Matthew Nall: Hello Takaaki, thank you for joining me today. First, I have to say congratulations for the recent publication of your research monograph on Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) identity. As a former ALT, and as a current researcher interested in the area of language teacher identity (LTI), I’ve read your book with fervor, and I’d like to interview you about it today.
Takaaki Hiratsuka: Thanks for having me. The book’s full title is Narrative Inquiry into Language Teacher Identity: ALTs in the JET Program (Hiratsuka, 2022). It represents a rich and fulfilling research project on the lived experiences of ALTs in Japan, and I am very happy that the book is out there for others to read now. Thank you for showing interest.
Before we get into your book, I want to first ask you about the research methodology of narrative inquiry. Why did you choose this methodology for your book? And what is the value of story in contemporary research in the fields of applied linguistics and TESOL?
Many years ago, I came across a quote by a poet, Muriel Rukeyser (1968), who contended that the universe is made of stories, not of atoms. I really loved that. Stories have been around for as long as human existence, even before the advent of writing. Humans have always lived with stories, whether they were the tellers or the receivers of them, right? Connelly and Clandinin (2006), researchers in the field of education, noted that people shape their daily lives with stories about who they and others are. This is so true. I was reading an article the other day as well, and a social psychologist named Krotoski (2011) claimed that stories can serve as memory aids, instruction manuals, and moral compasses. Stories are everywhere in our lives. I am one of those who has been drawn to the art and utility of stories and their telling. Therefore, the decision to employ narrative inquiry methodology as a research approach in my endeavor came naturally. In applied linguistics specifically, the use of narrative inquiry has become more common in recent times. In particular, it began to gain wide traction around the turn of the century. A prominent scholar in the field, Professor Gary Barkhuizen, who was actually my PhD supervisor, is one of many who have argued that storytelling helps us to understand the inner mental worlds of language teachers and learners and that the nature of language teaching and learning are social and educational activities (Barkhuizen et al., 2013). That is to say, stories deriving from narrative inquiry are always dynamically constructed and ingrained within the idiosyncratic social and cultural worlds. As far as the employment of narrative inquiry as the methodology in the present volume of mine, it helps to create compelling representations of the complex individual identities and illuminate the negotiations of identity within broader sociocultural contexts and surroundings. This is because narratives are, as I said, always constructed within social, cultural, and historical conventions. Stories allow us to see off-camera angles, and to think about and study, or understand and interpret, the experiences of people’s lives that are usually concealed and unknown. These experiences are often difficult to observe or even become consciously aware of, but narrative inquiry makes it happen. Although nuances embedded within the complex identities of teachers can often be missed or underreported by other methodological approaches, this is not so with narrative inquiry. This is the reason why I decided to adopt narrative inquiry in my study, which focuses on language teacher identity of ALTs in the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program.
What were your motivations for writing the book? And what did you plan on accomplishing? Do you feel that you’ve accomplished those goals?
When I was young, growing up in rural Japan, ALTs were just on my periphery because I was never taught English by them as a student. But in later years, they have become quite central to my professional, academic, and private spheres. This is because I team-taught English classes about once a week with them as an English teacher in public high schools. During my ten years of teaching in high school contexts, I taught with five different ALTs. I have also conducted research on the topic of ALTs and team teaching for many years. Privately, as well, I became acquainted with a whole host of ALTs, over 500 of them, outside of professional contexts through local cultural events, sports meetings, international holidays, and dinner parties. From my personal experiences, I can now say with confidence, that I have the dual desire for ALTs to lead the best life they can in Japan and for Japanese teachers and students, like myself in my own past, to successfully exploit the presence of the ALTs to the fullest. In tandem with these intrinsic private motivations, I now realize that research studies to date, including my own previous ones, have not adequately examined ALTs’ social and cultural experiences within the JET program in an all-embracing manner. Hence, I felt a strong need to delve into the development of ALT identity across the board by concentrating on both their professional and personal identities, which are socio-culturally and politically formulated through contextualized practices. In other words, my study holistically scrutinizes and documents who ALTs are and what it means to be an ALT. I feel that through the book projects, I could lay out the complicated and dynamic identities of ALTs in their gestalt, although of course I need to ask the readers themselves whether or not my book truly is a useful and meaningful resource for them.
Of course, ALTs are one target audience for your book, but what is the intended readership as a whole?
