THE LEARNER DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL
学習者ディベロップメント研究部会誌
ISSN: 2433-5401
https://ldjournal.ld-sig.org

The Learner Development Journal Issue 7:
Challenging the Conventions of Learner Development Research
Authors: Andy Barfield & Akiko Nakayama
Title: Collegially Exploring Engaged Meaningful Learning: Stories, Perspectives, Dialogue,
and Issues
Date of publication online: 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTSIG.LDJ7-8
Author contact: <abarfield001f(at)g(dot)chuo-u(dot)ac(dot)jp>, <akknkym(at)gmail(dot)com>
Published by the Japan Association for Language Teaching
Learner Development Special Interest Group, Tokyo
https://ld-sig.org/
Copyright 2023 each respective author
This article can be cited as:
Barfield, A. & Nakayama, A. (2023). Collegially exploring engaged meaningful learning:
Stories, perspectives, dialogue, and issues. The Learner Development Journal, 7, 128–156.
https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTSIG.LDJ7-8

This article is part of a collection of practitioner research on the theme of “Challenging theConventions in Learner Development Research” for Issue 7 of the Learner Development
Journal (LDJ7), edited by Ellen Head, Aya Hayasaki, and Ryo Moriya. Published once a year,
each issue of the Learner Development Journal follows a Community of Practices approachover a period of approximately 18 months in which contributors work together, under theguidance of the editors, to share, respond to, and develop their research and writing.
Articles are published in the Learner Development Journal under a Creative Commons Attribution
License (CC BY), of which CC BY 4.0 is the most recent version. Under this agreement, authors
grant users the right to unrestricted dissemination and re-use of the work. They ask only thatproper attribution is given to the work.

ARTICLE
Collegially Exploring Engaged Meaningful Learning:
Stories, Perspectives, Dialogue, and Issues
Andy Barfield, Chuo University, Japan<abarfield001f(at)g(dot)chuo-u(dot)ac(dot)jp>
Akiko Nakayama, Hiroshima University, Japan<akknkym(at)gmail(dot)com>
In this article we (two university teachers in Japan) collaboratively reflect on our teaching experiences andpractitioner research to do with what we have come to call “engaged meaningful learning” approaches suchas Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Learning through Discussion (LTD). We use autobiographical stories,
our responses to each other’s stories, different teacher and learner voices, as well as a reflexive dialogue,
to develop personal and local perspectives about what engaged meaningful learning means for ourselves
and our learners. Akiko shares her story of becoming socialized as a Japanese teacher and examines
why she found that LTD promoted students’ engagement and critical understanding, whereas she had
mixed experiences with using PBL. This led Akiko to puzzle long and hard over what successful practicemeans for her. Andy reflects on project work in his own education and past teaching, as well as in a recent
curriculum reform process introducing PBL classes in which students research global issues and look at
how such issues impact local communities and people that they know. He presents the story of one learnerdoing a project into ethical consumerism to illuminate the complex interplay between learner creativity,
learner criticality, and learners’ translingual practices in PBL. In this unconventional patchwork multivocalic
reflection we (Akiko and Andy) come to recognise the importance of acknowledging internal and external
ideological constraints and of creating new discourses to foster critical awareness and agency in students
for engaged meaningful learning.

この論文では、
プロジェクト型学習（PBL）やディスカッションを通した学習（LTD）のような、私たち（日本の大学教員2名）が「関与ある学習方法」と呼ぶアプローチに関する自身の教育経験と実践研究を共同で振り返る。
私たちは、自伝的な物語、互いの物語への応答、
教師と学習者のさまざまな声、そしてリフレクシブな対話を用いて、私たち自身と学習者にとって意味あり関与ある学習とは何かについて、個人的かつローカルな視点を発展させた。
中山は、日本語教師として社会化するまでのストーリーを語り、PBLを使った経験が彼女にとっては評価が分かれるものであったのに対し、なぜLTDが学生の関与と批判的理解を促進することがわかったのかを考察する。
そして、中山にとっての実践の成功とはなんだったのかという問いを投げかける。
バーフィールドは、自身の教育や過去の指導におけるプロジェクトワークの経験とともに、学習者が国際的な問題について調査し、それらの問題がいかに学習者の身の回りの共同体や人びとに影響を与えているのかを考察するPBL授業を導入した最近のカリキュラム改革の過程について振り返る。
PBLにおける
学習者の創造性、学習者の批評性、学習者のトランスリンガルな実践の間の複雑な相互作用を明らかにするのに役立つ、倫理的消費主義についてのプロジェクトを行った一人の学習者の話を紹介する。
この型破りでパッチワークのような多声的な内省の中で、私たち（中山とバーフィールド）は、内面化されたもの、外的なもの双方のイデオロギー的制約を認識することの大切さと、意味あり関与ある学習に取り組む学生らに批判的意識と主体性（agency)を育み、そのための新しい言説を創造する重要性を認識するようになった。

Keywords

teacher narrative, teacher socialization, local context, Project Based Learning (PBL), engaged meaningful learning
教師のナラティブ、教師の社会化、ローカルな文脈、
プロジェクト型学習（PBL）、意味あり関与ある学習

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Learner Development Journal • Issue 7 • December 2023

Andy Barfield & Akiko Nakayama*****
Representations and especially academic representations came to be criticizedbecause, in and through the context where they appeared, they laid claims to truth. In
the wake of this critique, representations were recognized to be context-dependent,
always embodying interests, politics, and power. Yet much of the postmodern, feminist,and constructivist literature continued to employ genres characteristic of modernism.
That is the critiques, lacking self-reflexivity, merely wrote new truths.
… These attempts used a variety of means to break the voice of the dominant narrative
to the point that the different voices intersect, overlap, resist, and contrast one another.
It is a form of writing that resists language, all the while making use of it. (Roth, 2005,
p. 13)

I. Introduction

HIROSHIMA & TOKYO March-August 2023 – We each work in different parts of Japan,
Akiko in Hiroshima, Andy in Tokyo, and have different areas of work and disciplinaryinterests. Akiko’s background is History and Japanese Language Education, and she used
to teach international undergraduate and exchange students. Andy’s disciplinary areas
are Applied Linguistics and English Language Education and he teaches mostly Japanese
undergraduate students. Despite these differences, we share interests to do with learnerdevelopment, which we discovered by chance a few years ago when we were in the same
response community for Issue 5 of the Learner Development Journal (LDJ). With its themeof challenging the conventions in researching and writing about learner development,
Issue 7 of the LDJ offered an interesting opportunity for us to collaborate further. In the
beginning we had no fixed idea about what we might explore and write about together.
Over time, through our collegial dialogues and discussions every few months or so, ourfocus shifted towards how we and our learners understand and engage with ProjectBased Learning (PBL) and other non-conventional approaches to learning, and whatquestions come up for us about this. We also became interested in writing our accountin a non-conventional way by co-authoring a personalised, reflective, and interactive
exploration of our practitioner concerns with engaged meaningful learning.
The two of us believe that practitioner research is highly personal, subjective, and that
it is driven by teachers’ own puzzles and interests within their practices with their learners(Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Hanks, 2017; Jarvis, 1999; Zeichner & Noffke, 2001). Our
practitioner inquiries often spring from our inner conversations with ourselves, as well asfrom our spontaneous interactions with learners, colleagues, and close others with whom
we talk and reflect about our work. We find that our practices are deeply embedded in
our own biographical trajectories (past, present, and future), as well as in the very local
contexts of our lives and work, including the institutional discourses, affordances, andconstraints that impact our daily work. These fundamentally important contours ofpractitioner research figure strongly as we delve into our experiences of being socialised
as teachers, working with PBL in our own local ways, and reflecting on what meaningful
engaged learning signifies for us and our students in our particular contexts.
It is however difficult to reconcile writing from these personal and local positions withthe distancing, objectifying, de-voiced writing that much conventional academic writing
and publishing mandates. Although there is no commonly agreed way to write reflexive
practitioner research accounts, we try to write here in a context-dependent, personally
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Collegially Exploring Engaged Meaningful Learning: Stories, Perspectives, Dialogue, and Issues

voiced fashion. Rather than starting with an extensive literature review and adopting a
conventional universalizing stance, we each begin with an opening autobiographical story
about significant experiences to do with PBL that we have had in the past. We then sharereflections about each other’s stories before focusing on particular puzzles that we eachhave around PBL and other non-conventional approaches to learning in our different
contexts. Looking at how some of our learners have responded to these approaches, weconsider what we have gained from contemplating our learners’ activity and work. We do
this in a dialogue, before raising, in the final part, questions for further consideration andinquiry.
This way of writing includes multiple voices, stories, and student artefacts. We have tried
to do this in such a way that these intersect and overlap, and also resist and contrast, with
one another, as Roth proposes in the opening quotation to this article. What follows, then, is
not a conventional piece of academic writing: It is more a patchwork multivocalic reflectionthat narratively—and in places contradictorily—explores engaged meaningful learning fromseveral different perspectives. We begin with our two autobiographical stories side by side.
As they are parallel, please read them in any order that you choose. We then briefly respondto each other’s stories, before continuing our narratives sequentially, with Akiko looking foralternatives to a prescriptivist approach to language education, and Andy navigating new
PBL discourses in a collaborative curriculum reform process.

