Recent reforms to Foreign Language Activities policies in Japan have highlighted the importance of facilitating multilingualism and multiculturalism in global contexts. However, as this analysis finds, some of the most recent textbooks (2018-2020) for Foreign Language Activities classes in Japan are English Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks that fail to provide teachers and students with meaningful discussions on society, language, or culture. This critical discourse analysis (CDA) finds that four elementary school textbooks currently being used by boards of education throughout Japan fail to meet the Ministry of Education’s goals for developing multilingualism and multiculturalism in Japanese elementary schools. Working in an anti-racist lens, this paper identifies problematic areas within the textbooks Let’s Try 1, Let’s Try, We Can 1, and We Can 2 (MEXT, 2018) and discusses the necessity of an attitudinal shift from linguistic hegemony to the implementation of anti-bias frameworks in language and culture education in Japan.
The positioning of the English language as the world’s lingua franca has led to the prioritization of an English monolingual ideology, which has, over the years, promoted the English language as a product to be manufactured, sold, and continuously promoted in capitalistic spaces and neoliberal markets as a tool of upward mobility. This paper presents a university teacher-educator project that is continuing to implement an alter-globalized framework in language education. The project focuses on utilizing translingual practices to create more context-based and liberating learning environments for students and teachers, with a recognition of how these practices can empower people beyond schooling. The paper maintains that by shifting away from globalized perspectives rooted in imperialism in language education, the English language can be repositioned as one tool among many for international cross-cultural communication.
In Japan, recent Foreign Language Activities (2018-2020) policies have explicated the importance of facilitating multiculturalism and global thinking through education and educational tools, including through the use of textbooks. Accordingly, an Anti-Bias Framework (ABF) is one way for educators to develop learners’ global and cultural identities, as well as learners’ appreciation of human differences. ABFs are of particular relevance in multicultural textbooks and classrooms, as they are used for helping students develop local and international identities, and for helping learners eliminate biases. However, the current EFL textbooks (2018-2020) issued by the Japanese Ministry of Education are not inclusive of ABFs. Consequently, there are numerous missed opportunities for teachers and learners to engage in active anti-bias lessons for the facilitation of global citizenship. This paper seeks to address this gap in the textbooks by discussing opportunities for EFL teachers in Japan (and elsewhere) to use anti-bias frameworks in language and culture education. Elaborating upon the Teaching Tolerance Anti-Bias Framework (2017), this article proposes that EFL students in Japan can develop intercultural competencies and anti-bias thinking through an ABF, and offers suggestions for lesson activities, guided classroom discussions, engagement with local interlocutors, for English language development. While positioned against the backdrop of the Japanese EFL elementary classroom, these suggestions can be adapted to other EFL in-person and online classrooms, as well.
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