Teaching immigrant students: paradoxes of multiculturalism and multicultural education

• In Event: Technology and education. Inclusive education for domestic and international students

Proposal

1. Relevance of topic as related to the field of comparative and international education, CIES 2023 Meeting
This study explores the politics of multiculturalism inscribed in its system of reasoning in Japan to indicate that discourses on multiculturalism and multicultural education engender inclusion and exclusion at the same time. The English term “multiculturalism” emerged in the 1960s in Anglophone countries in relation to human rights and equal citizenship of non-European migrants. The meaning of multiculturalism differs from country to country and has evolved over time since its inception. This study undertakes novel critical inquiry into pedagogies as reflected in the national textbooks and curriculums of Japan which is facing rapid demographic and immigration changes. Japan has embedded and transformed the concept of multiculturalism in its curriculums. This study finds that the Japanese version of “multiculturalism” makes a binary classification between the so-called Japanese people and foreigners.

2. Theoretical framework
Foucault’s skepticism is what is required when we read institutional discourses. It is dangerous to be deluded by the literal sense of words. In modern societies, individuals are at once governed by others and are involved in the practices of self-governing (Foucault, 1988, 1991). The relationship between the governing and the governed is a dual one. Individuals are simultaneously governed subjects, and take part in their own governing. Using Foucault’s skepticism allows us to be skeptical about power when we examine the issues raised in the discourses regarding multiculturalism and multicultural education. We argue that the construction of multiculturalism and multicultural education is a discourse that involves complexity of power relations. The relationship between teachers and immigrant children is complicated. Governmentality as a technology of disciplinary power is a useful tool for analyzing the way power circulates in schools. On one hand, multiple technologies discursively construct and normalize the “reasonable” foreign students.

3. Inquiry
Two different methodologies are applied in this study. The first type of methodology is a critical textual analysis. A critical textual analysis is different from a narrative textual analysis, which tends to trace a series of events. The second methodology involves historical exploration to compare various time periods for changes in imagery and in discursive constructions of multiculturalism in Japan.

4. Findings
4.1 Emphasizing Japanese language learning
Japanese school curriculum and textbooks are designed by the Ministry of Education, a branch of the Japanese government. The national standard curriculum guideline, The Course of Study, was first issued in 1947 and has been renewed periodically since. Therefore, even when they are teaching to foreign students, Japanese teachers are inflexible and unable to introduce classroom-specific curricula to reach immigrant students. Treating foreign students in precisely the same way as other Japanese students is considered a form of the “multicultural approach” in Japan. Japan is characterized as a group-oriented society and Japanese students reproduce the collective behaviors ingrained in the society and school. There are many detailed school rules, e.g., uniforms, school lunch. Foreign students have to follow the same rules and do what Japanese students do. However, only one thing is exceptional for foreign students, especially newcomers, that is they are taken out form the Japanese language art class and take special Japanese class taught by a volunteer. It is called “toridashi” lesson (take-out lesson) in Japanese. The purpose of “toridashi” lessons is to teach foreign students “easy Japanese” while other Japanese students are taking regular Japanese language arts class. The volunteer instructor rewrites the standard textbook material into easy Japanese and make students re-speaking their own learning in easy Japanese (Mitsumoto, 2014). Emphasizing Japanese language learning, in particular teaching foreign students a form of “easy Japanese” is characteristic of the Japanese version of multicultural education. The Japanese standard national curriculum selects English as the only foreign language to be taught in K-12.

4.2 Focus on Japanese language teaching pedagogical issues
Since the middle 1980’s, multiculturalism and multicultural education became new studies in the Japanese academic field. Most research topics were related to multiculturalism and multicultural education in English speaking countries, e.g., the United States, Canada, Australia. Moreover, studies of Japanese multicultural education tend to focus on Japanese language teaching pedagogical issues. As a consequence of globalization, the number of minority children attending Japanese public schools began to increase in the late 1980s. The Ministry of Education issued a new version of the Course of Study in 1989. The Ministry of Education placed emphasis on how schools should teach “Japan’s magnificent culture and traditions” by teaching Japanese language and how they should “seek to enhance educational content to focus on cultivating understanding and affection for the Japanese nation and its history and fostering the attributes of Japanese people living independently in the international community” (MESSC, 2000, p. 174). As many scholars have pointed out that the Japanese government strive to develop and focused on linguistic methodologies rather than epistemological inversion of changes (De Lissovoy, 2019).

4.3 Dispelling of the myths about multiculturalism and multicultural education in Japan
Thus, it seems that the approach of multicultural education is teaching the Japanese language to foreign students. Communication with families of foreign students and getting to know foreign students’ cultures and languages are not important. We argue that the Japanese multicultural education is not for the cultural minorities but schools and cultural majorities.

5. Scholarly contribution
Using Foucault’s skepticism allows us to be skeptical about power when we examine the issues raised in the discourses regarding multiculturalism and multicultural education. We have to be skeptical about how we label and categorize things as multiculturalism and multicultural education. It is our hope that this study will usher new voices into the field of educational research while inspiring educational researchers to frame critique in ways that were previously unthinkable.

Authors

• Jie Qi, Utsunomiya University

• Ann Yao Zhang, University of Rochester