II. Starting Autobiographical Stories
Akiko: Setback in Becoming a Conventional
Japanese Language Teacher

Andy: Recovering the Themes of ProjectBased Learning

HIROSHIMA June 12th, 2022 – “I would
like to share an old story from my early days
as a new Japanese language teacher, which
eventually led me to graduate school as akind of escape. Back then, I cherished themoments of laughter with my students in theclassroom, despite the daily struggles of classpreparation. Narrative is the way I can convey
my voice and context in all its complexity.

TOKYO June 6th, 2022 – Apart from one
spectacularly hazy memory of a project on
Roman roads in primary school, I don’t recall
project-based learning (PBL) in my own
school years. Now, in conversation with Akiko,recollecting bygone experiences of school anduniversity learning helps me puzzle over what
PBL means in my present work.

My socialization as a Japanese language
teacher started in Korea in the 90s. I met basic
language teacher knowledge and skills forthe first time and learnt them over there. It
was exactly like the “Practice makes perfect”
experience. I learnt the differences between
grammar syllabus and situational syllabus,
and basic Japanese verb conjugation from theteacher’s guide attached with the textbook.

At the same time in Korea, I was also learning
Korean without any formal classes. I learnt
Korean through reading grammar books andtalking with Koreans in my daily life. I tried
to understand announcements on the bus,
130

An art teacher in secondary school
encouraging us to express ourselves freely,
and who was never anything less than
accepting and enthusiastic about our ideas
and artistic work. An inspiring German teacher
who would discuss and laugh with us inclass and always invited us to use our basic
German to express our ideas as best we could.
Newspaper articles, current affairs magazines,
radio recordings, films, and later a wide
range of German literary works, all helping
us make connections with new worlds, bothcontemporary and historical. Such moments ofeducational freedom, empathy, and connection
seem almost subliminal and enduring

Learner Development Journal • Issue 7 • December 2023

Andy Barfield & Akiko Nakayama

advertisements in the newspaper or the shop
windows. I listened carefully to what mystudents said and copied them. I can give you
the moment I understood “뭐라고? (mweora-go) What did you say?” as an example.

It was in May or June a couple of months afterI came to Korea. Two junior female students
were sitting on a big stone near my officebuilding. It was early afternoon, so I asked
them “Have you had lunch?” in Japanese,
which is a very common “How are you?” inKorean. Then two girls looked at each otherwith confused expressions and said, “뭐라고?
(mweo-ra-go).” At that moment, I understoodthat it meant “What did she say?” Wow, I can’ttell you how excited I was.
I had so many experiences picking up words
and phrases in my daily life. I also studied
very hard at home with grammar books. The
more phrases and vocabulary I could study,
the more my world in Korea expanded. I
enjoyed studying a foreign language for the
first time in my life.
But I could not integrate those very exciting
experiences in my classroom.

After I came back to Japan, I was lucky
enough to teach at two different institutions.
One was following a strict grammar andsentence-pattern syllabus from beginner
to intermediate. Another one was using asituational functional syllabus and was more
open-minded for experimental teaching. In
the former one, I was shocked about thevolume of knowledge other teachers had.
They seemed to know everything written
in the textbook; the vocabularies, elementsof grammar, and the order of submissions.
They used their knowledge and their senseof “native speakers” to check students’
written homework. At first, the grammarcentered textbook was very new to me
and I realized my lack of knowledge, bothabout the textbook and the grammar. Even
though I prepared a lot for the class, students
sometimes got confused or I could not answer
students’ questions. What I could do was

influences on me as I look back.
As an undergraduate, no “project-like” learning
experiences spring to mind, either. Yet, a few
years later, in postgraduate teacher training,a drama teacher using drama projects in aworkshop approach to teacher education
had a lasting impact on me: It was a new andmuch deeper way of learning than I had everexperienced before, and it made profoundsense.
Soon afterwards I tried extra-curricular drama
workshop projects in Yugoslavia at Novi Sad
and Belgrade universities where I taught
in the early part of my teaching career. At
Belgrade University, over several months, thedrama workshop had 30 to 40 first- throughfourth-year students of English Language
and Literature and met once a week for 2-3
hours. The students created together throughimprovisation, discussion, and reflection two
plays, each about an hour long. The workshops
featured minimal frames for improvised work,with students discussing their improvisations
and feeding ideas back into the scaffolded
development of each play week by week.
Never scripted, the evolving plays wereconstantly re-negotiated, then performedin public, and shared with a wider audience(initially inspired by Dorothy Heathcote’s
educational drama work (Farmer, n.d.), later
Boal’s (2004) Theatre of the Oppressed).
Some years later I worked with students at
the University of Tsukuba on what I came tocall “drama-mentary.” An early conversation
with Akiko led me to start searching for more
concrete connections: Where were thosephotocopies of student work from that class?
Finding a long untouched folder of notes andstudent writing, I started recollecting more
sharply how this advanced class had involved
students from different faculties in exploring
contemporary issues in society. For one
project we had decided to take the theme ofraising public awareness of HIV/AIDS. Using“drama across the curriculum” methods, I
then guided the students to do improvisations

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Collegially Exploring Engaged Meaningful Learning: Stories, Perspectives, Dialogue, and Issues

blindly follow what was written in textbooks
so that class went a little bit smoothly.

After teaching there for a few years, I becamefamiliar with their strict prescriptivism andI could gradually afford to include sentencesthat seemed relevant to students’ lives andcomposed sentences on topics that I wasinterested in talking about in my handouts.

In the latter one, I had a chance to teachintermediate exchange students with anotherfull-time teacher. The course consisted of asituational syllabus, and, for different lessons,
I made handouts reorganizing the text bookand had students practice sentence patterns
and dialogues. Sometimes I and anotherfull-time teacher invited Japanese students
who were interested in exchange withinternational students and organized someevents which were related with themes inthe textbook like introducing Japanese New
Year’s games or doing some sports together.
We planned those events in the hope thatexchange students could get off the “English
island,” in the university where Japanese was
the mainstream. Exchange students camefrom all over the world, and they were lively
and frank. I felt like they were my younger
friends.
When I look back on myself, I was learningand teaching in a conventional way, at thesame time, looking for a chance to give
students an opportunity to use Japanese in
an authentic situation like I had in Korea.
Moreover, I learnt the joy of chit-chatting
and even making jokes with my students
with their limited vocabulary and phrases.
When I had a laugh and a good time withmy students, I felt teaching Japanese was
rewarding, and finally I could admit tomyself that I am a language teacher.

Slowly I began to accept offers for otherclasses, and just as I was gaining a little
confidence in my ability to teach through trial
and error, I hit a wall. Some students did notunderstand, no matter how well I explained
the grammar and vocabulary in the textbook.
132

around particular situations to do with HIV/
AIDS, before they reflected through discussion
and writing about what they had experienced.
Next, in pairs and small groups, the students
created their own drama-mentaries. These
were public awareness dramas in which
they acted out different situations (drama),
in addition to freeze-framing or interrupting
scenes at certain points to present information,
contradictory perspectives, and commentary
about HIV/AIDS (commentary) to let the(imagined) audience step back and reflect.
One particular set of notes stood out as I
delved through the folder. These handwritten
reflections picked up on the fieldworkinterviews the student had done at two nurseryschools in her local area about school policies
for accepting an HIV positive child: “I wasreally surprised these two had different pointof view towards accepting of HIV positive
child. One thinks it is the privacy right. The
other says it is the responsibility to tell toeverybody that there is HIV positive child.”She further reflected: “But it was really goodchance to deepen my knowledge. I talked a lot
with my friends of other classes and especiallywith my boyfriend. I will be a doctor someday
and when I become doctor I would be the one
who tell about the disease.” I am struck by
how talking with others outside of the class
was meaningful for this student, as well as
how creativity and criticality dovetailed for the
students in what they did.
Reflecting on these past project learning
experiences, I grasp more clearly key
leitmotivs of dialogue, creative commitment,
and a quest for critical engagement andconnection with a wider audience outside of
the class. Working with others, solo activity,and later sharing also come into view, together
with self-directed individual and group action.
In a recent blog post about project-basedlearning, a writer (Aida, 2017) refers to a key
dimension of such learning as “この「夢中になった経験」” / “kono「muchū ni natta keiken」”/ “this‘engaging/engrossing experience’.”Learner Development Journal • Issue 7 • December 2023

Andy Barfield & Akiko Nakayama

And also, some university students, perhaps
tired from their part-time jobs, gave me a cold
look as I explained how to write an academic
report using the academic Japanese textbooks
that had just been published. “Oh, come onteacher, we are fed up with your meaninglessinstructions. It is no use learning those poshphrases.” I felt as if they said that to me.
I started to question myself. “Is a prescriptive
approach to language education truly
beneficial for learners?” There were many
ways to blame them: They were unmotivated,
they didn’t have enough experience reading
and writing in their own country or studying
foreign languages, they came to Japan toearn money. I didn’t want to accuse themusing those phrases, but I could not find analternative way of teaching. I started to feel
my students were the enemy to be defeated.
Fortunately, only one or two classes gave methat feeling, but that was enough to break my
joy and confidence for teaching.

