Papers by MASAHITO YOSHIMURA
International Perspectives on Critical Pedagogies in ELT, 2018
Chapter 10, by Christine Helot, Masahito Yoshiruma, and Andrea Young, analyses the co-constructio... more Chapter 10, by Christine Helot, Masahito Yoshiruma, and Andrea Young, analyses the co-construction and implementation of a teacher education course for Japanese teachers of English by a Franco/Japanese team of researchers. Based on research conducted on ideology in language education policy in both France and Japan, the course aimed to reconceptualize the teaching of English in a more inclusive, ethical, and critical fashion in order to better prepare teachers to deal with diversity in their classrooms. The authors describe the learner-centered and problem based learning approaches they chose, to give teachers an experience of their own use of language(s) as social actors, as well as an awareness of diversity and its relevance to the unequal power of languages induced by policies focusing on English only. Finally, they analyze the discourses of the participating teachers, based on the recorded oral and written group reflections on issues such as approaching difference with literacy activities, children’s literature, translation, and critical language awareness.
In this report, we examine the undertaking of Nara University of Education that started its Profe... more In this report, we examine the undertaking of Nara University of Education that started its Professional Graduate school for teacher education-one of Japan's professional graduate schools-in 2008, and address their achievements and challenges over a two-year operation period. As solutions to those challenges, we present a 2010 revision in curriculum content and educational approach. Specifically, we will first look into how the following efforts worked out: assuring quality of education through curriculum work, drafting assessment guidebooks for lectures, practicum and seminars, using electronic portfolios and promoting FD, based on the record of electronic portfolios, minutes from staff meetings and class evaluations conducted by graduate students, etc. Next, we will discuss achievements and challenges of teaching practices, which are intended to improve practical leadership abilities among teachers, finding how they work out and what sort of issues they leave us in the end, while touching on ways to coordinate with the universities, affiliated schools and local board of education. One instance is that mentor/teacher handbooks, as well as other systems and methods for sharing educational theories and teaching environments related to teaching practice at professional graduate school for teacher education, required for systematically teaching trainee students must be refined, with the cooperation of local board of education and affiliated schools.
Conscience du plurilinguisme: …, 2008
This paper deals with a practice of multilingual activities in a Japanese primary school, which h... more This paper deals with a practice of multilingual activities in a Japanese primary school, which has been designed and implemented by an in-service teacher in Nara, one of the tourist sites in Japan. He has let his students, for example, make multilingual interviews with tourists from abroad, perform multilingual Manzai (stand-up comedy) and public speaking. This practice is extremely rare in the Japanese context, where English is almost exclusively designated as the foreign language at school. The primary purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that this practice can be identified as a realization of language education for plurilingualism and language awareness, in that the students were approaching and achieving the goals of plurilingual education and language awareness through the activities. The outcomes of the practice were clarified by an analysis of the curriculum and their reflection by text mining. The secondary purpose is to discuss teachers’ experiences, awareness of their...
The purpose of this research is to investigate how we can tackle the issues of gender and sexual ... more The purpose of this research is to investigate how we can tackle the issues of gender and sexual orientation in the teacher education program at the graduate level on the bases of what we have done concerning career development and education for teachers. It would be necessary, first of all, to explain the background of this study. The Central Council for Education in Japan suggested in its 2012 report that the teachers should continue learning and updating their abilities according to their career stages and the colleges of education were expected to respond to this issue. To discuss a "teacher who continues to learn" throughout his/her life, we needed to consider the viewpoints on the notion of occupation or vocation and on that of "life career," as shown by Super (1980), that is, a career that consists of various life roles. At that time, most of the programs in the graduate schools in Education focused on the development of teaching skills in a narrow sense assuming that the students have acquired careerrelated abilities, such as self-understanding, communication skills and so on. Recently, however, it has been considered that we need to develop professional skills and human and basic abilities. In this context, our graduate school has also developed and implemented career education throughout the curriculum, from the perspective of life career (Kawasaki, Yoshimura, Nakai, 2015, 2017), but we are now beginning to recognize another aspect which is comparatively new but cannot be ignored in teacher education: Diversity. Actually, even in the government's documents concerning career education, diversities in gender, age, individuality and values have been mentioned (Central Council for Education 2011, for example). It is, therefore,
教育実践総合センター研究紀要, Mar 1, 2007
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Papers by MASAHITO YOSHIMURA