JALT
2004
NARA
Language Learning for Life

Lifelong Teacher
Learning through a
Collaborative StudyGroup
Kazuyoshi Sato
Nagoya University of Foreign
StudiesNobuyuki Takaki
Kumamoto University
Chieko Okada
Doho High School
Keiko Takahashi
Ikeda High School
Rie Yamashita
Kumamoto Seminar
Hirohumi Serikawa
Shisui Junior High School
Reference Data:
Sato, K., Takaki, N., Okada, C.,
Takahashi, K., Yamashita, R., &Serikawa, H. (2005). Lifelong
Teacher Learning through a
Collaborative Study Group.
In K. Bradford-Watts, C.
Ikeguchi, & M. Swanson(Eds.) JALT2004 Conference
Proceedings. Tokyo: JALT.

4 MENU� PRINT VERSION� HELP

Networks as informal study groups support isolated teachers, stimulate and enhance professional development,
and provide a reality-based start to change their practices in many school settings. Recently, teacher learning
is a catchy word, and the importance of networks has been addressed. However, little is known about how
such networks are formed, what they focus on, and how they are sustained. We will introduce two study
groups—CLT Kenkyukai and PIGATE. After a short introduction by a coordinator, two members from eachgroup will tell their stories. This forum will encourage other teachers to form and participate in a similar study
group, which will engage them in lifelong learning.
研究会などの自主的なネットワークは、学校の中で孤立しがちな教師達を支え、鼓舞し、教師達が自らの授業を改善するために学ぶ機会を継続的に提供する。最近、教師の継続的な学習の大切さやネットワークの意義が強調されている。
しかしながら、
このようなネットワークがどのようにして生まれたのか、何を目的としてどのように発展してきたのかは、
ほとんど知られていない。
この討論会では、CLT研究会とPIGATEという２つの研究会について報告する。初めに、各代表者が研究会を紹介した後、それぞれ２人のメンバーが詳細を報告する。
この討論会は、こうした研究会に参加して生涯にわたり継続的に学びたいと考えている教師を励まし、また新たに研究会を創設しようと考えている教師に多大なヒントを与える。

Introduction

Although the importance of networks has been addressed, “little is known
about how such networks are formed, what they focus on, and how they
are sustained” (Lieberman & Grolnick, 1999, p. 292). In particular,
in the area of foreign language teacher education, there is little research on them.
Networks as informal study groups support isolated teachers, stimulate and enhance
professional development, and provide a reality-based start to change their practices
in many school settings. We will describe how our two different study groups were
established, how they have developed, and what challenges they have faced.
The two study groups we introduce are PIGATE and CLT Kenkyukai. PIGATE,
founded in 1993, now involves 120 members, while CLT Kenkyukai, established in
2000, has 45 members. In both groups the participants share their ideas, materials,
and teaching issues in regular meetings, creating continuous collaborative learning
opportunities. Thus, these study groups are in sharp contrast with formal inservice
training programs which basically force teachers to attend and provide prescriptive
knowledge about teaching. Many studies have indicated that one-shop workshops do
not work, because teachers do not learn by being told to do what to do. Instead, theyneed continuous learning opportunities to adapt new ideas and try them out in their
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CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGSJALT 2004 NARA — Language Learning for Life

Sato, et al: Lifelong Teacher Learning through a Collaborative Study Groupschools (Darling-Hammond & Mclaughlin,1995; Lieberman,
1995; Sato & Kleinsasser, 2004).
First, each group coordinator will describe thedevelopment of his study group. Then, two members fromeach group will tell their stories, including how and why
they are participating in the group, what they have learned,
and how they have actually used ideas to change theirpractices in their schools. Finally, we will conclude ourpaper with implications and future issues.

Chieko’s Story
How I Used toTeach
Before I joined the study group, my lessons had beenmiserable. I asked students questions, but nobody answered.
So I answered myself. I asked students to repeat after me,
but only a few students did so. I asked them to make somecreative English sentences, but nobody could. Therefore, I
did it myself. I had to do everything by myself in my classes.
All my students did was to sit at their desks. I wanted to get
out of the classroom as soon as possible.

