to a distinguished professor who was the host of the event. As soon as he found out I was involved in setting up the new faculty, with a hint of sarcasm, he said, “Oh, you work at the place that never changes!” (It sounds much better in the original Japanese.) I had heard that expression before from the staff and faculty to describe the conservatism and insularity of the institution at which I work. The new interdisciplinary social science faculty—in which English language education based on the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach as an integral part—had caused a bit of stir. But how did the university that had been known for its traditional and conservative culture come to start an entirely new faculty with an innovative curriculum? K. Irie (*)  Faculty of International Social Sciences, Gakushuin University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7_11

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The purpose of this chapter is to provide a rare account of the development of the new program from an insider’ point of view. By doing so, I hope to shed light on the complexity of Japanese educational system and unpack some of the contextual factors that bind educational institutions and often hinder educators from realizing their creative ideas. My aim in writing the chapter is to help practicing teachers understand some of the restrictions they might have faced, or might face, in their own attempts to innovate or the restrictions they cannot be aware of until they have been involved in the actual process. After a brief background on the featured institution and a description of the program, I will discuss the impetus for the creation of the new faculty and chronologically trace the development highlighting some of the societal, financial and institutional constraints that affected its course and how we attempted to overcome them.

Institutional Background The origin of the institution, which currently offers education from kindergarten to graduate school, goes back to 1847 in Kyoto—the then-capital of Japan. It began as a school to educate imperial court nobles. In fact, the name, Gakushuin, which means the institution of learning, was granted by Emperor Komei in the following year. The campus was relocated to Tokyo in 1877 and continued to be managed by the government to educate the children of the imperial family and the nobility. Now, a total of about 8000 students, primarily from high schools in the Greater Tokyo (Kanto) area attend Gakushuin University. It is not the most competitive but still competitive enough to be in the top 5% of the 260 universities in the area. Despite the fact that the institution was completely privatized after World War II in 1947 and that the university was opened to the general public, due to its origin and the association with the imperial family, it is still considered to be traditional and historical. Within the Japanese higher education system often characterized by its conservative nature, this particular school stands out as the most resistant of all. In fact, that resistance to change

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could be considered to be a defining characteristic of the institution. The Faculty of International Social Sciences, which offers the innovative program described in this chapter, was the first new faculty to be established in 52 years.

Shrinking Population as the Impetus for Innovation In the case of innovation at the institutional level, it is often the context itself that creates the need for innovation, and this new faculty is no exception. Innovation was necessary for this historic institution to re-establish itself as a forward-looking university and to survive the difficulties presented by changes in society. One pressing contextual issue facing all educational institutions in Japan is the issue of the low birth rate. The population crisis for higher education is no secret. The college population (18 year olds), which stood at 2,000,000 in 1992, decreased to 1,200,000 in 2008, and has plateaued since, although it is expected to start decreasing sharply from 2018. In the ten years between 2007 and 2017, at least ten universities had to be closed down due to the insufficient number of enrolled students (Yamamoto, 2017). Many twoyear colleges and women’s universities have been merged into affiliated or neighboring institutions. Some private universities in rural areas are being forced to become public in order to survive. Currently, in Japan, more than 770 schools are accredited by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) as bachelor degree-granting institutions (MEXT, 2016). The consequences of this falling population have been anticipated and feared by higher educational institutions. In the 2016 academic year, 257 private universities could not fill up the seats in their classrooms (Obunsha Kyoiku Joho Center, 2016). Although it is not publicly acknowledged, it can be logically assumed that many universities and colleges will be forced to lower their admission standards to secure the same number of students to maintain their accreditation—if they are not already doing

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so. The population shrinkage is shifting the balance of demand and provision of tertiary education. To overcome this demographic crisis and remain financially viable, the number of applicants has become a significant concern for universities as it ensures the competitiveness (the acceptance rate) and the quality of the incoming students. However, keeping high academic standards alone does not guarantee the institution’s popularity as this is more to do with how ‘attractive’ the university or the program appears to high school students and their parents. Thus, marketing and advertising in order to recruit prospective students have become regarded as crucial and an ever-increasing part of managing higher education institutions. In addition, to remain appealing to high school students, institutions must also invest in developing novel programs and attractive campuses with state-of-the-art technology, all of which require additional funds. The revenue can be increased by raising fees, but this is effective only up to a certain point, above which applications will drop as the application fees are also a substantial source of income. It is possible for universities to seek business opportunities not directly related to education; for example, offering various in-house services, such as renting out classrooms and other facilities, restaurant/catering, hotel, and travel business, to the general public. However, other than cost reduction, the simplest way to raise funds is to increase the number of students entering the institution by starting an additional program or faculty. Compared with most of its competitors in the private sector in Tokyo, the institution lagged behind in taking measures to launch new programs to increase the number of applicants. In fact, this particular university seems to have been resisting the trend of the explosion of new faculties. For example, a neighboring university, considered to be a rival, has started 16 new departments and three faculties since 2000 while Gakushuin University has added only two small departments to the already existing faculties. While it seems the need was obvious, why did the institution resist and take such a long time to start a new program?

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Area of Innovation Going ‘Global’ with CLIL The new faculty was built on the idea of cultivating students, who primarily come from Japanese high schools, through the study of social science in English, to produce global jinzai (global human resources) referring to individuals who will contribute to and thrive in ‘international society.’ The term, global jinzai has become a slogan since the government started promoting it from around 2010 (Yoshida, 2014; see Suzuki, Chapter “What Does ‘Teaching English as a Lingua Franca’ Mean? Insights from University ELF Instructors”, this volume), responding to strong demand from Japanese industry through Keidanren (the Japan Business Federation) (Bradford & Brown, 2018, p. 7). The rationale for the faculty is that the social science framework of problem-identification, hypothesis-building, and solution based on data analysis in English along with the required study-abroad experience would make the graduates more attractive in the job market. The curriculum was designed to achieve such a goal, and the goal and the curriculum together authenticate the purpose of studying English, as English proficiency is at the center of discourse surrounding global jinzai (Hashimoto, 2018) and is required for English as the medium of instruction (EMI) (Bradford, 2016; Dafouz & Smit, 2014). However, most students coming from Japanese high schools are not expected to have the adequate proficiency or relevant experience studying content subjects in the EMI approach. Therefore, an English language program to prepare incoming students for content study is crucial. For this purpose, CLIL (see, Ikeda, Chapter “CLIL in Comparison with PPP: A ‘Revolution’ in ELT by Competency-Based Language Education”) was employed as an interface for the introduction of social science in Japanese and English for academic purposes as well as a bridge to EMI. The discussion on CLIL in higher education is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, despite its origin in the mainstream primary and secondary education in Europe, and the variety of applications and the rationales across the contexts, CLIL is increasingly accepted at the

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tertiary level across the globe including Japan (Lasagabaster & Doiz, 2016; Tsuchiya & Pérez Murillo, 2015; Zhao & Lei, 2017). At this point, it might be useful to remember the tendency of Japanese educators to seek solutions from abroad, including communicative language teaching in the 1980s (Locastro, 1996), and the introduction of CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) ‘can-do’ about a decade ago (Yoshijima & Ohashi, 2004). At this time, following the trend in Europe and elsewhere (Dalton-Puffer, 2011; Marsh & Wolff, 2007; Wilkinson & Walsh, 2014), CLIL became a buzzword among English language educators in Japan. Many institutions are pressured to respond to the permanent discourse regarding need to improve language education. The faculty also decided to employ CLIL to bridge the gap between Japanese high school English education that is primarily characterized by grammar-translation and examinations and the studying of social sciences in English at the tertiary level. If integration is the keyword in CLIL, the focus of the curriculum development was really on the integration of social science study and English education. In order to achieve this integration, the language development component of the curriculum was specifically designed, and English language specialists including myself were recruited, and the criteria for hiring social science faculty members were set on the understanding that they would be able to deliver lectures in both English and Japanese and fully undertake administrative duties in Japanese.

Faculty-Specific Language Program The curriculum differs from those usually found in Japanese universities, which tend to separate majors from compulsory language education. The recent movement across many Japanese higher education institutions has been to remove English education from the hands of individual faculties and transfer it to a language center so that the curriculum can be unified with the aim of establishing the standards across the institution and to clarify the educational responsibilities of the faculties. In other words, faculties can focus on teaching the academic content of their particular discipline and are released from the burden of

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providing general education. This includes the required English courses and the administrative duties associated with such courses, including the hiring of part-time teachers, which is seen as irrelevant and as a nuisance at best to the academics outside language education. This program then is countering this trend and bringing English education back to the faculty and positioning it as an integral part of the curriculum. It makes sense to do so as the language cannot be separated from the content in this case. The curriculum is also clearly different from some of the prominent recently developed liberal arts programs in Japan; for example, Akita International University, Waseda University and Rikkyo University. These programs are conducted entirely in English where only the elite (CEFR B2 as the minimum); that is, students who are capable of handling tertiary-level content in English, are admitted. Therefore, in theory, they do not require the scaffolding language program. The number of high school students who take exams such as TOEFL iBT or IELTS is still limited as these tests are expensive and completely independent of the high school English education. They are offered only in the few major cities. They also require additional resources for students to obtain the necessary scores unless they received education abroad. Considering the small number of high school students who are ready to embark on the tertiary-level education in English, the discourse in the Japanese society regarding the need for university to produce global jinzai is understandable but setting such a high English proficiency as an admission requirement is unrealistic for many universities. It is simply not financially viable. This explains why there are only a handful of full EMI programs, which are sometimes known as English Taught Programs (ETPs). One solution is to take in ‘ordinary’ high school graduates and progressively cultivate and develop them into those who can thrive in the international community. The program was ambitiously designed to do just that. The curriculum described above has features based on contemporary thinking within tertiary language education. However, the most notable innovation of the new faculty is the fact that this program was developed in one of the most conservative universities in Japan. Understanding the process of how this innovative program came to be

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launched at the institution that reifies the education system that instinctively refuses any changes can reveal some mechanisms and contextual factors that are common to Japanese universities. In the following section, I will describe these processes focusing on three areas: internal and external tension at the initial stage to gain institutional support; the actual process and the administrative work involved in getting the approval from MEXT; and conflicts between the pedagogic concerns and various constraints in developing the curriculum.

Forces Opposing Innovation Internal Resistance Although it is difficult for me to make any claims about what happened prior to my appointment in April 2014, I have been informed of a great deal of concern and resistance on campus towards the opening of a new faculty. At this university, as with many others, any major decision can only be made upon unanimous agreement. It is understandable for an institution that is proud of its history and the quality of the education that it offers to resist anything new. After all, creating a faculty that is fashionably ‘global’ would be to concede the fact that the existing faculties were not global enough, despite the fact that many professors are active and renowned internationally in their respective fields. A new faculty might have been seen as a threat or a potential rival poaching their applicants. They could also be forced to make various adjustments to the well-established systems including the various customs and ‘perks’ based on the norms of more than 52 years ago.

External Pressure The university admission system in Japan requires high school students to choose a specific faculty to apply to as each offers a different entrance exam. Most students start preparing for admission to the university as soon as they begin their first year in senior high school (the equivalent

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of tenth Grade in the US system, 15–16 year-olds) by choosing one of two paths: ri-kei (science) or bun-kei (humanities and arts). After that, students may aim to get into a bun-kei program of a particular university or try for a bun-kei program at various universities. Amongst the bun-kei programs, so-called kokusai-kei (international) is a major category that always attracts a sizeable segment of high school students. As most of the new programs at competitor universities belong to this category, the university needed to differentiate its own new offering. Preliminary research revealed that most kokusai-kei program at other universities focused on cultures, languages and communication based on existing faculties of literature and linguistics, or identified themselves as liberal arts. In light of this, an interdisciplinary social science program in English with a focus on economics, business, area studies, sociology and law was considered to add a new dimension and to raise the profile of the university with this newsworthy change. This identification of kokusai-kei was also important to sell the idea internally as it clarified the distinction from the existing faculties. Despite the internal resistance, the final push came from the realization that an increasing number of students, particularly those who scored high on the entrance exams, were accepting offers from other universities with new programs, many associated with some form of internationalization.

Proposal Development: Obtaining MEXT Approval Obtaining approval from MEXT to open a new faculty and start a new degree program, even within an already established institution, requires a tremendous amount of work (see MEXT 2009 for details of the system). For the faculty, the process of writing up the proposal officially took over a year, but the preparation took more than three years, and almost ten years since the inception of the idea. The university made the final decision in July 2012 to proceed with setting up a preparatory office for the purpose of starting a new faculty. A committee was officially formed with representatives from other faculties and

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received its own budget and two dedicated staff members, one with a high proficiency in English and the other with a high competence in administration to begin in April 2013. The primary task of the committee was to hire two academics, one in social science and another in English education to develop the curriculum and write a proposal. I was employed in April 2014 as the language education specialist to design the English language program to prepare new high school graduates for EMI courses in social science. The team, composed of the preparatory committee chair who is a professor from the Faculty of Economics, the newly hired academics (my new colleague and I), and the administrative staff, spent the academic year of 2014–2015 developing a curriculum and writing the proposal to meet the submission deadline in March 2015 to apply for the academic year of 2016–2017. The proposal writing process was long and arduous. It required coordination by the main university administration office to gather contributions from the offices of human resources, finance, facilities, and business strategy development. For example, it was necessary to provide external evidence to strengthen the rationale for the new faculty. To this end, several market research companies were hired to conduct surveys to demonstrate that there was enough demand for the program in the high school population and also within the business communities (to hire the graduates of such a program). The structure of the proposal and the guidelines on how to write the proposal were voluminous and the instructions were abstract and formal. As with many manuals, determining the level of detail required is almost a guessing game. Following the designated format precisely was crucial, as any deviation may result in rejection of the submission. Since the proposal was to be reviewed by committees comprised of specialists in relevant fields only after the submission, the MEXT officers were technically not in a position to answer questions that mattered. It was possible to set up a few meetings with officers to ask specific questions with regards to the format of the proposal. Questions to elicit information about the acceptability of content had to be disguised as questions about the structure of the proposal or the appropriateness of wording. In fact, so little guidance could be gained from the meetings that previously accepted proposals, which are made public online by other universities, proved to be more useful.