As if bad things happen to bad people/悪い時に悪いことは起こるもので/waruitokini waruikotoha
okorumonode/, right around that time, things
were going wrong with the international andJapanese student events which I organized
in a situational syllabus course as well. Even
though those were small events, it required adecent amount of coordination with a full-timeteacher who was in charge of the courses orJapanese students who saw the call for event
participants. Despite our efforts, it seemed
like my students didn’t use Japanese as
much as we expected or their relationshipwith Japanese students was just on the site.
Compared to the amount of preparationand coordination, the fruit I got was quite
small. I was running around behind thescenes and felt I did not get much of a chance
to see what the students were doing, how
they were feeling, or what they were talking
about. The students were the guests. Whatbroke my heart was the time of cleaning.
After the events, a few girl students from
Asian countries helped me clean, but otherstudents left the site without saying thankThe complete involvement of learners in what
they do in project-based learning is often
highlighted, as are individual creativity andpersonal engagement, in the way that PBL
gets discoursed. These elements certainly
feature in the past experiences of PBL thathave come back into focus for me. Yet,
something is absent in that picture, and themissing link for me is the theme of developing
a critical relationship to the world, exploringthat critical understanding with others, and,in some way, raising others’ awareness of
the issue at hand. Trying to develop criticality
was undoubtedly salient in the drama projectwork in Yugoslavia and, later, at the Universityof Tsukuba with drama-mentary projects. It
is also a key concern in my current teaching
and has been an important part of curriculum
reform discussions with colleagues in the past
few years, as well as with teachers at otheruniversities interested in PBL. The criticaldimension is a significant interest in my current
PBL work—a puzzle and a challenge that I
keep coming back to.
My students continually teach me that neither“the local” nor “the global” has any fixed
senses. Their perspectives, positions, andunderstandings are constantly shifting as they
develop a project. For one student the local
may start with doing visual research in theirneighbourhood, observing and taking photos,
for example, of recycling points. For another,
the local may have a stronger transnational
sense and involve talking to people they know
online and discussing what a particular issue
such as overconsumption means for thoseindividuals where they live, whether they are
in Japan, South Africa, Thailand, or the USA.
For another student it may mean first findingout basic information about gender (in)equality
at a global level or in other local contexts, andthen considering which people close to them
they might discuss their lived experiences ofgender inequality with.
Just how the mediation of the personal, thelocal, and the global might be realised inpractice is something that I continue to be

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Collegially Exploring Engaged Meaningful Learning: Stories, Perspectives, Dialogue, and Issues

you. Eventually I withdrew from these events
because I felt like a servant. I decided toget a PhD which seemed necessary to geta full-time job and I wanted to pursue themystery of why my different selves emerged
when I spoke different languages. Starting a
PhD was empowering for me, and at the sametime I used my PhD studies as an excuse to
reduce my teaching load and stop making myteaching practice the center of my life.

puzzled by. In what ways do students makeconnections between global issues and theirown lives and local communities? Why? How
do they go about developing their criticalawareness? And do they see doing theirprojects as a creative process or not? Why?

III. Responding to Each Other’s Autobiographical Stories
TOKYO October 2022/March 2023 – Hi Akiko,That initial period of prescriptive thinking
and action as a teacher reminded me of how
like you I looked for basic secure pedagogic
routines when I started as a teacher (and still
do when I take on new types of courses)—andof the endless hours of lesson-planning that
I would do in my early years of teaching. I
can remember too the sense of authority thatteachers’ textbooks conveyed, and how linearlycertain teaching needed to be before any
ostensible learning was thought to take place.
Perhaps for early-career Akiko, fixed methods(and textbooks and teacher manuals) let youteach in an explicit and predictable way, so
you inevitably reached a point where youneeded to find out how you wanted to teach inyour own way. You started experimenting andfocusing on your learners and using language
in different spontaneous ways. And then you
hit a wall. An image of four walls comes into
my mind, without any ceiling or roof. It could
literally be an exercise yard (!) that you returnto and are trapped in. The image makes me
notice that prescriptivism is so difficult toquestion and see beyond. At the same time,
opting for more open(-minded) learner-centred
pedagogies brought with it its own risks andchallenges for you.
You mention that in some classes you felt
like you wanted to blame your students andreproach them, although you didn’t want to.
As teachers we don’t often write about how
we relate emotionally to our learners and to134

HIROSHIMA July/October 2022 – Hi
Andy, Reading your short opening story,
which gives a picture of what you have been
pursuing as a teacher, I was struck by thejoy of learning that young Andy felt. It was
one of the roots and the compass of yourteaching.

And I thought it was so awesome thatthat experience led you to pursue creative
learning, using collaboration with others,
drama acting, and improvisational dialogue,rather than focusing on “knowledge” thatcan be measured by tests. I was amazedbecause I can imagine how difficult runninga classroom without the tests and theteacher’s authority is, and it requires
teachers to carefully listen to their students’voices and learn from them also.

What you wrote made me reflect on my own
experiences. Did I have a learning experience
like Andy’s in any classroom? I grew up
in a Japanese educational environment
dominated by scores, pecking orders, andentrance exams. And what was my goalin teaching? After World War II, Japanese
language education resumed focus on
language skills, not learner development,
as a reflection of the use of the Japanese
language as a symbol of national unity
during the prewar colonialist era. I feelthat we are now faced with the challenge ofovercoming the ghosts of a belief that covers
the teaching of Japanese: Language is just askill, and there is a right way to use the skill.

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Andy Barfield & Akiko Nakayama

ourselves as teachers, although we may welltalk about this with workplace colleagues
or close others. For me those feelings offrustration come up for different various
reasons when I am teaching. My learners
are “present but not engaged” (for whateverreasons) in what I want them to focus on (orthey want me to focus on!), or I don’t see
clearly where each of them is, or even: They
are not being the learners I want (or imagine)them to be.

One more thing: only native speakers know
the right way to use it. And create a newgoal of teaching and learning language.
In reflecting on my history as a teacher,I reaffirm that I, too, have been attracted
by the collaboration and creativity of mystudents.

You have given me homework trying to fit
student creative learning into the history ofJapanese language education. I hope I can
submit my summer homework, like my son
drawing pictures for the new semester.

That sense of “not seeing” the learners andnot connecting with them came through for mevery strongly when you described coordinating Sincerely,
the different events and being rushed off yourAkiko
feet in serving the students and making surethings ran successfully. And then your priorities
moved from teaching to your PhD studies.
What happened next?
Best
Andy

IV. Continuing Our Stories
Akiko: Looking for alternatives

HIROSHIMA March - August 2023 – In my opening story I wrote about the first decade of
my life as a language teacher. As a Japanese language teacher, my socialized environment
was filled with traditional teacher-centered prescriptivism, but when I referred to my own
language learning experiences as my standpoint for teaching, I realized I wanted to pursue
an alternative way of teaching. So I organized some events where international students
and Japanese students participated together. They gave me a sense of excitement alongwith the feeling of “I am doing a new thing,” but I was not sure that was what I wanted todo. After completing my PhD, I realized that I had been longing to have a teaching practicewhere I could encourage my students to have a positive Japanese speaking self, like my
Korean speaking self. To continue my story, I would like to share two of my practices in
the following decade.
After completing my PhD, I was fortunate enough to be offered a full-time teachingposition at a local university in the Kyushu area. Initially, I was assigned to a class ofundergraduate international students. The class was for non-native Japanese students
who had chosen it as an alternative to English or as a second foreign language. Most of
the international undergraduates had studied Japanese for one or two years at a Japanese
language school and had obtained JLPT N1, but their Japanese language skills were notprecise enough to be considered effective when writing academic reports or participating
actively in university classes. On the other hand, they had spent a lot of time studying
standard Japanese at a Japanese language school, and I did not want to impose more
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Collegially Exploring Engaged Meaningful Learning: Stories, Perspectives, Dialogue, and Issues“correct” Japanese on them because they were already highly proficient Japanese users tomake their lives on their own.

