Education for Peace and Democracy in the Literature and Language Class: Action Researches in the Japanese Saturday School in London Miwa Mizushima-Macmaster UCL Institute of Education Degree: PhD Submission 1 Declaration I, Miwa Mizushima-Macmaster, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract This thesis is built around three pedagogical action researches relating to education for peace and democratic citizenship. These researches were conducted in three successive school years in the department of literature in the Japanese Saturday School in London (JSSL), with the collaboration of my departmental teaching colleagues and of the students in the senior division (15-18 years old), who we were teaching. They involved significant episodes of cross-age-group teaching and learning. The research questions are: 1) How could we, Language and Literature teachers of senior students, use Literature to develop effective curriculum and pedagogy units around the theme of war and peace? 2) How, more generally, could we develop and teach Language units that would nurture democratically-minded citizens who would become voluntarily and independently involved in society? The research draws throughout on the JSSL students’(atypical) experience of both Japanese and British life and education, and the thesis begins with points of comparison between Japanese and British society and education, bringing out Japan’s ‘seniority’ system and culture, its difficulty with its growing multi-culturalism, and its traditionally centralized education system. The first, and most prolonged, action research involved a sustained engagement with literature texts, approved for senior school use in Japan, to raise serious questions about war and peace, and more specifically about invasions of other countries. The second engaged the students in investigating Media reporting of wars and other matters to raise questions about the citizen’s news-consumer responsibilities. The third reflected on cultural differences between Britain and Japan and how we can ‘understand’ each other. It was helped by an extended session with a Japanese WWII veteran, who was famous for his reconciliation work with Japanese and British soldiers. The study uses a range of methods including a planning, teaching and research diary, semi- structured interviews with teacher colleagues and students, student questionnaires and evaluations, and video records to track and evaluate: (a) the impact of the action researches on students (including the cumulative impact on students who experienced all three researches), and (b) the impact on teachers’ pedagogical development of working collaboratively and with cross-age-groups of students. 3 Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my supervisor, Dr. Paddy Walsh. I am grateful for his incredibly deep knowledge, intelligence, analysis and insight. It is difficult to imagine completing this thesis without his intellectual support. I am also grateful to his wife Pat for allowing him to give so much of his time. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to president, Mr. Shuichi Sugano; to my former colleagues and collaborators, especially with their permission, the three who were able to contribute most to the fieldwork phases - Ms. Sei Hamaguchi, Ms. Tamako Matsukuma, Ms. Kazue Morino; and to the many students who willingly lent their young talents and their learning to the research in Japanese Saturday School in London. Their collaboration in my research is at the heart of this thesis. I hope that they will not find too many disagreements with my conclusions. I would like to express my appreciation to headmaster, Ms. Mariko Hayashi, colleagues and students of Kobe College, where I work at this moment and where I am now also trying to put some ideas from the thesis into practice. I would like to express my deep respect for Mr. Susumu Tsuboi, an A-bomb survivor, who passed away on 4th April 2016. He inspired me a lot about peace education from 1998 when we went together to Ukraine for his lecture and for peace activities. I would like to express my profound gratitude to my dear husband Rob for his love, support and patience that enables me to complete this thesis. 