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Submitting a Proposal The final proposal the preparatory office developed turned out to be about 1000 pages long, describing not only the purpose of the new faculty (program) and curriculum, but also the physical space and facilities and their cost, syllabuses of the courses to be taught by the tenured faculty members, admission criteria, procedures, the prospect of procuring students, CVs of all the faculty members (to be hired), studyabroad destinations, policy for dealing with low-achieving students, and the consent forms from prospective part-time teachers indicating their intention to teach the assigned courses for the first four years (which meant almost six years from the time of the interview). I was also informed that there was another set of documents prepared by other divisions providing detailed financial information regarding matters such as renovation of the building, equipment, fixtures and furniture to be purchased, and all the books and references to be added to the library. What makes it especially challenging is that once the proposal is accepted, we would be strictly under the scrutiny of MEXT, and we must report and get approval for any alternation including something as apparently trivial as adding a bookshelf to the teachers’ lounge or switching around the use of the office rooms. Any modification would alert MEXT that the proposal was not well-designed and was not likely to get approved and may even result in the warning on the ministry’s website, which would hurt the reputation of the new faculty even after the approval. In other words, we must rigorously follow the proposal drawn by imagining applicants and students and how they would feel and behave. We would not be able to add any new courses or alter syllabi in any way for the first four years until the first cohort graduate. Only after we submitted the proposal in March 2015, approximately one year in advance of the planned opening, were we allowed to start promotion for recruiting applicants provided that we add “new faculty under review” to all promotional materials. We were cautioned by MEXT that we may receive a warning if we failed to comply. In early June of 2015, the team was summoned to receive the provisional feedback from the special review committee. The feedback was read by one MEXT officer, without the presence of the review

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committee members to ensure the anonymity of the process. The officer could only deliver the feedback but not answer questions. When we had some questions, she diligently took notes and told us that she might be able to provide answers from the committee. There was one significant concern expressed by the committee that could have led to a delay in obtaining the approval. According to the officer, the committee was wary that the faculty name in Japanese, Kokusai-shakai Gakubu (Faculty of International Society) did not represent the goals and curriculum of the faculty. This was somewhat shocking as we did not anticipate such feedback and had already incurred considerable costs on all the promotional materials including the billboard signs. In Japan, faculty names do not necessarily express the main academic discipline but often feature the focus of the study. Kyoto University, one of the top national universities, has Sogo Ningen Gakubu, which can be literally translated as the Faculty of General Human Studies, but the Faculty of Integrated Human Studies is its English name. More colorful names can be found at other universities, such as Ajia 21-seiki Gakubu, which can be read as the Faculty of 21st Century Asia (the official English name: School of Asia 21), and Kyaria Dezain Gakubu, literally the Faculty of Career Design (the official English name: Faculty of Lifelong Learning and Career Studies). Therefore, we were puzzled to receive such a concern as we believed the name, Kokusai-shakai Gakubu, communicated the focus of the faculty, and it was a name that could be easily understood by high school students and the general public. Although it was not clearly stated, we interpreted the feedback as the suggestion to change the faculty name as it could be parsed as the faculty of sociology (syakaigaku ) or even social studies (shakai ) studied in high school. To avoid any delay in receiving the approval, we replaced it with Kokusai Shakai-kagakubu (Faculty of International Social Sciences), a runner-up on the faculty name list. We had avoided the word social sciences originally, as one of the market research studies indicated that high school students were not familiar with social sciences and it could give the faculty the image of ri-kei (science). The result of the market research played a major role in the choice of name, which shows the emphasis on the successful recruitment of students. In hindsight, changing the name was the right decision, as it is academically suitable and combines the two keywords that

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represent what our faculty is about: the focus on Kokusai-Shakai (international society) through the application of a Shakai-kagaku (social sciences) approach. As all the other points were minor, we were able to submit the revised proposal within the two-week period. The moment of great relief came with the final approval in August 2015, as scheduled. We proceeded with the recruitment process to welcome the first cohort in April 2016.

Curriculum Development: Working with the Constraints It is difficult to believe a 1000-page proposal can provide only the outline of the program, and most details not included in the proposal had to be decided before, during and after the development of the proposal and even the approval. While the autonomy of the new faculty was ensured, the institutional mindset and practices as well as strict MEXT guidelines set some limitations that affected the shaping of the academic program. I now turn to a few examples just to give an idea of how complex the process of developing a new curriculum can be, focusing on the factors that are connected to language education.

Optimum Size of the Program A program size must be decided by various factors, and the number of intake students is strictly monitored by MEXT. The number of students seems trivial yet it may be the most crucial feature that affects the fundamental design of the program. For the faculty, it was determined that 200 students per cohort would be optimum if it were to increase the revenue for the university to remain competitive in the market. At the same time, 200 would have been too ambitious for the program to be taught only in English. If the purpose of this new program were purely academic and to pilot an educational innovation, it would make sense to start small, as the number of high school students who would qualify is limited. For example, one liberal arts ETP program that started in

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2008 at a large-scale university in Tokyo, considered to be at the same academic level, set the admission bar for English proficiency at TOEFL iBT score of 71 (CEFR B1) and the capacity at 100 students per cohort, but this program seems to be suffering from under-enrollment. Another liberal arts program created recently at a different university set the capacity at 20 students with a similar requirement in English proficiency. Therefore, to ensure the success of the program, it is much safer to designate it as ‘partial EMI’ or with a requirement of EMI courses to attract a bigger high school population. The cohort size 200 was agreed on for the fifth faculty on campus. It needed to be comparable in size at least to one of the four existing faculties so that it could function in a similar way and could be easily assimilated into the already established system. The number of tenured faculty and full-time staff members to be hired was also determined by the expected revenue generated from this number of students; how many courses could be taught by the full-time English faculty members; and how many part-time instructors were to be hired, purely on a financial basis. The total number of classes to be taught was also determined basically by the maximum size of English class that still allowed the claim of ‘small-class instruction’ to be made, which has a significant marketing value as it appeals to high school students.

Balancing Act: Social Science, English, and Study Abroad The faculty was designed to award the bachelor degree of social sciences to those who successfully earned 124 credits or more, which is the minimum number stipulated by MEXT for a bachelor degree. The majority of the credits should be for social science courses while language is essential to the success of the EMI social science component. From the language education point of view, a delicate balancing act was required to secure as many courses on the list and slots in the timetable as possible in order to maximize the effect. Yet, there are other competing factors to consider. On average, only six to eight credits can be transferred from the study abroad semester while the maximum number of credits

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taken per semester is 24 if a student had stayed. The job-hunting practice in Japan also steals classroom time from the fourth-year students. Accordingly, those students who choose to study abroad for two semesters may still have a substantial number of credits left to be earned in the fourth year when job interviews will place a competing demand on their time. That is why the minimum study-abroad requirement was set at four weeks, to allow for the option of going away during the summer or spring break without sacrificing a whole semester. This would also provide financial flexibility for the students. The idea of offering CLIL courses in the first-semester of the second year simultaneously with the first lecture courses in English emerged out of the compromise between the limited number of English classes to be offered in the first year, and the need to start the EMI courses to meet the requirement for the social science degree before the students get too busy with their job hunting in the fourth year. From a marketing point of view, it was also important to keep CLIL as the distinctive feature of the new faculty, giving a strong impression of innovative language instruction. After all, students and parents know English as a school subject but almost never social science.

Learner Autonomy to Overcome Limitations Considering the expected level of students’ English and the limitation on the number of the credits for language education within a social science degree program, any given number of instructional hours would not guarantee the development of the desired level of proficiency. One way to overcome this is to support students’ out-of-class learning. Yet, one of the problems associated with this approach is that Japanese high school education focuses on students’ ability to follow instructions and complete exercises and not on the ability to manage their own learning. The importance of learner autonomy and metacognitive skills have long been recognized in language education (Benson, 2011; Cohen, 2011; Oxford, 2011), yet they have rarely been integrated into formal education in Japan. In the first-year compulsory Self-Directed Learning courses, the students are taught how to identify their needs, set goals, plan their own learning, execute the plan, evaluate the progress, and set new goals.

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The aim of developing agency and self-regulation is also built into the curriculum by the study-abroad requirement. In hindsight, this was a fortunate coincidence brought about by the institution’s limited number of partner schools overseas and lack of administrative staff and infrastructure that can develop an easy lockstep system. This forced us to employ a do-it-yourself approach. In other words, the students must make their own decisions not only with regard to where to go but also when to go and for how long. Making a decision that involves a substantial cost for the first time on their own necessitates them to consider their future, their capacity and their resources. They must learn to gather information, consult with and convince others—especially their families—and execute their plans that meet the various guidelines set by the faculty, and comply with the university-wide regulations.

Wiring the Classrooms One of the visions for the new curriculum was the heavy use of the online course management software and a bring-your-own-device approach. Much effort was required to persuade the administration to realize this seemingly simple idea. One question I was asked in the first year of planning was how many computer rooms should be added on the campus. The university administration was concerned that there would not be enough computer or multimedia classrooms available if the new faculty was to have many language classes. Going back to the days of language laboratories, some people have associated language education with the provision of the latest, often expensive, technological facilities. On the other hand, the university and its IT division had been very cautious in providing Wi-Fi across the campus for both educational and security reasons. Educationally, the idea of students having access to the internet in the classroom seemed to have been considered equivalent to reading comic books during the class. This mentality was apparent in the fact that Wi-Fi was available only in the hallway even in the newer buildings. Administratively, the tendency to prioritize security or avoidance of problems over the purpose of the action is pervasive in Japanese universities. Despite almost all universities in Japan claiming

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to be wired (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 2015), the use of Wi-Fi on campus is actually limited as most students connect to the internet by other means—usually via the phone company associated with their smartphones. The administration as well as some senior faculty members were skeptical as to whether the students would actually bring their own computers, yet agreed to provide Wi-Fi across the faculty building and in one of the classroom buildings where most of the language classes would be held when they realized the cost of the wiring the building would not exceed the high-spec computer rooms.

Innovation in Reality The new faculty drew more applicants for the first academic year (2016–2017) than initially expected and even more for the second year (2017–2018), which pushed up the ratio of applicants to places from 3.7 to 6.6. The change shows there is a demand for the program. The new faculty would add around 800 students to the institution over four years. The new program is certainly increasing revenue. The ripple effect is also seen as the number of applicants increased in all other faculties. But how is innovation actually taking place?

Educational Challenge The students come into the program through various admission hoops, which should eliminate those who do not identify with the aims of the program. Even if they are not so proficient in English, the students who are accepted are expected to be fairly motivated. Despite the concern initially held by the administration, there seems to be no problem with the bring-your-own-device approach. In fact, carrying a computer in their backpack into the classroom has become a norm and a mark of identity for the faculty’s students. Another new feature of the program for the university that was also a target of concern, the study-abroad requirement, seems to be taking shape. In the fall of the second year, over 70 students, nearly a third of the first cohort, left the campus to

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study social sciences or languages at universities abroad for a semester or two to fulfill the study-abroad requirement; it was previously assumed only a fifth would leave the campus for that long. At the same time, we are witnessing the fact that the realization of an innovation brings many conflicts at various levels. The necessary adjustments and improvements are being made to issues that we could not anticipate until we actually had students and teachers in classrooms. One of the challenges we immediately faced was how difficult it was to explain the concept of learner autonomy, and this became immediately evident in the students’ survey taken at the end of the first year. The first cohort students complained that they did not understand the purpose of the Self-Directed Learning courses in which teachers teach skills and strategies but not the language, and many felt that there was not enough support in the study-abroad program as they needed to think for themselves. Both components are designed to help students develop a sense of control and ownership of their learning, but the message was not understood by the students. The content-driven English courses for the second-year students in tandem with the first lecture courses in economics and international development as a bridge to other social science courses in English seemed to be functioning. However, many students found the jump from the firstyear EAP (English for academic purposes) courses difficult, especially in discussing the key concepts. The meaningful and effective integration of language education and social science study is still at the beginning stage.

Administrative Challenge Innovations are expected to be challenged by the existing structures. To provide support for study abroad, the faculty decided to operate entirely in the semester system while the rest of the university is still in the slow transition from the annual system to the semester system. Therefore, the online course registration system functions according to the annual system, which has no official registration period in the second semester, only the period for adding to and dropping the courses previously registered. All students are expected to register themselves into the

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second-semester courses at the beginning of the first semester in April. Those who wish to take the year-long courses in other faculties must be sure that there would be no overlap with the faculty courses they wish to take in the second semester on the timetable. The university issues official transcripts only once at the end of the academic year, including the courses offered in the first semester. This is all very confusing to first-year students. The launching of the faculty has so far opened up more possibilities that are also challenges. One such possibility is to add an English-only track as we are attracting students with a wide range of proficiencies in English. Some students would benefit from having the course of study entirely in English, and MEXT is encouraging the use of standardized, external exams as part of the admission requirement. In turn, this may bring in more students who are not so proficient in Japanese including degree-seeking international students. Again, the diversification of student population on the home campus would be a natural step toward true ‘globalization’ and would enhance the marketability of the university both domestically and internationally. Yet, such an idea cannot easily get support from the university administration as they will be forced to provide language training to the general administrative staff or hire those with special skills, which would inevitably require a change in the one-size-fits-all promotion and salary scale across the entire institution from kindergarten to graduate school offices. The small administrative section that has been dealing mostly with sending out and receiving a handful of exchange students would not be sufficient, and the recruitment and admission system must be adjusted to a wider range of applicants if the institution commits to this idea.

Closing Many of the challenges described in this chapter are not specific to this institution. Innovation is indeed onerous and changes can be incredibly slow to come by because the existing system is protected as “most everyone takes their responsibilities with total seriousness” even if the job is not worth doing or defeating the original purpose (Murphy, 2014, p.

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xxiii). It is tempting to blame the bureaucratic practices and conservative mindset. Yet, it is important and crucial for practicing teachers to remember that the total seriousness and the loyalty of the administration are what ensure the smooth operation in the classrooms of learning and teaching, and educational reforms cannot be achieved without the harmony of administrative and educational needs. As this chapter has demonstrated, if the creative thinking for education aligns with contextual and financial needs to get the administration on board, it can gather the momentum and be realized even in the least promising of environments.

References Benson, P. (2011). Teaching and researching: Autonomy in language learning. Essex: Pearson Education. Bradford, A. (2016). Toward a typology of implementation challenges facing English-medium instruction in higher education: Evidence from Japan. Journal of Studies in International Education, 20(4), 339–356. Bradford, A., & Brown, H. (2018). Road-mapping English medium instruction in Japan. In A. Bradford & H. Brown (Eds.), English-medium instruction in Japanese higher education: Policy, challenges and outcomes (pp. 3–13). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Cohen, A. (2011). Strategies in learning and using a second language. Harlow, UK: Longman Applied Linguistics/Pearson Education. Dafouz, E., & Smit, U. (2014). Towards a dynamic conceptual framework for English-medium education in multilingual university settings. Applied Linguistics, 37(3), 397–415. Dalton-Puffer, C. (2011). Content-and-language integrated learning: From practice to principles? Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, 182–204. Hashimoto, H. (2018). Government policy driving English-medium instruction at Japanese universities: Responding to a competitiveness crisis in a globalizing world. In A. Bradford & H. Brown (Eds.), English-medium instruction in Japanese higher education: Policy, challenges and outcomes (pp. 14–31). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Lasagabaster, D., & Doiz, A. (2016). CLIL experiences in secondary and tertiary education. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang AG.

