The Scope of Innovation in Japanese Language Education
In addition to introducing the various contributions to the book, this chapter also discusses some of the core themes informing the book. The chapter provides a platform for the subsequent contributions to the book by establishing what is meant by the ter
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novation 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 l
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