CLT Kenkyukai
CLT Kenkyukai (Communicative Language Teaching Study
Group) started in 2000 as an informal study group for six
teachers in the Nagoya area of Japan. We have a monthly
meeting, which lasts two and a half hours. We share ourideas and materials, and discuss teaching issues. During
a summer vacation, we attend a three-day workshop. The
workshop is sponsored by Nagoya University of Foreign
Studies, for which I work. It is a good opportunity toadvertise this study group to workshop participants. The
numbers of members increased from six to 20 in 2002
and to 45 as of today (see Sato, 2003 for more details).
In the following sections, Chieko and Keiko, two of ouractive members tell their stories. Both teachers stress thesigniﬁcance of continuous learning and of developing
teaching skills needed to adapt activities to their classes inorder to expand their teaching repertoire.

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Workshops
Then I started going to several workshops. They wereinteresting and exciting to me. However, in my school otherteachers had never tried anything new. They didn’t believe
the innovative ideas I learnt would work in our school. I felt
isolated in my workplace. The workshops were only onceor twice a year. Then Mr. Sato started this study group four
years ago, and I began to attend the monthly meetings.
CLT Kenkyukai
I found that most of our members also felt isolated in theirworkplaces though they tried to improve their practices bythemselves. I had a lot in common with them. If it wasn’t
for this study group, I would have given up changing mypractices and I would still be teaching English in a boring
way now. During these four years we came to know eachother’s background, which helped me adapt some activities
that the other teachers told me about. Finally, my students
began to react better to some of the activities I tried. I’m not
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGSJALT 2004 NARA — Language Learning for Life

Sato, et al: Lifelong Teacher Learning through a Collaborative Study Groupsure if they have learnt more English, but at least they seemto enjoy my classes more. This was the most powerful factor
in changing myself and my way of teaching.
New Ideas
Now I’d like to give you two examples. These are mystudents’ favorite games. The purpose of the ﬁrst game
(Appendix A) is to make my students use classroom English.
After studying classroom English with this handout, theyplay this “Sugoroku” game. In a group of three or four,
one of the students becomes a referee. The referee has ananswer sheet so that he or she can judge whether the otherstudents’ answers are correct or not. If the answer is wrong,they have to go back three squares. After I tried this game, I
encouraged them to use classroom English in my class. To
my great joy, they began to do so.
The second game (Appendix B) comes from “Grammar
games and activities” written by Peter Watcyn-Jones (1995).
In this game, students practice irregular verbs. Two students
in the group compete against each other while the third
student is a referee. Students take turns choosing a square,
and then give three different verb conjugations in eachof three squares (e.g. freeze—froze—frozen). The gamecontinues until one student gets a row of four squares (either
vertically, diagonally or horizontally). Once the game starts,
I don’t have to do anything. Students teach one another!
After this game, some of my students told me that theylearned a lot of irregular verbs unconsciously.
In my class, winners of the games earn stamps. At theend of the term I count the number of stamps and give them
participation points. Generally speaking, most Japanese
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English teachers believe that it’s very important to teachgrammar explicitly. I also believe that grammar is importantfor Japanese learners, but my students did not learn fromexplicit grammar teaching. Instead, they enjoyed learning
grammar in a communicative way.
My Change
After I learned some communicative ways of teachinggrammar, I began to realize that I should change my way ofteaching it. Although I was scared of my students’ reaction,
I realized that students would like learning grammar, if wewould change the way of teaching it. While I was adopting
speciﬁc activities I learnt in the study group, I began to
discover how to adapt them to my class. I began to enjoy
doing this. During these four years I found out the following
four things.
First, I need to know my students well. Second, formaximum student enjoyment, games should include bothluck and English skills. Third, every member has to beequally responsible for the group task. This means that theteacher has to think of activities which require each student
to be responsible for some aspect of the task. Fourth, I
have found that when students work together in my class,they can learn how to cooperate with one another. I feelhappiest when I see my students smiling and laughing
as they study English. I’d like my students not only tolearn communication skills but also to experience realcommunication in my class.
As a ﬁnal word, I would like to say that I should be a model
learner. People around me sometimes say that I don’t needto study any more, because I’m old and also I’m a part-time
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGSJALT 2004 NARA — Language Learning for Life

