Research in Japan
I set off tomorrow for Japan (13 Jan – 19 Feb 2012). I’ll be spending one month in Sendai, Tohoku, the venue of the Great East Japan Earthquake on 11 March 2011, visiting as a joint-researcher with Dr. Laurel Kamada at Tohoku University. Together we will work on an article, teach English classes and participating in campus club activities. I orginally made the connection with the University in reference to the Prime Minister’s Education Assistance Program to Japan, but wasn’t successful. The chance to collaborate in original research in Japan though is worth my own investment, so I guess the program is already going to have some influence in stimulating the relationships between Japan and Australia without even having to fund it.
Here is a brief summary of the article we will be working on while I am there:
This joint study will focus on the effects of volunteer activities in an elementary school in Tohoku following the earthquake and tsunami disaster of 3/11 on pupils’ intercultural perspectives 異文化的意識. The background for this study is based on volunteer activities which I have already been conducting on several occasions since the disaster. I have made syllabus, organized and conducted fun, motivating and practical English lessons in the 5thgrade classes of an elementary school in Miyagi with the help of a large group of volunteer students of Tohoku University, including Japanese and foreign students who went there dressed in their native costumes. During one of the English lessons, we also presented each 5th grader with a children’s illustrated book (written in English by an American who donated most of the books) which told the story of a Japanese boy in a village struck by a tsunami and how he had built a bridge. For this research, we plan to conduct interviews and questionnaires, and then analyze the data in order to examine the children’s intercultural consciousness and how the children feel about building bridges and bonds 絆with countries and people beyond Japan.