Learning through Discussion

There were three classes, and it was my job to coordinate with the other teachers. As was
decided before I came, the first semester would focus on reading comprehension andthe second semester on presentations, leaving it up to each teacher in charge to decideon which materials to use. From the second year, I decided to use for the first semestera collaborative learning method I had learned at a workshop held in a nearby university.
The method was called LTD (Learning through Discussion). I chose reading materials
from several anthologies published on the subject of 大学活用法/ How to Make the Most of
University (e.g., Iwanami Shoten Editorial Department, 2000). I had in mind the students
who had given me those cold looks before I joined the PhD course, and, in particular,a student from China who dropped out because he could not find a purpose or goal inuniversity life. I wanted them to spend their four years of college in the most meaningful
way possible, because if they did not find their own purpose, the time would go byaimlessly.
In the original LTD textbook (Yasunaga, 2006), students were supposed to read one
whole paper whatever the length, before the class and follow designated steps, like“definition of terms and concepts” or “integration of material with other knowledge.” In
the classroom, students should break into small groups to discuss the reading materials
following the same steps they had done as preparation. I was attracted to LTD becausethrough those steps the teacher could make sure students had read the materials
before the class. Also, using one of those steps, each student needed to articulate how
the reading materials related to them personally. In short, by using LTD, students aresupposed to read deeply and personally engage with the texts, key ideas in the texts, andthe challenging questions that they raised.
As I hoped that reading about college life would give students a chance to reflect on
their own lives, I specifically arranged LTD with the hope that reading would give students
a chance to reflect on their own lives. I decided that students would read only two essays
per semester, and I also created a simple worksheet and assigned it as homework.
There was one class that still remains in my memory: it was a small class of about 10
students, all Chinese, Taiwanese, and Korean. They were not “model” students at all. They
took Japanese courses as the easiest choice. Some of them told me, “No more studying
language!” At least, they were very frank and honest to tell me that without hesitation. For
this class, I chose to read an essay that argued that university students should spend timemaking the best choices for their future, so that students should not take on part-time jobs
or club activities. The argument was clear; the author recommended dedicating yourself toyour studies and finding a specialty, thus, “Don’t optimize now, optimize in the future. If you canfind your favorite speciality while you are in university, you will have a better life in the future.”
However, agreeing with this perspective in the Japanese context was somewhat difficult.
Many Japanese university students had a limited understanding of society prior to entering
university. As a result, taking on a part-time job was often viewed as a way to “learn aboutsociety” rather than just a means of earning money. Similarly, I believed that participating inclub activities could be an effective means to make friends and have a more active university
life. This was especially true for international students who needed part-time jobs in order
to finance their studies and enhance their understanding of Japanese culture. If things went
well, they might make lifelong Japanese friends.
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As the week progressed, their discussion grew more heated. How quiet and yet
passionate their discussion was over the single word “最適化/ saitekika/ optimization.” I
was impressed that they could be so serious in class and respond to their classmatesin such a non-superficial way. I was almost moved as I watched the discussion and feltthat although it was a “Japanese” class, learning was involved in their lives. In otherwords, they engaged meaningfully in their learning; then, their engagement lead themto critical understanding of the word “最適化/ saitekika/ optimization,” rather than simply
memorizing the dictionary meaning of the word. I felt I witnessed them giving their own
meaning to the word, trying to express it to classmates, and negotiating the meaning witheach other. I heard their voices echo in Japanese.
To this day, this remains one of my most unforgettable teaching experiences. Even after
my Japanese course ended, these students visited my office from time to time and fondly
reported on their recent activities when we met on campus.

Try PBL again

However, the number of full-time international undergraduate students entering theuniversity began to decline, and instead, a large number of exchange students, staying forat least one semester/6 months, enrolled in Japanese language classes. (Undergraduates
here means students who graduate from the university over a four-year period, whereas
exchange students refers to students who come to Japan from partner institutions tostudy for six months or one year.) I then began to feel that this method using LTD was notsuitable for the many exchange students who were majoring in Japanese in their homecountries, because they were more the type of student who cared about test scores. They
preferred to avoid classroom discussions where there were no definitive answers. Before
I could explore other options, there was a curriculum reform and I stopped teaching thiscourse. I suspect that this curriculum reform, ostensibly designed to introduce active
learning into general education, was in fact intended to reduce the number of foreign
language courses which hired many part-time instructors and put pressure on thebudget. As a full-time Japanese faculty member, it was necessary to create an attractive
program to attract international students to choose this university in order to protect theemployment of the teachers.
Due to the curriculum reform around 2013, I and another teacher were required tomake a class for short-term international students and Japanese students’ project work.
Although we did not know much about how to conduct project work, we were aware thatthe short-term exchange international students had a hard time finding opportunities
to use Japanese in their lives. Also, the Japanese students had never spoken withinternational students before, even though they were interested in foreign countries. I
wanted to give international exchange students chances to interact with local people inJapanese since they had spent at least a couple of years studying Japanese in their home
university. I also wanted to puncture the small comfortable cocoons that local Japanese
students lived in.
The area where the university was located, like other regional cities in Japan, wassuffering from an exodus of young people and the hollowing out of its industries.
The local government was hoping that foreign students would bring an international
perspective to the area, and provide some ideas about bringing international tourists tothe area. My colleague and I worked together to organize the projects for the students.
I was in charge of this project work for several years, and we organized groups with half
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international students and half undergraduates as much as possible because we expectedthat would create continuous interaction in the groups.
In the first year, there were 4 groups and, two or three years later, 5 or 6 groups due tomore students enrolling in the course. We set the goal of the project as making brochures
to attract domestic and international tourists to the local area where the university was
located. For each project, students visited sites related to their chosen theme. In thefirst year, they chose themes and explored bike-friendly locations, including the best
restaurants and spots with beautiful autumn leaves. One year later, students were more
ambitious and tried to go farther looking for interesting places such as hot spring areasand power spots (places where people believe you can feel a spiritual or healing energy
and come away refreshed and rejuvenated). We didn’t set any limits or frame what they
had to do other than making a brochure. Since we could not get any funds for theseprojects, they had to use their own money to visit the sites in a group. We printed out thebrochures they made and distributed them at the international student center office ormunicipal international exchange associations.
In reviewing past materials, I noticed that the quality of the brochures varied fromyear to year and group to group. I can still feel their passion and energy from somebrochures even now, but I could not help but think at the time that some were just copies
of municipal pamphlets or websites. The differences probably came from the themes,leadership, and/or ideas. Some groups chose interesting themes, and the cooperationin the group worked very well, while others were, even though they tried very hard,suffering. When I had the chance, I was curious and asked them “How is it going?” Some ofthem confessed to me, with sad, tired faces, that they didn’t have any idea what to write or
they could not find anything interesting.
This is my experience with PBL, if you can call it that. I know every teaching is always“trial and error,” but something didn’t sit right with me. I still can’t find the reason why
I couldn’t be satisfied with my PBL compared to the reading-discussion class which I
had. Why did it seem like it didn’t work for me? Was it because I did not have a chance
to observe students’ conversations and discussions? Or was it because I could not see
how much students developed by doing projects? Perhaps I had passed too much
responsibility to students? PBL is like a black box. You can read many reports which write
about how wonderful PBL is, but there must be many hidden tips and structures. One
reason I can identify is that I didn’t try to make a dialogue with students. Rather, I was
focused on trying to respond to the local needs of the university. I didn’t conceive carefully
who they were, what they needed, and what I wanted them to be. Maybe I also felt someexternal pressure to create a good program to make the university more attractive, somore international exchange students would choose the university for their studies. That
distracted me from thinking about the students in front of me. I needed to think about
who is the most important person for me as the teacher.

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Artefact 1. Student Brochures
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Andy: New Discourses & Learner Story about PBL
New PBL discourses