Sato, et al: Lifelong Teacher Learning through a Collaborative Study Groupteacher. However, I want to offer the best lesson possible
until the day I retire. Furthermore, I’d like to be a model ofsomeone who does lifelong learning. I have a lot to do in orderto reach my goals, but my favorite word is “challenge.”

Keiko’s Story
Teaching Experience at Different Levels of Schools
While working at different levels of public high schools
as an English teacher, I had chances to attend many kindsof workshops and ﬁnally this study group. The ﬁrst school
I worked at was a highly academic school. The students
enjoyed learning English even if I taught based on the
traditional grammar-translation method. When I occasionallyintroduced some communicative activities in class, thestudents actively participated in the activities. I didn’t realizethat I should teach English more communicatively.
Then I was transferred ﬁve years ago to the school where
many students didn’t like English. Since my teaching style
was still traditional and teacher-centered, the class wasboring for them. They didn’t enjoy my class at all because
they didn’t like doing grammar-translation drills or reading
aloud in class. Many of them didn’t have any purpose instudying English, let alone studying English for university
entrance examinations. This made me rethink how I could
teach English more communicatively. Although I knew I
had to change my teaching style, I didn’t know what to do.
I asked other teachers for advice, but they had already given
up trying out new ideas. I couldn’t share the problems withmy colleagues and felt isolated at the school. Thus I started
to look for some solutions outside the school.
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Attending Workshops
At ﬁrst I attended many workshops to get new teachingideas. I tried them out in my classes after each workshop.
Sometimes they worked well, and sometimes they didn’t
work at all. However, attending these workshops didn’tchange my teaching style. At the workshop, I was just shown
some impressive achievements or success stories. Therefore,
I didn’t ﬁgure out what processes and what problems wereinvolved in making the class more communicative and how
I could deal with those problems. I was just given new ideas
from each workshop. There was no quick and easy solution
to improve my English classes, because the workshops didn’t
teach me how to adapt their teaching ideas to my classes.
As a result, I soon went back to my routine traditional
ways. I didn’t realize why I always went back to my routine
traditional patterns, and I continued to look for solutions inworkshops for the next two years.
Joining CLT Study GroupIn 2000, I met Mr. Sato at one of those workshops. I learned
the word “Communicative Language Teaching” there, andI really liked the activities he showed us. For instance,
he used English songs to teach the rhythm of English. He
introduced some activities to teach grammar inductively. He
demonstrated what tasks we could give and how we could
integrate four skills in one textbook lesson. His workshop
was a lot of fun. He also announced that he was leading
a study group. Although I didn’t understand what a study
group was, I really wanted to learn how to make a class morecommunicative. This is why I started to participated in his
study group.
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGSJALT 2004 NARA — Language Learning for Life