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Locastro, V. (1996). English language education in Japan. In H. Coleman (Ed.), Society and the language classroom (pp. 40–58). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marsh, D., & Wolff, D. (2007). Diverse contexts—Converging goals CLIL in Europe. Frankfurt: Peter Lang AG. MEXT. (2009). Quality assurance framework of higher education in Japan. Retrieved from http://www.mext.go.jp/en/policy/education/highered/ title02/detail02/1373877.htm. MEXT. (2016). Heisei nijyu-hachinendo gakko kihon chosa kakuteichi no kohyo ni tsuite [Regarding the report on school basic survey 2016]. Retrieved from http://www.mext.go.jp/component/b_menu/other/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2016/12/22/1375035_1.pdf. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. (2015). Joho Tsuhin hakusho heisei 27nendoban [White paper information and communications in Japan year 2015]. Retrieved from http://www.soumu.go.jp/johotsusintokei/whitepaper/ja/h27/html/nc121310.html. Murphy, R. T. (2014). Japan and the shackles of the past (What everyone needs to know). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Obunsha Kyoiku Joho Center. (2016, August). Shiritsu-dai nyugaku teiin ware: 27nen yori nanakozo no 257 daigaku, 44.5% ni akka [257 private universities facing the insufficient enrolment, 44.5% worsened by 7 schools from 2015]. Retrieved from http://eic.obunsha.co.jp/pdf/exam_ info/2016/0816_1.pdf. Oxford, R. L. (2011). Teaching and researching language learning strategies. Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman. Tsuchiya, K., & Pérez Murillo, M. D. (2015). Comparing the language policies and the students’ perceptions of CLIL in tertiary education in Spain and Japan. Latin American Journal of Content and Language Integrated Learning, 8(1), 25–35. Wilkinson, R., & Walsh, M. (2014). Integrating content and language in higher education: From theory to practice: Selected papers from the 2013 ICLHE Conference. Frankfurt: Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften. Yamamoto, N. (2017, April 28). Genkaidaigaku wa kieru! Shiritsudai teiinware no kozo: Sashisemaru 2018 mondai, sono chokuzen taisaku wa? [Borderline universities will disappear! The structure of private university insufficient enrolment: What measures to be taken for the fast approaching the 2018 issue]. Retrieved from http://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/169669.

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Yoshida, A. (2014). Gurobaru jinzai no ikusei to nihon no daigaku kyoiku: giron no rokarizumu wo megutte [Development of global jinzai and Japanese university]. Educational Studies in Japan, 81(2), 164–175. Yoshijima, S., & Ohashi, R. (2004). Gaikokugo Kyouiku II -Gaikokugono gakushu, kyojyu, hyoka no tameno yo-roppa kyoutsu sanshowaku [Foreign Language Education II. Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment]. Tokyo: Goethe-Institute Japan, Asahi Publishing. Zhao, K., & Lei, C. (2017). Technology-enhanced content and language integrated learning in Chinese tertiary English classes: Potentials and challenges. In H. Reinders, D. Nunan, & B. Zou (Eds.), Innovation in language learning and teaching: The case of China (pp. 89–113). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Innovating with the ‘The Collaborative Social’ in Japan Tim Murphey

Introduction This chapter is a very personal and subjective overview of some potentially harmful aspects of society and education in Japan. Social psychology has warned us for many years about the danger of increasing isolation and individualization (III) along with reactive affiliations (e.g. Nazism) just for the sake of belonging to something. Fromm wrote in his 1941 book Escape from Freedom, “to feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death” (p. 17). More recently, biology (Wilson, 1975/2000) and neuroscience (Lieberman, 2013; Cosolino, 2013; Sapolsky, 2018) have stressed and exposed our social needs. Hari’s recent book Lost Connections (2018) has exposed the billion-dollar antidepressant industry as mostly unnecessary when we learn how to socially reconnect with others and our core values. And most recently the UK has T. Murphey (*)  Kanda University of International Studies, Chiba, Japan © The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7_12

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created a minister for loneliness position in their government (BBC 2018) to fight the ill effects of III. Schools it would seem are places where students can go to become more social, but while we teach students in groups we evaluate and score them individually and the amount of social interactions in many classrooms does not often add to a sense of school belonging (Dörnyei & Murphey, 2003; Murphey et al. 2010). This chapter looks at ways to innovate and activate “the collaborative social” in general and during assessments in particular so that students can become more socially adept at bonding and belonging with others. It is unapologetically a blend of several articles and book chapters beginning 30 years ago with my student-made tests (Murphey 1989). Below I also reflectively note autobiographically seven sources of innovative practices that I fortunately encountered that I think will tell us how to seed many future innovations in education in Japan. This is followed by three waves of activity around innovating testing.

A Reflective Introduction: Seven Sources of Innovative Practices I believe that my seven inspirations for innovation below have actually helped many of us to innovate in the area of teaching, research and, more precisely, testing (addressed later below). (1)  Somebody believing in you: In the article, Publishing Ecologies (Murphey et al., 2008), I shared the following short story about the impact of Pat Byrd’s expressive belief in her graduate students at the University of Florida where I did my MA TESOL degree: When Tim’s MA supervisor, Pat Byrd, first told him that he had a good idea and should write it up, he thought she was joking. But he dared to write a rough draft just describing an activity he had been doing in class and gave it to her. She modified it a bit and

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published it in a small newsletter, certainly no more than a page. What happened next is the important part: Tim saw his name in print. Seeing his name in print, he felt a sense of possible belonging to a new group, an imagined community (Norton, 2001) of teachers striving to understand how to teach better. He felt like, maybe, the profession wanted his contributions and he began identifying himself as a teacher/researcher. Lave and Wenger (1991) would describe it as being invited in from the peripheral of merely looking at it to actually doing it as a member of a community of practice. (Murphey et al., 2008)

When someone believes in your capacity to innovate, it gives you not just permission to innovate, it encourages innovative thinking and actions: new ways of teaching, describing alternative ways of learning, and even daring to imagine more effective ways of assessment and grading. I try to express such beliefs in my own students as much as possible to spur on their own creativity. Even my freshmen write their language learning histories, and we put them into a class publication (with all their names attached). I make extra copies to give to junior and senior high school teachers when I do workshops with them. And I let my freshmen know I am doing this and that their stories, with advice and criticism, might change a teacher’s teaching. (2)  No rules, no limits: The Wilga Rivers (1975) quote below summarizes much of what I wish to say in this chapter about innovation and supports our social teaching and testing within exploratory action research (see Smith, #4) and principled improvization: The essence of language teaching is providing conditions for language learning—using the motivation which exists to increase our students’ knowledge of the new language; we are limited only by our own caution, by our own hesitancy to do whatever our

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imagination suggests to us, to create situations in which students feel involved—individually, in groups, whichever is appropriate for the age level of our students in the situation in which we meet them. We need not be tied to a curriculum created for another situation or another group. We must adapt, innovate, improvise…. (p. 96, bold added)

When I read this many years ago, I felt liberated and free and realized that different things work with different groups and that my role as a teacher was to explore and let my intuition tell me what might work in different situations. I felt that no two teachers or classrooms were ever exactly the same; that I needed to improvise and see what would ‘fit’ the group I was teaching. It did not mean that I had to reinvent everything each class, but it did mean that I was supposed to get to know my students and find out what was working for them. Over the years, I have found in my teacher-training that sharing this perspective with students has allowed them to become more innovative with the special gifts that they all also have. (3)  Dare to be unreasonable: “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world: the unreasonable ones persist in trying to adapt the world to themselves. Therefore, all progress depends on unreasonable people” (a paraphrase of Shaw, 2008).  Innovation is often a process of challenging reason, doubting what we normally do and questioning conventional thinking to find better ways and processes. George Bernard Shaw is telling us that we need to be unreasonably brave to do things in different ways and not always just do what everybody else does. Prospecting innovation often requires throwing conventional reason out the window and dares us to imagine the unimaginable. (4)  Be an explorer: Many researchers have been doing what Smith (2015) labeled Exploratory Action Research for a long time. My own exploratory action research with testing began in 1989 in Switzerland (30 years ago) when I dared to suggest to students at my university to create their own tests with their own questions (described in more detail below).

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(5)  Question traditional assumptions: Swain, Kinnear and Steinman (2011) explain well the illogic of conventional testing and question it in the following quote: We tend to take the use of tests for granted. However, underlying their use is a set of assumptions about the knowledge and abilities being tested that are different from those of SCT [socio-cultural theory]. For example, in general, we think of tests as something that must be done alone. It is considered cheating to ask a peer for help, to use a dictionary, or to search the Internet. Why? (p. 118)

Thus, our basic assumptions lead us down a testing path that ignores our sociality (Dunbar, 1998, see below). Asking students to evaluate themselves puts them into a different seat of responsibility and autonomy, which is profoundly supported by Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory (SDT; 1985) and Hattie (2012, more details below). (6)  Organize your thoughts collaboratively: When we bring people together in groups to learn, it creates great potential for social learning. However, most teachers and schools do not treat students, nor classes, as active socially intelligent dynamic systems (SINDYSs) that can learn from each other (Murphey, 2013a, 2013b). We teachers often see the group as a threat to be controlled rather than a dynamic ever-changing mystery to be explored and stimulated. And while we teach to groups, we evaluate the individual. Our present state of testing isolates students from what made us intelligent initially: each other. Our conscious mind, and the class mind, is like a cloud that is constantly moving between two sets of poles. A class together ideally would be able to be active and inter-mental (Fig. 1)—that is, it would enable exploration of each other’s thoughts. However, very often students are pushed into passive roles of listening to one professor talk and quite often drift off to their own private worlds in their minds (i.e., intra-mental and passive).

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Fig. 1  Socially intelligent dynamic systems; Consciousness cloud in motion

What does a SINDYS have to do with my social testing below? Well, Dunbar’s (1998) and Lieberman’s (2013) arguments lead us to believe that we are first and foremost social animals meant to interact and learn from one another through socializing. The social testing procedures below (Wave III) and the students’ intuitive comments seem to support these findings. Many students also say they enjoy being more active and inter-mental and learn a lot from the testing procedures. In our normal everyday world, we often access information about the health or economic activity of people like ourselves so that we can hopefully live more intelligently, creating a SINDYS. When a teacher returns information that she has gathered from the class, back to the class, also known as Critical Participatory Looping (Murphey & Falout, 2010), she can make the group more intelligent about itself creating an active SINDYS in the classroom. Every class is actually a SINDYS, but some are unfortunately more passive, dormant and intra-mental than others who receive more information about the group that they can use to engage and learn from. For Falout, this is called the social crux: Teachers in Japan endeavor to make personal connections with their students and inspire them. But in a culture of learning inclined primarily toward testing grammar knowledge on paper,

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the point soon comes when lessons become heavily reliant on explications of complicated textual phrases and passages that are largely unapplied, unwieldy, and uninteresting … English is then a school subject with specimens of the language captured somewhat randomly and pinned down for dissection with various parts studied as facts or rules. (Falout, 2013, p. 145)

Social testing brings SINDYS into the assessment arena and allows social intelligence (the social crux) to play a greater role, which of course it already plays in our everyday lives. (7)  Look for collaborating co-innovator-specialists: I have found many advocates of changing our testing procedures with innovative testing from Kohn (1993, 2000), Roediger (2014), Clarke (2003), Pennycook (2010), J. D. Brown (1996, 1998), H. D. Brown and Abeywickrama (2010), and Shohamy (2001). We do not have to create a whole new world alone and we can collaborate to see how others are thinking and bounce our ideas off one another to come up with even better ideas. I have also felt the increasing impact of neuroscience and sociology in general on my concepts of social testing (below).

Wave I: Student-Made Tests (Including Students in the Testing Process) In 1989, I was in my last year of my Ph.D. in Switzerland before I came to Japan and I wanted my university students to engage a bit more in the democratic running of their classes. So, I asked them in pairs to brainstorm all the things they had learned over the last few weeks that they thought should be on a test. I asked them not to look in their books but rather in their minds. Next, they got into groups of four and exchanged their papers and discussed whether they agreed with the others about what should be tested. Some ideas were accepted and some crossed off, some new ones were added and there was lots of negotiation. I collected all the lists from the students and complied them into one large sheet so each person could have a copy in the next class. I then instructed them to make questions out of the information.

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They again negotiated a lot and consulted with me somewhat. They went over the questions in groups, had great discussions, and decided which questions were too difficult and which ones they could handle. I also asked them to tell me which ones would help them to learn. Before turning their papers in. I told them that they might want to look at all of the sheets of questions during the last 15 minutes of class because I would try to take a least a few questions from every sheet for the test in the next class. It was an intensive 15 minutes, to say the least. I realized afterward that the above interactive test-making probably filtered down through several general ideas that I had read over the last few years. Krashen had said that we need comprehensible input in order to acquire language. Michael Long and others looked at how we get comprehensible input, finding that it was through adjustments to each other when we speak. These adjustments (confirmation checks, reformulations, questions, etc.) happen most when we are interacting, preferably with only one other person. I ended this early article with these thoughts on adjusting and interacting (Murphey, 1989, p. 29): While this hypothetical schema is quite plausible, there still exists the problem of testing. Interaction is a multidimensional, messy thing done between idiosyncratically processing human beings. In other words, we may all interact in the same environment and acquire, or think we are doing different things. Allwright (1984) has demonstrated this very well. So all I am suggesting is to ask our students what in their opinions, was done and learned, using this information to help them teach each other, and then having tests that reflect a consensus of what was done and what was really learned.

After moving to Japan in 1990, I was given opportunities to continue my thinking about innovative changes in the structure of curriculum and testing and I embraced them whole heartedly (Murphey et al., 1991). I started seeing the responsibility of curriculum and testing as responsive acts of education to the needs of students: “These responding curricula ideally allow for teachers’ and students’ individual talents and creativity to be taken advantage of ” (Murphey et al., 1991, p. 13).

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Wave II: Negotiated Interaction: Learning from Our Students Some of my social testing preferences come from my desire to learn from my students and their understandings of what they have learned and what is valuable in the classes. My students all do action logs (Murphey, 1993) in which they evaluate the activities we do in class and write comments and suggestions for improvements. The action logs can be seen as feedback on the efficacy of my classes (a kind of test result for me on how well I do as a teacher). So, in a way, I am testing myself in every class and getting valuable feedback soon after to improve the processes of teaching and learning. Students tell me what they understood and what they did not understand, thus showing me what I need to re-teach in subsequent classes. I realized that, through this action log dialogue with my students, I was learning a lot about how to be a better teacher. Thus, about a decade after Dick Allwright’s seminal 1984 paper, Why don’t students learn what teachers teach? I wrote, Why don’t teachers learn what learners learn? Taking the guesswork out with action logging (Murphey, 1993), suggesting we use action logs to inform ourselves of what is happening in our classes. And then I thought to myself, “How could I organize such valuable feedback for students during tests?” Thus, in the mid 1990s I started trying to see how I could help students learn as much as I was learning by having negotiated interactive tests (Murphey, 1994, p. 12). Allwright (1984) answered his own question (“Why don’t students learn what teachers teach?”) in part by showing that students have their own perceptions of what is going on in a classroom, so naturally they learn different things. Although some may find this to be a problem, these different perceptions are potentially a teacher’s richest resource. They are the raison d’être of communication and can add greatly to variety and fun in the classroom. Of course, like any resource, it requires figuring out how to use it before it can have value. One way to mine students’ different perceptions and use them is through student-made tests, building upon what a group knows as a whole and getting them to collaborate in their learning.

