Culturally relevant self-study methodology with Japanese teachers: Navigating the strings of the “air” to understand intimate knowledge in education

• In Event: Exploring teachers' experiences in challenging educational contexts

Proposal

This self-study aims to investigate the Japanese common cultural practice called “reading the air” in education through both personal and collaborative self-study methods. Reading the air or “kuuki” (the air) “wo yomu” (to read) in Japanese is defined as “to infer the situation from the atmosphere of the situation, particularly to speculate and judge what people should or should not do in a given situation, and what they want or do not want the others to do'' (Digital Daijisen, 2008). It is considered as one of the essential social skills in Japan (Oishi,2009) and is an example of culturally-based knowledge and social systems (Kariya, 2022; Koukami, 2009; Yamamoto, 1977) toward understanding “intimate knowledge” (Kasulis, 2002) that the Japanese society has recursively built as dominant cultural orientations. I use Thomas Kasulis’s theory of intimacy and integrity to argue the “air” as one form of intimate knowledge in Japan as opposed to integrity knowledge in the West particularly of the U.S.. (Kasulis, 2002).

Understanding tacit knowledge in education is indispensable. Various forms of teacher knowledge exist that teachers professionally understand or believe to be true (Verloop et al., 2001), and it is a critical factor for teacher professionalism (OECD, 2021). Self-study is a useful tool to reveal intimate knowledge such as taken-for-granted knowledge like reading the “air,” a common Japanese way of knowing to understand the unspoken language depending on a given context. This study investigates how Japanese high school teachers understand the “air” in the educational context particularly through their international academic experiences in the US. It analyzes the impact of such cultural practice in education for contemporary societal and educational settings and its impact on the quality of education and teachers’ well-being.

The self-study emerges from the work of teachers and teacher educators who seek to better understand the complicated world of teaching and learning as practitioners (Feldman et al., 2004). It is a collaborative scholarship where a researcher, or the self, is the central focus and collaborates with critical friends to validate and ensure the trustworthiness of a study functioning as a support system (Samaras, 2011). Although self-study research is an internationally practiced scholarship for both English and non-English-speaking countries including Iceland, Netherlands, Chile, South Africa, Israel, Korea, and Japan (Saito, 2021; Saito et al., 2022), it is still a novice practice in the Japanese school context (Saito 2021; Nishida 2020). Self-study caught attention in Japan due to the increasing demand to reconsider the traditional values and practices in education (Nishida, 2020). It is a practical and empowering methodology for teachers in Japan, however, there is still a limited amount of resources available in Japan about self-study. It creates barriers to a proper understanding of concepts such as critical thinking and reflection, which are keys to the self-study research method (Nishida, 2020). Active efforts to introduce the idea of self-study and to increase access to literature have been led by multiple scholars based in Japan and Iceland including the efforts to translate one of the most famous books on self-study written by Samaras Anastasia, “Self-Study Teacher Research: Improving your Practice through Collaborative Self-Study” in 2024. This paper aims to contribute to providing additional information on culturally relevant methodologies to conduct self-study for Japanese teachers and scholars who wish to utilize self-study in the Japanese educational context.

This paper particularly explores two different self-study methods. One is a personal self-study in which I explored my teacher experiences as a former school teacher in Japan to untangle the concept of the “air” in education linked with the challenges and struggles I faced at schools. I elaborate on how the reflective perspectives gained through my international professional and academic experiences made me realize the existence of the “air” in schools and discuss how self-study helped me to see the “air” through active reflection and critical discussion with my critical friend, a research participant who help researcher investigate their educational experiences critically and reflectively in self-study research.

In the collaborative self-study, I examine culturally responsive and respective self-study methods by working with three critical friends who are Japanese teachers with international professional experiences. I used arts-based methods namely, haiku, the traditional Japanese poem, and concept mapping. Arts-based self-study promotes critical self-reflection (Nishida, 2021) and guides to empathy (Samaras, 2010). I follow Nishida (2022), a self-study researcher who introduced haiku as a culturally responsive strategy for Japanese teachers to learn the new concept of critical reflection. I explain the use of a web-based learning management system called Canva, which many institutions use to provide courses. Canva helped us build and develop a professional community, enabling us to stay connected, engage with interest, and feel comfortable sharing our stories that sometimes made us feel vulnerable as teachers. Concept mapping was utilized to visualize the notion of the “air,” which tends to be elusive and esoteric not only for people within the same intellectual community but sometimes even for those within the broader community.

Empathy, the core component to sustaining an intimate-oriented society like Japan where feeling others’ emotions is considered an indispensable social skill including reading the “air” (Ooishi, 2009), I emphasize that the use of art-based methods played a key role in the success of culturally responsive self-study in the Japanese context. By fostering empathy with participants through self-study and developing a community of practice by discovering professional intimacy, this study contributes insights into how self-study can be conducted in a different cultural context without losing their own cultural relevance and integrity.
This paper aims to contribute to the self-study community in Japan and other countries with cultural orientations different from the U.S. by providing insights into how self-study can be adapted to be culturally relevant for teachers. It will explore how self-study can be effectively utilized for their professional development and empowerment in diverse cultural contexts.

Author

• Kae Takaoka, University of Minnesota - Minneapolis, MN (06940)