Sato, et al: Lifelong Teacher Learning through a Collaborative Study GroupIn the beginning, my intentions were to learn as many
communicative activities as I could. I did learn many
practical ideas from Mr. Sato and other members, andmy classes became more student-centered and morecommunicative. I stopped giving grammar-translation
practices. As I introduced songs, many kinds of pairactivities, and group projects to my classes, more students
enjoyed learning English.
Gradually I learned how to overcome the problems andhow to modify the activities.In the meeting, we share ourteaching experiences. That is, we report: 1) what activity wetried in a class, 2) what the results were, 3) what we learned,
and 4) how we can modify those activities.
I started to observe my students carefully and to think
how I could modify the activities. Even when they were notsuccessful in my ﬁrst trial, I didn’t give up on them. In ourmonthly meetings I can report what happened, how I failed,and how I can modify the activities. The feedback from
Mr. Sato and other members is very helpful and powerful.
Then I go back to school with the feedback I received and
I continue to take risks. After each meeting, I have madea small change and taken a small risk in class. Eventuallythese small changes have made a big difference.
Networking
By joining CLT study group, I met many teachers fromdifferent schools such as universities, high schools, andjunior high schools. Although each teacher is from adifferent academic level of school, together we can share ourideas, interests, problems, and the goals of teaching English.
Five years ago I felt very isolated in my workplace, but now
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I’m strongly supported by the members of this study group.
I’m always encouraged and inspired by them. This helps me
form a strong belief in teaching English communicatively.
This kind of networking also helps me develop relationships
with other high school teachers and university teachers. Three
years ago our school was assigned by the Gifu Prefectural
Board of Education to promote a two-year project to develop
the students’ communicative abilities. Mr. Sato visited ourschool as an advisor during that period. With his support
and advice, we started to give Oral Communication Classfor the ﬁrst-year students systematically. In the end of theschool year, the students enjoyed skit performance and using
English. In the following year, for the second-year students,
we introduced an innovative approach to Writing class, inwhich speaking and writing activities were integrated throughtopics related to students’ lives. In the end of the second year,
the students could maintain 3-minute conversations and write
15-sentence compositions about the topics. Some students
could have more spontaneous conversations for 4 minutes. I
was very glad to get to know Mr. Sato by joining CLT study
group. Without the support of this university teacher, we
couldn’t have carried out the project. We had no ideas about
how to make a curriculum reform and how to connect theory
and practice.
I’m now beginning to share the ideas I have learned fromthis study group with my colleagues. I’ve learned how
important it is to share goals, ideas, and problems with mycolleagues. This year again, Mr. Sato visits our school. Withhis help, we started to have a weekly meeting and to developa learning community in our school. CLT study group haschanged not only me but also our school.
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGSJALT 2004 NARA — Language Learning for Life

Sato, et al: Lifelong Teacher Learning through a Collaborative Study GroupPIGATEPIGATE whimsically denotes a group of learner-teachers(piglets) working together at the gate leading to the worldof professional teachers of EFL (see Takaki, 2002 for moredetails). It is a self-governed study group founded in 1993
originally as a follow-up program for local college graduates,
later aiming to support the professional development of
pre-/in-service EFL teachers and teacher educators in andaround Kumamoto, Japan. PIGATE was already discussed
three times at annual JALT international conferences andalso once at the TESOL World Convention in Vancouver
in 2000. Unfortunately, however, no PIGATE participants
except its director, Nobuyuki Takaki, were included in thepresentations. Thus, the conference participants never had an
opportunity to listen to the members’ own voices. PIGATE
believes that “a small change will make a big difference,”
and for this presentation a small but signiﬁcant change
was made; two PIGATE members told their stories about
their learning experiences through the PIGATE grassroots
program.
First, Ms. Rie Yamashita, one of the founding members of
PIGATE and an EFL teacher of young learners, described
how PIGATE has been managed for as long as twelve years,
which is rare in Japan (Natsuhara, 2000), and how PIGATE
has made things happen. Rie told her PIGATE story focusing
on how the PIGATE network such as monthly newslettersand mailing list has contributed to the effective managementof monthly/summer sessions. She also discussed someproblems PIGATE has faced so far as well as its prospects.
Second, Mr. Hirofumi Serikawa, a junior high school EFL
teacher, talked about some differences between a typical
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government-run seminar and that of PIGATE based on
his observation during his two-year learning experience at
PIGATE. He also told a story about his dilemma in which he
was caught between attending PIGATE’s Saturday sessions
and fulﬁlling his Saturday responsibility as his school tennis
club advisor.

