Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This study is an ethnography conducted in a public school ''Kokugo'' classroom. The presenter, a Japan-born teacher with a foreign background, uses this perspective to examine children’s theatrical creative worlds and explore how ''Kokugo'' can be opened to genuine diversity.

Paper long abstract

This study investigates how children actively open and shape their learning in ''Kokugo'' (national language education) classes through theater practices, highlighting child-centered learning, creativity, and cultural creation. The field is a public school ''Kokugo'' classroom in Yokohama, where contemporary national language education often emphasizes finding “correct answers” and mastering prescribed skills. Although child-centered learning is officially encouraged, subtle pressures toward conformity have been noted. As a public school teacher, I have aimed to design lessons where children themselves actively open and shape their learning, fostering imaginative and critical engagement.

Born and raised in Japan, yet as a teacher with a foreign background, I utilize both insider and outsider perspectives to anthropologically examine classroom dynamics. Using ethnographic methods, I document children collaboratively writing, rehearsing, and performing scripts, capturing dialogues, conflicts, and creative processes. In these activities, children fuse European and other linguistic folktales, Japanese folktales, and contemporary pop culture to produce original plays. Their creative processes reveal critical perspectives on society and unique imaginative worlds, and also led me to a rediscovery of Shoyo Tsubouchi’s philosophy of children’s theater, which sought the development of Japanese culture and children’s psychological growth. My own reflections, moments of struggle, and moments of resonance are recorded alongside their cultural creation.

In this classroom, children reinterpret the world and construct narratives with their own hands. Walking alongside them, I reflect on the future of diversity, the role of national language education in fostering open-minded learning, and the human capacity to inhabit and engage with fictional worlds. Ultimately, through the stories of the children and myself, this study demonstrates a challenge to open ''Kokugo'' to genuine diversity, emphasizing the transformative potential of imagination, creativity, child-centered learning, cultural creation, and theater practice.