TheSocially Responsible Feminist EFL Classroom: A Japanese Perspective on Identities, Beliefs and Practices 9781783098026

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The Socially Responsible Feminist EFL Classroom

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Series Editors: Professor Viv Edwards, University of Reading, Reading, UK and Professor Phan Le Ha, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA Two decades of research and development in language and literacy education have yielded a broad, multidisciplinary focus. Yet education systems face constant economic and technological change, with attendant issues of identity and power, community and culture. This series will feature critical and interpretive, disciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives on teaching and learning, language and literacy in new times. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION: 54

The Socially Responsible Feminist EFL Classroom A Japanese Perspective on Identities, Beliefs and Practices

Reiko Yoshihara

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Blue Ridge Summit

I dedicate this book to all the women learners and educators in my life.

DOI: 10.21832/YOSHIH8019 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Yoshihara, Reiko author. Title: The Socially Responsible Feminist EFL classroom: A Japanese Perspective on Identities, Beliefs and Practices/Reiko Yoshihara. Description: Bristol; Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Multilingual Matters, 2017. | Series: New Perspectives on Language and Education: 54 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016054520| ISBN 9781783098019 (hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781783098033 (epub) | ISBN 9781783098040 (kindle) Subjects: LCSH: English language—Study and teaching—Japanese speakers. | Feminism and education—Japan. | Sex differences in education—Japan. Classification: LCC PE1068.J3 Y67 2017 | DDC 428.0071/052—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016054520 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-801-9 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: NBN, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2017 Reiko Yoshihara. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Nova Techset Private Limited, Bengaluru and Chennai, India. Printed and bound in the UK by the CPI Books Group Ltd. Printed and bound in the US by Edwards Brothers Malloy, Inc.

Contents

Acknowledgments

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Introduction Why Teach about Gender Topics? Purposes of the Book Poststructural Contributions to Feminist Pedagogy Feminist Pedagogy in TESOL Feminist Pedagogy in TEFL in Japan Relevance Outside Japan Feminist EFL Teachers in Japanese Universities Overview of Chapters

1 1 4 5 9 12 15 16 18

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Method, Data Collection and Participants Introduction Feminist Narrative Research Researcher Positionality Data Collection and Data Analysis Feminist EFL University Teachers as Research Participants Summary

20 20 20 24 25 28 35

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On Becoming a Feminist EFL Teacher Introduction Women’s Sociocultural Contexts in Japan What Feminism Means to the Teachers The Formation of Feminist Identity Complexity of Feminist Teacher Identity Summary

36 36 36 38 43 51 57

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Teaching According to Feminist Principles Introduction Teaching about Gender-Related Topics Giving Equal Attention and Treatment Teaching Gender-Neutral Language

60 60 60 78 79

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Using Group Techniques for Gender Awareness Incorporating Women’s Stories into Writing Techniques Bringing in Videos about Girls and Women Reclaiming Local Women’s Issues Introducing Gender-Related Events Summary

81 83 85 87 88 90

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Incompatibility Between Feminist Identity and Classroom Practices 92 Introduction 92 Female Teachers in Japanese Universities 93 EFL Contexts in Japanese Universities 94 Mika’s Case 95 Akiko’s Case 100 Linda’s Case 105 Summary 108

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Conclusion Introduction Redefining Feminist Pedagogy in TESOL Defining Feminist Pedagogy in TEFL in Japan Implications and Recommendations Reflections on the Study Future Research Concluding Personal Reflection

109 109 109 112 114 118 120 121

Appendix A: Lists of Abbreviations Appendix B: Timetable of Data Collection Appendix C: Sarah’s Handout Appendix D: Tom’s Handout Appendix E: List of Feminist ESL/EFL Associations

124 125 128 130 132

Epilogue References Index

133 134 145

Acknowledgments

Although many people have fostered this book through encouraging words and inquiries, there are a few whom I would like to acknowledge individually here. I first would like to thank Dr Christine Pearson Casanave, who gave me ongoing guidance and support throughout this project, since she was my main adviser of the doctoral dissertation at Temple University, Japan. As a main adviser and a qualitative researcher, she taught me not only how to conduct qualitative research, but also the richness of qualitative narrative research. Since I embarked on the project from my doctoral dissertation to this book, she provided me with tremendous support from the initial to the final stages of publishing my very first book. Without her unfailingly professional guidance and advice, this book would never have been able to leave the ground. I would also like to thank excellent and supportive scholars who gave me invaluable and detailed feedback; Stephanie Vandrick, Andrea Simon-Maeda, Cheiron McMahill, Sarah Holland, Laura Kusaka and Emi Itoi. I have been fortunate to have many colleagues and friends who have encouraged me throughout the process. In particular, I would like to thank my former colleague, Kirk Hyde, for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this book. Last and foremost, my gratitude goes to all the participants who kindly agreed to participate in my research. I am grateful to my participants for generously sharing their personal and professional stories. This book could not have been published without their cooperation. I thank the anonymous reviewers for insightful readings and constructive suggestions, and the Editorial Director at Multilingual Matters, Anna Roderick, for making the publication process run smoothly. Reiko Yoshihara Tokyo, Japan