Rie’s Story
Challenge to Japanese Teachers’ Isolationism
I am one of the seven founding members of PIGATE, andI have learned to teach and learn EFL in various PIGATE
activities for twelve years. In my slot PIGATE will be
discussed in terms of its network system and regular session
management. Japanese teachers are relatively collaborativein their non-academic guidance of students, but little friendly
sharing among them is found when it comes to teaching theirsubjects, a fact which has not been known much to outsiders(Takaki & Laskowski, 2002). This tradition has createdprofessional isolationism in teacher development as well.
In other words, teachers not only live apart geographically,
but also psychologically in terms of subject matter teaching.
It is for this reason that connecting members on a day-today basis is difﬁcult but extremely important. I would liketo emphasize at this point that PIGATE is participant-led,
by which I mean that our activities are initiated by theSteering Committee, which is like a hub in a wheel, and theCommittee members act as sub-committee leaders as shownin Appendix C. The success of PIGATE activities depends
largely on the Steering Committee’s activism.

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Sato, et al: Lifelong Teacher Learning through a Collaborative Study Group
The Monthly Newsletter Is Our Lifeline!
A ﬁve-hour monthly session is PIGATE’s central activity, butthat is not everything. PIGATE Newsletter and the PIGATE
Mailing List have connected members more closely andeffectively. PIGATE Newsletter No. 1 published in June,
1993 had only two pages, but the recent issues have wellover forty pages. The newsletters are edited by the Public
Relations Committee, and four editors-in-chief take turns
being responsible for each issue. They start editing one rightafter each monthly session, a process which normally lasts
three weeks, since they collect various articles contributedby the members in and outside Kumamoto including thoseliving in four foreign countries. Each issue carries essays,
columns, reports, stories, book reviews, information
and announcements, etc. The most time-consuming andchallenging part of newsletter editing is to report in detail
descriptions of what happened, who said what, etc. in eachsession. They always make the most of video/audio tapes,
written records and participants’ reports etc. of each monthly
session. We do so basically for the beneﬁt of the members
who did not make it to the session, and also for those who
like to review their learning. Every second Tuesday, fourdays before each monthly session, copies (120 are sent off
and 30 are kept in PIGATE Library) are mailed to membersby the General Affairs Committee and student volunteers.
This basically reminds them of the coming session,
encouraging them to get ready for it, and also helps them toreview what they learned in the previous session.

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The Mailing List Is Indispensable!
The PIGATE Mailing List started in 1999 using Yahoo egroups free ML service, and managed by the General Affairs
Committee. On the ML, ideas, suggestions, and Q’s andA’s concerning mainly session preparation/management
and newsletter editing are shared. ML was not as popular
as we expected for a while, but particularly after new
projects began in October, 2004, as many as 180 e-mails
were exchanged on the ML in a month. We need to promote
our ML much further because it is now indispensable incommunicating with other members, and also because it
records for us all information of each session’s preparationand evaluation. The only sad fact about the use of ML isthat some teachers are too exhausted because of their harsheveryday life at school to even turn on their computers. We
give such members a phone call once in a while to see how
they are doing.
The Monthly Session Chief System Works!
The monthly session (including a summer special session)
is PIGATE’s central activity. It is made possible by our“session chief” system, in addition to the newsletter and
ML. The Steering Committee members take turns acting
as monthly session chief. The chief drafts the session
program based on PIGATE’s two-year syllabus prepared andapproved at the Annual General Meeting every September
in consultation with Professor Takaki, PIGATE directorcoordinator, and other coordinators. The rough draft will beon the ML for open discussion and suggestions before it isﬁnalized. The chief also emcees the session in collaboration
with the director and six managers in charge of various
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Sato, et al: Lifelong Teacher Learning through a Collaborative Study Groupsections as shown in Appendix C. At a reﬂection session,
which follows immediately after every monthly session,
the chief asks for evaluation and suggestions about thesession s/he has emceed in order to further improve session
management. The chief system is one of the most importantchanges we have made to vitalize monthly sessions.
PIGATE Faces Problems, But….
On the other hand, we have had a difﬁcult time regularly
updating the PIGATE Homepage, created in 2000, due to thelack of enough volunteers to take care of it. But, the greatest
problem we have faced is the fact that many school teachers
are kept too overloaded and seem lost in their job as EFL
teachers. In any case, PIGATE is a fun group of teachers,
students and teacher educators working together in harmony
as it is described in an illustration in Appendix C.

