2020 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Assessing Foreign Language Activity Assistants' perspectives on primary Foreign Language Activities
| Project/Area Number |
16K02952
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| Research Institution | Fukushima University |
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Principal Investigator |
Mahoney Sean 福島大学, 行政政策学類, 准教授 (50292454)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
猪井 新一 茨城大学, 教育学部, 教授 (80254887)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2016-10-21 – 2021-03-31
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| Keywords | 小学校外国語活動 / 外国語活動協力者 / ノン・ネイティブ・スピーカー / 教科 / 英語の非母語話者 / 外国語活動支援者 / 英語教育 / ＥＡＡ |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Thanks to the one-year extension of our Kakenhi Project, we were able to add to and report on findings collected through the previous year’s online surveys of non-native English-speaking assistants (both Japanese and non-Japanese). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many non-Japanese English assistants, whom our survey had targeted, returned to their home countries and have not been able to resume work in Japan. Moreover, far fewer new assistants have been recruited from abroad than before the pandemic. Despite this, however, we managed to survey 10 more non-native English speaking foreign assistants (in FY 2020) who currently teach English at public primary schools. We also 1) continued processing open-ended data collected in 2019 and 2020; 2)published a paper (in February, 2020, but not reported last year) on data from interviews with Japanese assistants in particular; 3) presented on large-scale online survey data at the JALT 2020 (online) conference in November 2020; and 4) published two new English activities (in English and Japanese) in Keirinkan’s “English Times” newsletters, directed at primary schools nationwide.
Having placed non-native English-speaking assistants in the spotlight through various conferences and publications in three countries (Japan, South Korea, and Thailand), we consider this Project a success overall. Our findings, which have offered a fresh perspective on the true variety of collaborators and team-teaching types in public primary school English education, have been welcomed with interest.
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