The role of EFL teachers in Japan : negotiation of cultures

This study explored how EFL teachers in Japan with various backgrounds perceive their roles in relation to the teaching of culture and, further, investigated how such perceptions shaped (and were shaped by) their lived experiences of teaching English. Since the mid-1980s, Japan has been undergoing controversial educational reforms emphasizing communicative English teaching with a focus on the teaching of foreign cultures. The dramatic increase in foreign English teachers, the cultural diversity of the teachers, and the rise and decline of the English language school industry are part of the unique backdrop for this study. Taking a qualitative research approach, a variety of procedures were employed for data collection: questionnaires, class observations, post-observation interviews, and weekly retrospective journals. Two female Japanese and two American (one male and one female) EFL teachers participated in the study for one semester (over a five-month period). Teachers' perceptions were found to be deeply embedded in the individuals' personal histories as cultural beings, based on their educational, professional, and cultural experiences (biographical/professional basis), and subject to constant negotiation due to changing contextual elements (i.e., classroom culture, institutional culture, and textbook). Thus, the study illuminated the teachers' role in interfacing a "curriculum-asplan" and a "lived curriculum". The complexity of the teachers' identities, their struggle for "connection," and their struggle with the "education-control dilemma" emerged as common themes. Therefore, I argued that the issue of culture teaching in EFL classrooms requires a new approach to analyzing and preparing teachers and curricula. Implications for ESL/EFL teacher education and curriculum development with respect to taking a new view of teachers as dynamic, but complex, agents are suggested. Finally, the possibility of collaborative research in effecting desirable educational change is considered.Education, Faculty ofLanguage and Literacy Education (LLED), Department ofGraduat