Hirofumi’s Story
My DilemmaFigure 1 shows one aspect of Japanese junior high school(JHS) teachers’ reality. The teacher with a PIGATE ﬁle ina cold sweat is myself two years ago. As you may know,
in Japanese schools both teachers and students are busy at
school with sports/culture club activities even on Saturdays,
Sundays and holidays, while PIGATE monthly sessions areheld every second Saturday afternoon. Thus, it is not easy
to attend PIGATE regularly. However, I now appreciate
how important my struggle to participate in PIGATE is forme, and for my students as well, in the long run despite my
Saturday school responsibility.
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Figure 1
How PIGATE Is Different from A Government-Run Seminar
Table 1 describes some differences I have experienced
between government-run teacher seminars (GS) and
PIGATE activities. First, while GS are mostly one-shot andmandatory, PIGATE is on-going and spontaneous. Second,in GS the teacher learning content is decided by “them”
and therefore inﬂexible, and the seminar is organized andimplemented by the local board of education. In PIGATE,
sessions are planned and administered by ourselves andthey are normally ﬂexible depending on the participants’needs. What usually bothers GS attendees is that although
they are required to submit very ofﬁcial reports, no feedback
is provided, but in PIGATE friendly feedback on ourpresentations, discussions, beliefs and methodologies is
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Sato, et al: Lifelong Teacher Learning through a Collaborative Study Group
usually given by colleagues and coordinators. Third, it issurely beneﬁcial to be informed about the government’s
policies at GS, but they normally demand drastic changes
in our teaching without considering much about the school
and teacher reality. This eventually makes us go back to
traditional ways of teaching at the end of the day. At thesame time model lesson demonstrations at GS are too ideal
to be implemented in our classes. In PIGATE, discussions

Table 1
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are based on our daily classes, and we basically aim at
making small but practical and continuous changes in ourclasses, without necessarily following a prescribed method.
“Why-Not-Join-Us” Project Makes A Difference
PIGATE was founded with seven members participating in
1993, and as of November 2004, it has 120 members in all:5 coordinators (university teacher educators), 23 college anduniversity students including graduate students, 4 elementary
school teachers, 44 public and 2 private JHS teachers, 11
public and 4 private SHS teachers, 3 college teachers, 3 ALT’s
and 10 English conversation or juku school teachers, 4 postservice teachers overseas, and 7 special members who areteacher educators in other prefectures and board of education
people and principals in Kumamoto. Although PIGATE has nosponsors the number of participants is constantly increasing
perhaps partly due to the “Kitemiran (Why-not-join-us) Plan”
we have conducted during the monthly sessions. We haveincluded in the monthly program a ﬁve-minute slot where
we exchange information about those who have not attended
PIGATE yet and also those who used to come to PIGATE
but have become reluctant about coming back. We thenencourage ourselves to take whatever action to invite suchpeople to join us. This is a challenging job, but seems to work
relatively well. In my case, for instance, the relationship withmy colleagues before my participation in PIGATE was basedon complaining about the school system, curriculum, andsome students, but thanks to PIGATE, our relationship has
been changing toward being colleagues who keep on learning
together, which has contributed to our getting rid of routinesand ruts we otherwise easily get into.
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Sato, et al: Lifelong Teacher Learning through a Collaborative Study GroupPIGATE’s Latest Projects Activate Our Learning
Lastly, let me tell you about our two-year syllabus whichstarted in October 2000. Under this syllabus two major tasks
are promoted. In Task 1 each member contributes to PIGATE
Journal which is compiled annually. This is a challenge
for most classroom teachers and students since they are
not familiar with writing papers and essays to a journal,
but we believe that we will learn a lot more by reﬂecting
on our practice and verbalizing our thoughts. In fact, as of
September 2004, eleven issues of PIGATE Journal werecompiled but not many members contributed to them. Task
2 is that each member belongs to at least one of the four
special interest groups: CRE (using more English in theclassroom), RGT (revisiting grammar teaching), 4ES (4minute English song use in the classroom), and FST (funstorytelling). The current syllabus is a process syllabus, andeach group decides their learning goals, procedures andmethodologies basically on their own through negotiations
on the ML and in meetings. In two years each group iscompiling a group report.