TOKYO July/August 2023 – Like you, learning from my students and trying to follow theirdevelopment has long been important for me, and, at a time of curriculum reform, thatprovides some kind of counter-balance to dominant institutional discourses of teachercentred, exam-oriented, non-interactive classes. In the past, as my opening story about
doing drama workshops and drama-mentary highlights, I did projects with students by myown choice, and that was strongly connected to the creative potential that PBL involved
for me. The development of critical awareness was also a significant theme in that earlier
work, following through for me now, years later, around the driving question of how
students make connections between global issues, local communities they belong to or
identify with, and their own lives.
Three years ago in 2020, with a forthcoming curriculum reform on the not-too
distant horizon, I was part of a working group of several colleagues responsible forconceptualising and introducing PBL, for the 2023 academic year, into the English
curriculum that my colleagues and I teach in and co-coordinate.
As a general observation, I find it tempting to think of a pedagogic change as a“new” approach, so it is humbling to keep in mind that PBL was originally proposed by
Kilpatrick (1918) and others for new progressive education in the early twentieth century
in the United States. Kilpatrick put “project” in these terms, “If …we think of a project as
a pro-ject, something pro-jected, the reason for adopting the term may better appear”(Kilpatrick, 1918, p. 4). He argued that projects involve “wholehearted purposeful activity
in a social situation” to solve a problem through “purposing, planning, executing, andjudging” (Kilpatrick, 1918, pp. 17-18). Soon after the Second World War, project work figured
in contemporary school education in Japan and was explicitly promoted within official
guidelines. At other times it slipped out of official view (Nomura, 2017). Nomura points
out that PBL was incorporated in the “New Education” period (1946-1957) as 自由研究/
Independent Research, “where each individual student was expected to find his or her
own problems and inquire them proactively” (Nomura, 2017 p. 632).
The reform process that I took part in alsoCollegial reflections on creating new PBL courses
had a major impact on my thinking about
what PBL means. In this continuing story,
Mike: ... We (the Working Group) initially hit on theidea of projects in a kind of brainstorm of possibilities
I will include quotes from members of thefor making the new course different from the existingworking group (see the box opposite) andcourses based on cycles of (individual) researchfrom guideline documents to bring out theand presentation/writing, as we felt students would
multivocalic evolution of this new institutional appreciate and benefit from a different kind of
discourse about PBL. Where I represent theprocess/engagement with content in the third sectionof the curriculum. I recall we weren't really very sureworking group’s collective thinking, I use aourselves for a while what "projects" meant or what“we” voice. When members of the groupthey would include, but the idea opened up space toshare their own perspectives, they are
imagine things in a new way, and within that spaceindividually named (with their agreement).
we were able to consider and further brainstorm theTo give my own views about different PBL
kinds of 'principles' and practices we wanted to baseprinciples and practices that I identify strongly PBL on (both new approaches and ones taken fromemerging practice in existing courses) …
with, I switch to “I” in certain places.
Although the working group had no initial (M. Nix, personal communication, August 12, 2023)
template for deciding what new PBL courses
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would involve, we were clear that any new
Peter: … For myself, my concern with the old English
content-based learning course needed tocurriculum for Kokki (International Business andLaw) students was that they were doing almost all of
have a distinct profile from other required
their research online, and it was very difficult to get
English courses that students would take inthe new curriculum. This point is taken up by them away from the mindset that "issues" exist "outmy colleagues Mike Nix and Peter Thornton there" in society and not in their own lives. …
in their recollections of how the reform(P. Thornton, personal communication, August 5,
process evolved. Over time, the overall
2023)
aim became more distinctly articulated as
students carrying out projects, individually, in pairs, or small groups, into global issues andproblems that interest them, and how the issues impact local communities and people
they know; then planning and doing (different kinds of) research into those issues orproblems, before “creating some kind of product at the end of each project cycle to reporton their research to others” (Chuo University Faculty of Law 3.4 Working Group, 2021, p.
1); see also Appendix A for the generic PBL course description that we later created). We
imagined that these products might include different real-world genres such as blog posts,
campaign proposals, opinion pieces, and project narratives, or multimodal products, forexample, webpages, videos, visual narratives, as many of these genres were already partof existing Research & Writing (R&W) courses.
Discussing these principles with full-time and part-time colleagues in January 2022
helped us frame the idea of local research more explicitly. We had originally called this“fieldwork,” but we found that some teachers (both full- and part-time) almost exclusively
associated PBL fieldwork with students contacting and visiting NGOs to do interviews.
Would we be providing a list of appropriate NGOs and organisations for students to contact?
What kind of protocols would be appropriate for students in arranging formal interviews?
Would teachers need to check and keep track of students’ email correspondence with different
organisations? We realised that, if fieldwork became predominantly concerned withstudents seeking out expert opinions from staff working in civil society and other types oforganisations, this would encourage students (and teachers) to see issues as “out there”
and disassociated from their own lives. So, we came to put much greater explicit emphasis
on students talking with those around them in their own lives, local communities, andnetworks.
One other important part of this story concerns re-thinking the prevailing view ofacademic literacy within the wider English curriculum. For a good many years, this had
been expressed as becoming “able to engage with content and to use English to learn
about social, political, legal and global issues” (Chuo University Faculty of Law Taughtin-English Program, 2012). That was now changing through the collaborative dialogic
curriculum reform process among full-timers and around 25 part-time teachers: Academic
literacy was becoming more focused on students’ participation in society throughbeing engaged with the world around them, talking with people as well as gathering
information, and making a critical analysis. I found this both exciting and intriguing. PBL
was pushing us all to break further away from conventional understandings of academic
literacy. Within the new PBL framework, this was now being constructed as “active
informed citizenship literacy,” closely echoing a critical language pedagogy position as“teaching for social justice, in ways that support the development of active, engaged
citizens …” (Crookes, 2013, p. 8):

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Collegially Exploring Engaged Meaningful Learning: Stories, Perspectives, Dialogue, and Issues… the kind of citizenship literacy that you need to:••••

be an active informed member of society
be engaged with the world around you
talk with people, gather information, and analyse it criticallyshare it in many different ways just as people do in the real world, rather than theliteracy you need to do conventional academic studies ... (Chuo University Facultyof Law 3.4 Working Group, 2022, p. 5).

To reach towards this, students (and teachers) would need to seek out new ways tolink what they learnt in their projects to their lives and participation in society, or, as mycolleague Peter Thornton put it, to gain some “sense of ‘projecting’ new ideas into the world,of thinking about what is possible, and hopefully feeling more invested and confident about
participating in society” (P. Thornton, personal communication, August 5, 2023).
As I look back at the reform process, I notice how this made me, as well as otherteachers, consider more specifically how to guide students to mediate personal, local,
and global connections and “understand the issues in their own lives in terms of wider
conditions and factors in society” (Chuo University Faculty of Law 3.4 Working Group,2022, p. 3). We had no set pathways to follow here. We would each experiment withputting this into action. Other aspects such as student translingualism and creativity inproject work (particularly in making final products) were also coming to have greater
salience for me than in the previous R&W classes. This is highlighted in the following
story of Fumi, as she carried out a local-global project within the broad parameters of theunfolding reform.

One learner’s experiences with PBL

TOKYO March-July 2022 – I had known Fumi (pseudonym) since the beginning of thepandemic when she joined my second-year seminar that year. In the spring semester ofthe 2022 academic year, I talked with Fumi outside of class as she carried out a one-off
individual project in May and June 2022. I wanted to step back from partially experimenting
with PBL elements in my transitional R&W class, and see how a relatively experienced nearpeer learner (similar in age, experience, and other ways; Murphey, 1996) would organise awhole project. Talking with Fumi in weekly/fortnightly Zoom discussions over 8 weeks or
so would, I hope, let me see things differently than would otherwise be possible within thebusyness of the R&W class itself. The box on the right gives a brief summary of how I tried toshadow Fumi as she organised her project. On the left I continue the narrative by presenting
Fumi’s experiences with PBL.
Following Fumi as she organised herFumi was interested in looking at ethicalindividual project
consumerism in her own life. She began bylooking at her everyday consumption habits Andy: In the first discussion I asked Fumi about
her experiences of project work and about her
and consumer products that she couldn’t
ideas for her project. It turned out that Fumi had
help buying, like loose-leaf paper for making no direct experience of doing any project-likenotes, and fast-fashion clothes. Although
work in her earlier school education, so the main
she tried to recycle her used clothes, sheconnection that she made about doing a project
often ended up throwing them away. Fumi
was to half-day and whole-day “internships” thatnext had conversation-discussions withshe had been recently doing in her third year
while job-hunting. These group-work sessions
other people she knew to develop her
understanding. Active on social media, Fumi involved several undergraduates from different
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talked in English with several Instagram
universities working together on a set task underfriends in different localities around thea time limit, such as creating a new product, orworld (in South Africa, Thailand, and thecoming up with a new business plan.
USA) about their views on consumerism,
For this pilot project, I explained that she should
before looking at YouTube videos andaim to understand the issue that she chose in
TEDTalks to learn about minimalism. She
her own everyday life and also develop a more
quickly gathered multiple perspectives and global interconnected view. Making clear thatstarted thinking about the end-product
Fumi could withdraw from the project at any
that she would make from her project. Her point, I talked through further information about
the research and asked if she had any questions.
first idea was to make a video commercial
Fumi then signed an informed consent sheet. In
to encourage people to consume less. The
audience, she imagined, would be Japanese. the following discussions I invited her to share
She would share stories from her project to what she had done for her project since ourprevious meeting, then followed up with further
raise their awareness of overconsumption.
questions to understand different points in more
This took her to finding out about consumer depth. As it was my intention to follow Fumi as
advertising, and thinking about how she
she developed her project, I held back on making
would design the video.
specific suggestions to her. Towards the end of
The key question that Fumi became
each session, Fumi would outline her next steps
focused on was: What can I do to be a more
and actions.
sustainable consumer? She next foundThe story of her project that is shown to the left isout about environmental impacts andreconstructed from her online project notes, notes
widespread labour rights violations inthat I kept, and video-recordings of the Zoom
fast-fashion global supply chains. In a “bad- discussions that we had.
things-happen-to-bad-people” moment,
Fumi had a crisis of confidence: She felt that she was doing bad as a consumer and blamed
herself. After this crisis she started to understand her own consumer footprint in new
ways. First, she mindmapped her growing understanding of the web of local and global
factors around her personal consumption (as shown in Artefact 2).

