Sakamoto Mitsuyo

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate a four-year mentorship program for Japanese graduate students at a private university in Tokyo, Japan. The following research questions were investigated: First, does mentorship provide effective and adequate preparation needed for graduate students to perform competitively (e.g. attending conferences, publishing in journals, etc.) in academic forums? Second, what kinds of benefits are gained by the mentees? Third, what factors are conducive to the benefits accrued by the mentees? Fourth, what are the obstacles to providing an effective mentorship program? Design/methodology/approach – Adopting narrative approach as its research method, this study collected and analyzed reflective essays from 13 Japanese students in a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) program. Findings – Particular types of mentoring which encouraged active participation in scholarly activities through appropriately scaffolded inductions into academia led to increased mentee confidence in terms of making the transition from student to scholar. Research limitations/implications – The students should not remain assistants on the periphery of academia, but rather play active roles to extend their knowledge and expertise to something that they can attain only with appropriate scaffolding (Vygotsky, 1981). In order to promote such mentorship, it is emphasized that institutional support is indispensable, and that the significance of solid mentorship programs should be re-acknowledged and discussed on an official level. Originality/value – The study of mentoring within a Japanese context, in particular from the perspectives of sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1981) and Bandura's (1994, 1995) self-efficacy theory, is an under-researched area.

Compared with other countries in Asia, Japan is far behind in terms of introducing and delivering bilingual education, let alone effective immersion programmes. In order to make its citizens more bilingual, Japan has been introducing innovative measures including the implementation of the teaching of English in elementary education and a new curriculum guideline requirement of using English exclusively in all high school English classes. However, these innovations are met with opposition and obstacles. Before Japan can introduce effective bilingual and immersion programmes comparable to those in Europe, North America and other Asian countries, it is crucial that Japan addresses these concerns. At the same time, other linguistic resources unique to Japan are being neglected. To elaborate and explore the above issues, this article focuses on public English education and ethnic bilingual schools in Japan.

平成１９年〜平成２２年度科研基盤研究のまとめ

The paper explored and identified the factors that affect the identity formation of a Chinese national residing in Japan. The data were collected via oral interview based on narrative approach.

This paper provides a descriptive account of what one university implemented to foster Japanese graduate students’ professional development. In order to provide adequate training needed for young Japanese scholars to perform competitively, a mentoring program was devised.In order to facilitate our investigation, qualitative data were collected from 15 graduate students, mostly from master’s level, in the course of three years, between fall 2007 to fall 2010. Two doctoral students’ accounts of sponsored conference attendance are also included.

英語教育法をバイリンガリズムの理論に基づいて考察。

インターアクションを介して英作文能力の向上を測った。

平成２０年２月１３日に愛知教育大学で開催されたシンポジウムでの講演内容。

Research results from 2007 to 2008 were presented.

In the midst of globalization, having seen Canadian examples as possible models to follow, there is a pressing need for Japanese society to identify and rectify social issues related to minorities in this country. While Canada is no means utopia for its minority population, it nonetheless offers some insights as to the future trajectory Japan ought to follow.

A 24-item questionnaire addressing the issues about language use, language perception, and identity was disseminated to 55 Chinese students in grades 6, 9 and 10 attending Tokyo Chinese School.

Thirty-seven sophomore students at a Japanese university participated in an extensive writing and homepage building task. Three questionnaires were disseminated throughout the study to investigate the students’ perceptions about their English writing competence. Their in-class interactions were audio- and video recorded, and their writing samples before and after the task were collected. These writing samples were fed into Nation’s (2005) Vocabulary Range Programme to identify the variety in vocabulary use.

The conclusion begins with an analysis of the common thread that ties the papers included in this special issue together. The collection hinges on an analysis of issues of language and power in diverse contexts, seen in a perspective a la Jim Cummins. Included in the conclusion is a discussion of how the papers in this collection illustrate or operationalize Cummins' (2001a) empowerment framework. The conclusion also discusses the diverse ways in which the papers examine the influence of societal power relations on educational structures and classroom instruction. Next, the explanatory value of Jim Cummins' empowerment framework is put to the test by evaluating its ability to account for the wide range of contexts of issues of language and power in the various texts. This is followed by a summary of key lessons learned from what the authors identified as constraints limiting bi/multilingual development in their contexts, followed by an analysis of overarching themes emerging from those constraints. Finally, current options for dealing with the constraints identified are reviewed, and recommendations are made as to promising paths of future research in the study of language and power.

The results of this study show that all learning shared by the group members through interactions were refined and incorporated into their writings, and the same errors did not appear in subsequent writing. However, their idiosyncratic errors which were not addressed in languaging process persisted, even after peer proofreading.

The issue of being 'practical' presents a continuous challenge, because student teachers' meanings for that word tend to be in sharp contrast to meanings that allow inquiry and are connected to personal and cultural histories. Instructor and student perspectives elucidate the struggle to find a compromise within this tension in the form of a particular narrative exercise assigned in a foundations course of a teacher-training programme. Investment of identity and performative language were required in order to construct collaboratively a narrative repertoire of techniques and strategies that was practical in a non-technical sense.