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I believe that at least some tests can be relaxing and enjoyable opportunities for students to grow and become better learners. Although enjoyable tests may seem an oxymoron to many students and teachers, enjoyment is the actual reaction of many students to these tests. The main goal in creating them is to offer as many wonderful opportunities for learning (Allwright 1984) as possible; without the ‘enjoyable’ aspect, tests are usually missed opportunities. Putting students more interactively in the center of creating and administering the tests reduces anxiety as students feel more in control and actually have fun with the tests.

I created a list of things that I thought were valuable for me to aim for when constructing and organizing testing with my students around this time (Murphey, 1994, p. 12) and I have added to it since. During this wave, I also started performance testing with students recording themselves in videoed conversations, transcribing them, and counting the number of words, questions, rejoinders and so on (Murphey, 1998; Murphey & Woo, 1998). I was also able to explore this while in Taiwan recording students speaking both Japanese and English as a foreign language (Murphey, 2003b).

Wave III: Scaffolding Social Testing I had been promoted to head of the entrance exam committee at my Japanese university in 2000. During my short term, I discovered the ugly side of entrance exams at many universities in Japan and resigned and went to Taiwan for two years. During this time, I published several articles criticizing the exams as being harmful to students and to the university system in general, as well as writing a novel, The Tale That Wags, for the Japanese public, (with a purposeful playfulness with tail and tale ) published in English, Italian and in Japanese (Murphey, 2010, 2011). I began my third wave of innovative testing around 2012 with the use of what I called a ‘social testing component’ at the end of a regular individual time period test. Students gave themselves scores at two separate occasions during the test, once after doing it individually, and then

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again after asking for help and adding answers with an ink pen (the first part was done with a pencil, so the teacher could see the amount completely by the student alone, and the second part was completed with the help of others in ink). Thus, even when being tested, students can use their social learning skills to collaboratively help one another, improve their learning, and learn through giving themselves their own grades. Hattie’s research rates “self-reported grades” as having the highest effect size (a quantitative measure of the magnitude of a phenomenon) of 150 researched activities researched (Hattie 2012, p. 266). My students for the past six years have given themselves test grades after these two time periods, once after working alone, and again after asking others for answers (no copying, everything is verbal, see Appendix 1 for a sample test). However, there still remains room for improving this process through teaching students through scaffolding (which I have only recently begun doing), to not simply give answers, which Hattie and Timperley (2007, p. 96) address below (bold added): Mueller and Dweck (1998), … conducted a series of six studies with elementary students and found that students provided with ability feedback [judgements] were more performance than learning oriented and reported poorer performance and lower enjoyment of tasks after a failure. ‘Seeking help’ is a learner proficiency, and many types of help-seeking behavior can be considered aspects of self-regulation. A major distinction is made between instrumental help seeking (asking for hints rather than answers) and executive help seeking (asking for answers or direct help that avoids time or work; Nelson-Le Gall, 1981, 1985; Ryan & Pintrich, 1977). Higher levels of instrumental help seeking lead to feedback at the self-­ regulation levels, whereas executive help seeking is more likely to relate to the task level and sometimes the processing level. When considering how to develop instrumental help-seeking behavior, it is important to keep in mind it is mediated by emotional factors. Many students do not seek help because of perceived threats to self-esteem or social embarrassment. (Karabenick & Knapp, 1991; Newman & Schwager, 1993, bold added)

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The major social testing procedure that I am proposing in this third wave is ‘asking for help,’ or ‘seeking help,’ as presented above. Asking is a designated part of the test, and thus a prescribed procedure that students at first ‘play along with,’ but soon, as they get over their “threats to self-esteem or social embarrassment” (because everybody is asking questions at the same time), they engage with whole-heartedly and learn that they can learn even more during a test! The Japanese have a common saying that goes “Asking may be a moment’s embarrassment, not asking is a life-long regret” (Kiku wa itoki no hadji, kikanu wa isho no hadji). However, most students very seldom dare to ask for help—a process that not only helps themselves, but helps those who help them to feel good as well. In fact, most of the comments I get at the bottom of the tests (see Table 1) are of two types. One is about how much they enjoyed helping others and that it made them feel really good. The second acknowledges that others helped them a lot and they regret that they could not help as much as they wanted to; thus, they say they will study harder for the next test. They are proclaiming that they want to study harder in order to help others, not themselves. In our world of increasing isolation and individualization (hereafter, III, an acronym that also speaks to its narcissistic meanings), these tests teach students how to ask and the joy of interacting and helping others. This is The Collaborative Social that we need more of in our schools. Ironically, I have been discovering The Collaborative Social in an area where students are normally totally isolated—testing—by simply adding on a social component to the end of a test. Over the last 10 years, I have tried augmenting classroom interaction as well as interaction out of class by assigning call reports (in which they have to call their partners and discuss for a few minutes, mostly in English if possible, about what they learned that day) and teach reports (in which they have to teach someone not in our class, something they learned in our class) which spreads their learning and socialization with networks of people outside of class. They write the call and teach reports in their action logs and I read them each week and comment on them.

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Students’ Feedback (Bottom Scores and Comments) As you will notice in Table 1, which is located at the bottom of all the social tests, there are places for three grades and a place for comments about the test. The first two places for the scores have been explained above as an individual time period self-grade, and a post-social period grade. The third score can be used by the teacher to average, add or adjust a grade based on criteria that they have in mind. I typically mark off lots if there are lots of blanks because it means they just do not care or did not dare to ask anyone for an answer. After students write in their grades, I ask them to write in the names of people “Who helped you?” (WHY) and “Who did you help? (WDYH) (which are often the same people) and finally “What do you think of this test?” (WDYTOTT). Table 1  At the end of social tests (see examples in Appendix 1) 1st score /100% 2nd score Who helped you? WHY? Who did you help? WDYH? What do you think of this test? WDYTOTT?

/100%

3rd score

I give them a minute or two to reflect on the test, and to tell me what they think about it. Then I typically copy all the comments and loop their comments back to them in a class soon after the quiz, using critical participatory looping (CPL; Murphey & Falout, 2010). On the handout, I might write “Five left this blank; ten people said it was hard, five said I needed more time. And the rest are below for you to read.” Below are a few exceptionally positive evaluations of a test from 2014, which confirm some of the points made above: ++ Very Positive Evaluation of ‘Ways of Learning’ Class (May 2014)

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1. It was interesting because I think it is important to help each other and share information. I also had a chance to speak to strangers. 2. The most fascinated test that I’ve ever had. 3. I think this type of test is awesome!! We can help each other even in Quiz!! I think that is amazing! We can actually show our courage. We can co-construct our knowledge. 4. I really like this type of test. I’ve never done such a creative and interactive test, and I really think that I was required to get information and help people, and these are vital skills to live in real life! 5. I’ve never had this type of test, but this is really fun. Talk to people and get answers from them. I learned how important to ask, share, communication are.

Performance and Video Assessment/Testing Another form of testing that is becoming more and more popular in Japan is referred to as ‘performance testing,’ which usually involves students having a conversation with one another about some previously prepared topic. It is best done when videoed and shared with students along with a self-evaluation component. I recently was on two Ph.D. committees in which students were analyzing such interactions longitudinally and with classes of students at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies.

Student Presentations as Performance Material I believe also that by giving students the agency to make decisions to present on topics concerned with a vast array of global problems and to navigate their environments collaboratively, they develop awareness and a sense of self-efficacy, autonomy and hope that they can also make a difference in the world. These presentation tasks can at first be done in pairs and then individually.

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The world needs innovators and people who dare to do what others have not yet conceived. An important part of these tasks is that students seem to develop personal agency and autonomy, and the willingness to collaboratively improvise with others, to find difficult answers to difficult problems: at first in simply teaching what one is struggling to learn (teaching reports), and then daring to ‘ask’ during a test (social testing), and then daring to collaboratively improvise with others in presentations. These are tasks-as-tools for teaching, testing and, later in life, for saving the planet.

A Note on Action Logs I came to Japan in 1990 and started experimenting with action logging (reflection journals) as a way to get valuable feedback from students (Murphey, 1993). To this day, I still can’t wait to read my students action logs and get about 160 every week at my present school. Their feedback is continually teaching me how to be a better teacher and to create better classes. I strongly believe that great innovation needs great feedback methods in order to create something that is visible and valuable. I remember telling my students those first few years to “think of every day as a test, and you want to speak as much English as you can for the test, make good mistakes and learn from them. And describe your efforts and your desires in your daily action logs.” When they do that well, they end up training teachers to be better teachers as well.

Socializing Students with Affective Videos and Surveys Murphey and Morris (2018) describe three videos that seemed to help students engage in more peaceful learning in their classes and be more emotionally sensitive to their classmates. For several years now, my Tokyo research team have been surveying students about their “ideal classmates” and have found that simply asking crucial questions like,

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“Please describe classmates who would help you learn and enjoy learning in our classes. What would they do?” We collect all their answers and loop them back to the students so they can see what their classmates are saying about what they want and this seems to make them all more sensitive to helping each other learn in positive ways. We (Murphey, Falout, Fukuda, & Fukuda, 2014) call the procedure ‘Ideal classmates.’

Conclusion Active learning holds that teachers should not be the only people teaching in a class: students can learn to teach each other and, in the process, learn better themselves. Teaching-to-learn is one of the highest-rated learning tasks that we as teachers can give to our students. Hattie (2012) also cites “reciprocal teaching” as having one of the highest-rated impact sizes among all the learning activities investigated through his meta-analyses (2012, p. 266). When students are given tasks to teach what they are trying to learn, they learn it better and it gains more value (Murphey, 2017a). I have over five years of students’ case studies (in-class-published-booklets) of students teaching course material to others outside the classroom: friends, family, and co-workers (Murphey, 2016). These case studies clearly verify how students’ teaching clarifies their understanding and their mastery of the material being learned. Roediger (2014) in his insightful article, How tests make us smarter, teaches us that frequent quizzing and testing are actual ways to build knowledge. The act of trying to retrieve information actually creates better neural connections in our brains. Practicing retrieval makes us smarter. Frequent, low-stakes oral quizzing (asking students to ask each other questions) could be one of the best ways for teachers to help students create robust learning in the classroom. Seeking to retrieve information creates stronger connections that subsequently become stronger. Thus, testing and quizzing can be used as ways to enhance learning

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when done frequently and with low stress and helpful feedback. Roediger and Finn (2009) showed in an earlier study that getting an answer wrong at first was alright; as long as students were thinking in order to create an answer, they could plug in the right answer later. It seems that the mental struggling was essential for setting up a neural network that could hold the answer. The relationship-centered autonomy of ‘The Collaborative Social’ seeks to empower students with the ability to ask and learn, rather than isolate and individualize. Educators may need to decide what is more important to them: (1) the assessment of individuals deprived of their normal social networks of knowledge; or (2) the assessment of individuals connected to their resources, who are at the same time developing their resources (Murphey, 2003a). ***********

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Appendix 1: Quiz 1 for Group Dynamics and the Social Brain. Fall 2017. Students n = 27

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Full NAME and # 2017 July 20 Write what you know! Quiz quickly. Write the song lyrics on the back and put them in small boxes THE lyrics & #: How are you?#2 or Are you vivacious? What are you going to do today? Are you content? Who are you? What’s more beautiful than a bird sitting in a tree? How do you have a good life? How can you be rich? How do you write well? What is positive psychology:

10. Why does bird-sounds make us relax? 11. If you work in an open space office with others, what are the results typically 12. When does a baby begin to smile? 13. What was the added longevity to smiling baseball players? 14. What does an amygdala whisperer try to do? 15. What % of our brain is Glial Cells and what do they do? 16. Describe the special connections between our hands and our brains: 17. What is the best way to fight cell-phone addition? 18. How do moderate challenges, problems, and mysteries (CPM) push human development? 19. What is PERMA: T= TRUE F = False 20. Women are right brain people (emotions) and men are left brain (rational thinking) 21. Language is located only in the left hemisphere of the brain 22. We only use 10% of our brains 23. Listening to classical music will make your brain smarter. 24. Learning to juggle has no impact on brain development 25. It is OK for young children to learn several languages at the same time. 26. Children learn languages faster than adults 27. Physical education has no impact on cognitive functioning 28. When the brain is damaged, there are no ways to fix it. 29. Emotions and logic are in separate areas of the brain. 30. Sleep is more important than study for cognitive development. 31. Questions answered wrongly once will continue to be answered with the wrong answers. 32. Riding a stationary bike while reading keeps kids from reading well. 33. Singing together synchronizes and connects brains and bodies. 34. It is time to shout out loud “I’m in love” with a power pose and get extra points. Score one (ink) % Score two (ink) % Score three Who Helped you? Who did you help? Whar do you think of the test?

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Social testing with student changing partners every few minutes (circa 2014). They can only ask one or two questions per person, and are not supposed to look at the papers, only ask and listen and write. About 20 minutes of solo time at the beginning and then 10–20 minutes social time. When there is a question that no one seems to be getting, I go to a low-level shy student and help him find the answer, then I announce to the class, “Hiro has the answer to #8” and suddenly Hiro gets a lot of attention and can enjoy helping many people.

Appendix 2: Important Points for Making Learning Tests (Murphey, 1994)

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Additional things to think about (added 2019): 11. Can students learn powerful social skills while testing like ‘asking’ or scaffolding and even friend-making? 12.  Can students self-evaluate themselves at least partially to give teachers an idea of what they think of themselves and strengthen their abilities to self-evaluate as they will be doing for the rest of their lives?

