ABSTRACT
Foreign language education in Japan has always focused on teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) in K–12 schools (Butler & Iino, 2005). In fact, as for Russian as a foreign language (RFL) education, only a few schools offer Russian courses today – no elementary schools, just one middle school, and only 23 high schools out of 4,981 in the nation (Hayashida, 2014). Currently, the focus in foreign-language education is exclusively on English which is explicitly displayed in the national language education policy. While the government provides guidelines for EFL, Russian teachers are merely instructed to follow these guidelines (MEXT, 2009). How are Russian teachers supposed to follow the guidelines tailored for teaching EFL when the learning contexts for RFL are starkly different from those of EFL? Moreover, how is the RFL policy shaped in individual classrooms?
Aligned with the recent emphasis on the local in language policy research (Canagarajah, 2005), this qualitative study examines how Russian foreign language education policies are locally constructed by four Japanese and Russian teachers at two high schools in Japan. Data collected in this study include participant observations, audio-recordings of classes, interviews with the four participant teachers as well as textbooks used at the schools, lesson plans and teaching materials the instructors created, and various documents related to the Russian language education policy.
The content and micro-discourse analysis our of the data reveal how the national EFL education policies, including the “Course of Study” and high-stakes testing such as college entrance exams impact the local RFL education policy processes in individual classrooms. The analysis also highlights moments in which the four teachers locally negotiate and recreate the policy to meet their students’ needs within their individual school contexts. In such moments, the teachers often reflected on their practice and/or took risks to try out what they had learned in their professional development workshops in their own classes. Thus, the present study argues that multilingualism may be promoted through local foreign language education policies, in which professional development may play a significant role in language education policy processes, giving opportunities and tools that teachers can use to practice their agency, and challenge and recreate the top-down policy through their daily practices.
