Based on extensive original research, this book explores the early educational experiences of foreign children in Japan. It considers foreign children’s experiences of Japanese schools, examines the special tutoring such children often have to improve their language proficiency, and explores the role of mothers in encouraging their children’s education. It contrasts the experiences of foreign children with those of Japanese children and sets out the extensive difficulties foreign children encounter in becoming fully accepted by and integrated into Japanese society. The book concludes by discussing the nature of citizenship in Japan and the importance of education, including early education, in shaping Japanese citizenship.

The relationship between language and citizenship in Japan has traditionally been regarded as a fixed tripartite: ‘Japanese citizenship’ means ‘Japanese ethnicity,’ which in turn means ‘Japanese as one’s first language.’ Historically, most non-Japanese who have chosen to take out citizenship have been members of the ‘oldcomer’ Chinese and Korean communities, born and raised in Japan. But this is changing: the last three decades have seen an influx of ‘newcomer’ economic migrants from a wide range of countries, many of whom choose to stay. The likelihood that they will apply for citizenship, to access the benefits it confers, means that citizenship and ethnicity can no longer be assumed to be synonyms in Japan. This is an important change for national discourse on cohesive communities. This book’s chapters discuss discourses, educational practices, and local linguistic practices which call into question the accepted view of the language-citizenship nexus in lived contexts of both existing Japanese citizens and potential future citizens. Through an examination of key themes relating both to newcomers and to an older group of citizens whose language practices have been shaped by historical forces, these essays highlight the fluid relationship of language and citizenship in the Japanese context.

This fascinating volume introduces an international audience to citizenship in Japan. It traces the development of citizenship education from before the Second World War to the present day, demonstrating the role of both the school system and the wider society. The book provides a detailed account anchored in critical analysis of the curriculum, educational resources, pedagogy and assessment. Citizenship Education in Japan explores controversial issues through tracing four themes: global/intercultural education environmental education geographical education historical education. It also examines current curricular innovations. Overall, this insightful volume demonstrates that contemporary citizenship education entails not only knowledge about social, historical and geographical affairs, but also participation in society – locally, nationally, and globally.

When Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, language learning became a touchstone in the emerging culture wars. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Los Angeles, where elected officials from both political parties had supported the legislation, and where the most disruptive protests over it occurred. The city, with its diverse population of Latinos and Asian Americans, is the ideal locus for Zevi Gutfreund’s study of how language instruction informed the social construction of American citizenship. Combining the history of language instruction, school desegregation, and civil rights activism as it unfolded in Japanese American and Mexican American communities in L.A., this timely book clarifies the critical and evolving role of language instruction in twentieth-century American politics. Speaking American reveals how, for generations, language instruction offered a forum for Angelino educators to articulate their responses to policies that racialized access to citizenship—from the “national origins” immigration quotas of the Progressive Era through Congress’s removal of race from these quotas in 1965. Meanwhile, immigrant communities designed language experiments to counter efforts to limit their liberties. Gutfreund’s book is the first to place the experiences of Mexican Americans and Japanese Americans side by side as they navigated debates over Americanization programs, intercultural education, school desegregation, and bilingual education. In the process, the book shows, these language experiments helped Angelino immigrants introduce competing concepts of citizenship that were tied to their actions and deeds rather than to the English language itself. Complicating the usual top-down approach to the history of racial politics in education, Speaking American recognizes the ways in which immigrant and ethnic activists, as well as white progressives and conservatives, have been deeply invested in controlling public and private aspects of language instruction in Los Angeles. The book brings compelling analytic depth and breadth to its examination of the social and political landscape in a city still at the epicenter of American immigration politics.

The relative status of native and non-native speaker language teachers within educational institutions has long been an issue worldwide but until recently, the voices of teachers articulating their own concerns have been rare. This innovative volume explores language-based forms of prejudice against native-speaker teachers.