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Murphey, T. (2013b, October). With or without you and radical social testing. Po'okela (Hawai’I Pacific University Newsletter), 20(69), 6–7. Murphey, T. (2016). Teaching to learn and well-become: Many mini-renaissances. In P. McIntyre, T. Gregerson, & S. Mercer (Eds.), Positive psychology in SLA (pp. 324–343). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Murphey, T. (2017a). Asking students to teach: Gardening in the jungle. In T. Gregersen & P. MacIntyre (Eds.), Exploring innovations in language teacher education (pp. 251–268). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Murphey, T. (2017b). Provoking potentials: Student self evaluated and socially mediated testing. In R. Al-Mahrooqi, C. Coombe, F. Al-Maamari, & V. Thakur (Eds.), Revisiting EFL assessment: critical perspectives (pp. 287– 317). New York: Springer. Murphey, T. (2017c). A 4-page condensed version of Tim Murphey’s book chapter “Provoking Potentials: Student Self-Evaluated and SociallyMediated Testing”. Available at STANFORD University’s eNewsletter by Rick Reis “Tomorrow’s Professor”, https://tomprof.stanford.edu/ mail/1581#June 30. Murphey, T., & Falout, J. (2010). Critical participatory looping: Dialogic member checking with whole classes. TESOL Quarterly, 44(4), 811–821. Murphey, T., Falout, J., Fukuda, T., & Fukada, Y. (2014). Socio-dynamic motivating through idealizing classmates. System, 45, 242–253. Murphey, T., Kim, M., Kusutani, S., Lawson, J., Sugawara, M., & Yamaura, N. (2008). Publishing ecologies. OnCUE Journal, 2(3), 206–220. Murphey, T., & Morris, S. (2018). Short emotional peace video recommendations. Positive Peace Pedagogy Papers #1, 7–9. https://drive.google.com/ drive/folders/1gLaZAM_ot7Eb_rz6HnDfBz0Yb8sKtdaE. Murphey, T., Prober, J., & Gonzáles, K. (2010). Emotional belonging precedes learning. In A. M. F. Barcelos & H. S. Coelho (Eds.), Emoções, reflexões e (trans)formações de professores e formadores de línguas [Emotions, reflections, and (trans)formations of language teachers and teacher educators] (pp. 43–56). Campinas, Sao Paulo: Pontes Publishers. Murphey, T., & Woo, L. (1998). Videoing student conversations: Educational video’s daimond in the rough. The Language Teacher, 22(8), 21–24. Murphey, T., Wright, M., & Kondo, Y. (1991). Frozen vs responding models of language curriculum. Journal of the Nanzan Academic Society, 51, 1–16. Nelson-Le Gall, S. (1981). Help-seeking: An understudied problem-solving skill in children. Developmental Review, 1, 224–226.

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Nelson-Le Gall, S. (1985). Help-seeking behavior in learning. American Educational Research Association, 12, 55–90. Newman, R. S., & Schwager, M. T. (1993). Students’ perceptions of the teacher and classmates in relation to reported help seeking in math class. Elementary School Journal, 94, 3–17. Norton, B. (2001). Non-participation, imagined communities and the language classroom. In M. Breen (Ed.), Learner contributions to language learning: New directions in research (pp. 159–171). London: Pearson Education. Pennycook, A. (2010). Critical applied linguistics. New York: Routledge. Rivers, W. (1975). Speaking in many tongues: Essays in foreign-language teaching. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers. Rodiger, H., & Finn, B. (2009, October). Getting it wrong: Surprising tips on how to learn. Scientific American: Mind Matters. Retrieved from https:// www.scientificamerican.com/article/getting-it-wrong/ and http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=getting-it-wrong. Roediger, H. (2014, July 20). How tests make us smarter. The New York Times Sunday Review. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/ opinion/sunday/how-tests-make-us-smarter.html. Ryan, A. M., & Pintrich, P. R. (1977). “Should I ask for help?” The role of motivation and attitudes in adolescents’ help seeking in math class. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 329–341. Sapolsky, R. (2018). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. London: Penguin. Shaw, G. B. (2008). Annajanska. Accessed June 10, 2008 from http://www. notable-quotes.com/s/shaw_george_bernard.html (original source: Maxims for Revolutionists ). Shohamy, E. (2001). The power of tests: A critical perspective on the uses of language tests. New York: Longman. Smith, R. (2015). Exploratory action research as workplan: Why, what and where from? In K. Dikilitas, R. Smith, & W. Trotman (Eds.), Teacherresearchers in action (pp. 37–45). Faversham, UK: IATEFL. Swain, M., Kinnear, P., & Steinman, L. (2011). Socio cultural theory in second language education: An introduction through narratives. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Wilson, E. O. (2000). Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

An Innovative Approach to In-Service Teacher Training for Teaching English at Japanese Public Elementary Schools Maiko Ikeda, Hiroyuki Imai and Osamu Takeuchi

Introduction Public elementary schools in Japan are currently tackling the ­enormous challenge of preparing to teach English as a formal academic subject to their pupils, which will officially begin in the year of 2020. Unfortunately, however, it has been reported that teachers are not well prepared for this endeavor, and their anxiety regarding teaching English has been drastically increasing since the announcement of introduction of English as an academic subject into the elementary school curriculum. M. Ikeda (*) · H. Imai · O. Takeuchi  Faculty of Foreign Language Studies, Graduate School of Foreign Language Education and Research, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan e-mail: [email protected] H. Imai e-mail: [email protected] O. Takeuchi e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7_13

257

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This is because most of the teachers do not have sufficient pre-service training or in-service experience/training in teaching English. To partially help ameliorate this dire situation, in this chapter, an innovative in-service teacher training approach is developed, and its validation through the experience of the people involved is reported. Its development and validation, situated in a specific context, can surely contribute to the smooth implementation of English in public elementary schools.

Area of Innovation As a part of the newly introduced Course of Study (i.e., the national curriculum standards),1 the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (henceforth MEXT) has officially announced that English will be introduced nationwide into the elementary school curriculum, effective from April 2020. One of the reasons behind this decision was the general perception that the current English language education system operating in public primary and secondary schools failed to achieve the government’s target of making the Japanese fluent enough to communicate in English. Given the rapid globalization of the economy and the introduction of English into primary school curricula in neighboring countries such as China and Korea, MEXT was faced with the urgent need to improve the country’s English language education. In 2002, the ministry thus introduced English classes in elementary school not as a formal subject, but as an optional or experimental subject. In 2011, amid fierce opposition2 from several prominent 1The

Courses of Study stipulates broad standards for all schools in Japan, from kindergarten through upper secondary schools, to organize their programs with the purpose of ensuring a fixed standard of education throughout the country. It was first implemented in 1951 and has generally been revised once every 10 years. The last time it was revised was March 2008 for elementary school (starting in 2011) and lower secondary school (starting in 2012), and March 2009 (starting in 2013) for the upper secondary schools. 2Some of the issues raised by the opponents are (1) a lack of clear goals for attainment in ‘Foreign Language Activity’ as had been planned; (2) a lack of appropriate pre-service and in-service teacher training systems for English language teaching; (3) an insufficient annual number of English class hours to be implemented; (4) skepticism about the priority of English over other foreign languages (criticism against so-called ‘English imperialism’); and (5) priority of teaching the mother tongue over foreign languages at the primary school level (see Otsu, 2005 for the details).

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researchers and English Language Teaching (ELT) practitioners (e.g., Otsu, 2005, 2009), this optional class was changed to ‘Foreign Language Activity,’ an academic domain (not a formal subject) taught at every elementary school. Its primary focus was placed on providing fifth and sixth graders with a chance to get familiarized with English (as well as cultures all over the world) in a more playful atmosphere, such as through playing games, chanting and singing. The annual number of English classroom hours was 35 for fifth and sixth graders, respectively. The primary school English education system introduced so far, however, has continued to produce nationwide dissatisfaction and ­ debate over its effectiveness and thus has resulted in major revisions in the form of the introduction of English as a formal academic subject, which is scheduled to take place in 2020. The new Course of Study, effective from 2020, provides that English is a formal academic subject for fifth and sixth graders. Accordingly, the use of authorized ­textbooks will be required, and official grades will be given to pupils based on their academic performance in the classroom. Reading and writing, in addition to listening and speaking, will be taught for the first time at elementary school. Furthermore, the document stipulates that ‘Foreign Language Activity,’ where pupils are only expected to experiment with English by speaking and listening (and hence no official grade is given), will also be conducted for third and fourth graders. The annual number of English class hours will be 70 (twice a week) for fifth and sixth graders, respectively, and 35 (once a week) each for third and fourth graders. As a result, a total of 210 classroom hours (compared with 420 classroom hours in junior high school) will be devoted to teaching English at elementary school throughout Japan.

The Context and Impetus for Innovation Since the above announcement, elementary schoolteachers’ anxiety regarding teaching English has been drastically increasing (e.g., Machida & Uchida, 2015; Yonezaki, Tara, & Tsukuda, 2016). This is because most of them do not have sufficient pre-service training or in-service experience/training in teaching English. As a matter of fact,

260     M. Ikeda et al.

basic knowledge and skills for teaching English have not long been mandatory for obtaining an elementary school teaching credential.3 Elementary schoolteachers thus feel that they are not well qualified or prepared for teaching English to pupils who are in the middle of a very sensitive period of language acquisition. To help mitigate this situation, a variety of in-service training sessions at various levels, ranging from those sponsored by MEXT to those conducted by local Boards of Education, have been implemented to ease teacher anxiety and to instruct them how to teach English effectively. For example, at a national level, MEXT has commissioned the British Council, a UK-based educational institution, to train motivated teachers to be the leaders in ELT. The Leaders of English Education Project (LEEP), launched in 2014, is a five-year project aimed at upgrading ELT across Japan. Through the project, MEXT aims to provide high quality training to teachers engaged in English language education at primary and secondary (junior high and senior high) levels in Japan. As a part of this project, by 2019, about 1000 elementary schoolteachers (200 per year) will be trained to become leaders of a new type of English education to be implemented soon. In this project, they are expected to teach fellow teachers at their local school districts in so-called ‘cascade’ training sessions (British Council, 2015). Local Boards of Education have also implemented various types of training in cooperation with MEXT or independently for their elementary schoolteachers. Although in-service training such as LEEP has been producing future leaders in the field, its effects so far have been limited. This is partly due to the sheer number involved: in Japan, as of August 2017, there are 19,929 elementary schools (with 4,319,595 third-sixth grade classes), and a total of 418,776 teachers are working in them (MEXT, 2017a). Thus, the aforementioned training, although of high quality and working well, might be a drop in the ocean in terms of numbers. In addition, only 5% of elementary schoolteachers surveyed had experienced

3Several revisions were made in 2016 by MEXT to the teacher-training system. From 2019 onward, basic knowledge of English teaching will be required (at least a half-semester course) for university students who are seeking to obtain a primary school teaching credential.

An Innovative Approach to In-Service Teacher Training …     261

studying abroad (MEXT, 2017b), and a very small proportion of them attained CEFR B1 level English proficiency (Asahi Shinbun, 2017), which means the starting point of the training is compelled to be set at a relatively lower level. A tight government budget for education is also a problem because these in-service training programs are costly, especially when their quality is the top priority. Another difficulty is that most of the training programs in progress are designed for general use and not for the use of a specific elementary school. Teachers thus need to adjust what they learn in the programs to their own schools, which is extremely difficult since most have little expertise and experience in teaching English. Furthermore, Japanese elementary schoolteachers are particularly busy, according to the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey 2013 (OECD, 2014).4 As with teachers around the world, elementary schoolteachers in Japan are in charge of not only teaching all the academic subjects taught at elementary school, but also of running extra-curricular activities, conducting daily school management, counseling troubled children, and sometimes coping with so-called ‘helicopter parents,’ who make unreasonable demands on behalf of their children. According to the OECD survey, however, the time commitment required for the latter half of the above-mentioned job descriptions rank extremely high when compared internationally. Most elementary schoolteachers in Japan are thus tremendously busy and not readily available for English teaching training sessions conducted at places outside of the school at which they work. These combined factors are a huge barrier against making English teaching at elementary school work effectively. Therefore, to circumvent this barrier and maximize results, an innovative in-service teacher training approach, tailored to the individual school context and readily available for a larger number of teachers is urgently and critically needed. Its development and validation, situated in a specific context, would surely contribute to the smooth implementation of ‘English’ and ‘English Activity’ in public elementary schools, beginning in 2020. This is the very impetus for the study reported below. 4See

also OECD (2017).

262     M. Ikeda et al.

The innovative in-service training approach and its implementation in a specific context are reported in the following sections. Its effectiveness is then evaluated using the model of activity theory (Engeström, 1999), based on the experiences and perceptions of the people involved.

An Innovative Approach for In-Service Teacher Training This section first describes the framework upon which the proposed in-service training approach is based. The details of the approach are elaborated on and its possible advantages are discussed.

The Framework The approach reported in this chapter depends on a framework called konaikenshu or in-service teacher training conducted at each individual school according its specific needs. This framework has its roots in the Meiji era (1912–1968) teacher training system in Japan and has long been a tradition among Japanese teachers, especially at the elementary school level. The present form of konaikenshu has been utilized all over Japan since the 1960s, and it is recognized as an effective way to develop the teaching faculty (Takagi & Fujii, 2010). In this framework, first, needs analysis is conducted at an individual school. After determining the needs at the school, possible ways to meet these needs are discussed, and teacher-training sessions are accordingly implemented, sometimes with the help of academic domain experts from a university or the local Board of Education. Sessions are usually conducted after school for about an hour or an hour and a half. Teachers are strongly encouraged (but sometimes not required) to participate. After each session or series of sessions, following the recent trend of observing the Plan-DoCheck-Action (PDCA) cycle,5 reflection is sometimes conducted among 5The PDCA cycle is an iterative four-step management method. It is used especially in business for the continual improvement of processes and products. The idea of the PDCA cycle has also been applied to fields such as education and school management.

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the teachers in charge, and further training needs are assessed. A striking feature of konaikenshu is that teachers at individual schools manage all these procedures on their own. Recently, however, its implementation has been low because of hindrances such as busy schedules, tight budgets, limited availability of human resources, and lower morale of teachers in terms of improving their own teaching abilities (Takagi & Fujii, 2010). Since konaikenshu has been a mainstay for in-service teacher training in Japan, its decline is considered to be a problem, especially in this time of great educational reform. The approach we are going to explain is based on the konaikenshu framework elaborated above, but it has several unique or innovative features of its own. The features involve: (1) the bridging role of students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching in training sessions; (2) collaboration among school administrators, teachers, and graduate/college students; and (3) supervision and feedback offered by university experts who have professional knowledge and skills in the concerned field. In addition, (4) a local Board of Education is also involved in its implementation, offering help to university experts and graduate/college students who are not familiar with the specific school context.

The Approach: How It Works In this approach (see Fig. 1 for its schematic representation), two or three students are dispatched to each of the selected elementary schools. They are postgraduate (master’s) or undergraduate (senior) students of teaching EFL and have knowledge and skills in TESOL (Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages) or applied linguistics. An experienced instructor intensively (90 minutes, five times a week) trains them beforehand: (1) teaching English to younger learners and (2) teaching elementary school practices, so that students can better adjust themselves to the school environment (pre-dispatch training). Additionally, a supervisor at a local Board of Education provides students (as well as the university experts involved) with some information about each school they are going to be dispatched to.