Artefact 2. Fumi Mapping her Understanding
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Mapping let Fumi look beyond her own individual consumption and locate herself locallyin a chain of interlocking actors that reproduce the wasteful consumerism that she wasalso part of. Second, she looked for ways to make a critical appraisal of certain brandsneaker companies. She checked their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports
in Japanese, and also found a citizen network, Citizens’ Network to Build a Sustainable
Society through Responsible Consumption (SSRC) / 消費から持続可能な社会をつくる市民ネットワーク (n. d.), which surveys and evaluates companies in terms of sustainability so that it canissue ethical report cards. In this stage of her project, Fumi developed a simplified set of
evaluation criteria (environment, work environment, inclusiveness, and contribution to
local communities) for three leading sneaker companies (see Artefact 3).
Artefact 3. Fumi’s Evaluation of 3 Brand Clothing and Sportswear Companies

Evaluating specific brand companies enabled Fumi to re-work in a more critical way her
understanding of how she might become a more ethical consumer.
The final part of Fumi’s project involved the design and production of a short video (3min, 23 s). She first wrote the script in Japanese, then translated it into English, and edited
it over three further drafts in English. To protect identities, Fumi digitised her voice andthe voices of other people whose views she includes from talking with close others at thestart of her project.

Artefact 4. Fumi’s Digitized Video
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The slides in the final published video present strong visual images with concise summary
points in Japanese, while the digitised voice-over in English elaborates each slide (Chuo
University Faculty of Law PBL Resources, 2023).
Looking back over her whole project, Fumi saw PBL in these terms:
PBL definitely expanded my interests and broadened my horizons. For this reason, it
was difficult to focus on and I easily jumped on different topics. In that sense, I neededa guide. However, it was fascinating to explore an issue while looking for a way to
improve my PBL. Since I was free to decide what I research, how to research, as well as
how I end this project, I could deepen my understanding about the issue from a varietyof perspectives and how I can cultivate a better understanding of the world. (Fumi’s
project notes, 4 July 2022)
While Fumi drew satisfaction from freely deciding the focus for her project, she foundthe open choice challenging and felt she needed some guidance to carry out her projectsuccessfully.

Understand PBL again

TOKYO August 2023 – Fumi’s experiences helped me understand PBL from new perspectives.
Her sense of the local was strongly influenced by her use of social media: Talking withclose others did not necessarily mean those in her immediate community and networks
in Tokyo. For this project Fumi drew on an internationally dispersed set of close othersfor her local research. Second, Fumi’s project was initially driven by her personal interestin sustainable consumerism rather than by a “central driving question” which different
accounts of PBL (e.g., Blumenfeld et al., 1991; Condliffe, 2016; Mikouchi et al., 2018;
Thomas, 2000) tend to propose as a defining criterion that should guide projects from thestart. In Fumi’s case, the issue of sustainable consumerism had strong personal interestand value, but was also challenging (features emphasised by Blumenfeld et al., 1991, pp.
375-378). She struggled to find a specific focus in the initial weeks of her project. Once
she did, Fumi could begin to formulate a guiding question, which helped her imagine
her project through to the video that she planned to produce at the end. Another salient
moment in Fumi’s PBL experiences was the crisis of awareness that she had as she
located her own everyday consumption in relation to inequalities in the global flows of
consumerism that she is part of. Mapping the network of consumerism actors let her
position herself in a new personal-local-global way to the issue that she was researching.
This re-positioning seemed to act as a reflexive prelude to Fumi developing a more criticalview. In turn, her critical awareness grew as she worked translingually in Japanese andEnglish on creating and finalising her bilingual video.
From this I understood that creativity and criticality were running in parallel in Fumi’s
project. Their interaction was closely related to her translanguaging practices in producing
a bilingual product for a near-peer audience of young adults. Following Fumi as she
developed her project also let me appreciate the need for flexible scaffolding with PBL in
two particular ways. First, I now explicitly guide students in the first weeks of a project toplan their projects in a global-local frame and imagine how they might make personalised
connections through (a) conversation-discussions with close others and (b) choice overtheir project products (see Appendix B for an example of such framing). Second, I havecome to use a minimal set of guidelines for students to narratively journal the development

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Collegially Exploring Engaged Meaningful Learning: Stories, Perspectives, Dialogue, and Issuesof their projects week by week (see Appendix C). My intention here is to open up spaces
for students to document their projects in their own self-directed ways. Both of thesepractices were strongly influenced by the pilot project with Fumi.

V. A Dialogue: Akiko and Andy August 2023

Akiko: After reading Fumi’s PBL, I realized that your PBL is very similar to the image I
have of a bachelor’s thesis (卒論/sotsuron). It is new to me and great that you can
do individual PBL instead of group activity, which can open up more spaces forindividual choice and agency. But one thing I am curious about is how much andwhat kind of feedback you gave to Fumi. Did you find it difficult to understand herEnglish? How did you deal with that? How long did it take to give feedback? I thinkthese constraints and workloads determine the quality of teaching. It seems like
Fumi is very positive about her PBL. How about other students? Did your students
enjoy the PBL?
Andy: I prefer to start with students working on individual projects, often in pairs. Laterthe students work in different collaborative formations, although I don’t go forlarge groups. Working individually with Fumi on that pilot project was an ongoing
conversation-discussion with her as I wanted to understand her decision-making
and actions, and how she was making sense of doing a local-global project, so ourinteractions were more exploratory than evaluative. We talked, I kept notes, but
I didn’t provide any written feedback. The project was definitely challenging for
Fumi, but it was driven by her interests, and she was able to engage with what itmeans to become a sustainable consumer. She could also connect the personal,
the local, and the global in her understanding. So, if students can do that in theirprojects, documenting their work in reflections and mindmaps, and bring those
three perspectives meaningfully together, then create and share final productswith others, I think they can enjoy this kind of PBL a great deal, but it takes time
and their development gathers over time.
I want to add that very few of my students have done project work in their previous
education. They may sometimes mention projects they did in elementary school
such as finding out about local food production or environmental issues. A handfulof students in each class may have done individual or group-based inquiries or
projects in high school, but they are still the exception.
Akiko: I see. I think it is great that the students can exercise their agency, not just as
homework for class without teachers. And I like the way you find student creativity inthe process of learning. That is a very important theme for you which I don’t have.
Andy: In your story the contrasting experiences that you highlight and reflect on reallycaught my interest. The way you learnt Korean for yourself was completely atodds with the prescriptive teaching methods that you encountered early on inyour career. At the same time, I was struck by how those constraints eventuallypropelled you towards exploring more learner-centred creative pedagogies,
including LTD and PBL, and to puzzling over why you still feel that PBL didn’t workfor you. Looking back, was there anything positive you gained from PBL?
Akiko: On this point, I felt that the PBL I wrote about here was a kind of failure because I
couldn’t feel my students’ sense of accomplishment. I want to make clear for theirhonor that the students who did PBL in my class worked very hard, but something146

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was missing. Of course, not all groups did. Maybe I didn’t appreciate my students’creativity enough compared to you. Or maybe I failed to guide them to see theworld differently, to be critical.
Andy: You say you couldn’t feel their sense of achievement. Did the students keep
learning diaries or reflections about what they were doing in their projects, so you
could follow their activity?
Akiko: No, I didn’t. I could not find their feedback on the projects from my old files, but
most of them were positive as far as I remember. Maybe it was not their senseof achievement but mine. In this dialogue with you for this article, I have noticed
the reason why I could not be satisfied with PBL. I wanted to see my students
find something new and meaningful in the world, thus I wanted them to see theworld differently through their activity. Finding something new means creative andcritical maybe for me.
Andy: I’m constantly pondering how the two processes of creativity and criticality interact
and work together for learners, and what I can do as a teacher to bring them into
interaction. Take your experiences with “Learning through Discussion”: LTD created
new possibilities for you about teaching and learning. It became a significant pointof reference for you. That’s what the drama workshops in Yugoslavia and the classat the University of Tsukuba let me see too. They almost prototypically embody
meaningful student engagement, creativity, and criticality for me: Important
landmarks, not always visible, yet pointing the way at different times: Am I close tothis or moving away from it? How might I/we get closer to that? What might I/we dodifferently? Why?
Akiko: I had been wondering what criticality is. It’s intriguing that you’ve highlighted theinterplay between criticality and creativity. In your PBL experiences and my LTD
practice, we both appreciated learners’ engagement to learning and that led
them to create their own views of the world. As teachers we could perceive theircreativity and criticality as they did this, in your case especially the connection
between global and local. If the native speakerism and prescriptivism are still
pervasive in language learning teaching, as I think is still the case, we need to think
about how to nurture teachers who have an ability to find and appreciate thelearner’s creativity and criticality.
Andy: Yes, guiding students to develop their critical awareness about their views of
the world is an ongoing challenge for me. In the PBL frame I’m working with,interrelating the local, the global, and the personal is central. As I must also do,
my students have to break through the cocoons of habituated thinking andassumptions about the world that have become normalised for them. I noticethat students might articulate the local in a binary contrast to “the global” as if
the global is some disconnected other, outside of their personal lived experience(Appadurai, 1996) in which a process of othering (powell & Menendian, 2016) is
common. Students might, for example, scale up the local to seeing this in terms of“Japan” in relation to other societies in the world, so that they take a generalised
nation-state perspective on connections between the local and the global (“Japanis …/We are … but X country is …/They are …”). At other times they might frame
the local in terms of a problem that stereotypical groups or minorities within
Japanese society have, i.e., the problem becomes essentialised as a property of
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the group or minority, and disconnected from particular unequal conditions,systems, or structures within society that underlie and reproduce the issue inpeople’s lives, by, for example, assuming that poverty in Japan is limited to thehomeless and/or immigrant workers and refugees, whereas “real” poverty can befound only in “Africa” or is not an issue for “us” in Japanese society. I find that “we/they” categorical views of the world run through these global-local entanglements,
making it difficult for students to connect issues to their personal lives and wider
conditions and factors in society. I’m still trying to understand how to help students
get beyond those normalised binaries, so to speak.
Akiko: I would also like to emphasize the importance of the teacher’s criticality in being
aware of the constraints under which our practices are carried out. Without anawareness of these constraints, it’s all too easy to fall into the misconception thatour practices are occurring in a vacuum, not in the real world with economic,
political, and cultural constraints. I realize now, recognizing and understanding
these constraints is an important aspect of criticality, isn’t it? As before I
mentioned, the absence of this critical perspective can inadvertently lead teachers
to unwittingly reproduce and prolong oppressive conventional discourses andpractices. I am sure that I’ve likely fallen into this trap multiple times in the past.
Andy: Yes me too, and I still do. Although native speakerism didn’t come up for me somuch in my thinking about PBL, Fumi’s story helped me notice translanguaging
from new perspectives. It’s interesting that in our collaboration you and I havenearly always discussed in English, and we’ve written this article in English too.
Beyond these overtly English-centric practices, we have used translation software
to work with Japanese and English—you for writing and also reading our article
at different points, and me for reading some blog posts and articles in Japanese
about PBL. Did we address language and power questions in our collaboration?
Akiko: You encouraged me to write in Japanese a couple of times, but I didn’t choose to.
Probably because each language has particular readers… And no one can escape
the issue of language and power, and it’s not fun to think about. But you can see
the power and ideology that each language has in our stories. In my example, I
suddenly had a university teaching position with no training as a language teacher,or in your case, all the students had the ability to do PBL in English before they
entered the university. And behind these episodes, there was native speakerism
or language imperialism, and also many non-native teachers who are not working
under the same conditions.
Andy: Yes and no ... We could have examined more explicitly our use of Japanese andEnglish, and our experiences of power around this. We did at times, but it was nota constant theme for us. Questioning that more might push me to explore further
how my learners can translanguage in different ways for their own purposes. What
we are thinking through together here makes me reflect about the complexityof co-constructing and creating alternative norms and discourses, not just in acurriculum and among the teachers who enact that curriculum, but with each class,and with the individual students in each class, too. Questioning our internal andexternal ideological constraints is part of becoming a critically minded teacher. It
is a never-ending struggle. But it is not everything. Creating alternative norms anddiscourses is important too.
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Akiko: I think so too. It is necessary to create new discourses for them and for us …
Andy: On this I’d like to come back again to the theme of criticality in PBL. When we weretalking online about PBL, you mentioned that you were struck by the emphasis on
critical, informed citizenship in the new discourse around PBL. The frame was notjust about learners or students in the classroom, but explicitly connected to their
participation in society. That caught for you the sense of agency that learners mightdevelop through PBL, and/or the potential for learners to exercise their agency
in PBL, and to understand themselves and what’s happening in society in new
ways. From this perspective the curriculum reform was as much about enabling/empowering PBL practices and principles as putting forward a political aim for sucheducation. Bringing this back to our collaboration, I find that, through our stories anddialogues, we have been pointing towards a critical view of education that aims toempower and help students become conscious and critical of multiple inequalities insociety around them or in their lives. That political emphasis is important for both ofus.
Akiko: Through your words, I can have a glimpse of your educational ideals. I hadn’t
directly addressed controversial issues in my classroom before, but that also
reflects my stance on education, which is a matter of politics. I might need toponder this aspect a bit more.
You may not want to go back to this point, but I still can’t shake the suspicion
that PBL and LTD are appropriate for people who already have competency. You
have told me that there are great practices that have been adapted for beginning
students, and I have seen examples of very old critical applied linguistics practices
such as literacy workshops. But I wonder how it can be done.
Andy: It’s a great question that you are raising about content, skills, and language proficiency.
I guess part of my response is that it can be addressed in different ways—I see it
as trying to imagine/imagining ways, appropriate for the learners that I work with,
where I can involve them more in what they are doing, around topics and issues they
are interested in, and where they/we work collaboratively in the classroom, makedecisions about their learning, and bring in their “content” to what they are focusing
on in a class, take ownership of it, so to speak, as well as reflect on their progress,
and plan their next steps. To some extent I am more focused on content and learners
using language rather than explicitly teaching language. For me “it” starts from there,
whatever proficiency level(s) the students have.
Another part of my response is that a significant point of reference is the work ofLeni Dam, who is probably the most-recognized and widely published classroom
practitioner of learner autonomy. Much of her work is concerned with Danish
learners of English at beginner level, where they work from the start on different
kinds of projects. Dam’s work is very strong on the teacher’s role in structuring andscaffolding learner activity, and on the learner’s role in being pushed into action
and taking ever greater responsibility for their learning (Dam, 1995, 2018). I’m notclaiming that you or I need to slavishly follow Leni’s Dam approach. What stands
out for me is that her work involves practice-driven theorisation about a particularapproach to meaningful engaged learning (i.e., learner autonomy), so it frankly
provokes the reader to reflect on their own practices in unexpected ways.

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Akiko: Wow, that sounds interesting. But one thing that caught my eye or ear in what you
said is Dam’s emphasis on the teacher’s role in structuring learner activity. For along time PBL was like a black box to me. There must be some trick or format, orI don’t know how to say it, but you can’t leave everything to the students, is thatwhat Dam said?
Andy: Absolutely. For Leni Dam the teacher’s role is crucial. It changes as the teacher
progressively lets go, and learners take greater hold of their learning in becoming
more autonomous. She is very clear about this.
Akiko: In LTD there are strict steps on what students should do. Although this made me
suspicious about restricting the students’ freedom when I first heard it, the steps
made the format and gave direction to the students. The format also conveys the
purpose of this discussion to the students. Now I’m going back to the beginningof our dialogue. Creativity. Appreciating learners’ creativity is very important forteachers who want to do PBL. If you think your student project is very ordinary, you
can’t appreciate their effort. You have to find value in the learner’s products, whichis still a challenge for me, and I feel like it takes skill, like appreciating an art form.
So that quality of teacher is very important for the successful PBL.
Andy: I guess what we are saying is that the ongoing dialogues and quality of appreciation
is important in our interactions with learners as they engage in discussions,
undertake projects, and create products. Even if it’s about something very ordinary,
it is all part of trying to follow learners and support them in what they do, andraise different options for them about what they can do further. Seeing examplesof other students’ work can be a great support here as it may let them imagine
how they can apply their own creativity.
But what do we mean by learnercreativity? Within the specific
Another view of the creativityapproach to PBL that I have been
criticality nexus
exploring here learner creativity
Ellen: These stages are really interesting.
involves re-working different
It seems different from the usual meaning
artifacts of a project (e.g., notesof creativity, as these stages involvefrom conversation-discussions
patience, the ability to take an overview,
with close others, images fromthe ability to work methodically. I have
local research, journaling, notes
had a question in the back of my mind
from web resources, mapping,as to whether academic creativity isnotes from in-class discussions),
different from artistic creativity and I
and re-constructing them inthink the answer is to some extent yes.
new ways to create an original
When you were writing about creativity
product for a particular audienceand criticality I thought that criticality
in society (based on Janks, 2010).
creates a kind of limiting condition which
Fumi, for example, does this withkeeps academic creativity under control.
her digitized video. She creates
Artistic creativity has more options, toher own personalised and criticalcontrol itself using tradition, or not tounderstanding of sustainable
control itself.
consumerism.
(Ellen Head, editor, 6th September 2023,
In our stories another reallypersonal communication)
important consideration is theaudience that students have in
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mind for the products that they create. For Fumi this was other young Japanesepeople, like her.
Akiko: … producing something to present to others?
Andy: … yes, creating and producing for an outside world, a non-classroom world,right? As students focus on the end-product, that’s when criticality starts to comeinto play … and interacts with creativity much more. That has been a key partin all the projects that we have been exploring: some kind of public display andsharing of work within the class, as well as to an audience beyond the class itself,and something that most practical accounts and theorisations of PBL strongly
recommend (Alan & Stoller, 2005; Anderson, 2021; Güven, & Valais, 2014; Mikouchi
et al., 2018; Sheppard & Stoller, 1995; Stoller & Chandel Myers, 2020). Oddly
enough, the outside world is more often than not an imaginary audience, isn’t it?
In your projects the audience was specific and definite—the International Student
Center Office and Municipal International Exchange Association. How did thestudents see this?
Akiko: The students in my projects? I’m thinking about a group who tried to do that famous
hot spring brochure. For them the audience would be an abstract tourist. They
wanted to make it very, very professional, like a brochure that some professionals
make. So that’s the one reason they had a hard time, but the teams who didn’t
have so much abstract audience in mind — for example, they imagined otherinternational students coming to the university next year as their audience — they
enjoyed their projects more, I think. Yeah, they were more …
Andy: … focused on people close to them, an audience who was familiar to them?
Akiko: Yes, that’s one possibility. … Through writing this article we want to convey what welearnt from our practices and learners. At this point I think I have said everything I
wanted to say.
Andy: Let’s move on.
*****

