Speaker
Description
This qualitative research investigates how 13 in-service primary and secondary English teachers in Japan make instructional and assessment decisions while addressing tensions between curriculum expectations and students’ actual proficiencies, learning needs, and classroom realities across diverse educational contexts. Grounded in a collaborative action research framework, the research project was conducted with three university educators who participated as participant-observers and co-researchers while mentoring and facilitating teachers’ school-based action research initiatives. The research aims to empower in-service teachers to engage more autonomously and reflectively in classroom-based inquiry, to identify factors that facilitate or hinder the implementation of action research in school settings, and to clarify the complexity of teacher decision-making processes through qualitative analysis of teachers’ reflective practices and pedagogical adaptations. Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured focus group interviews and reflective discussions conducted throughout the research project and subsequently analyzed inductively and thematically. The findings reveal that teachers continuously negotiate competing demands among curriculum policy, institutional expectations, learner diversity, and their own pedagogical beliefs concerning learner autonomy, motivation, and self-efficacy. Teachers’ adaptations included shifting from advanced task-based activities to ICT-supported foundational learning and modifying spontaneous oral communication tasks into more structured retelling activities for learners experiencing difficulties in language processing and production. By examining teachers’ ongoing cycles of reflection, inquiry, and pedagogical adjustment, the research demonstrates how classroom challenges and uncertainties contribute to professional learning, teacher agency, identity reconstruction, and the development of more context-sensitive and sustainable instructional practices within Japanese English language education.
Biography
Toshinobu Nagamine is a Professor of Teacher Education and Vice Director of the Teacher Education Center at Ryukoku University, Japan. He holds a Ph.D. in TESOL and Applied Linguistics from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He teaches primarily in the English teacher education program and coordinates university-wide teacher education initiatives. Prior to his current appointment, he gained extensive experience in language teacher education and curriculum development at the Prefectural University of Kumamoto and Kumamoto University. His research interests encompass applied phonetics, foreign language education policy, language teacher cognition and emotions, reflective practice, teacher agency, and teacher development. His current project actively investigates English teachers’ decision-making processes and collaborative action research in school settings. Dr. Nagamine is an active member of several professional organizations, including JACET and JASELE, and has contributed to numerous conferences and journals. His publications focus on bridging the gap between theory and practice in language classrooms. Through his ongoing research and institutional leadership, he seeks to advance the quality of English language teaching and teacher well-being both in Japan and internationally.
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