264     M. Ikeda et al.

Elementary Schools Selected Dissemination of the appraoch

Selection of schools

Local Board of Education

Information sharing

Implementation of in-service training Offering of data

Joint building of training

Offering of data

Dispatch of students

University Pre-dispatch training of students

Fig. 1  A schematic representation of how the approach works (Ikeda, Imai, & Takeuchi, 2017)

University experts, local Board of Education supervisors, and teachers in charge of konaikenshu then conduct needs analysis at an individual school. Based on the results, the dispatched students discuss possible ways to fill the specific needs of each school with university professors who are experts in teaching English. Building on the discussion, students then devise and offer several concrete ideas of training to the teachers in charge at each school. Then, the teachers in charge and the dispatched students together develop a concrete plan for in-service training and implement it collaboratively at an individual school, usually after school, five or six times per academic term, for about 30–60 minutes each (note that fine-tuning and adjustment are made depending on the schools). Once a series of sessions is finished, a reflection report completed by the dispatched students is submitted. Based on the report, further needs are assessed by the people involved, and revisions are made, if any, for the training procedures implemented and the materials developed.

An Innovative Approach to In-Service Teacher Training …     265

Advantages of the Approach As explained above, the approach offers a unique environment where specific needs for in-service training in an individual school context are met in the form of collaboration among teachers, graduate/college students, school administrators, supervisors at a local Board of Education, and university experts, each of whom have their own expertise to employ in the collaboration. This collaboration surely contributes to a reduction in teacher anxiety and improved English teaching in elementary schools. In this approach, the bridging role of students and its advantages should also be emphasized because they are in a unique position where no hierarchical consideration by teachers is necessary. Thus, discussion and subsequent joint building of training are possible in a relaxed and non-regulated atmosphere among the participants. Such an atmosphere may not be possible if school administrators, supervisors at a local Board of Education, or university professors were designed to be explicitly and directly involved in the procedures for the approach. This is because teachers generally regard these people as their managers/mentors (not as equals), so a sense of self-inhibition among them is inevitable in every phase of the approach. Note that the participating students can also benefit from the approach because they gain a good experience of on-the-job training from it and have opportunities for making use of the expertise they are develop. Furthermore, they learn how to cooperate with others in setting up and achieving common goals based on needs analysis through the procedures. Because most of them are aspiring to be teachers at various levels, this type of collaborative experience can be a great asset for their future careers (although there is a possibility that they would think pursuing the teaching profession is too hard for them based on the experience).

266     M. Ikeda et al.

Trial Implementation of the Approach To confirm the effectiveness of the approach, trial implementation was conducted with the full cooperation of a local Board of Education in the years 2015–2016.6 Consent for conducting the experimental approach at school and collecting the data for validation was obtained from the Board of Education, and from the principals and teachers of the selected schools.

The City, Schools and University Trial implementation was conducted in a suburban city in the Osaka Metropolitan Area, which is located in the western part of Japan. The city (with its population of 374,500 as of 2015) has a total of 35 elementary schools of various sizes. Out of 35, five schools were selected based on size, location and availability. Table 1 shows detailed information regarding the five elementary schools chosen. Three schools were middle sized, while one of them (J) was relatively large and another (S) was rather small. Two schools (M and R) stated that the improvement of English teaching was an annual goal of the school shared by the teaching staff. The university with which the language-teaching experts are affiliated is located in the vicinity of the city. It is a large-scale private university with 13 undergraduate faculties and 15 graduate schools with 30,887 students enrolled (as of August 2017).

School Administrators and Teachers Ten school administrators (one principal and one deputy principal of each elementary school) and a total of 102 teachers participated in this trial implementation. Some school administrators were positive

6In 2015, three schools participated in the trial implementation, while three others participated in 2016. Note that one school participated in both years. Because the data obtained from the school showed the same trends for both years, only those of the first year were used for the analysis.

An Innovative Approach to In-Service Teacher Training …     267 Table 1  Details of each school selected Annual Assignment school goal of AETsb

Elementary Number of schoola teachers

Approx. number of pupils

Number of classes per grade

K

21

450

2

M

22

420

2–3

English

R

22

470

2–3

English

S

14

290

1–2

J

23

615

3–4

Once a week Once a week Once a week Once a week Once a week

aThe

alphabets used for each elementary school are pseudonym stands for assistant English teacher who is a native or near-native speaker of English but has no teaching credential that is valid in Japan. The term ‘ALT’ (assistant language teacher) has also been used widely and interchangeably with AET, depending on the preference of local governments. In this study, such AET teachers are part-time teaching staff members (N = 8 for 2015; N = 7 for 2016) directly hired by the city and assigned to each school for helping classroom teachers in teaching English bAET

about the introduction of English in elementary school, while others were rather indifferent or reluctant. Most teachers were inexperienced in teaching English and had high anxiety associated with it before the implementation. Their English teaching experience varied from virtually none to just trial runs lasting a few years. They did not have English teaching credentials at the secondary level (i.e., junior or senior high schools) or English language proficiency above B1 on the Common European Framework of References for Languages (CEFR) scale.7 Teachers’ age range varied from a younger population to an older one, with two schools (R and J) having a larger population of junior teachers. Teachers in charge of konaikenshu (one or two for each school) were positive about teaching English at elementary school, and some had previous experience in teaching the language at the primary level. 7According

to the MEXT survey (MEXT, 2017b), only 5.1% of elementary schoolteachers surveyed (17,749 out of 346,094) have a secondary level teaching credential in English as of December 2016.

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Dispatched Students Students dispatched in this trial were postgraduate (master’s) or undergraduate (senior) students of teaching EFL at the university with which the language-teaching experts were affiliated. A total of 13 students participated in this trial implementation. They had good knowledge and skills in TESOL or applied linguistics. Their English proficiency was rated as B2+ to C1 on the CEFR scale, and they were considered to be fairly competent in English by Japanese standards. All of them were seriously considering a language-teaching profession as their future career. Among them, 10 were postgraduate students (two had previous teaching experience at the primary or secondary level), while three were undergraduate students with no official teaching experience at a school. They participated in this project on a voluntary basis but were paid a small honorarium at the end of each trial.

Data Collection and Interpretation By using questionnaires (in fixed and free formats) and semi-structured interviews, data were collected from school administrators, teachers and graduate/college students. Reflective reports of the sessions filed by the dispatched students were also used for data analysis. The data collected were analyzed quantitatively through descriptive statistics, and the findings were supported if necessary by qualitative data obtained from the interviews and free-format descriptions in the questionnaires. Field note entries were also used as data. Interpretations were then made about the data using the framework of activity theory (Engeström, 1999).

Activity Theory Activity theory was first proposed by Lev Vygotsky and further developed by Alexei Leont’ev, both of whom were Russian psychologists. Activity theory is a meta-theory or framework rather than a predictive theory, and it “conceptualizes human cognition in relationship to

An Innovative Approach to In-Service Teacher Training …     269

human physically and socially motivated activities” (Swain, Kinnear, & Steinman, 2011, p. 97). The theory focuses on the dynamic interaction of multiple individuals and socially constructed practices, norms, and institutions. The theory allows us to have multiple perspectives on observable human endeavors while avoiding dichotomous explanations (e.g., cause–effect) that sometimes become a hindrance to analyzing complex interactions in social settings such as classrooms. It also enables us to observe the process and the product simultaneously because of its focus on the interaction. The modern-day version of activity theory is based mainly on Engeström’s work (1999). The Finnish psychologist visualized the interpretation of activity theory by using a triangle with meditational tools (means), subject, object, rules, community, division of labor, and outcomes included in it (see Fig. 2). Through the lens of activity theory, possible relationships among school administrators, teachers and students can be explicated.

㻹㼑㼐㼕㼍㼠㼕㼛㼚㼍㼘㻌 㻹㼑㼍㼚㼟㻛㼀㼛㼛㼘㼟

㻭㼓㼑㼚㼠㻛㻿㼡㼎㼖㼑㼏㼠

㻾㼡㼘㼑㼟

㻻㼎㼖㼑㼏㼠㻛㻳㼛㼍㼘

㻯㼛㼙㼙㼡㼚㼕㼠㼥

Fig. 2  Engeström’s model of activity theory

㻰㼕㼢㼕㼟㼕㼛㼚㻌㼛㼒㻌 㻸㼍㼎㼛㼞㻛㻾㼛㼘㼑

㻻㼡㼠㼏㼛㼙㼑

270     M. Ikeda et al.

Findings This section reports on the results of the trial implementation and their interpretation based on Engeström’s model of activity theory.

Results Needs analysis conducted in each school has shown that teachers were commonly in need of in-service training regarding how to: (1) use classroom English with no anxiety; (2) implement communicative language activities with confidence; (3) make appropriate teaching plans for the goals stipulated by MEXT documents; and (4) conduct effective team-teaching with AETs who are not fluent in Japanese. The results clearly indicated that the anxiety of teachers regarding teaching English was mounting, and they were desperately seeking help in reducing: (1) the anxiety associated with the use of English and (2) the uncertainty associated with unfamiliar procedures of English teaching. Building on these results, teachers and students, along with university experts, made a syllabus that would meet the needs recorded and then implemented it at each school with some variations available for an individual school context. The syllabus was basically made up of six sessions (four to seven depending on the school) of about 30–60 minutes each (see Appendix). For the details of the syllabus and the materials used in the implementation, see Ikeda et al. (2017). Just before and after the training, questionnaires were administered and interviews were conducted. The questionnaire data analyzed indicated that approximately 70% (72 out of 102) of the participating teachers were satisfied with the in-service training and that the training sessions met their needs properly. They also mentioned that the konaikenshu-based approach was quite satisfactory because of its time-saving nature and friendly atmosphere. A breakdown of the data, however, showed a different picture. Table 2 revealed that the rate of satisfaction somehow varied depending on the school and that the

An Innovative Approach to In-Service Teacher Training …     271 Table 2  Degree of satisfaction with in-service training (n = 102) School

Satisfied (%)

Dissatisfied (%)

No answer (%)

K M R S J

37 70 86 53 78

44 20 14 16 7

19 10 0 31 15

reactions from the two schools (K and S) brought down the average figure drastically. As for the dispatched graduate/college students, all of them were quite satisfied with this endeavor, although some complained about the time-consuming nature of the preparatory stage of the training.8 Approximately 60% (60 out of 101) claimed that their anxiety level had lowered because of the training sessions and that their use of English in the classroom had increased and a clearer image of English class had been formed. This finding corroborated that of Machida and Uchida (2015), who demonstrated that teacher anxiety in teaching English at elementary school can be reduced through a short-term training program. The breakdown presented in Table 3, however, confirms that anxiety reduction varied depending on the school; the negative influence in two schools (K and S), both of which showed poor satisfaction ratings in Table 2, was strongly felt again. Roughly 70% (69 out of 99) hoped that the training would be conducted once again in the following year, mentioning that it offered them good opportunities for learning how to teach English effectively and for increasing their confidence in teaching English. Table 4, however, highlights once again the poor ratings from schools K and S. Lastly, about 38% of the participants (38 out of 99) suggested possible minor revisions to the syllabus and materials used in the implementation. However, they did not demand major revisions to the basic scheme of the approach, which implies that the problems existed with the syllabus and materials, not with the approach itself. 8Others,

however, remarked that the preparatory stage of the approach was truly rewarding and worth spending time on.

272     M. Ikeda et al. Table 3  Anxiety reduction after in-service training (n = 101) School

Yes (%)

No (%)

No answer (%)

K M R S J

7 55 68 44 81

80 27 16 34 8

13 18 16 22 11

Table 4  Possible renewal of the training in its present form in the following year (n = 99) School

Yes (%)

No (%)

No answer (%)

K M R S J

0 78 92 67 81

80 0 0 11 0

20 22 8 22 19

The results discussed above have shown that the approach is effective, although its effectiveness may change according to specific school contexts. To elucidate what human and social factors were responsible for the context-dependency of the effectiveness of this approach, interpretations based on Engeström’s model of activity theory were made. Data for the interpretations were derived mainly from teachers’ comments (written in the free-format section of the teacher questionnaires), interviews with school administrators and teachers, and reflective reports by students. Some were from the field notes recorded by the observer, the first author of this chapter. Figure 3 is a schematic representation of the activity system network for elementary schools M, R, and J, all of which were rather positive about the trial implementation of the approach. A salient feature shared among the three schools was the positive attitude and behavior expressed by school administrators (especially by principals). They clearly understood the purpose of konaikenshu-based training, frequently mentioned it to teachers, and positively participated in the training sessions whenever possible—all of which seemed to have prompted teacher attendance in the sessions at the schools.

An Innovative Approach to In-Service Teacher Training …     273

They became good liaison officers with university experts and supervisors at the City Board of Education while actively facilitating the interactions among teachers, as well as between teachers and graduate/college students. In other words, they established good rules, examples or norms for teachers to follow through their own positive attitudes and behaviors. One commented, “As the school administrator, I would like to let them (teachers) spend as much time as possible on this project, since it can surely facilitate the improvement of their teaching skills in an accessible form, which is a rare opportunity at an elementary school nowadays” (R-P-Lines 75–79; translation ours).9 A second feature shared among the three schools was teachers’ clear understanding of the purpose of the training. One dispatched student commented, “The teachers, as well as the principal, at the school understood what this project was all about. They realized that this project was not an easy sharing of teaching tips, but it offered chances for discussion (especially among the teachers) for the improvement of teaching” (TJ-2015-Q5; translation and parenthesis ours). A third salient feature was the active participation by teachers. Students dispatched to these schools frequently commented on teachers’ positive attitude toward the implementation itself and their active contribution to the preparatory stage of the training, both of which, in turn, prompted more active participation on the part of graduate/college students, too. Figure 4 is a schematic representation of the activity system network for elementary schools K and S. As has been shown above, these two schools were quite negative toward the trial implementation of the approach. A striking characteristic shared between the two schools is the school administrators’ low expectation of the effectiveness of konaikenshu-based training, which is perceived as a main obstacle to the approach by university experts. One principal commented, “Teachers are extraordinarily busy, […] so I am sorry to put them through so

9The

coding system used here (such as “R-P-Lines 75–79” and “TJ-2015-Q5”) indicates where the data came from and was located in a particular dataset. For example, “R-P-Lines 75–79” indicates that this remark came from the Principal (P) of School R (R), and was located in Lines 75–79 of the interview dataset, while “TJ-2015-Q5” means that this was from student TJ and was located in the response to Question 5 of the 2015 dataset.

