Y.-H. Tohsaku

Japanese language education in the global age: new perspectives
and advocacy
Y.-H. Tohsaku, University of California, San Diego
Abstract
As globalisation reshapes our world and impacts on every aspect of our lives, education
is forced to undergo constant changes to effectively prepare our children to participate intwenty-first century society as productive global citizens. Japanese language education
is no exception. Faced with globalisation, we as Japanese language educators needto rethink our goals, contents and classroom practices. This paper will examine how
globalisation has impacted on educational policies and reforms, everyday classroom
teaching and professional development, and explore the new perspectives and valuesof Japanese language education. It also has become more and more important for us toadvocate for Japanese language education as the vision of Japanese education has beenshifting in the twenty-first century. We will discuss how we can develop our advocacy
skills and what we can do to advocate Japanese language education to students, parents,
school administrators, communities, politicians and other stakeholders.

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国際化時代における日本語教育: 新たな視点とアドボカシー
當作靖彦、カリフォルニア大学サンディエゴ校
国際化により世界が再編成され、我々の生活の様々な局面に影響を及ぼしている。
その中で、教育は、子供たちが生産性の高い国際人として21世紀社会に参加できるよう効率的に養成するものとなるべく、絶え間ない変化を余儀なくされている。
日本語教育もその例外ではない。
日本語教育関係者も国際化に対峙し、指導目的・内容・教室での実践を再考する必要にある。
この論文では、教育政策・改革、そして日常の教室指導と教師の職能開発に対して、国際化がこれまでにどのような影響を及ぼしたかを分析し、日本語教育の新たな視点と意義を探ることにする。
また21世紀社会においては日本語教育の展望が変化し続けているゆえに、我々日本語教育関係者が日本語教育を推奨(advocate)することがこれまでになく重要になってきた。
我々日本語教育関係者がそのためのアドボカシーのスキルをどのようにして育成する、また学生、保護者、学校管理職、地域社会、政治家、その他関係者に向けて日本語教育を推奨するために何ができるかについても議論する。

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Introduction
Japanese language education is at a crossroads in many countries. While the numberof Japanese language students has been increasing in such countries as China andIndonesia, there are many countries that have been experiencing a drop in Japanese
language enrolment. In a constantly and rapidly changing globalised world, Japan has
been losing the economic power it had boasted since 1980s. From the 1980s to the early
1990s, Japanese language classrooms were crowded with students who were interested
in doing business with Japan or gaining employment in Japanese companies. After thiseconomic downturn, Japanese language classrooms have been filled with generations ofstudents who are fond of Japanese pop culture. However, due to the falling status of Japanin the globalised economy, interest in Japanese language learning has evidently been
waning in many countries. In the United States where the author is teaching Japanese,
people’s focus on Asia has clearly shifted from Japan to China. More and more schools
have started teaching Chinese, whilst other language courses including Japanese, arescaled back or cut.
Faced with this situation, we as Japanese language teachers must intensify our effort toadvocate Japanese language education in order to attract more students to our classroom
and maintain our program. In this paper, I will discuss how we should advocate Japanese
language education. I will discuss three important factors of advocacy: Vision, Value andVisibility. Then, I will discuss six elements for raising our visibility: Communication,Culture, Connections, Collaboration, Credibility and Community.

Three Vs for advocacy: Vision, Value, and Visibility
First things first: Vision
The first keyword for successful advocacy is Vision. Education without vision ispowerless. Likewise, advocacy without vision is powerless.
We face problems including program cuts, cuts of small advanced level classes, lack ofgood curriculum materials, and lack of professional development opportunities. Those
issues are important. However, when we talk about advocacy, the first thing we should
do is have a strong vision of Japanese language education.
We are teaching Japanese within each country’s education system, and Japanese language
education constitutes an important part of that system. The main goal of education is5

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to help young people develop into productive, intelligent adults. Education means thetotal development of children. Our main goal must be to help the human developmentof children through Japanese language education. We should help students grow to be
intelligent, knowledgeable, smart citizens who can lead a rich, fruitful, productive life.
In other words, we should be educators before Japanese language teachers.
Once the vision of Japanese language education is set, it should be shared among all
those who are involved in the profession and everyone should do their best job to makethis vision a reality. A strong vision will unite Japanese language teachers and becomea foundation for advocacy and will also help us think about how we should solve issuesof program cuts and lack of funding. I strongly believe that education without vision isuseless.

More than grammar and vocabulary: Value
One of the important goals of foreign language teaching is, of course, to impartknowledge of grammar and vocabulary as well as functional skills and abilities to use
the language in the real world. Nowadays, however, this goal may not be sufficient. We
have to add more value to foreign language teaching.
The twentieth century society saw change, but the change was rather slow, consistent andpredictable. As long as we made an effort, success was guaranteed in our life. Comparedwith the twentieth century, changes in the twenty-first century are much faster andmore complicated. Due to this, the twenty-first century world is diverse, fluid, chaotic,uncertain and unpredictable.
Information created by and available to the general public in the last century was ratherlimited. Those who had specialised knowledge were respected and held power. The maingoal of education was to provide students with knowledge. Thus, the memorisationof information was encouraged. On the other hand, in this century, an abundantamount of information is produced every second, especially through the internet. In
this information-rich, information-driven age, the general public can have easy accessto information anytime, and having specialised knowledge is no longer considered
special. Rather, it is considered more important to have the ability to search for andaccess information, organise and synthesise available information, and make decisions
on issues and solve complicated problems.

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Surviving in this complicated, globalised twenty-first century world requires a different
set of knowledge, abilities and skills from the twentieth century. The main goal of
educational activities now is considered to help children develop the knowledge,
abilities and skills that they need to survive the twenty-first century. They are called key
competencies (OECD 2003) or the 21st century skills (Partnership for the 21st Century
Skills 2006).
Examples of these include:• Knowledge on current, complex social issues• Critical thinking and problem-solving skills• Creativity, innovativeness, curiosity and imagination• Problem-solving and decision-making skills• Initiative and entrepreneurialism• Flexibility and agility• Collaborative and leading skills• Various literacies (information, technology, media, cultural, etc.)• Cross-cultural communication skills (NNELL 2011)
We as Japanese language educators must design and implement our instruction so as
to impart required knowledge, abilities and skills to our students through the teachingof the Japanese language. This way, Japanese language education will become morevaluable as a school subject and worthwhile advocating.
In order to have our students acquire these knowledge, abilities and skills in our Japanese
language classroom, we have to adopt a new teaching model. The prevalent teachingmodel of today originated in the nineteenth century. It is called the “factory model”. In
this model, a teacher, standing in front of a large number of students, gives a lecture andleads the classroom in mass practices. This model makes it possible to produce a mass ofstudents who have uniform and standardised knowledge and behaviour. This model ofeducation was created in response to the needs of the industrialised age that needed a large
number of factory workers who had the same knowledge and skill. However, the twentyfirst century requires a different education model to prepare students for living in our7

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diverse, globalised, complicated world. This is the case with Japanese language education,
too. We should adopt such approaches as Project-Based Learning (Markham 2003; La
Mer and Mergendoller 2010), Problem-Solving Learning (Jonnasen 2010), Passion-Based
Learning (Newell 2003), the Thematic Approach (Dirkx and Prenger 1997), InquiryBased Learning (Gonzalez 2013) and Content-Based Instruction (Valeo 2013).
The goal of Japanese language education in the global age should be more than theacquisition of grammatical, phonological and lexical knowledge and functional
communicative skills. Rather, it should be the acquisition of social and networking
abilities; that is, abilities to engage in social activities, to connect with others to develop
new communities and societies, and improve quality of life by using the Japanese
language. These abilities can be best acquired through social networking activities in
the real world. This new approach to language teaching is called the “Social Networking
Approach” (see Kokusai Bunka Forum 2012; Tohsaku 2013). By bringing a variety
of social networking activities into our classroom, we can easily create learning
environments where our students effectively acquire and develop twenty-first century
skills in addition to language skills. On top of that, we can connect our language
classroom with communities outside our schools and thereby raise the visibility of oureducation.
The use of these approaches in our Japanese language classroom produces students withglobal fluency and minds who can survive the twenty-first century world. This is value
worth advocating.

Be everywhere: Visibility
One of the important goals of advocacy is to raise the visibility of Japanese language
education. To this end, we should consider the following 6 Cs (based on NNELL’s
advocacy website):8• Communication• Collaboration• Culture• Credibility• Connections• Communities

Y.-H. Tohsaku

Communication
We should communicate what we are doing in our classroom to parents, other educators,
community and stakeholders whenever possible. We should talk about the short-termand long-term benefits of Japanese language learning. It is important to tailor ourinformation depending on the audience. When we talk with parents, for instance, weshould emphasise the benefits of Japanese language learning for their children’s future
career. When we communicate with local politicians, we should focus on the impact ofJapanese language education on the local economy.
Whenever we have a chance, we should highlight and boast about our students’achievement and success. For example, if your student wins first prize in a local or
national Japanese language speech contest, you should publicise it through not only
your school newspaper and classroom newsletter, but also in your local newspapers andTV stations. Even a small publication is helpful to raise the visibility of your program.
It is important for the community and stakeholders to become aware that you and yourJapanese language classroom are too good to lose.
In the current information age where social networking services play an importantrole for information exchange and dissemination, the effective use of social networking
services such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and YouTube is key to successful advocacy.

CultureThe uniqueness of Japanese culture can attract many people’s attention. Organise culturalactivities and events in which not only students but people in the community enjoy andgain the knowledge of Japanese culture. As it is evident that many of our current students
are interested in Japanese manga, anime, video games, cosplay and J-Pop, Japanese pop
culture has the power to excite young people and draw them to the Japanese language
classroom. Also, Japanese pop culture is a good vehicle to keep them motivated for learning
Japanese and about Japan. Whenever possible, create opportunities where your students
can demonstrate their knowledge of Japanese culture to the community and stakeholders.
Japanese culture has been an influence on life in many regards: industrial design, art,food, technology, fashion, and entertainment. Highlight these Japanese characteristics
and emphasise how Japanese language learning will make young people aware of them.
This kind of knowledge will make them more creative and imaginative. Such creativeminds will help them in their future career.

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Connections
Look for opportunities to connect with others and influence them on the benefits ofJapanese language education. For instance, if you are asked to give a talk about Japanesemanga, never say “no”. Always say “yes”. Whenever you have a chance to talk about
Japan, Japanese culture and Japanese education, make yourself available. Make yourself
indispensable. Always say “yes” (Rifkin and Haxhi 2012). This way, you will raise yourvisibility as a Japanese language teacher in your community.
You can use your students to develop connections with your local community. For
instance, have your students organise a play or festival that is related to Japanese
seasonal events (e.g. hanami, momijigari), holidays (e.g. kodomo no hi, oshōgatsu), orJapanese culture (e.g. Japanese hip-hop, Japanese art and craft, ikebana) and invite local
community people. Or have your students organise a Japan anime night where Japanese
anime movies are shown to local children and young adults. Students can explain how
popular anime is in Japan and give comments about each anime movie shown.
Your students can work with students in Japan through social networking services such
as Skype and Google Talk or through the internet to conduct a cultural exchange project.
Get local community people involved in this project by, for example, presenting theoutcome of the project to them live or through the internet. Connecting your classroom
and students with people outside the school will raise the visibility of your teaching andbecome a plus for advocacy. On top of that, your instruction will be connected to thereal world.

Collaboration
We teachers are always busy and tend to work isolated from our peers. Collaboration
with other Japanese language teachers, however, will help improve our teaching andadvocacy of Japanese language education. Collaborate with other Japanese language
teachers to gather and exchange information, develop materials and develop curricula,and develop articulated programs and organise events. Working together with otherJapanese language teachers, rather than working alone, definitely raises the visibility ofJapanese language education.
Foreign language education does not have a high status in many countries. Collaborate
with other language teachers to advocate the importance of foreign language education
for young children. Also, collaborate with teachers of other subjects and let them know
how foreign language education can contribute to their subject and education as a whole.
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Finally, collaborate with people outside your school. Your presence in this type ofcollaboration will attract a lot of attention to Japanese language education.

Credibility
While you are involved in advocacy activities, you will be often asked for informationand data regarding Japanese language education. For instance, your local politician
might like to have your enrolment data or information about the future demand ofJapanese language courses. Always make sure that data and information you provide isaccurate. Also, make sure that information provided by others is accurate before giving
it to others. Once you lose credibility in what you say, what you do, and in the dataand information you provide, it will be difficult for you to effectively advocate Japanese
language education.
When you engage in advocacy, certain data and information is constantly requested.
Try to accumulate and keep them on file so that you can provide them immediately.
Also, do not forget to do your own research by using and analysing that data andinformation, and prepare for presentations and arguing for the importance of Japanese
language education using your data.

Community
Try to make you, your program and your students visible in your community. Encourage
your students to be involved in the community. For instance, your students can singJapanese songs in a local festival. If you are teaching at a high school, you can takeyour students to local elementary and middle schools to recruit your future students.
Encourage your students to talk about their experience in your classroom and thebenefits of Japanese language learning. Have them make presentations (e.g. sing ageappropriate Japanese songs, perform short skits in Japanese, show kamishibai or teachorigami) to elementary and middle schools, which will excite and motivate younger
students about learning Japan, Japanese language and culture. It would be a goodidea to contact local newspapers and broadcasting stations about these opportunities.
Remember that any photo opportunities are beneficial for advocacy. Also, you can use
the photos in your newsletter and have it distributed to the students’ parents, otherteachers, school administrators, school board members, local politicians and the wider
community people.

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The students’ parents and community always become big supporters when you are facedwith program reduction or elimination. The time to repair the roof is when the sun isshining!

Concluding Remarks
In this paper, I have talked about the importance of advocacy for Japanese language
educators. In order to advocate effectively, we should:
1. Be visionary teachers
2. Add value to our Japanese language teaching
3. Constantly raise our visibility in the community.

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