Conclusion
Perhaps the only thing we can say for sure after listening
to the two groups’ presentations is that both groups are in
the professional development process, and that processitself means much to the members’ development. After all,teacher learning takes time and it surely is a lifelong work.
It is like water dripping on a stone. Expert participation andgrassroots activism work in harmony!

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The two groups are slightly different from each other inthat CLT Kenkyukai is technically a part of a local university
program, and Dr. Kazuyoshi Sato’s regular visits to the boardof education designated schools to help with their teaching
and curriculum reform (which PIGATE has not done muchyet) is promoted by the local government. PIGATE activities
are much more grassroots and are not directly involved insuch ofﬁcial reforms. However, the study groups resemble
each other in that they demonstrate how expert participants
and grassroots activism work together in harmony. In otherwords, in-service teachers and pre-service teachers as well asteacher educators complement each other and enhance theirteacher learning on comparatively informal, non-threatening,problem-solving, cooperative, self-help, self-discovery,
on-going, day-to-day basis, in a reﬂective, heuristic anddevelopmental fashion. Moreover, the members from bothgroups strongly feel that the participation of university
teacher educators is the key to success.
In both groups the participants relatively freely share
their teaching and learning experiences, released fromrigid formality and most importantly without losing face. It
seems that they have learned that no teacher is an island by
regularly verbalizing their thoughts and exchanging various
kinds of information about teaching in their meetings.

Local college based collaboration works!
The concept of “follow-up program for local college
graduate-teachers” has made it easier, at least
psychologically, for those teachers to attend monthly
meetings because they are held at their alma mater. PIGATEin twelve years has gradually spread to other teachers who
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Sato, et al: Lifelong Teacher Learning through a Collaborative Study Group
have graduated from other universities as well by word of
mouth. It would not be too difﬁcult, then, for teachers andteacher educators in other areas to start a teacher study
group if they follow a PIGATE approach. CLT Kenkyukai
is also a local college-based group, and it is expected that
more universities and experts can contribute to the local
community in terms of lifelong teacher education.
Finally, we would like to point out that school teachers’
right to develop themselves professionally, especially inthe subject matter teaching, should be guaranteed by allmeans as described in Japanese Kyoiku-komuin Tokureiho,laws that apply to civil servants in the ﬁeld of education.
Mombukagakusho, the Japanese Ministry of Education,
recently brought into effect a ﬁve-year action plan “Japanesepeople who can use English,” and a two-week intensive
training program has become mandatory for all JHS andSHS English teachers in the country (with some exceptions).
However, such a government-led program will need to besupplemented by on-going, collaborative teacher learning
opportunities as discussed in this colloquium because we
feel that such grassroots teacher development organizations
are vital in a country like Japan, where the hierarchical, topdown teacher education approach is inadequate in helping
teachers to make necessary changes in themselves. All this
implies that we must not wait for the government and otherformal institutions to take the lead in teacher training anddevelopment reform.

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References
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Sato, et al: Lifelong Teacher Learning through a Collaborative Study Group
Takaki, N. (2002). PIGATE: affecting EFL teacher education
change from the grassroots level in Japan. The Teacher
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Takaki, N., & Laskowski, T. (2002). Investigating teacher
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Appendix 1

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Sato, et al: Lifelong Teacher Learning through a Collaborative Study GroupAppendix 2

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CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGSJALT 2004 NARA — Language Learning for Life

Sato, et al: Lifelong Teacher Learning through a Collaborative Study GroupAppendix 3

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CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS