Ideologies of English Among Students in a "Multilingual" School in Japan

• In Event: 77.058 - MTCC Roundtable Session 36
  In Roundtable Session: 77.058-2 - Temporalities of Educational Policy, Reform, and Learner Diversity in Global Contexts

Abstract

This study explores ideologies of English among students in a yakan-teijisei (night part-time) high school. A yakan-teijisei high school is focused, not only because it has been marginalized in educational research, but also because the number of multilingual students in this type of schools has drastically increased. Through an ethnographic case study, (1) yakan-teijisei high school students’ attitudes towards English, and (2) ideologies of English underlying their attitudes were investigated. Interviews with students with multilingual backgrounds revealed their complex attitudes towards their parent’s non-Japanese language. Through a detailed analysis of one female student whose mother was Filipino, two conflicting ideologies of English have emerged; English as a language of tourism and English as a language of foreign mothers.

Author

• Shoko Moriya, The University of Tokyo