Curriculum Reform and Policies of Japanese Language Education for Immigrant Children

• In Event: Contradictions and Complexities of Curriculum Reforms Around the World

Abstract

This study explores the politics of Japanese language curriculum reform. As Japan struggles to come to terms with the question of what it means to be a citizen of a post-industrial nation in a rapidly globalizing economy, the curriculum of Japanese as second language has gone under various reforms. This paper demonstrates that reforms which took place in the 1980’s and 1990’s were attempts to spread Japanese norms and values, and the current reforms were established in an effort to construct foreigners into rational and ideal members of Japanese society. This paper concludes that the conceptualized notion of Japanese as a second language for immigrant children does not have an ideological basis, but is the effect of multiple power relations.

Authors

• Jie Qi, Utsunomiya University

• Sheng Ping Zhang, Meijo University