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Introduction

Why Teach about Gender Topics? Since becoming an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher at the university level, I have been asking myself what my responsibility as a university EFL teacher is and how I can prepare my students for their future. I believe that our job is not just to teach grammar, vocabulary and linguistic information, but also to promote equality, peace, justice, freedom and human rights among all people. The importance of the social responsibility of English as a second language (ESL) and EFL teachers has been highlighted by Cates (2002, 2004), who pointed out that one of our responsibilities as language teachers in ESL/ EFL classes is to address global issues of ethnic conflict, social inequality and injustice, environmental destruction and to educate our language students to become socially responsible world citizens. Gender issues are also discussed in language education to promote social equality and justice (for a detailed discussion on ESL, see Benesch, 1998; Frye, 1999; Nelson, 1999, 2004, 2009; Rivera, 1999; Vandrick, 1994, 1995b, 1997b, 1998, 2000; for EFL, see Casanave & Yamashiro, 1996; McMahill, 1997, 2001; O’Mochain, 2006; Saft & Ohara, 2004; Simon-Maeda, 2004b; Summerhawk, 1998; Yoshihara, 2010, 2011). However, when I argue that we should teach, not only about gender equality on wages and laws, but also about topics on violence against women, sexual harassment and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues in the language classroom in articles and conferences, hesitation and resistance from ESL/EFL teachers sometimes surfaces. Even accusations of indoctrination or brainwashing are leveled against feminist language teachers, including me. Nevertheless, as Vandrick (1995b) noted, addressing these difficult gender issues is important, because girls and women often are not taught about these issues and possible means to fight sexism. She concluded that this kind of teaching should not be criticized as indoctrination and that one of language teachers’ responsibilities is to help students raise their consciousness about issues of justice in order to end sexism. Vandrick (1995a, 1997a, 1998, 2000, 2011) also pointed out that teaching about feminist or gender issues is important for ESL male students from privileged class backgrounds, immigrant and international women students 1

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with various cultural backgrounds, women students from the working classes and sexual minority students. Feminist pedagogy would provide the opportunity to raise awareness and consciousness toward gender equality and justice among privileged male ESL students, because they often take for granted gender segregation in their culture and tolerate gender inequality (Vandrick, 1995a, 2000, 2011). It would also benefit marginalized students, including immigrant and international women students from various cultural and working class backgrounds, and ESL students with hidden identities to give them more voice and help to empower them (Vandrick, 1997a, 1998, 2000). All students, whatever their gender, sexual, racial and class identities, should be treated equally and respectfully. These concerns can refer to not only ESL settings in the USA, but also EFL settings in Japan and around the world. Increasingly, women learn English as a foreign language and go on to higher education in EFL settings, and women from various cultural and social backgrounds are appearing in EFL university classes in Japan and worldwide. Feminist teaching would give these women a voice and empower them. In particular, in Japan and some Asian countries, EFL teachers might find female students have internalized typical gender roles and fear being labeled odd or unfeminine, or being criticized by parents and peers (Hardy, 1996). Feminist teaching would give these female students the opportunity to express their own opinions and analyze gender inequality in their society. In my teaching experience in Japan, I often see male students who agree with women’s equal rights, but feel no particular connection to them. Feminist teaching might provide an opportunity to change these male students’ perceptions. We as educators should teach gender equality and justice for a better world, even in the language classroom. In any educational institutions, progressive teachers do not tolerate discriminatory language and attitudes toward women or minority groups. Avoiding teaching about gender issues deprives students of an opportunity to learn about important topics for social equality and justice. These points are applied to language classrooms more broadly as Vandrick’s work and that of others confirm. Readers might wonder how I became a feminist EFL university teacher in Japan and why I have such a strong feminist teaching belief. Becoming a feminist language educator was not straightforward. It was a very complex journey. I was born in a Tokyo suburban middle-class family in which typical gender roles, such as believing that a man should work outside the home and a woman should stay home and take care of children, were endorsed (see Fujimura-Fanselow, 2011; Fujimura-Fanselow & Kameda, 1995; Inoue, 2011; Koyama, 1991; Mackie, 2003; Sabatini, 2012). My parents expected me to be a good wife and wise mother (ryosai kenbo), so they sent me to a private girls’ high school and a women’s university. However, like many daughters who want to lead a different life than their mother, I did not want to be like my mother who devoted herself to her husband and children. I had known that