4 Analytic Table of Contents . Chapter 1 Introduction and Contexts 11 1-1. Finding the Area of Research 11 1-2. Research Focus and Questions 15 1-3. Three elements of Japanese political and educational culture 17 (1) Japan’s Seniority System 18 (2) ‘Living together’ – Mono-Culturalism under Challenge 26 (3) MEXT, England and School-based Curriculum Development 30 1-4. The Structure of the Thesis 35 Chapter 2 Research Site and Theory-Methodology 38 2-1. Introducing JSSL Senior High Division 38 2-2. Action Research 44 John Elliott’s philosophy of action research 46 Some Research Dilemmas and Practicalities 52 2-3. Research Instruments 55 (1) My Research Diary 55 (2) Tape-Recorded Interviews of Students and Teachers 56 (3) ‘Before and After’ Student Questionnaires 58 (4) PM Evaluation Forms 60 (5) Constructed Learning Materials 60 (6) Use of Video / DVD 60 2-4. Analyzing Data 61 2-5. Ethical Issues 63 2-6. Summary 66 Chapter 3 The First Project: Literature Education for Peace 67 3-1. Rationale and Conceptual Framework 68 Peace education, more than emotional manipulation 68 5 Three particular objectives in using war and peace literature 71 3-2. The Key Texts 72 3-3. Planning 77 Getting Going 77 ‘Before and After’ Questionnaire 79 Planning the Class Programmes 80 Planning the Plenary Meeting 80 3-4. The Class Periods 82 Understanding the historical background in S1 82 Reading and Using the Main Text in the S1 Class 83 Using the S1 Supplementary Texts 85 S2 and S3 Colleagues’ class periods 90 Chapter 4 The First Project (cont.): Plenary Meeting and Final Evaluations 95 4-1. The Plenary Meeting 95 Watching and Responding to the A-bomb video 96 The Discussion Groups – Evidence for ‘RICE’ 97 The PM Evaluation Questionnaire 101 4-2. The ‘Before and After’ Questionnaires 103 Rationale of the Questions 103 Analysis of the Students’ Responses to the Four Categories of Questions 105 4-3. Evidence from Interviews and a Reflective Meeting 109 Ten Recurring Themes 109 The Student Interviews 110 The Teacher Interviews 113 Reflection and Looking Forward: Final Meeting 116 4-4. Final Comments on AR1 119 (1) Literature, video, discussion and peace 119 (2) Discussion, Japan and Deep Questions 120 Chapter 5 The Second Project: About Newspapers 122 5-1. Rationale and Conceptual Frameworks 122 Newspapers in Education (NIE) 123 Three Priorities in NIE 125 6 5-2. Preparations and Assignments 127 First and Second Terms 127 The Teacher Study - Group 129 Official and Unofficial Reasons - the Winter Assignments 130 5-3. Two Preparation Classes for the PM (4th and 11th Feb) 133 5-4. The Plenary Meeting (18th Feb 2006) 138 Final Preparations and New Materials 138 Using the New Materials 139 Reflection 144 5-5. Evaluations 145 Student Views of the PM 145 The ‘Before and After’ Questionnaire (4th / 25th Feb 2006) 147 How AR2 differed from AR1 149 Successes and lessons learnt 150 Chapter 6 AR3: Pedagogy as Sharing Personal Experience 153 6-1. Imphal, Mr. Hirakubo and Other Resources 154 6-2. Teaching, Learning and Evaluation 161 A class preparing for the first PM (8th July 2006) 161 The First Plenary Meeting (15th July 2006) 164 The Summer Holiday Assignment (Summer 2006) 166 6-3. Being Japanese in Britain 166 The preparatory class for the second PM (9th Sep 2006) 168 Further Preparations for the 2nd PM 171 The 2nd Plenary Meeting (16th Sept. 2006) 172 6-4. Student and Teacher Evaluations 177 The Student Evaluation of the second PM 177 The Teacher Evaluations 179 6-5. Conclusion: Progression in the ARs 182 Chapter 7 Comparable Research Studies 183 7-1. Action Researches in Japanese Classes from 2003-2006 183 (1) Japanese History in a Senior 2 Social Studies Class 184 (2) World Peace in Junior 2 Integrated Study and Social Studies Classes 185 (3) ‘Structural Violence’, action-study in a first year University (U1) English Conversation class 186 7 (4) ‘Japanese and American views of peace compared’ in a Junior 1 Social Studies Class 188 (5) ‘Understanding the Singaporean View of the Pacific War’ in S1 English Literature classes 190 7-2. Japanese study after 2006 192 (1) ‘Conflicts and conflict resolution in the Modern World’, an action study in High School Social Studies 193 (2) Michel Apple 194 7-3. Some Non-Japanese Studies 196 (1) ‘The Situation Made Us Special’, a year-long action study in an American Middle School 7th grade 196 (2) Workshops exploring Community and Identity for 10-18 year olds in four schools in Leicester, UK 200 (3) Citizenship education and student identities: school-wide action research with 11-16 pupils 202 7-4. Conclusion 208 Chapter 8 Final Evaluation of ARs 1-3 210 8-1. Summary of ARs 210 8-2. An Evaluation Methodology 215 8-3. Comparing the Themes 218 8-4. Student Learning 225 Independent-Mindedness 226 Equality, Justice and Law 228 Peace and Communication 230 8-5. Values of the Pedagogy 232 The Three Variants 232 The Three Constants 235 Japan Now 237 A Positive Appeal 240 Bibliography 241 8 APPENDICES Chapter 2 Appendices App. 2-1 A Note on Entrance Examinations to Japanese Universities 253 App. 2-2 Foundations for Elliott’s view of ‘Action Research’ 254 Chapter 3 Appendices App. 3-2 Digests of the Main AR1 Texts (S1, S2 and S3) 257 App. 3-3 The Programme for Considering Wars 261 App. 3-4(a) Sample Class/Research Diary Extracts for AR1 262 App.3.4(b) S1 Supplementary Texts in AR1 265 App.3.4(c) Sample Extracts from S2 and S3 Teachers’ AR1 Diaries 269 Chapter 4 Appendices App.