This book is an attempt to seal a large gap in our knowledge and effort to provide an illustrative example of the lives of native-speaking language teachers and local language teachers across the world. Therefore, the book is useful to those involved in team-teaching practices or in the employment of native speakers in numerous places around the globe. Native-speakerism is an ideology that remains prevalent these days, as exemplified by these team-teaching schemes. The comprehensive overview of the day-to-day experiences of ALTs in Japan would therefore be applicable to other contexts. That said, as you mentioned, the main intended readership includes prospective, current, and former ALTs, local Japanese teachers of English (JTEs), other coworkers of ALTs, officials working in Boards of Education and in other government positions in Japan, among others. This also extends to researchers interested in the topics of team-teaching practices, language teacher education, narrative inquiry, and teacher identity across the world.
In the epilogue, you bring up the ocean as a metaphor for identity. Can you talk a little bit about that? How does it apply to research in your field?
I allege in the epilogue, as you said, that the ocean is an apt metaphor to illustrate the idea of identities in our field (see also Williams, 2018), mainly because of the following five reasons. First, it is because the ocean and identity can both be described as being stable, unstable, peaceful, violent, changing, fleeting, infinite, abundant, and so on. Second, both the ocean and identities are a mishmash of everything. Just like all the little drops from completely different places comprise the vast expanse of an ocean, all the unique bits and pieces of identity constituents form a person. Third, the ocean and identities are both our focal points of transnational and global human experiences, including business, conflicts, love, and culture. Fourth, in the same manner that certain parts of the ocean suddenly transform other parts of the ocean, some identities within the self transform other identities within that same self. Last, the ocean and identities are heterogeneously constructed and arranged in unique ways (Hiratsuka, 2022, p. 216).
Can you please introduce your model for ALT identity? And what do you think is its significance?
Let me start with the significance of the ALT identity model. I want readers to know about what, broadly speaking, composes ALT identity and about the influential factors affecting its construction. It is my hope that with that knowledge, ALTs and those surrounding them will no longer react blindly, but respond wisely, when issues, difficulties, and struggles relating to ALT identity arise in front of them. It has been widely accepted in public discourses, almost too widely, that ALTs are valuable language teachers and cultural informants for people in Japan. The JET program itself has also been praised as being successful in making grassroots international exchange possible. An overwhelming number of ALTs themselves have been grateful for the friends they have met on the JET program, and spoken well of the regions where they have been placed—rightly so to some extent. Moreover, previous studies on the topic involving team teaching and the JET program were conducted and presented on the presumption that ALTs are ascribed to these language teacher and cultural identities automatically as well. In addition to or even contrary to these assertions, however, my inquiry characterizes ALTs—hence the ALT model—primarily as foreigners and dabblers who often struggle in their daily lives in the face of negotiating these identities. In other words, my study highlights the reality of an ALT’s life being much more nuanced and contextualized. Regarding the ALT model more specifically, ALTs are first and foremost foreigners from English-speaking countries who will eventually go back to their home countries and be replaced by new ones. The ALT foreigner identity consists of celebrity, sojourner, and English expert sub-identities. ALTs in Japan are also dabblers, who do not acquire legitimate competence as full-fledged staff members within their schools, nor as functioning members of Japanese society. ALT dabbler identity is therefore composed of assistant, greenhorn, and Japanese novice sub-identities.
Why do you argue that the foreigner and dabbler identities are the most important findings?
I believe that this conceptualization of the ALT identity model is perhaps the most important finding of the present inquiry, and the most significant contribution of this book to the readers and to the field. This is because within this study, I embrace the complexity of that identity and the elaboration of it when it comes to language education in Japan within a particular set of intercultural relations for a particular group of individuals—ALTs in Japan. This study, with the presentation of the ALT identity model, elucidated how ALTs set up, develop, and enact their professional, private, political, and cultural identities, in what are inherently complex interactions and positionings of self. This aspect of ALTs’ lives has not been extensively documented or discussed in previous research or in public discourses, and therefore adds to the knowledge in the field in a very original way.
How do you expect this volume to help or improve the educational field in Japan? What can stakeholders hope to gain as a result of your work?