VI. Our Concluding Thoughts & Questions

In this article we have attempted to write in experimental narrative-dialogic ways that areclose to how practitioner-researchers talk, question, and reflect about their work withlearners, colleagues, and others in their local contexts. We have also made connections
to work in the wider field as we have theorised from practice and drawn on key works
that have impacted our thinking and evolving understandings. To do this, we have been
on a long collaborative journey over the last 18 months. At times we found it difficult tocontinue, but then we would talk again and start seeing our stories, practices, and puzzles
in new ways. What is important, it seems to us now, is that, on purpose, we did not set out
to find common ground. We wanted to talk about our different practices, but we did notforce ourselves to focus on a common theme from the beginning. Rather, we each shared
our interests, practices, and puzzles, then our stories and reflections.
As we did this, over time, we realised that we were in many ways talking about the same
phenomenon, “engaged meaningful learning,” and what that means for us and the students
that we work with. Engaged meaningful learning emerged from our collaboration anddirected us to a fundamental rethinking of what matters to each of us with our students.
As we look back together, we now see that our collaboration has led us towards three new
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discourses about (a) what engaged meaningful learning means for us and our students,(b) how we may understand our practices through talking and writing collaboratively, and(c) how we can write about our learners, local contexts, and practices in new ways, andwhy. And at this point we think we have now said everything that we wanted to say, so
we turn again to you, the reader: What do you make of this? What intersections, overlaps,
resistances, and contrasts do you find with different themes and issues that we havecovered in this article? Which ones are engaging and meaningful for you? Why?

Review ProcessThis paper was open peer-reviewed by Katherine Thornton and the Learner Development
Journal 7 editors. (Contributors have the option of open or blind peer review.)

Author Bios

Andy Barfield PhD teaches in the Faculty of Law at Chuo University, Tokyo, where hehelps to coordinate an English curriculum in which students do self-directed research
projects into social, political, legal, and global issues. His current research interests include
multilingual issues in society, critical literacy, and Project-Based Learning (PBL).

アンディ・バーフィールド(博士)。
東京の中央大学法学部で教鞭を執っており、学生たちが自己指導型の研究プロジ
ェクトを通じて社会、政治、法律、
グローバルな問題に取り組む英語カリキュラムの調整をサポートしてる。
彼の現在の研究関心は、社会における多言語の問題、批判的リテラシー、
プロジェクトベースの学習（PBL）など。

Akiko Nakayama PhD is an associate professor in the Teaching Japanese as a Second
Language program at Hiroshima University, Japan. She is currently interested in learners’
stories, L2 learner identities, and teacher development.

中山亜紀子(博士)。
広島大学人間社会科学研究科日本語教育学プログラム准教授。
学習者の物語，学習者のア イ
デンティティ，教師教育などに関心がある。

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Appendix A

PBL Course Description

In this course you will carry out projects, individually, in pairs or small groups, into global
issues and problems that interest you, and how they impact local communities and people
you know. Problems might include investigating fairtrade products in local businesses,
exploring local government support for minorities, looking at people’s attitudes andconcerns about artificial intelligence in daily life, finding out how local organisations
are putting into action Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and so on. You will do aminimum of 3 projects in one year (at least two in the spring semester and one in the fall),with journaling a key continuous process in each project.
Your research will include gathering information and making notes from both material(e.g., books, library, documents, audio-visual materials) and online sources (e.g., web
searches, databases, other e-sources, including online videos and podcasts) in order todevelop your understanding. You will also talk with “close others” (other students, family
members, people in local communities, or local networks that you belong to). At the endof each project, you will create a product (e.g., an academic essay, blog posts, an opinion
piece, visual report, or webpage) that can reach an audience beyond your class (e.g.,with other classes, in public spaces, and/or in web-based products) so that you can shareresults from your project with other people.

この科目では、個々の学生が関心を持ったグローバルな諸問題に関してプロジェクトを遂行し、それらが身近なコ
ミュニティや周囲の人々にどのような影響を与えるかについて、ペアやグループワークを通して探究します。
プロジ
ェクトの例として、地域に根差したビジネスとフェア・トレード製品をテーマに調査したり、地方自治体とマイノリテ
ィ支援策、日々の生活におけるA I活用の課題、地方自治体が主導する持続可能な目標の実践例など、他にも様々なテーマが考えられます。
１年間のコースでは、３つ以上のプロジェクトを遂行し（春学期２つ秋学期１つ、以上）、調査の過程や結果などを逐次記録することが求められます。
調査では、資料（書籍、図書館、文書、視聴覚資料）やオンライン（検索、
データベース、
ビデオやポッドキャストな
どのその他電子資料）を活用した情報収集とノートテイキングを行います。
加えて、「身近な他者」（学生友達、家族、近隣住民、や所属する地域ネットワーク）へのインタビューも行うことになります。
プロジェクトの終盤では、調査結果を成果物（学術論文、
ブログ、意見書、
ヴィジュアルレポートや、
ウェブページ）にまとめ、教室の外の人々（他クラスの学生や、公共の場、ウェブなど）に向けて調査結果を広く発信します。

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Appendix B

Two Example Global-Local Frames for Initial Project Planning(Outline – Problem – My question – Project goals)
Presented and discussed with students at the start of Project 3 in the 2023 academic year.
Students are guided to develop a similar overall frame for their own projects.
Example Guideline Frame 1 for a project on “Making Connections Between Local Groups orCommunities in Japan & Other Countries on the Right to Education for Foreign Children”
Human rights -> The right to education -> foreign children in local communities
The problem —> Education of Children with Diverse Backgrounds (n.d.): “An estimateof over 700 foreign children in Hamamatsu are not going to school.” Hamamatsu aims fora “zero out-of-school rate (or a 100% enrolment rate) of foreign children and promotionof the enrolment of children of foreign residents …” (Hamamatsu Voluntary Local Review
Report, 2019, p. 13)
My question: How can the right to education for foreign children be locally protected andpromoted?

Project goals

1. Find out more about the situation in Hamamatsu, and research the policies andactions that are being taken to support foreign children’s right to education there.
What? Which actors are involved? What is working? Why? What are the problems? Why?
2. Find out about the approach taken in a local community in another society, forexample support for refugee children in Australia. Local community view => Adelaide:
Women’s group supporting refugee children (ABC, 2023 April 9)
3. Conversation-discussions: Share my research with people in my local community/
network, and find out what they think about the right of foreign children to education,
and what their ideas and views are.
Project product: Advocacy Letter? Campaign Proposal? Opinion Piece? Video?
Example Guideline Frame 2 for a project on “Making Connections Between Local Groups
or Communities in Japan & Other Countries on Local Food Production”
Biodiversity / Food Supply and Waste -> Sustainable living -> Local organic food production
My question: Who and what makes local organic food production possible? What isworking? What are the problems? Why?

Project goals
1. Find out about the cultivation and consumption of organic vegetables and food in
my local community: Who? What? Where? When and how did this start? What is working?
What are the problems? Why?
2. Search for information about growing organic food in a local community outside
Japan => Example: Making cities organic food gardens (Deutsche Welle, 2018 February
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Collegially Exploring Engaged Meaningful Learning: Stories, Perspectives, Dialogue, and Issues16): How does this work? Which actors are involved? What is working? Why? What are theproblems? Why?
3. Conversation-discussions: Share my research with people in my local community/
network, and find out what people in my local community think about organic food,and whether this matters to them or not.
Project product: Campaign Proposal? Magazine article? Video?

Appendix C

Minimalist Frame for a Project Narrative

Presented and discussed with students at the start of Project 3 in the 2023 academic year:
Students are required to create individually their Project Narratives for a 6-7 week project in a
Google Doc within a Shared Drive for the PBL class.

Build Your Project Narrative Week by Week
1. In this document week by week be sure to:• write the narrative of your project• add JPEGs of your notes• build your reference list.
2. Document your work by putting the date each time you add to your Project
Narrative, for example:• 2023/09/26 Project Narrative• 2023/10/01 Project Notes• 2023/10/01 References
3. Write in English, and use Japanese or other languages when it helps you to express
your thinking and ideas, then continue writing in English.
4. Write at least 180 words each week, but please feel free to write more, & put theword total at the end of your project narrative each week, e.g., (Total: XXX words)
5. Add the sources of information to References week by week to build yourReference list.
6. Include the following details for each one: Author, Date, Title, Organisation/
Publisher, URL etc.

References
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Learner Development Journal • Issue 7 • December 2023