Fig. 3  Activity system network of schools M, R and J

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Fig. 4  Activity system network of schools K and S

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much more trouble with this kind of training in teaching English” (K-P-Lines 92–94; translation ours). He also said, “The situation in school is very tight, […] thus every school needs to have extra teachers who excel in English. These teachers should devote their time solely to teaching English, while holding others free from English” (K-P-Lines 31; translation ours). Administrators at the two schools did not demand that teachers set the improvement of English teaching as one of their annual school goals, which is assumed to be a sign of a passive attitude toward English teaching. Principals and/or deputy principals themselves tended not to participate in the training sessions and did not insist that it was compulsory for teachers to attend them. In other words, no rule or norm for teachers to follow was established. Consequently, teachers were not enthusiastic about the implementation, which resulted in a lower attendance rate for the training. Additionally, teachers complained, “What we have learned are not the tips for immediate use in tomorrow’s English classroom” (ST-Post-Q). One student dispatched to school S lamented, “There was a gap between the teachers and us. They demanded tips for instant use in the classroom, but we failed to produce them [in actuality, students were told beforehand by the university experts not to provide teachers with tips for immediate use in the classroom]. What we offered was basic knowledge applicable to many classes, but the teachers were desperate for techniques that could be used in the next class” (YS-2015-Q5; translation and note ours). These kind of gaps in needs among the parties involved is also considered to be a major obstacle to the implementation of the approach. Summarizing the interpretations above, notable differences between Figs. 3 and 4 were found in the ‘Rules’ and ‘Division of Labor/Role’ of the triangle for teachers (upper left) and for school administrators (upper right one), respectively. The differences resulted in producing a different ‘Outcome’ for schools M, R, J and schools K and S, respectively. In Fig. 3, ‘Rules’ include a better understanding of the purpose of the in-service training and its priorities over other routines at school, while ‘Division of Labor/Role’ indicates a clearer understanding of what individual members were expected to do in this implementation. At the same time, in Fig. 4, poorer understanding of the purpose and lower priority

An Innovative Approach to In-Service Teacher Training …     277

placed on the training sessions were included regarding ‘Rules.’ As for ‘Division of Labor/Role,’ the individual roles expected in this implementation were unfocused or not clearly defined in schools K and S. Furthermore, a marked difference between the two figures was observed in ‘Agent/Subject’ of the triangle for teachers and administrators, respectively. In Fig. 3, positive attitudes expressed by both teachers and school administrators contributed to the clarification of the goals in this implementation, thereby jointly supporting the better outcome of schools M, R, and J. In Fig. 4, meanwhile, a reluctant or passive attitude observed among teachers and a no-show of leadership found among school administrators blurred the goals of the implementation, thus resulting in a somewhat disappointing outcome at schools K and S.

Implications from the Implementation The results and interpretations presented above suggest that positive or constructive relationships between school administrators and teachers are crucial for the successful implementation of konaikenshu-based training in English teaching at elementary school. Participation of teachers, and consequently of dispatched students, depends on the attitude and behavior exhibited by administrators. During the implementation, they need to exercise their leadership in facilitating discussion and interactions among participants and in establishing the rules and/ or norms for teachers to follow. These efforts by administrators led to a good atmosphere that was conducive to cooperation among all the people involved in the project. Both administrators and teachers (as well as dispatched students) are required to clearly understand the purposes of the in-service training. The konaikenshu-based approach is designed to help teachers upgrade their teaching skills and improve their attitude toward teaching based on the needs of individual schools in the most accessible way (i.e., training sessions at their own school). It is not imposed on teachers against their will by education authorities. Active voluntary or autonomous participation is thus a key ingredient for successful implementation.

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Alignment of needs is also indispensable in this approach. It is true that needs analysis is incorporated into its procedures. However, the way it is conducted requires more refinement. There seems to be a chasm between what some teachers think is important and what university experts (and dispatched students as well) consider essential. Teachers who are teaching classes everyday tend to seek solutions that are readily usable in the classroom. Leaning more toward their demands is one option, but prioritizing basic knowledge and skills transferable to many other English classes is also a viable option to consider. Adjusting for the differences in opinion seems to be necessary for better administration of the approach. The sustainability of the approach should also be given more attention. The present form may put excessive demands on graduate/college students, especially when troubles occur at school among teachers or between administrators and teachers. Solutions to these troubles are of course beyond the reach of students, and so a proper mentoring system for them needs to be installed. Additionally, although students are supposed to have good knowledge and skills in TESOL and high proficiency in English, some of the demands made by teachers are beyond the abilities of students. Thus, appropriate support for them by university experts is important when considering the sustainable operation of the approach. Before concluding, it is imperative for us to point out that many of the implications of this study reach further than the improvement of the approach described in this chapter. The findings are also applicable to any reforms or projects relating to English language education in Japan, especially when they are dictated from the top and where, as a result, the morale of teachers is relatively low. For instance, the positive attitude and behavior shown by the school administrators in this study were indispensable for the successful implementation of any changes. These attitudes and behaviors foster constructive relationships between administrators and teachers, which in turn leads to a good atmosphere for cooperation among all the people involved, consequently resulting in better ideas for the effective teaching of English. In addition, for better cooperation under any reforms, a clear understanding of the goals as well as the alignment of the needs of all the parties involved is of utmost importance. Furthermore, support or help for schools from a

An Innovative Approach to In-Service Teacher Training …     279

local community or academia is always most welcome, especially for the sustainable development of English education in Japan, as was shown in this chapter. The implications derived from the present study could thus be interpreted with a broader perspective and be generalized to most reforms concerning English education in Japan. Acknowledgements    This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (the Grants-in-aids for scientific research) grant number 16K02989. The authors would like to express their gratitude for the support and cooperation of the teachers, students, school administrators and the local Board of Education involved in this project.

Appendix: The Basic Syllabus Used in the Implementation Class Aims

Procedures

Martials

1

– Showing some typical models – Analyzing the models – Conducting mock lessons – Demonstrating – Practicing – Reflection

– Ideas and procedures for some communicative activities – A list of English expressions useful for conducting lessons – Ideas and procedures for some communicative activities – Ideas and procedures for both lower and higher graders

– Demonstrating – Practicing – Reflection

– Lyrics and songs – Ideas and procedures for both lower and higher graders

2

3

– Learning communicative activities applicable to many contexts – Learning English expressions readily usable in the activities – Learning typical communicative activities for lower graders – Learning how to use English expressions (with gestures) effectively in the activities – Learning how to make use of songs in teaching English – Learning how to praise and acknowledge pupils in English (with gestures) in classroom

(continued)

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Procedures

Martials

4

– Demonstrating – Practicing – Reflection

– Ideas and procedures for using skits and dramas

– S howing some typical models – Analyzing the models – Conducting mock lessons

– YouTube videos – Ideas and procedures for activities – Alternative ideas and procedures for activities

– S howing some typical models – Analyzing the models – Conducting mock lessons

– Explanation on various annual cultural events – Ideas and procedures for activities – Alternative ideas and procedures for activities

5

6

– Learning how to use skits and dramas effectively in teaching English – Learning how to reduce anxiety in using English – Learning culture of English-speaking countries through Christmas events – Learning English expressions useful in TPR (Total Physical Response) activities – Learning Englishspeaking countries through various annual cultural events – Learning English expressions useful in instructions – Learning English expressions useful for communicating with AETs

(Adapted from Ikeda et al., 2017; Translation ours)

Questions for Discussion Question #1 Why do you think many elementary schoolteachers in Japan are rather reluctant to teach English?

Question #2 What factors do you think could contribute to the reduction of teacher anxiety in teaching English at the elementary school level in Japan?

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Question #3 What additional qualities of school administrators do you think can facilitate the implementation of the approach described in this chapter?

Question #4 What kind of theories—other than activity theory—do you think are applicable to the interpretation of the results reported in this chapter?

References Asahi Shinbun. (2017). Shogakko eigo wo oshieru chikaratte? [What kind of abilities are required in teaching English at elementary school?] A newspaper article dated July 30, 2017. British Council (2015). Joint project with MEXT to improve English teaching. Retrieved from https://www.britishcouncil.jp/en/about/ press/20150520-mext-teacher-training-leep. Engeström, Y. (1999). Activity theory and individual and social transformation. In Y. Engeström, R. Miettinen, & R.-L. Punamäki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 19–38). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ikeda, M., Imai, H., & Takeuchi, O. (2017). Jizokukanona kyoinkenshu shisutemno kochiku: Shougakkoeigo (gaiokugo) katsudoniokeru fuannokeigenni shotenwoatete [Development of a sustainable system of in-service teacher training: Focusing on the reduction of teacher anxiety for teaching English at primary schools]. JES Journal, 17, 4–19. Machida, T., & Uchida, H. (2015). Kyoshino gaikokugofuanno keigenwo mezashita kyouinkenshu no kaihatsu [Development of in-service teacher training aimed at reducing the anxiety of teachers in teaching English at elementary schools]. JES Journal, 15, 34–49. MEXT. (2017a). Gakko kihon chosa [Fundamental statistics regarding schools in Japan]. Retrieved from http://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/estat/NewList. do?tid=000001011528. MEXT. (2017b). Heisei28nenndo eigokyoiku jitsushijyoukyou chosa [A 2016 survey on English language education]. Retrieved from http://www.mext.go. jp/a_menu/kokusai/gaikokugo/1384230.htm.

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OECD. (2014). The OECD teaching and learning international survey 2013. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/talis-2013-results.htm. OECD. (2017). Education at a glance 2017: OECD indicators (Country note). Retrieved from http://www.oecd.emb-japan.go.jp/files/000289921.pdf. Otsu Y. (Ed.). (2005). Shogakkodeno eigokyouiku wa hituyounai! [No need for teaching English at elementary school]. Tokyo: Keio University Press. Otsu Y. (Ed.). (2009). Kikinitatsu nihonno eigokyoiku [English education in Japan in peril]. Tokyo: Keio University Press. Swain, M., Kinnear, P., & Steinman, L. (2011). Sandra’s story: A teacher’s dilemma. In Sociocultural theory in second language education: An introduction through narratives (pp. 93–115). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Takagi, H., & Fujii, M. (2010). Konaikenshu no rekishi to kenkyu doukou [The history of in-service teacher training and the research trends. Shizuoka Daigaku Kyoikujitsen Sogo Center Kiyou [Journal of Shizuoka University, Center for Educational Research and Teacher Development], 18, 93–108. Yonezaki, M., Tara, S., & Tsukuda, Y. (2016). Shougakko gaiokkugokatudo no kyoukaka · teigakunenka nitaisuru shougakkokyouin no fuan [Primary schoolteachers’ anxiety about teaching English as a compulsory subject and teaching English to middle-grade students: Structuring and transition]. JES Journal, 16, 132–146.

Innovation in Japan: Looking to the Future Stephen Ryan, Sachiko Nakamura and Hayo Reinders

We opened this book by expressing our admiration for the energy, vision and commitment to innovation displayed by the various contributors. We intend to close by channeling that admiration into a positive, constructive evaluation of some of the lessons learned from the various innovations discussed. Our belief is that although the book is very

S. Ryan (*)  School of Culture, Media and Society, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] S. Nakamura · H. Reinders  Department of Languages, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok, Thailand e-mail: [email protected] H. Reinders  Department of Education, Anaheim University, Anaheim, CA, USA © The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7_14

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much rooted in the setting of English education in Japan, many of the concerns and themes will be transferable to other learning situations. As uniquely captured by each chapter, innovation is not a mere implementation of creative ideas. The roots of these ideas extend back months, years and even decades into the contexts in which innovation is to take place. Its meaningful implementation then requires persistence of physical and intellectual effort. In this closing chapter, we hope to look beneath the surface to uncover some underlying principles informing future practitioners. Although this final chapter represents a review of the contents of the book, it is intended to be forward-looking and is aimed at offering practical support to those with future innovations in mind.

Innovation and Context Above all, this has been a book about innovation in context. No single action, or course of action, can be considered innovative in itself; innovation emerges from the interaction between action and context. It is impossible to understand innovation without understanding the context within which it is taking place, and the various chapters in this book share the implicit aim of exploring the context of English education in Japan and how that context is driving—and sometimes impeding— efforts to innovate. In doing so, the authors investigate some of the different levels at which innovation can take place, from macro-level policy and planning decisions to the micro-level initiatives taken by individual teachers, and, perhaps most important of all, the various interconnections between these contextual levels. The act of innovation in effect represents an attempt to change the learning context; therefore, the aims and means of any innovative initiative must be sufficiently in harmony with existing contextual parameters in order to succeed. Put simply, pushing too hard or in the wrong direction can increase resistance, reducing the chances of success. Philip Seargeant’s chapter allows us to step back and consider the bigger picture by situating English education in Japan within the

Innovation in Japan: Looking to the Future     285

broader context of globalization. His chapter paints a picture clouded with uncertainty: uncertainty surrounding notions of what English represents in twenty-first century Japanese society and uncertainty as to how to teach the language. Nevertheless, uncertainty can bring opportunity and several chapters in this book show how this climate of uncertainty can positively stimulate an environment open to new ideas and approaches. For example, Yuko Goto Butler illustrates how the broader societal discourse surrounding the need to begin English education at an earlier age has facilitated an openness to innovative practice within the often inflexible public education system. Similarly, Makoto Ikeda’s chapter shows how this same discourse encourages private schools, competing for admissions against the background of a dramatically falling school-age population, to try out ambitious approaches in order to become distinctive and attractive to fee-paying parents. Moving away from context at the national level, Noriko Ishihara, Terumi Orihashi and Zachary Clark reveal how unique, local factors can serve to stimulate and support innovation. In their chapter, they show how an awareness of cultural artefacts—dolls gifted by visitors from the USA in the 1920s—specific to the local community, together with an awareness of the local significance of these artefacts, facilitated a highly innovative approach to English education at the primary level, integrating peace education content with language instruction. In this case, an understanding of the local context served as a vital resource, facilitating innovation. English education in Japan offers a fascinating picture of contrasts and contradictions. In certain instances, these contrasts and contradictions can create a productive tension, while in others they can simply lead to a state of inertia. Innovators are constantly testing contextual limits and the evidence of the chapters in this book suggests that innovation works best when contextual contrasts and contradictions are understood and integrated, rather than being explicitly confronted. Furthermore, although it is in the nature of innovators to push boundaries, looking within those boundaries for facilitative resources may also prove to be a highly productive strategy.

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Innovation Across Time Innovation does not always occur instantly or smoothly, especially with more ambitious undertakings. One of the most refreshing aspects of the contributions to this book has been the willingness of authors to hold up their hands and to admit what did not work. Understanding why things are not successful is a vital element to any effective approach to implementing innovation; by contrast, unrealistic expectations of immediate success tend to impede or frustrate innovative efforts. Ayako Suzuki’s chapter provides an excellent illustration. When judged on the immediate results, this ambitious attempt to challenge deeply entrenched models of English and English speakers by introducing an ELF-based curriculum could be deemed a failure. Yet, if seen as a long-term incremental process, the initially underwhelming results represent the first small steps towards developing the understanding among all stakeholders—teachers, students and administrators—of the aims of the new approach, which is essential to effect meaningful change. This view of innovation as a gradual process is not confined to long-term curriculum-level decisions. Shifting focus to the everyday realities of the language classroom, James York, Jonathan deHaan and Peter Hourdequin identify continual trial and error as key to their attempts to introduce a theoretically grounded task-based approach to language teaching through the development of tabletop games. Perhaps it is Tim Murphey who provides the most poignant reminder of the notion of innovation as a long-term incremental process. The autobiographical element to his chapter frames teaching itself as an ongoing process of development energized by the powerful urge to innovate. Reflecting on his long and highly influential career in Japan, he implies that teachers are innovators by nature and that innovative teaching is a process of constant adaptation. He shows how certain core concerns—in this case the need to make language testing more meaningful for learners—have remained throughout his career and how his attempts to implement these ideas have evolved over time. Innovators too need to be able to adapt in order to make a difference; of course, a powerful, long-term vision can initiate innovation, but the successful implementation of innovation more often than not depends on the capacity to adapt that vision to events and other people.

