Team Teachers in Japan
This book provides insights into the professional and personal lives of local language teachers and foreign language teachers who conduct team-taught lessons together. It does this by using the Japanese context as an illustrative example. It re-explores in this context the professional experiences and personal positionings of Japanese teachers of English (JTEs) and foreign assistant language teachers (ALTs), as well as their team-teaching practices in Japan.
This edited book is innovative in that 14 original empirical studies offer a comprehensive overview of the day-to-day professional experiences and realities of these team teachers in Japan, with its focus on their cognitive, ideological, and affective components. This is a multifaceted exploration into team teachers in their gestalt—who they are to themselves and in relation to their students, colleagues, community members, and crucially to their teaching partners.
This book, therefore, offers several empirical and practical applications for future endeavors involving team teachers and those who engage with them—including their key stakeholders, such as researchers on them, their teacher educators, local boards of education, governments, and language learners from around the world.
Takaaki Hiratsuka is Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Ryukoku Univeristy in Kyoto, Japan.