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women in my generation would have more possibilities and choices beyond being a full-time housewife. Therefore, against my parents’ wishes, I went to the USA to study abroad and escape from my ‘overprotective’ mother. While I was enrolled in American universities, I took a few women’s studies courses at the undergraduate level and majored in women’s studies in graduate school, which opened the door of feminism to me. Women’s studies taught me what to name my experiences as a woman and how to place them in social, cultural and political contexts. Feminism became my philosophy and one perspective through which to see things in the world. When I returned to Japan, I wanted to teach women’s studies in a Japanese university; however, there were very few opportunities to teach women’s studies courses in Japan. I was naive about the academic world in Japan. I had no job in Japan. One professor in my Japanese university introduced me to an English teaching job in the university, because I was able to speak English and had graduated from an American graduate school. I accidentally became a university EFL teacher. Although many people told me that I was lucky to have a teaching job in a university in my late 20s, I was not happy to teach only English, especially with assigned textbooks that focused on grammar, vocabulary, linguistic information and superficial topics. The assigned textbooks did not include gender-related topics and other sociopolitical topics at all. However, even though I found that I had freedom to use any kinds of materials later, I did not teach about gender issues in my language classroom. Like many other ESL/EFL teachers, I worried about the inappropriateness of using gender and other sociopolitical issues in the language classroom. For a long time, I separated my feminist identity from my classroom practice in EFL classes. Yet, I have met several feminist and critical pedagogical language teachers and feminist activists in Japan. Through interactions with them, I changed my perspective toward teaching English and started to incorporate gender and other sociopolitical issues in my EFL classroom. Nevertheless, I was still worried about the appropriateness of teaching about these issues in EFL university classes. Such anxiety, as well as curiosity about teaching of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) made me decide to go to a graduate school of an American university located in Japan and study TESOL officially. One course I took at the graduate school, on the topic of controversies in second language education, taught by Dr Christine Pearson Casanave, was eye-opening for me. I found and learned that there were controversial debates on teaching about sociopolitical issues in the TESOL field. I have been strongly attached to feminist and critical pedagogues in the TESOL field and assured myself that it is important to teach about gender and other sociopolitical issues even in language classrooms, though this view is not universal. Thus, the process of becoming a feminist language teacher was a struggle and it took time to unite my feminist identity, teaching beliefs and teaching

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practices. Not only I, but also many language teachers, take different paths in becoming feminist EFL university teachers in Japan and elsewhere in the world. Each has different perceptions of feminism, teaching beliefs and teaching practices. Several studies showed that there were interconnections among identities, beliefs and practices even though they did not focus on feminist identities (Varghese et al., 2005; see also Ajayi, 2011; Duff & Uchida, 1997; Ellis, 2004; Morgan, 2004; Nagatomo, 2012; Tsui, 2007). In On Becoming a Language Educator, the editors, Casanave and Schecter (1997), collected stories told by well-known language educators and researchers and showed the complexity, diversity and transformation of authors’ professional identities, teaching beliefs and teaching practices. However, research on feminist ESL/EFL teachers’ identities, beliefs and practices in TESOL, or stories about the professional lives and development told by feminist ESL/EFL educators, particularly in Japanese higher education contexts, is not sufficiently widespread or scrutinized. Like other ESL/EFL teachers, feminist ESL/EFL teachers construct and reconstruct complex, diverse and shifting identities, beliefs and practices. They can bring the value of feminist teaching into the TESOL field.

Purposes of the Book The main purpose of this book is to explore feminist pedagogy in TESOL through a study of several feminist EFL university teachers in Japan. I focus on feminist EFL educators’ teaching practices in Japanese universities, because I am particularly interested in EFL in my home country; however, many aspects of the study also relate to language teaching elsewhere. To understand feminist language teachers’ practices deeply, it is important to explore them in connection with teachers’ feminist identities and teaching beliefs. As Vandrick (2017) noted, one’s feminist language teacher identity affects one’s teaching beliefs, language teaching, research, career, the relationship with students, colleagues and administrators, and the academic world. Therefore, I first explore their feminist teacher identities; what feminism meant to participants in my study and how they became feminists and developed their feminist teacher identities. I then examine what teaching beliefs the teachers have in relation to their feminist identities and how they have reflected their teaching beliefs in their practices. My final analysis explores how they relate their feminist identities, teaching beliefs and teaching practices. The multiple in-depth interviews of eight feminist EFL university teachers in Japan have helped me answer these what- and how-questions about their feminist identities, teaching beliefs and teaching practices. To understand more deeply what is going on in the feminist EFL classroom in Japanese universities, I also observed their classrooms and was given access to their teaching journals, if they were available. I explore feminist teaching in major and minor ways.