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Innovation Within a System Educators rarely work in isolation. From the smallest informal school to the largest established institutions, cooperation with others is a must. Understanding the components and dynamics of that system is crucial to the long-term health of any attempt at innovation. Kay Irie’s chapter offers a timely, cautionary tale of the need for all parts of the system to be functioning smoothly in order to effect meaningful change. Teachers, unsurprisingly, focus on educational concerns and have a tendency to regard administrative concerns as an unwelcome intrusion, or even obstacle, to educational practice. On the other hand, and this is certainly the case in the Japanese educational context, administrators may regard themselves as the ‘true’ long-term custodians of an institution and its values, regarding teachers as merely ‘passing through.’ Irie’s experience of launching a new faculty within an established, avowedly conservative institution shows the value of a patient approach to innovation, one in which the ambitious pedagogic aims of educators need to be aligned with the more cautious outlook of administrators. The value of healthy working relationships between educators and administrators is further highlighted in Maiko Ikeda, Hiroyuki Imai, and Osamu Takeuchi’s chapter. The success of their training initiative for in-service teachers was largely dependent on the understanding and cooperation of administrators: when administrators understood the purpose of the initiative, it was broadly successful; but when this understanding was absent, problems occurred. The successful implementation of innovation requires innovative educators to communicate their aims clearly to others involved; it is unrealistic to expect others to commit to any innovation without fully understanding its aims or merits.

Innovation Through Dialogue Innovation is rarely achieved through individual inspiration alone. Instead, it requires collaboration, cooperation and, above all, constant, effective communication between all stakeholders. In her chapter, Danya Ramírez-Gómez discusses an under-researched area of language education: older learners. Within the rapidly aging Japanese society,

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this is likely to become an increasingly pressing issue in the future and one of the key findings from the project described in her chapter was the prominent role of beliefs about the nature of language learning and older learners. Lay theories of language learning tend towards a ‘younger is better’ model, regarding older learners as doomed to failure forever, limited by their declining cognitive and physical capacities. RamírezGómez challenges these assumptions but acknowledges the negative role they can play, calling for a future conversation that includes researchers, teachers and learners. Negating these debilitative beliefs is essential to the provision of appropriately challenging classes for older learners, and this can only be achieved through effective dialogue. Stephen Ryan and Kay Irie’s contribution is conspicuous in that it is the only chapter in the book dealing explicitly with secondary education. This raises a very important question since this is the educational level at which the vast majority of English language teaching takes place. It seems that a lot of exciting innovations are being developed around the periphery of English education in Japan, but very little is happening at the core. Until relatively recently, English education was compulsory only at the secondary level, and for this reason it has been subject to strict governmental control and monitoring, severely restricting opportunities for innovation. Ryan and Irie’s account of a cross-generational project in rural Japan suggests that hope for innovation at the secondary level may lie outside the formal English curriculum. The project for high school students to teach English to local seniors was devised as part of a new subject, introduced as part of broader educational reforms, and central to the success of the project was a continuing dialogue between students and teachers as they tried to interpret this new, vaguely defined subject. Furthermore, the project aimed to take language learning beyond the walls of the classroom and into the local community, and this necessitated a further level of dialogue including administrators and community organizations. The theme of taking language learning outside the classroom is further developed in the Jo Mynard’s chapter, where she gives an authoritative overview of current practice in self-access and learning advising. This chapter skillfully interweaves many of the core themes that recur throughout the book. She draws attention to particular features of the Japanese

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learning context that mean self-access learning is still regarded as innovative practice in Japan in a way that it would not be in other settings. The chapter goes on to consider the historical development of self-access in Japan and reveals a process of slow, often uneven, growth. One crucial factor inhibiting growth was a lack of integration with the broader education system characterized by a unidirectional view of teaching and learning in which teachers deliver content to learners in the classroom. When self-access centers were eventually introduced into Japanese schools, usually at the tertiary level, teachers and administrators often found themselves at crossed purposes; teachers may have had educational goals in mind whereas administrators were often looking at teachers in terms of their potential for recruiting students. Nevertheless, crossed purposes represent a form of dialogue and wherever there is dialogue there is hope for innovation. It was broader contextual developments, most notably the falling birth rate triggering intense competition for admissions, not educational arguments, that allowed self-access a foothold in Japanese educational institutions. While early attempts at self-access in Japan were initiated by an uneasy combination of enthusiastic, do-it-yourself teachers looking to harness the latest theoretical developments within the Japanese educational context, and management looking to appeal to young prospective students, the more recent growth in self-access has been sustained through dialogue. Dialogue between teachers and learners about the use and potential of self-access, alongside dialogue between teachers and administrators about the best ways to provide self-access spaces. One of the great joys of teaching is the constant need to innovate, and this is especially the case in language education. As novice language teachers soon learn, no two language classes are the same and the unpredictable nature of language learning demands new ideas and new approaches. In other words, innovation is at the core of the language teaching experience and, in order to improve pedagogic practice, we need a fuller understanding of the processes of innovation. As editors of this book, we have been incredibly fortunate to learn from the efforts of our contributors. Our hope is that this book will serve to inspire other nascent innovators and, above all, serve as a springboard for future dialogue.

Index

A

Action logs 241, 244, 247 Active learning affinity spaces 118, 134–136 affordances 121, 132, 133 agency 120, 132 classroom 190, 248 communities of practice 136, 235 critical thinking 24, 119, 121, 126, 191 cultural-historical activity theory 127 debriefing 120, 124 experiential learning 78, 122 extracurricular 123–125, 129 game-based learning 75, 89, 93 interdisciplinarity 131 literacy 119, 124, 130, 134 materials development 29, 202

multiliteracies pedagogy 4, 118, 125, 130, 135 participatory language learning 119 self-access learning center 5 self-transcription 123, 129 tabletop game 118–121, 130, 133, 135 Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) 4, 72, 118, 119 teacher role 93, 110, 121, 129, 151, 152, 190, 236, 276 Activities 24, 37, 41, 55, 92, 102, 121, 124–127, 129, 130, 132, 149, 153, 162, 164, 166–169, 173, 176–179, 189, 195, 200, 241, 243, 248, 261, 269 Activity system network 272, 273 Activity theory 262, 268–270, 272

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 H. Reinders et al. (eds.), Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning, New Language Learning and Teaching Environments, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12567-7

291

292     Index

Administration 13, 18, 220, 226, 227, 229, 230, 278 Advising 5, 185, 187–191, 195, 196, 203, 204, 288 Ageing society 99 Agent/Subject 277 Anxiety 75, 175, 242, 257, 259, 260, 265, 267, 270–272 Asking for help 243, 244 Assistant Language Teachers (ALT) 14, 48, 55, 109, 267 Attitude 2, 11, 12, 18, 50, 128, 171, 175, 179, 180, 273, 276–278 Audiolingualism 23

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) 2, 24–34, 36–39, 41, 42, 211, 215, 216, 225 Content-Based Instruction (CBI) 25 Corrective feedback 41 Counterbalanced approach 41 Course of Study 13, 14, 100, 102, 229, 258, 259 D

Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) 33 Board of Education 262, 263, 265, 266, 273, 279 bun-kei (humanities and arts) 219

Demographics 4, 98, 99, 102, 114, 141, 144, 162, 214 Digital game 3, 72, 74–76, 78–80, 91, 93, 117, 118 Dispatched students 264, 268, 277, 278 Display questions 36 Diversity 3, 11, 12, 19, 47, 50–52, 54–56, 61, 63, 64, 66 Division of Labor/Role 276, 277

C

E

Challenging traditional assumptions 237 Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) 33 Collaboration 3, 24, 27, 39, 40, 47, 51–53, 65–67, 82, 111, 113, 132, 136, 202, 263, 265, 287 The collaborative social 6, 244, 249 Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) 15, 24, 42, 121, 122, 124, 154, 189, 216 Communities of practice 136, 235 Competency-based education 26, 37

Educational policy 9, 15, 27, 107 Elementary school 3, 14, 16, 31, 47, 48, 52, 54, 65, 101, 107, 108, 149, 257–263, 265, 266, 271–273 Empathy 3, 48, 49, 51, 52, 54, 56, 60–63, 65, 175 English activity 73, 77, 261 English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) classroom practice 151, 152, 156 pedagogy 150, 154, 156 skepticism towards 151, 154 teacher training 157

B

Index     293

vs. English as a Foreign Language (EFL) 15, 142, 263, 268 English-Medium Instruction (EMI) 25, 215, 217, 220, 224, 225 Experience 3, 5, 7, 11, 12, 19, 24, 25, 30, 39, 53, 57, 58, 61, 65, 77, 80, 86, 87, 90, 93, 98, 107–111, 114, 120–124, 130, 132–134, 142, 146, 148–150, 152, 153, 158, 162, 163, 165, 170, 171, 176–178, 181, 182, 188, 195, 196, 203, 215, 258, 259, 261, 262, 265, 267, 268, 287, 289 Exploratory action research 235, 236

H

Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) 25, 26, 121 Horizontal discourse 33 I

Foreign language activity 101, 107, 258, 259 Foreign language geragogy 163, 182 Formal academic subject 6, 73, 257, 259 Friendship doll 59, 66

Identity 10–13, 16–19, 60, 66, 75, 156, 188, 197, 198, 227 Immersion 25 Improvization 235 Innovating practices 2, 5, 6, 99, 185, 194, 196, 203, 285, 289 Innovating testing 6, 239, 242 Innovation in context 284 product or process 7 relational 7 sustained involvement 7 In-service teacher training 6, 258, 261–263 Interdisciplinary (degree program) 5 Intergenerational learning 114 Internal reorganization 144, 149

G

K

F

Game-based learning 75, 76, 89, 93 Global human resources 120, 144, 146, 215 Global jinzai 215, 217 Graduate/college students 263, 265, 268, 271, 273, 278 Grammar 13, 23, 31, 33, 40, 53, 122, 153, 155, 167–169, 176, 181, 188, 189, 216, 238 Grammar translation method 23, 42

kokusai-kei (international) 219 konaikenshu 262–264, 267, 272, 273, 277 L

Language policy 201 Language teachers 2, 28, 31, 50, 53, 122, 188, 289 Leaders of English Education Project (LEEP) 260

294     Index

Learner autonomy 133, 135, 185, 186, 188, 190–193, 196, 197, 201, 225, 228 Learner re-training 161, 165, 182, 183 Learning beyond the classroom 5, 185 Learning space design 202 Lifelong learning 26, 191, 222 Lingualist 113 Linguistic politeness 3, 49, 50, 53, 66 Lower-order Thinking Skills (LOTS) 26

N

National Assessment of Academic Ability 107 Native English Speakers (NESs) 141–143, 147, 149, 151–153 Negotiated interaction 6, 241 Non-native English Speakers (NNESs) 143, 151, 152, 156 Noticing 41, 123, 135 O

Older adults 161–165, 169, 170, 174–178, 180–182 Openness 47, 51, 52, 135, 285 Out-of-class learning 5, 225

M

Marketing 191, 214, 224, 225 Materials 2, 5, 39, 41, 51, 53, 66, 92, 107, 111, 118, 125, 127, 129, 132–134, 162, 165, 167, 173, 176, 180, 189, 192, 200, 202, 221, 222, 264, 270, 271 Memorization 24, 165, 168, 170, 173, 176 Ministry of Education 191 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) 5, 14, 16, 72, 73, 77, 100, 102, 120, 144, 190, 213, 218–221, 223, 224, 229, 258, 260, 267, 270 Motivation 3, 25, 27, 28, 65, 74–76, 80, 85, 88, 89, 92, 127, 128, 141, 157, 183, 188, 200, 235

P

Peace education 3, 48, 53, 65, 285 Peace linguistics 3, 49, 50, 52, 53, 61, 65–67 Peer assessment 80 Period for Integrated Study 99–102, 105, 113 Pragmatic skills 143, 152, 157 Presentation Practice Production (PPP) 2, 31–34, 36, 37 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 107 Prospecting innovation 236 R

Referential questions 36 Reflective dialogue 197 Relationship-centered autonomy 249 Research with children 76

Index     295

Respect 36, 50–52, 62, 65, 66, 81, 92, 99, 218, 259 ri-kei (science) 219, 222 Rules 74, 82, 118, 123, 235, 239, 269, 273, 276, 277 S

Scaffolding 6, 25, 26, 41, 180, 217, 243, 252 School administrators 6, 263, 265, 266, 268, 269, 272, 273, 276–279 Self-access learning 5, 127, 185, 189, 198, 200, 203, 289 Self-assessment 80 Self-determination Theory (SDT) 200, 237 Self-Directed Learning 225, 228 Self-regulation 226, 243 Shrinking population 144, 213 Social interaction 75, 163, 202 Socializing videos 247 Social learning spaces 199 Socially Intelligent Dynamic Systems (SINDYS) 237–239 Social science 211, 213, 215, 216, 219, 220, 222–225, 228 Social testing 6, 238, 239, 241, 242, 244, 247, 251 Strategies 5, 10, 11, 19, 41, 61–63, 74, 79, 81, 83, 121, 166, 173, 178, 181, 186, 228 Study abroad 224, 228 T

Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) 4, 72, 118, 119, 122, 128, 135

Task design 3, 72, 79, 81, 84–87, 91, 92 Techniques 24, 25, 41, 147, 161, 165, 170, 181, 276 Testing 6, 40, 177, 234–242, 244, 246, 248, 285, 286 Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) 124, 147, 148, 155, 156 Transfer appropriate processing 38 Translanguaging 10, 19, 41, 65 U

Under-enrollment 141, 224 University experts 263, 265, 270, 273, 276, 278 V

Vertical discourse 33 Vocabulary 31–33, 37, 39, 40, 72, 76, 78, 79, 84, 90, 107, 126, 129, 130, 132, 153, 163, 166, 168–174, 179, 181, 183 Vocabulary learning 3, 5, 72, 76, 81, 85, 165, 174 W

Wi-Fi 226, 227 Y

Young learners 3, 71, 72, 74, 76, 80, 81, 84, 91–93 yutori kyoiku 100