English education reform, local contexts, and teachers' responses: A case study of EFL teaching in a high school in Japan.

摘要

Two strong initiatives have been recently undertaken by the Ministry of Education in order to improve English teaching in Japanese high schools. One is the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program that incorporates native speaking teachers into English classrooms as team teachers whose job is to cooperate with Japanese teachers of English (JTEs). The other reform, the new English curriculum, has instituted newly designed Oral Communication courses with an emphasis on the development of target language listening and speaking abilities. Both reforms have sought to encourage Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in English classrooms, which contrasts with the traditional method, grammar translation. The purpose of this study is to examine how these recent Japanese two reforms have been implemented at various levels and how English teachers have responded to the reform in their perceptions and practice, as seen in the case of one local high school.; Primary data for this study were interviews with those who represent the levels involved; education ministry officials, a teachers' consultant at a prefectural board of education, and English teachers at one local high school. In addition, observation of Oral Communication classes and relevant documents collected at the sites were included for analysis.; The findings indicate that the teachers have accommodated some changes into their thinking and to some extent, into their practice. These include: acceptance of team teaching, use of a localized team teaching format, adjustment of some JTEs' oral proficiency level, and a co-existence of CLT and exam-oriented teaching. At the same time, there are several factors discouraging change. These include: the reform system, insufficient in-service training, collegial relationships among teachers, misunderstanding of CLT, university entrance examinations, and JTEs themselves. The results of this study imply the need to maximize the native speaker resource, to support teachers so they will better understand CLT, to improve in-service training and university entrance exams, and to pay closer attention to local contextual factors that influence the implementation process and results.