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Another purpose of this book is to investigate the incompatibility between teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices. Even though not directly concerned with feminist issues, much of the literature has reported that teachers’ beliefs are sometimes incompatible with teachers’ classroom practices because of contextual factors (see Johnson, 1994; Nishino, 2008, 2009; Sato & Kleinsasser, 2004). In my study, I wondered if my participants who identified themselves as feminists applied their feminist teaching beliefs to their teaching practices and how they actually taught in their EFL classes. If they did not reflect their teaching beliefs in their classroom practices, what would prevent them from practicing feminist teaching? A qualitative and interpretive investigation enabled me to more deeply understand the complex and diverse factors concerning the incompatibility of teachers’ beliefs and practices. I hope my study adds to, and expands our knowledge of, feminist pedagogy. Focusing on the narratives of feminist EFL university teachers in Japan can expand research on the exploration of feminist language teachers’ identities, teaching beliefs and teaching practices in the TESOL field. Before turning to my study, I present some background of poststructural feminist pedagogical theory in education. I also illustrate empirical studies in feminist pedagogy in ESL and EFL contexts. This review of theoretical and empirical work in feminist pedagogy demonstrates the relevance of the issues beyond the context of my own study.

Poststructural Contributions to Feminist Pedagogy Feminist pedagogy made significant progress through the influence of poststructural feminist theory. According to Tisdell (1998), elements of poststructural feminist theory were relevant to four themes of poststructural feminist pedagogy, such as knowledge construction, voice, authority and positionality. Before I explain about these four themes of poststructural feminist pedagogy, I briefly present structural feminist pedagogy. Because of the influence of the second-wave feminism, feminist pedagogy was originally discussed in women’s studies courses in the USA (Bright, 1987). The words ‘feminist pedagogy’ first appeared in Fisher’s (1981) ‘What is feminist pedagogy?’ in The Radical Teacher. Fisher focused on incorporating the common experience of oppression felt by women, their awareness of feelings, consciousness-raising and all central features of the women’s movement into women’s studies in higher education. She defined feminist pedagogy as ‘teaching which is anti-sexist, and anti-hierarchical, and which stresses women’s experience, both the suffering our oppression has caused us and the strengths we have developed to resist it’ (Fisher, 1981: 20). She stressed that feminist pedagogy was teaching for the purposes of ending sexism and asking for social change to resist sexism.

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Shrewsbury (1987) developed ideas about feminist pedagogy and explored not only the teaching aspects, but also the learning aspects of feminist pedagogy, by focusing on empowerment, community and leadership. She regarded empowerment as a way ‘to find their (female learners’) own voices’ and ‘to discover the power of authenticity’ (Shrewsbury, 1987: 9). Not only Shrewsbury, but also many earlier feminist pedagogues, valued women’s voice as the awakening and ability of women to speak for themselves through their personal experiences (Belenky et al., 1986; Briskin & Coulter, 1992). Shrewsbury (1987) also advocated ‘a re-imaging of the classroom as a community of learners’ (Shrewsbury, 1987: 10). For her, a classroom is a community of learners where students develop autonomy of self and a sense of mutuality. In the feminist classroom, students can find connections with themselves and their classmates and with their studies and the world. Then they can develop the quality of networking and support of others. This networking and support extends to solidarity and sisterhood and even a community for action and social change. To empower others and make feminist communities, Shrewsbury (1987) encouraged learners to develop leadership. She urged them to learn the leadership skills for accomplishing goals and objectives, understanding a sense of shared purpose, connecting between their needs and the needs of others and developing a community. She also suggested that the feminist teacher should be the role model of a leader. For her, the skills of leadership should be exhibited in the broader environment, as well as within the classroom. Although Fisher’s (1981) and Shrewsbury’s (1987) assertions were important and are still effective in many ways of feminist pedagogy, they must be critically scrutinized. Structural feminist pedagogy was supported by the viewpoints of white, middle-class and heterosexual women in North America and Western Europe. Structural feminist pedagogues have typically believed that women share similar experiences such as unfair and unequal treatment under a patriarchal system, stress the need for women’s rights and that women should be emancipated and liberated from oppression (Fisher, 1981; Schniedewind, 1981). Structural feminist pedagogues categorized ‘woman’ as a unified concept and focused on women’s experience as unitary and universal. However, poststructural feminist pedagogues questioned a unitary identity of women and the knowledge based on women’s experience as universal, that earlier structural feminist pedagogues highlighted. Rather than focusing on a unitary identity of women, poststructural feminist pedagogues stressed women’s experiences as diverse and multiple and argued for multiple and diverse identities of women (Tisdell, 1998; see also Maher & Tetreault, 2001). Therefore, they were concerned with multiple and diverse voices in the classroom (Maher & Tetreault, 2001). They also drew attention to ‘silenced’ and ‘marginalized’ voices in the curriculum and in the classroom and sought out ways to include these voices in the classroom (Tisdell, 1998).

