Educational Responses to Address Diversity and Social Inequality in Japan: Programs for Immigrant Students

• In Event: 30.021 - Immigration and Multicultural Urban Educational Policies and Their Implementation in India, Korea, Japan, and Singapore

Abstract

Purposes

This paper examines how education policies and practices deal with cultural diversity and pursue equity in Japan. Retention to post-compulsory schooling amongst migrant children remains behind the national average. How have migrant children experienced formal schooling and outof-school educational activities? To what extent has education been effective in preparing them for post-school lives and integration into the mainstream society?

Perspectives or theoretical framework

My theoretical interest is equity and diversity in education. Providing “equal” institutional opportunities to schooling does not lead to equitable outcomes for children from migrant and/or disadvantaged families. Sociologists have long offered various explanations, including the cultural deficit model and cultural difference theory (e.g., Persell, 1981; Pianta & Walsh, 1996), language codes (Bernstein, 1971), the use (or non-use) of family strategies for employing resources to benefit children (Bourdieu, 1984), and Ogbu’s ecological explanation focusing on “voluntary” and “involuntary” migrants (Ogbu & Simon, 1998). An examination of Japan, a latecomer to this challenge, contributes to this discussion.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry

The paper examines educational policies to address the educational challenges related to ethnic diversity of student population at the national government, local government/ education board, and individual school levels during the post-war period; and how these policies have been variously implemented. It then studies the voluntary initiatives that have gradually emerged outside school, which attempt to facilitate migrant children’s participation in mainstream schooling.

Data sources

In order to build up the historical and policy contexts, this paper draws on a wide range of primary sources of policies and descriptive statistics available from governments, local education boards, and NGOs. The author then reported and analyze the findings from an eight-year long qualitative study, based on the fieldwork in 2006- 2014 in the Kobe and Osaka regions, where she has maintained contact with several schools. The author observed educational practices, interviewed teachers, and collected primary sources in the form of school documents.

Arguments

Children of immigrant families generally lack resources. Mainstream school programs alone have been inadequate to meet migrant children’s needs. Out-of-school educational programs for migrants play increasingly significant roles, to the extent that some affected mainstream schools depend on their contribution. There is collaboration between local schools and out-of-school programs to differing degrees; and such collaboration seems effective in achieving the shared goal of promoting migrant children’s participation in formal schooling. The increasing number of out-of-school programs for migrant children prompted the emergence of similar programs for children from poor families who also struggle at school.

Scholarly significance of the study

Built as a context, the paper first illuminates how a country that perceives itself homogeneously and has no national multicultural education policy has responded to an increasingly diverse student population. Findings from the qualitative study provides insights into how initiatives outside schools can address the gaps in mainstream schooling by compensating immigrant family with limited resources, and in so doing forge collaborations between communities and local schools.

Author

• Kaori Okano, La Trobe University