We are pleased to announce the completion of the Japanese translation of A Handbook for Exploratory Action Research by Richard Smith and Paula Rebolledo (2018). You can read about the story behind the translation in this blog post written by the translators.
About Our Team and Motivation for the Translation
Our team consists of nine members: five from universities, two from technical colleges, and two from junior high schools. From 2014 to 2017, we engaged in an official project under the Chubu English Language Education Society to support and promote practitioner research, focusing primarily on primary and secondary school English teachers. Our shared passion for practitioner research stems from its emphasis on understanding and improving teachers’ practices.
While “lesson study” has been practiced for many years in Japanese schools, it is often led, or sometimes mandated, by school principals or municipal boards of education. Other forms of practitioner research, such as exploratory practice, action research, and reflective practice initiated by individual teachers, are not well supported. Moreover, some Japanese scholars undervalue practitioner research conducted by school teachers compared to conventional academic quantitative research. Through our efforts, we have sought not only to support school teachers but also to convey to academics the importance of practitioner research as a valuable tool for the professional development of school teachers. Support and understanding from academics are crucial for the effective dissemination of practitioner research.
Activities and Achievements
During the project, we conducted several practitioner research initiatives collaboratively. We also conducted an online survey to explore the perceptions of practitioner research among school and university teachers, analyzed published practitioner research papers from the journals of the Chubu English Language Education Society, and delivered presentations and seminars on practitioner research. Building on these outcomes, we published a Japanese book in 2019 titled A Guidebook for Practitioner Research for English Teachers, designed mainly for EFL teachers.
After the project concluded, we secured three consecutive Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. We continued our research to support practitioner researchers further and to create communities for sharing practitioner research. In 2021, we launched an online collaborative practitioner research course via Zoom, which is now in its fourth iteration. This course supports English teachers in conducting practitioner research with the help of mentors, enabling them to deepen their understanding of teaching practices and research methodologies. The course is open to in-service teachers at elementary, junior high, and high schools across Japan who aim to improve their teaching through practitioner research. It comprises five research seminar sessions and one research conference session, with preliminary video assignments. The sessions are held monthly over six months, each lasting approximately 2.5 hours.
Why We Translated This Handbook
We first encountered A Handbook for Exploratory Action Research through the ELT Journal and read four related publications. We were particularly drawn to the concept of exploratory action research as well as the handbook’s various activities and practical examples tailored to school teachers, a resource we found lacking in Japan. We believed that translating the handbook into Japanese would provide invaluable support for both practitioner researchers and their mentors.
Our Hopes for the Handbook
Now that the handbook is available in Japanese, we hope it will reach a wide audience of teachers and teacher educators and be utilized in various contexts to meet individual goals. As our next project, we plan to translate Mentoring Teachers to Research Their Classrooms: A Practical Handbook (Smith, 2020).
Lastly, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to the authors of the handbook and to Mr. Robin Skipsey and Ms. Chihiro Kawai from the British Council Japan for their support in the translation process.
About the Author(s)
Akiko Takagi
Akiko Takagi is a professor in the College of Education, Psychology and Human Studies at Aoyama Gakuin University, as well as the director of the Aoyama Gakuin Research Center for English Language Teaching. She received her EdD from the University of Exeter. She has been involved in pre- and in-service education for 17 years. Her scholarly interests include language teacher education, practitioner research, and qualitative research methodology.
Takeo Tanaka
Takeo Tanaka is a professor in the Department of Education at the University of Yamanashi. He received his EdD from Hyogo University of Teacher Education. He has been involved in teacher education for 22 years. His research focuses on second language acquisition, methods of teaching English as a foreign language, and practitioner research.
Yuki Minami
Yuki Minami is an associate professor in the Department of General Studies at Kobe City College of Technology. He holds a master’s degree in education from Kyoto University of Education. He previously taught for six years in high schools before he started his current position. His research interests include language teacher education, practitioner research, and second language vocabulary learning and teaching.