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Poststructural feminist pedagogues also argued for a deeper appreciation of the intersections of gender with other structural systems of privilege and oppression such as race, class and sexual orientation to construct knowledge (Tisdell, 1998; see also Nicholson, 1990; Weedon, 1997). They argued that postulating a dual structure of domination (man–woman) is problematic and asserted that feminist educators should understand an oppressive system as a complex and conflicting structure with connections between gender, race, class and sexual orientation. Because of this idea, poststructural feminist pedagogues attempt to construct knowledge with connections between gender, race, class and sexual orientation in their classrooms (hooks, 1994; Tisdell, 1998). Tisdell (1998) shared the story of her teaching practice in her paper. Her teaching partner and she provided the theoretical and rational materials in the course, and included activities such as watching films, writing and sharing of each student’s cultural story of their gender, race, ableness and sexual orientation, which were likely means of access to students’ emotions. The teachers encouraged students to express their personal experiences and emotions, made everyone visible and gave them more intellectual energy to deal with the theoretical material in the course. The significance of their teaching practice is that the teachers incorporated each student’s cultural aspects into the theoretical materials and tried to construct knowledge with the connection between gender, race, sexual orientation and ableness. In order to construct knowledge, poststructural feminist pedagogues first focused on the deconstruction of a dichotomy. For example, hooks (1989) and Kishimoto and Mwangi (2009) argued that feminist educators should be directive in creating activities and facilitating the class, while also deconstructing dichotomies. They brought up the safe–unsafe issue in the feminist classroom. Structural feminist pedagogues were concerned about creating a safe environment in the classroom for a long time (Belenky et al., 1986; Briskin & Coulter, 1992). However, hooks (1989) argued that students could be empowered, not only in a safe environment, but also by means of ‘a rigorous, critical discussion’ (hooks, 1989: 53). She asserted that although students feel empowered in an atmosphere of safety and nurture, they could also feel empowered in an atmosphere where differences, difficulty, conflict and contradictions are confronted to make students aware of the issues of racism and sexism. Similarly, Kishimoto and Mwangi (2009) argued that feminist learning could occur in ‘threatening situations’ and ‘nervous conditions’ by confronting differences among students (Kishimoto & Mwangi, 2009: 89). They explained that although confessional narratives, books or discussions proposed by women of color might bring discomfort among white students, white students could learn about differences among women and become aware of the interrelated issues of racism and sexism from the stories by women of color. Feminist learning could happen not only in a mutual and safe environment, but also in a tense situation.

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From a poststructural feminist view, this is an important point for feminist educators to deconstruct a dichotomy of the safe–unsafe learning environment. Like hooks (1989) and Kishimoto and Mwangi (2009), poststructural feminist pedagogues focus on the safe and conflicting learning environment in order to develop awareness and consciousness about inequality and injustice, and empower marginalized students (Tisdell, 1998). They situate feminist teachings in the safe–unsafe environment as the particular situation happens and the need arises. Other poststructural contributions to feminist pedagogy are the concerns of teachers’ authority and positionality. Both structural and poststructural feminist pedagogues acknowledged teachers’ power and privilege. Structural feminist pedagogues thought that as teachers acknowledged teacher power and privilege, they should confront unequal power relations (Bright, 1987; Briskin & Coulter, 1992). However, as Tisdell (1998) noted, poststructural feminist pedagogues believed that it was not enough to confront unequal power relations between teachers and students; rather ‘poststructural feminist educators maintain directive roles as challengers of unequal power relations and are proactive in working for social change’ (Tisdell, 1998: 151). Tisdell suggested that ‘poststructural feminist educators more directly seek out and validate the contributions of those who have been marginalized by more systems of oppression (female, people of color, working class, homosexual)’ (Tisdell, 1998: 151–152). In relation to power, poststructural feminist pedagogues are concerned about a teacher’s positionality. Orner (1992) criticized the view that some feminist educators assumed that they were already emancipated and able to empower students. Structural feminist pedagogues focused on the role of a feminist educator to help female students to find their own voices, discover autonomous subjectivities and empower them, and assumed that they are empowerers (Shrewsbury, 1987); however, they did not question that they might be oppressors. Orner’s argument is important for feminist educators in thinking of their own position and teaching practices, including interactive strategies and classroom management. When students perceive their teacher as an oppressor, they do not find their voice or speak up. Silence occurs when oppressed groups meet authority, even when that authority supports emancipatory politics (Orner, 1992). Feminist educators must be willing to learn from their positions. Thus, poststructural feminist pedagogues focus on bringing out ‘silenced’ and ‘marginalized’ voices in the classroom, constructing knowledge with connections between gender, race, class and sexual orientation, deconstructing dichotomies in teaching and being concerned with teachers’ authority and positionality. These educators directly discuss who is more recognized or given more status and who is more marginalized by the system of oppression, construct knowledge with multiple connections and through deconstructing dichotomies, and seek out emancipatory possibilities.