Over the last thirty years, two social developments have occurred that have led to a need for change in language policy in Japan. One is the increase in the number of migrants needing opportunities to learn Japanese as a second language, the other is the influence of electronic technologies on the way Japanese is written. This book looks at the impact of these developments on linguistic behaviour and language management and policy, and at the role of language ideology in the way they have been addressed. Immigration-induced demographic changes confront long cherished notions of national monolingualism and technological advances in electronic text production have led to textual practices with ramifications for script use and for literacy in general. The book will be welcomed by researchers and professionals in language policy and management and by those working in Japanese Studies.

This book explores the transition from the era of internationalization into the era of globalization of Japan by focusing on language and identity as its central themes. By taking an interdisciplinary approach covering education, cultural studies, linguistics and policy-making, the chapters in this book raise certain questions of what constitutes contemporary Japanese culture, Japanese identity and multilingualism and what they mean to local people, including those who do not reside in Japan but are engaged with Japan in some way within the global community. Topics include the role of technology in the spread of Japanese language and culture, hybrid language use in an urban context, the Japanese language as a lingua franca in China, and the identity construction of heritage Japanese language speakers in Australia. The authors do not limit themselves to examining only the Japanese language or the Japanese national/cultural identity, but also explore multilingual practices and multiple/fluid identities in "a transitional Japan." Overall, the book responds to the basic need for better accounts of language and identity of Japan, particularly in the context of increased migration and mobility.

This collection of essays and reflections starts from an analysis of the purposes of foreign language teaching and argues that this should include educational objectives which are ultimately similar to those of education for citizenship. It does so by a journey through reflections on what is possible and desirable in the classroom and how language teaching has a specific role in education systems which have long had, and often still have, the purpose of encouraging young people to identify with the nation-state. Foreign language education can break through this framework to introduce a critical internationalism. In a ‘globalised’ and ‘internationalised’ world, the importance of identification with people beyond the national borders is crucial. Combined with education for citizenship, foreign language education can offer an education for ‘intercultural citizenship’.

Language education is a highly contested arena within any nation and one that arouses an array of sentiments and identity conflicts. What languages, or what varieties of a language, are to be taught and learned, and how? By whom, for whom, for what purposes and in what contexts? Such questions concern not only policy makers but also teachers, parents, students, as well as businesspeople, politicians, and other social actors. For Japan, a nation state with ideologies of national identity strongly tied to language, these issues have long been of particular concern. This volume presents the cacophony of voices in the field of language education in contemporary Japan, with its focus on English language education. It explores the complex and intricate relationships between the “local” and the “global,” and more specifically the links between the levels of policy, educational institutions, classrooms, and the individual. In the much-contested field of foreign language teaching in Japan, this book takes the reader directly to the places that really matter. With the help of expert guides in the fields of anthropology, sociology and linguistics, we are invited to join a vital discussion about the potentially revolutionary implications of the Japanese government’s policy of teaching Japanese citizens to not only passively engage with written English texts but to actually use English as a means of global communication.” – Robert Aspinall, PhD (Oxford), Professor, Faculty of Economics, Department of Social Systems, Shiga University, Japan This insightful book about language education involves different disciplines using ethnographic methods. Both ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ speakers of Japanese (or English) collaboratively examine two different types of qualitative approaches in Japan – the positivistic and the processual. This is a must-have book for researchers and educators of language who are interested in not only Japan but also language education generally.” – Shinji Sato, PhD (Columbia), Director of the Japanese Language Program, Department of East Asian Studies, Princeton University, USA.

This handbook brings together new work by some of the leading authorities on citizenship education, and is divided into five sections. The first section deals with key ideas about citizenship education including democracy, rights, globalization and equity. Section two contains a wide range of national case studies of citizenship education including African, Asian, Australian, European and North and South American examples. The third section focuses on perspectives about citizenship education with discussions about key areas such as sustainable development, anti-racism, gender. Section four provides insights into different characterisations of citizenship education with illustrations of democratic schools, peace and conflict education, global education, human rights education etc. The final section provides a series of chapters on the pedagogy of citizenship education with discussions about curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment.