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Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017

REFLECTIONS
Reflections on Creating Community: Learning Together 3 (CCLT3)
Overview
Creating Community: Learning Together(CCLT) is an informal afternoon Learner
Development SIG conference taking placeeach December in Tokyo. The event acts as
the final Tokyo get-together of the year, andboth teachers and their students take part.
CCLT3 took place in December 2016.
Thirty-four students and 30 teachers
attended, and by all accounts everybody had
a very enjoyable afternoon—inspiring
presentations and convivial discussions, withmany different LD SIG members leading
the reflection circles after each of the threerounds of presentations.
Here Jenny Morgan, Mitsui Hirano, andDebjani Ray share their reflections on what
they learned from taking part in CCLT3.
Jenny reflects on how presenting at CCLT3
and talking with participants enabled her todevelop her understanding of questions to
do with creativity and criticality, as well as
explore how learners and teachers may
engage with important social and global
issues in different ways. Jenny’s reflections
are followed by “Studying Makes Your
Prospects Brilliant” by Mitsui Hirano, a
student presenter at CCLT3, who reports on
her autonomy-nurturing experiences ofattending a “free school” in Japan. Debjani
Ray closes the set with “Participating in
CCLT3: A Sense of Achievement” bylooking at the benefits that CCLT3 offers tostudent and teacher participants who takepart together, share, and connect.

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CCLT4 will be taking place in December
this year, and you are very welcome to takepart with your students. More details will
follow in the coming months.

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LEARNING LEARNING 

Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017

Reflections about Co-creating
Criticality and Creativity in
Learning and Teaching
Jenny Morgan
Wayo Women’s University, ChibaAt the third annual Creating Community
Learning Together (CCLT3) miniconference hosted by the Tokyo LD
SIG (December 2016), the number ofstudent participants outnumbered theteachers! This was inspiring to see as it
reflects the motivation by learners to take up
opportunities to present their research
and/or reflections on their learning to acommunity of peers which includes bothstudents and teachers. I picked up many
useful ideas and materials from all thepresentations I was able to see, and enjoyedlively conversations with various learners
and teachers throughout the afternoon.
Unfortunately, none of my students in my
two global issues seminar classes was able tocommit time to preparing and giving
presentations, but with their permission andcollaboration I was able to share theirresearch work, reflections and final reports
in my presentation. My presentation focusedon issues of criticality and creativity in a

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learner-negotiated syllabus for a global
issues content based, seminar-style course.
Two students worked on creating our poster
presentation with me: Using a honeycomb
pattern for the poster, we wanted to show
the interconnectedness of the learning that
happened in our class. In the past, I havetended to view and map syllabus design andlearning stages in a linear fashion. Of course,
some parts of learning are necessarily stepby-step, but I more clearly understandlearning-teaching to be interconnected,
where deep knowledge building and skills
development aren’t linear.
In the first class, the students brainstormed
various global/social issues they wanted to
discuss and learn about in our course, as
well as ways (activities, skills, research tasks)
they could use to achieve this. Then, we
mapped a fifteen-week plan with assessment
breakdown. I suggested a certain order ofthemes to help the learning beinterconnected and accumulative, and not
merely random. So, in terms of themes, ournatural starting point was looking at andsharing about “identities”, “communities”,“societies.” Then, a focus on “gender”
aimed to prioritise the realities of theseyoung women students; we felt “diversity”
to logically extend the knowledge and

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Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017

experiences of (gender) discrimination,
empowerment, and the reality and value of
diversity in our lives. Research and learning
about diverse “social-change makers andheroic individuals” nicely broadened out to“organisations and NGOs working forsocial-change.” For their final projects
students chose their own research topics,
which were connected to themes we hadalready explored together.
While working with content, learners carriedout activities which required them to engage
more critically and creatively withsocial/global issues; learners did not justhave to research and describe a social problem,
but also activities/prompts guided them totake an interpretative view and a critical view
when they gathered their information,
images, and opinions. Regular reflection
writing along-side Internet research, out-ofclass interviews, peer-share discussions,creating visual materials for theirpresentations, and writing their final reports
all jigsawed together to help my learners todevelop their critical understanding ofcontent, and to understand their research
processes better (unpublished data).
One of my goals for CCLT3 was to find out
from attendees what critical questions might
foster criticality in global issues contentbased classes. I invited CCLT3 attendees towrite on “post-its” any critical questions
they use in their classes to get their learners
thinking and exploring issues more deeply.
Thank you so much to everyone for sharing
and writing their ideas! I gathered many richquestions and prompts for me to take into
my classes in 2017.
WHAT QUESTIONS CAN HELPLEARNERS/YOU WORK TOWARDSCREATIVITY AND CRITICALITY
WHILE ENGAGING WITH
IMPORTANT GLOBAL/SOCIALISSUES?
• How are you/we connected to this issue?
• Who benefits and who doesn’t benefit from thissituation?
• EMOTION - how did/do you feel about this(issue)?
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• What communities/groups do you belong to now?
How do these communities help shape youridentity?
• Which groups/communities would you like to joinor learn about in the future?
• What slogans, quotations, sayings can you findabout this issue? Which are the most interestingfor you? Why?
• Find images of different kinds of (diversity) inJapan or other places- write sentences using theprompts for ‘three ways of seeing, thinking andquestioning’ (factual, interpretative and criticalviews).
• Have students create a survey and find out about
attitudes towards their topic on campus. Can
their research help understanding/change
attitudes?
• What NGOs are doing campaigns on this issue?
Why?
• Do you think you could live as ___? Why/whynot?
• Environment!!!
• How would you feel if this was you?
• What do other people think? Find out. Do you
agree with them?
• Imagine if you were faced with ___, what would
you do?
• How would you feel if you had to be ___?
• Imagine/reflect on...you are one of the actors.
• Nicole Gallagher described a roleplay activity
where there is a ‘lay-judge’ and the class engages
with agree/disagree stances on an issue. The
learners first read some case-studies/stories ofdifferent actors.

Re-reading the “post-its” now in January has
helped me reconnect with the presentations
I enjoyed in December. For example,
Dexter Da Silva commented and reminded
me about allowing space in the classroom
for “EMOTION—how did/do you feel
about this (issue)?” Some of the presentersin Round 1 (Dexter Da Silva, Nicole
Gallagher, Wakana Sakai, and Yurie Ogura)emphasized the importance of psychologicalliteracy in learning, emotions, andimagination/creativity in communicativecompetence. I found these presentations
particularly refreshing as I am often
worrying with my students too much about
the academic-intellectual side of language
learning and knowledge building. It’s good
to be reminded how essential the affective andpsychological aspects of learning-teaching are
for sustaining motivation for learning,

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developing the whole person, and simply
having fun while communicating with otherpeople in the classroom.
The other goal I had for CCLT3 was to talkwith many students whose stories I could
then share with my own learners. I had
interesting conversations with Yusei Ando
about learner goal-setting and teachers’ roles
in supporting learners to set their own goals.
He then emphasized the importance forlearners to regularly evaluate and adjustthese goals throughout a learning cycle. I
was very impressed with the quality of
research and presentations by three Chuo
students, Katsuyuki Tsutumi, Keito Imai,and Kohaku Kawada, who visited Myanmar
last summer with Andy Barfield. The
students’ perspectives as young adults onconnecting with local university peers,
Burmese teacher trainers, NGO workers,
and local business owners offered me aunique insight into important issues facing
this emerging nation, issues related toeducation, gender, ethnic minorities, andmicro-finance.
Thisisimportantbackground learning for me as I also visit
Myanmar in spring to participate in teacher
development workshops.
I appreciated talking with Shinobu
Nakamura about her extensive reading (ER)project at her university’s self-access centre(SAC).
Her research showed that byincreasing their pleasure reading of graded
readers, students developed their vocabulary
and confidence communicating in English.
All too often, I tend to let ER fall by thewayside due to time constraints whenplanning my syllabi, but now after hearing
the successes of ER at Shinobu’s SAC, I’m
definitely going to ensure all mycommunication English freshmen classes
get introduced to graded readers early on in
their study. At Wayo, I think it’ll beenjoyable and motivating for them to aim
towards some kind of vocabulary target(with prizes), and to measure their progressat the end of a semester (thanks, Shinobu!).
I was very much inspired by Caroline
Kocel’s PowerPoint presentation about her
research trips to Yap, FSM. Caroline’s
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journey as a reflexive researcher resonatedwith me as it is largely through asking myself
questions and writing reflections in myresearch journal that I can make sense of myown research processes for writing up data
analysis, for understanding the literature,
and applying any findings/theories to enrich
my teaching-learning approaches; also, in
guiding my research students in their own
reflection writing and growth as researchers.
Caroline’s presentation offered a small view
into some of the ways that these resilientisland communities are facing the challenges
of climate-change caused by industrial
nations, through environmental educationand efforts towards food sovereignty.
Caroline shared some photos and thoughtprovoking
visualisationsofthe“organization and management of learning
environments” for environmental education.
These powerful visual analyses revealed
various elements of learning and pedagogy
related to power in a classroom, and posequestions about whether the learningteaching approaches are participant-driven(learner-driven) or outsider-driven? Do
educational
approaches
value
the
participants’ lived experiences and existingknowledge about their natural environments
and how they sustain local knowledge? Is
the learning contextualised, is it co-created,etc? Finally, we discussed the need forparticipant-driven research, meaning that any
research projects must have “value-added”
benefits to the participants not just the
researcher. These were all valuable questions
and reminders for me in my EFL teachingin Japan, and also for working effectively
alongside
teachertrainers
inBurma/Myanmar.
Thank you again to the CCLT3 conference
team and all the participants. I enjoyed therelaxed, collegial atmosphere, meeting old
and new friends, eating the festive treats,
and taking away much to reflect on for the
coming teaching-learning year.
Author correspondence:<Email> jennyromain@yahoo.com

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Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017

Studying Makes Your Prospects
BrilliantMitsui Hirano
Department of English Communication
Faculty of Humanities, Keisen UniversityIt was a great honor to be a part of theconference and to share my experienceand my ideas with everyone. Also, it
was a great opportunity for me to think
about English education in Japan because
I’m taking the educational course at myuniversity. I talked with the participants
about why students seldom have the chanceto speak English and to state their own
thoughts in English class, and also
confirmed what teachers can do to givethem motivation and confidence throughEnglish study. I learned a lot through thediscussions. I think this experience will be
helpful and useful for my upcoming teacher
training and that motivated me to study
English more.
“What comes to your mind when you hear
the words free school?” When I asked thisquestion, most of the Japanese people at theconference didn’t know what free school
meant. That showed me the current
situation of free school in Japan. “Freeschool” is a unique school based on diversity
and flexibility. In my presentation, I talked
about how I changed my motivation andattitude to learning through free school. I
was so glad to see that the participants
showed deep interest in this kind of uniqueschool.
I started to go to free school when I was in
my fourth year in elementary school. It wasvery different from public and private
schools. My free school consisted ofelementary to high school classes, with thenumber of the students being nearly 30, allstudying the curricula the Government has
set in Japanese. Because of the small school,
you can have a deep relationship with bothstudents and teachers and learn how to getalong with each other in this community. In
addition, my school has several great
characteristics. For example, you can makeSPRING 2017

your own class schedule depending on yourneeds and sometimes you can study on a
one-to-one basis. Also, you have lots ofchances to meet people from all over theworld. You can learn the importance ofrespecting individual personalities andbuilding relationship with handicappedpeople and people with different
backgrounds.
On the other hand, there are some problems
in free school. Currently, it is not recognized
as an official educational institution by thegovernment. Because of this, the students
who are in elementary and junior high must
be enrolled in regular school because ofcompulsory education. This means that
there is not enough cooperation with regularschools and nearby communities. As for myfree school, it is mainly funded by school
fees and supporting membership donations,
so it is hard to manage the school.
However, I think everything I experienced
in free school was meaningful and helped toshape my personality. I realized that learning
is not for gaining knowledge, but for finding
possibilities through your school life. Also, I
learned that learning builds your confidence.
I believe these things motivate you tocontinue to push forward even if you facedifficulties.
I strongly hope that people in Japan willknow more about free schools and thesociety will be open to accept various waysof education such as free schools.

Participating in
CCLT3: A Sense ofAchievement

Debjani Ray
Tokyo University of ScienceThe varied and unique content of
CCLT Conferences, where teachersand students present side by side, isvery attractive for me. Due to other

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commitments, I was there for only the latterpart of CCLT3, so I missed much of it,which I regret, but during Round 3, I
managed to see two full presentations that I
would like to reflect on here.
The first was by a group of students of
Political Science and Economics from Meiji
University, Tokyo, who presented on acommunicative game, called Husky Race,
which they described as “brain-friendly.”
They also played the game with several
participants. In the game, players need tofollow some rules: first, players are required
to find answers to a list of clues given aboutsome interesting areas of a city or town; theplayers then go to the places physically andat each place they need to take photos withsome landmark as proof that they will later
use in a presentation on those places. A few
teams are meant to play the game at thesame time and to compete with each other.
Each team must try to do the race in the
shortest possible time.

Figure 1. Students playing in “Husky Race”

My impression was that the clues, written in
English, were all well thought out and thatthe game gave ample opportunities of
exercise that helped in improving theperformance of the brain (Ratey & Manning,2015). The game combines movement with
content and makes students actively andeffectively engaged in learning whichemphasizes the use of the target language
throughout the game. The problem solving
involved in this game helps in the essential
part of the team-building process throughbrainstorming and sharing ideas andknowledge. It also enhances co-operationand collaboration within the team and gives
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plenty of opportunities for improving
comprehension and communication skills,
so that motivated students use the target
language during the game, which in turn will
improve their language skills. This gamefacilitates learning of a variety of processes,
which makes taking part interesting andenjoyable and leads to improved outcomes.
My only concern is that there might besome conflict with the school authorities
about using this game at school as thestudents would have to go to different
places without any supervision. Other
questions I had are about judging the timeused in the game as class time or free time,
how much of class time can be spentoutside the class and school unsupervisedand how much of students’ free time can bedirected to be used for an activity for school.
This could provide the impetus for a debate
about using this particular game in the class.
Overall, the game was very interesting, andthe students did a wonderful job presenting
and playing it with the visitors to theirdisplay. Their teacher, Yoko Morimoto, wasalso present there and helped the students
whenever required, but without interferingin any way.
The other presentation that I spent time atwas by Jenny Morgan, of Wayo Women’s
University, Tokyo. It was on a contentbased course dealing with global issues while
focusing on encouraging students withlimited proficiency of English. The course
tried to enhance engagement, understanding,and critical thinking on prominent global
issues. The main learning goals for theseminar-style course were developing theskills for critical thinking, opinion making,discussion-developing, researching, andfinally, presenting on some chosen global
issues. There were some class materials forviewing as well as some learner products,
such as journal entries and research reports.
The attractive poster used in thepresentation provided the major steps of theprocess, essential information about the
project and displayed the outcomes. The
nicely organized materials made the logicalsequence clear. With its right amount of

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font and graphics, restrained use of colours,
the self-explanatory poster became a
motivational message itself.
Jenny explained how it had been a“challenging puzzle” for her to engage thestudents with limited English in ameaningful and critical discussion on
important social issues. The students
worked on a variety of difficult themes suchas diversity, social change makers, andgender issues. Jenny also talked about how
she guided the students through three levels:seeing, thinking, and questioning, to develop
criticality and help them build the necessary
vocabulary.
She also taught them toresearch various sources, to choose
appropriate topics, to do discussions andpeer-share discussions. Finally, the students
learned how to write reflections that theyshared with each other in class. Then theywrote reports on their research andpresented these to their peers, too. As thepresenter stated, it was “co-creating”
learning.
There were class materials and examples ofreflections written by students on display forattendees to look through. One of them wasa homework assignment sheet on socialchange makers. Students needed to go
through a series of multiple-choicequestions that set them thinking about socialchange makers and then focusing on one
person of their choice. They could choose
from a page of pictures of world-famous
heroes from different countries from avariety of fields. To help them in doing this,the presenter produced a worksheet using
mindmaps to teach them note-taking skills.
It was for the students to fill in the blankmindmap after conducting a research on
something or someone and in case they did
not know or find all the answers, they wereallowed to guess or "imagine" them. There
were questions to lead the students towards
the right direction, for example, why they
are a good role model or hero, and how
she/he made a difference to people’s lives.
There was also a guide for writingreflections. The students needed to write
reflections on their partner’s presentations
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on global issues. To guide the students
through the steps towards writing proper
reflections, the sheet contained questions,multiple choice questions, and supportive
statements.
As a teacher myself, I know the hardships
when dealing with students with limited
English, and it takes no imagination tounderstand how hard it might be to teachand explain difficult topics of global issues
to them. I thought that the presentation wasvery insightful. The presenter led theviewers smoothly through her challenging
journey with the students. At the end of the
project when the students learned some newsocial issues and made their presentations
successfully, it finally became enjoyable andrewarding for the students and satisfying forthe teacher. Specifically, the class materials
caughtmyattention.
They
were
meticulously created with the mission of
supporting the students. The example
student products indicated that the classmaterials undoubtedly enhanced thestudents’ understanding of the complexityof the content and, at the same time,
facilitated their language learning.
It was my second time to participate in a
CCLT conference: the first time was as apresenter and this time as a viewer.
Generally speaking, it is a well-organized
conference with a variety of presentations
on many different topics and the interactive
opening and closing plenary sessions. Its
unique quality is having reflection circles
after each round of presentations where
both the presenters and the viewers can takepart together, share, and connect. That is
how it creates a sense of achievement foreveryone present as people can learn fromeach other and learn together. And that is
also how, in my opinion, this conference
stays true to its title.
Reference
Ratey, J. J., & Manning R. (2015). Go wild: Eat fat,run free, be social, and follow evolution's other rules
for total health and well-being. London: Little,
Brown Book Group.
Author correspondence:<Email> dray.beta@gmail.com

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