Paper short abstract:

We have been conducting a survey on the backgrounds and teaching practices of Japanese language teachers in Europe. Our focus is on the intercultural conflicts of teachers who have lived and taught for only a short time and how they overcome such conflicts and co-exist as intermediaries.

Paper long abstract:

For two years, the authors have been conducting a qualitative fact-finding survey on Japanese language teachers living in Europe with multi-language and multi-cultural backgrounds and their teaching practices, while listening to their voices through life-story interviews. The survey conducted in 2021 yielded information about the lives of teachers who act as bridges and social agents in their mediation activities. It was found that these teachers had been building a "cognitive mediation" structure for learning (scaffolding) and "relational mediation" to create learning spaces that encourage dialogue and awareness (affordance). In 2022, the research focused on the relationship between these mediation activities and each of the teachers' own multilingual and multicultural environment where the 'mediation' and 'translation without translation' concepts in the broad sense proposed by Pym (2014) were practiced and which had a significant impact on the 'mediation activities' of language teaching practice.

　Most of the collaborating teachers have lived in Europe for a long time and many of their statements demonstrate that they have transcended cultural issues to accept every challenge. However, it is important to remember that some of the teachers have only lived in Europe for a short time and whose teaching experience is yet to develop and may therefore be struggling with problems and conflicts. Ting-Tomey (2001) states that intercultural conflicts are, on the substantive issues, those between several parties from different cultural backgrounds, where the values, the expectations, processes and outcomes, are defined as incompatibility in perception or in practice. It also identifies self-cultural centrism (ethnocentrism), stereotypes and misunderstandings in communication as triggers of conflicts. In Japanese language education, previous studies include analyses based on Thomas and Kilmann's (1976) coping strategies from cross-cultural conflicts among international students.

　The aim of this current study is to listen to the voices of such teachers and focus on what difficulties they have encountered and how they have overcome them to coexist as 'people living mediation'. This paper will also attempt to analyse how 'mediation' and 'translation without translation' are involved in resolving cross-cultural conflicts.