Paper short abstract:

We compare the features of the Japanese Language Teachers' Associations of the three countries of Spain,France and Belgium analyzing the survey based on interviews and questionnaire with founder and representatives of each country.Then we try to clarify their current situation and their development.

Paper long abstract:

In Europe, Japanese Language Teachers' Associations have been established in various countries since the 1900 's, and about 30 teachers' associations exist now. The environment surrounding Japanese language teaching has been continuously changing and is still diversifying nowadays, but how has the role of Japanese Language Teacher's Association changed? In this panel presentation, we compare and analyze the features of the Japanese Teachers' Associations of the three countries of Spain, France and Belgium as study cases in order to clarify their current situation and their development. These three countries are located as neighboring countries, but one has to take in consideration not only basic data such as the establishment year of the associations and the number of members, but also the purpose of the activity and the effective use of multilingualism in the management especially for meetings. Practice and research reports on the Japanese Language Teacher's Associations have been developed as a particular matter for each country, but a cross-country analysis connecting the association of each country like this presentation does not exist as far as we know, so It can be said that we set a first survey method.

The survey mainly focused on the following three points, based on interviews and descriptive questionnaire with founder and representatives of the three countries, reports published by the association: (1) Trigger of establishment; (2) Status of Japanese language education at the time of establishment; (3) Change in teaching association activities after establishment.

We try to analyze the Teacher's Association of each country from both the consideration of the vertical axis of a national level and the discussion of the horizontal axis connecting each country. Based on the cross-country observation of teachers' association such a « a common place for members », Panels 2 and 3 will investigate and analyze characteristics of the members i.e. participating teachers.

Final issue will be as following: What do members of each country expect from the Teachers' Association?