So, I provided suggestions and advice based on my study by saying all of us, including ALTs themselves, should be acquainted with the various aspects of ALTs’ identities and the influential factors that dictate and manipulate them. Some of the salient, internal, and external influential factors include ALTs’ nationality, gender, co-workers, and fellow ALTs. Being self-aware of where they stand, of what they are expected to do, and of what their responsibilities entail as an ALT in Japanese schools—hired as a member of the government-sponsored educational and cultural exchange program—are particularly important. Why? Because they are then equipped with the necessary knowledge to make informed decisions as they navigate their lives as an ALT. Perhaps most germane to the readership of the TLT journal, like yourself Matt, for example, my research as a whole, and the participants’ narratives in particular, could allow former ALTs to reminisce about and contextualize their own ALT experiences in Japan. For some former ALTs, reading my volume may become a catalyst for them to recall some fond and heartfelt memories of their time in Japan, and even rekindle that fondness going forward. This was certainly true during the narrative interviews for some of the participants in my study. The interviews seemed to have encouraged them to reconnect with some of the people they met through the JET program and reestablish or even deepen their relationships. For other former ALTs, moreover, reading my book might bring up their own unique memories of past events in Japan—both positive and negative. We human beings tend to have a bias towards selecting the best episodes of the past to include in our narratives, all the while excluding or distorting the unfavorable aspects. Therefore, former ALTs might hold overly positive memories of their time in Japan in accordance with the overwhelmingly positive narrative whole. My book might then give them an objective viewpoint, relatively speaking, about what in fact took place when they were ALTs, and perhaps give themselves a reality check about their mindscapes of their time in Japan, allowing them to more fully embrace their current lives and identities in a practical light.
In the book, you argued that the title “Assistant Language Teacher” was not adequate, and you suggested adopting “Language Teaching Assistants” instead. What would the significance of this subtle change be?
So, the term “Assistant Language Teacher,” as far as I’m concerned, is grossly misleading as ALTs are primarily not teachers, but assistants. ALTs are not licensed teachers and can only serve as assistants to the JTEs. In principle, they cannot conduct lessons alone or become the main teacher in the classroom, right? Furthermore, ALTs are not in charge of any extracurricular duties or curriculum management work, nor are they held accountable as teachers for their performance at their schools in the way Japanese teachers are. Therefore, I suggest that the position should be labeled as “Language Teaching Assistant” instead of “Assistant Language Teacher” to avoid misunderstanding amongst ALTs themselves and those who interact with them.
In terms of identity, what would be the impact of changing the title for ALTs?
It is a subtle point, but consequential, because it directly affects the perceived and recognized identities of the particular cohort of people and those around them. For JTEs, I would assume that, for example, if they are clear about the title and job responsibilities of ALTs as being assistants, they will regard their ALT as someone to support and assist them, rather than giving them the full ownership of the English language itself or English language teaching in particular.
How do you think other researchers can draw upon your ALT identity model in future research studies?
The presentation of my ALT identity model and the formulation of my ALT identity conceptualization, in and of themselves, are not what I intended other researchers in the field of language teacher identity (LTI) to take away in the sense of advancing their future research studies. Having said that, if anything, I would like future researchers in LTI to further their understanding about the original ways in which they can map out the findings of ALT research and also reinforce the idea that language teacher identities and their constructions are quite dynamic and complicated. I tried to convey this message by including three comprehensive figures in my book.
What are the implications of your research for ALTs, JTEs, and any other relevant stakeholders?
I carefully documented the implications of my research for ALTs and other stakeholders under a section entitled “Implications for Practice” in the book, which extends across 10 pages or so. I would not be able to explain all the details here, but I do want to state that the JET Program, involving hundreds of thousands of people, has been carried out under the auspices of tremendous financial, diplomatic, and social investments. Therefore, studies that closely inspect the program and its participants are warranted. The letters and testimonials posted on the official websites (e.g., JET Programme, n.d.) are not a true or honest reflection of the ALTs’ experiences in Japan. In some sense, my book serves as an effective counter-narrative to the rose-tinted accounts and to the go-to phrase “Every situation is different” because it provides particular anecdotes and idiosyncratic examples. It will function, hopefully, as a yardstick or a point-of-reference of which readers can practically make use as transferable knowledge and information for their own contexts.
Well Takaaki, I know your time is valuable, so I think I’d like to end the interview here. Thank you so much for your time today, and for your book. Take care.
It’s been my pleasure.
References
Barkhuizen, G., Benson, P., & Chik, A. (2013). Narrative inquiry in language teaching and learning research. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203124994
Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (2006). Narrative inquiry. In J. L. Green, G. Camilli, & P. B. Elmore (Eds.), Handbook of complementary methods of education research (pp. 375-385). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203874769
Hiratsuka, T. (2022). Narrative inquiry into language teacher identity: ALTs in the JET Program. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003248729
The Council of Local Authorities for International Relations. (n.d.). The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme. The JET Programme. http://jetprogramme.org/en/
Krotoski, A. (2011, August 7). Storytelling: Digital technology allows us to tell tales in innovative new ways. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/07/ digital-media-storytelling-internet
Rukeyser, M. (1968). The speed of darkness. Random House.
Williams, A. J. (2018, November 12). Memory and the sea: Oceanic metaphor in stories of migration. Medium. https://medium.com/@adamjonw/memory-and-the-sea-oceanic-metaphor-in-stor...