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Feminist Pedagogy in TESOL Focusing on feminist pedagogy in the field of TESOL, Jane Sunderland’s (1994) edited book, Exploring Gender, is pioneering. She pointed out that women and girls were effectively excluded by the use of generics such as ‘humans’ and suggested that alternatives such as ‘people’, ‘he or she’, ‘s/he’ and ‘singular they’ (e.g. ‘Everyone will get their homework back tomorrow’), should be substituted, especially in spoken English. She proposed from her home base in Britain that non-sexist language should be included when teaching English grammars. Stephanie Vandrick was one of feminist TESOL scholars who were influenced by Sunderland. Since she read Sunderland’s (1994) book, she has written, published and spoken about gender, feminism and feminist pedagogy in TESOL from her home base in the USA (see Vandrick 1994, 1995b, 1997b, 1998, 2000, 2017). In her 1994 paper, she put forth the principles of feminist pedagogy, such as equality, ethics and social justice provided by numerous feminist pedagogues’ works (e.g. Ellsworth, 1992; Luke, 1992; Shrewsbury, 1987; Weiler, 1988, 1992). Vandrick (1994) stated: Feminist pedagogy is not a specific set of practices; each classroom, each teacher, each group of students, is different. Teaching that has been informed by feminist pedagogy can and does take many forms, as such a consciousness infuses the teaching in many major and minor ways. (Vandrick, 1994: 84) Schenke (1996) similarly noted, ‘feminism, like antiracism, is … not simply one more social issue in ESL but a way of thinking, a way of teaching, and most importantly, a way of learning’ (Schenke, 1996: 158). As both of these feminist TESOL scholars noted, feminist pedagogy is not simply teaching about gender-related topics, but also teaching a way of feminist thinking. Vandrick (1995b, 1997b) concretely suggested that ESL educators should not only use readings and discussions on women’s issues including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues in classes, but also teach according to feminist principles, such as using gender-neutral language and expressions, paying equal attention to female students and introducing extracurricular activities related to women’s issues. She noted that feminist ESL teachers avoid gender stereotyping, false generics such as ‘he’ and gendered job titles from a perspective of gender equality. She also urged feminist ESL educators to call on female students as often as male students, because one feminist practice is to give female students more voice and raise their self-esteem. She argued that this kind of feminist teaching benefits female students from non-Western countries and sexual minority students, because it gives them more opportunities to have their voices heard and raise their self-esteem (1997a, 1997b).

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Furthermore, Vandrick (1995b) advised that feminist teachers can provide students with information about women’s studies programs, lectures and films on and off campus, about women’s issues or women’s lives, to raise feminist awareness and consciousness and work for social change. Thus, even though feminist ESL teachers do not teach about gender topics specifically, they can use many forms of feminist teaching in major and minor ways to raise consciousness about gender equality and justice. There are some important empirical studies that looked at the use of a women’s issue as a topic in an ESL course. Benesch (1998) used a women’s issue, anorexia, as one of the topics in an ESL course, linking it to a psychology course taught at the same university in the USA. As a teacher-researcher, she conducted this study with 25 students (11 men and 14 women) in two ESL classes and taught about anorexia. To introduce the topic, she assigned a fictional case history of an adolescent girl with anorexia, along with supplemental reading and held discussions on the topic using student-generated questions. The students were required to write their responses (journals) to the reading, the topic and the class discussion to produce a research assignment on anorexia. Through students’ journals, Benesch found that most of the female students empathized with the girl in the fictional case history and a few women shared their own experiences about eating disorders. She could see that some female students looked deeply at the causes of anorexia and examined anorexia, not only as a private problem of self-esteem or family dysfunction, but also as being related to cultural constructions of femininity. Benesch concluded that women’s issues were rich and important topics for ESL classes, because feminist ESL classes made room for women’s voices that were often ignored in classrooms and gave women students a greater sense of entitlement. Frye (1999) and Rivera (1999) explored ESL classes for immigrant women in a community education setting. Frye discussed an immigrant women’s ESL class in the USA in which 17 working-class Latina women participated. She used a feminist pedagogical approach and instructed immigrant women in her role as a teacher-researcher. A goal of her class was to offer the opportunity to think critically about, and to affect change, in immigrant women’s lives. She referred to this approach as ‘critical literacy work’ (Frye, 1999: 501). To promote critical literacy work, she attempted to create a safe, nonthreatening environment in which students could express personal experiences, emotions and feelings. In class, by reflecting on students’ lives and her own personal life, she was a facilitator who promoted discussion of differences among women, multiple oppressions and marginalization, and oppressive social, cultural and political forces in their lives. Throughout the class, she found many successes in using a feminist pedagogical approach. For example, the women developed solidarity, increased their sense of identity, explored woman-centered issues and empowered themselves and others. In particular, Frye emphasized a community for empowerment, and illustrated

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what the class was like: ‘the participants began to offer one another rides to class and share child care. They also shared in bringing food and materials to class’ (Frye, 1999: 507). The community for learning English nurtured sisterhood and grew into a small, mutual and supportive community. Rivera (1999), as a teacher-researcher, also illustrated the practices of a community-based adult education program in New York City. Like Frye’s (1999) study, the students in Rivera’s study were Latina women, who were mothers with children and received some kind of welfare benefits. They had experienced work as garment workers, had grown up poor, had received little formal schooling, had begun to work at an early age and had faced unfair social policies by being unemployed immigrants. Rivera stated that the intention behind the curriculum was to link literacy education with the development of the ability to organize and combat the women’s problems. In the program, students were encouraged to share their personal experiences, examine their social reality and the forces that had shaped their lives, and complete some kind of social action for a better life. As a final project, the students made a video that collected women’s garment workers’ voices to contest, reclaim and change reality. They also raised funds for educational supplies and met with funders and politicians to help their ESL program survive when they faced budget cuts resulting from welfare reform. Rivera concluded that feminist ESL classes raised feminist consciousness among the students and led them to take social actions. Nelson (2009) did not analyze sexual identities in ESL programs from a feminist viewpoint; instead, she examined them from a queer theorist viewpoint. However, it is important to illustrate her study about sexual identities in English language education, because many feminist teachers are concerned about LGBT issues in their language classrooms (see Vandrick, 1997a, 2009). In her book, Nelson examined teachers’ perspectives toward LGBT issues and their experiences of teaching about LGBT issues in their language classrooms, and she also looked at actual classroom conversations in three ESL classes in the USA. To explore teachers’ perspectives toward LGBT issues and their experiences of teaching about LGBT issues in their ESL classrooms, she conducted a study through group discussions at conferences and outside class time, in-depth interviews and classroom observations with six ESL teachers from a qualitative research approach and analyzed the data from the viewpoint of queer theory. In total, 44 ESL teachers (31 women, 13 men) voluntarily participated in her study. The teachers in her study who brought lesbian/gay themes into their classrooms believed that teaching about lesbian/gay issues raises the question of heteronormativity among students and leads to the understanding of cultural diversity and tolerant attitudes for sexual diversity among students. At the same time, the teachers wanted to support LGBT students. Although Nelson (2009) described case studies with three ESL teachers, her description of Roxanne’s (a pseudonym) classroom practice helped me

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understand my own study better. Roxanne taught a grammar-based ESL class at a community college in the USA. Roxanne was teaching 26 students (13 male and 13 female) from 13 countries and who ranged in age from their early 20s to early 70s. Roxanne incorporated a gay/lesbian topic in a unit of work on modal auxiliary verbs in her class. Roxanne put the sentence ‘Those two women are walking arm in arm’ in the worksheet and asked students to think of three or four different possibilities to explain what was occurring. In a small-group work and a follow-up class discussion, students expressed their cultural meanings and perspectives about same-sex affection. Through class discussion, they learned that in some cultures, it is common to walk arm and arm in same-sex pairs. They also learned that each student had different perceptions toward gays/lesbians within themselves, not only just between cultures. Roxanne took a risk in using the lesbian topic in her classroom, respected students’ privacy, framed sexual identities as culturally situated and foregrounded the ambiguity of sexual identity, which led to a successful lesson (Nelson, 2009). Roxanne’s classroom practice showed the possibility of incorporating sociopolitical issues such as LGBT issues into a grammar lesson. As there were no such sentences or topics featured in their textbook, she brought the language and topic into the classroom and directed the discussion on LGBT issues. This practice stimulated her students to learn about LGBT issues along with language learning, and some students even wrote about LGBT issues on their own initiative in their assigned journals. In this sense, there are various ways to teach about sociopolitical issues, including LGBT issues and gender issues; it involves not only teaching about these issues directly and explicitly, but also entails incorporating these issues into the lesson more subtly. These empirical studies on teaching about gender-related topics showed that feminist teaching in ESL contexts made room for women’s voices that were often ignored in classrooms, explored woman-centered issues and empowered women and others. Additionally, it sometimes nurtured sisterly solidarity and led to social actions. Vandrick (1997a, 2009) and Nelson (2009) also argued for the importance of teaching about LGBT issues in the English language classroom. This kind of teaching helps students to understand cultural diversity and tolerant attitudes for sexual diversity among students. The empirical studies showed that incorporating gender-related issues into the English language classroom was important and useful in order to teach about gender equality, tolerance and social justice.

Feminist Pedagogy in TEFL in Japan Case studies in EFL also offer an array of approaches to feminist language education in Japan. Casanave and Yamashiro (1996) edited Gender Issues in

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Language Education, which is a collection of papers on gender issues and topics in foreign language education in Japan, including critical thinking and pedagogy, feminist teaching, feminist analysis in research and authored narratives. In this collection, one interesting paper that looked at a feminist teacher’s practice was written by Beebe (1996). She believed that language itself is biased and political, and that sexist language is an appropriate topic to import into language classrooms to raise students’ awareness of sexist features of English. By mentioning that teachers do not have to search for an interesting gender topic to bring into language classrooms, she presented one lesson to raise awareness of sexist language and discourse with a worksheet on avoiding sexist language. She discovered that this lesson provided students an opportunity to learn about gender-neutral language and expressions, as well as gender-biased language. She also found that the lesson made teacher authority less salient by sharing knowledge and exploring language with teachers and students together. Simon-Maeda (2004b), as a teacher-researcher, taught a course about language and gender to women’s junior college students in Japan. The classes met once a week for 90 minutes for a 15-week semester. She introduced 11 topics related to the linguistic aspects of gender inequality with examples from English and Japanese and two topics about eating disorders and domestic violence. She began with microlevel examples of gender-based differences in conversational patterns, titles and forms of address, proverbs and textbooks to macrolevel examples of gendered linguistic and non-linguistic differences in advertisements, newspapers, television, and movies. Throughout the course, she examined 60 students’ journals and explored students’ perceptions and perspectives toward given gender topics from a poststructuralist feminist position. In journals, she encouraged students to reflect on the relationship between the lecture topic and their personal experiences. Through the students’ journals, she found that her students developed awareness of gender inequality in linguistic, cultural and social contexts. She noted that in emerging feminist identities, some of her students imagined how they might change inequitable social conditions for all women. Saft and Ohara (2004) conducted a study on the effect of teaching about gender topics in a Japanese university, illustrating the example of teaching about gender topics as one of the modules. They developed a four-day module on gender and language, including gender roles in the USA and Japan. The classes met once a week for 75 minutes and the module was implemented for weeks 25–28 of the course. The researchers had 116 student participants (64 men and 52 women) in three first-year EFL classes in a large Japanese national university. One of the researchers taught these classes and facilitated discussions of reading materials on the topic. The data from the audiotapes and the questionnaires were collected and revealed that this module had a great impact on female students. As the module continued, female students expressed their opinions with their experiences and critical reflection in response to the

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reading material. They also expressed critical ideas about gender in Japanese society. The researchers concluded that teaching about gender topics promoted critical consciousness about gender issues in Japanese society. As a teacher-researcher, I also conducted a study on teaching about domestic violence in my two EFL university classrooms by using themebased language instruction (Yoshihara, 2010). I developed a four-week unit on the topic and conducted a study with 55 students (29 men and 26 women) in a large private university in Japan. The class met once a week for 90 minutes for 24 weeks during the academic year and the four-week unit was implemented for weeks 5–8. In the four-week unit, my students were required to read an article, watch a short film and a news clip, discuss the topic in a group and write a final essay about the topic. I examined the data provided from pre- and post-questionnaires about domestic violence, students’ final written products and open-ended questionnaires about the module. As a result of teaching this unit, I found that students’ perceptions of domestic violence changed and that they gained new knowledge about domestic violence from the unit. They corrected their misconceptions and stereotypes toward domestic violence, understood the causes of domestic violence and finally expressed their own opinions to solve the problem. As a teacher, I felt that students were curious about difficult and controversial gender issues, even in a language classroom where they are usually expected to learn grammar, vocabulary and rhetorical forms. Aoki (2016) employed an autobiographical narrative approach to illustrate the relationship between her feminist beliefs and classroom practice. She was teaching an English content-based discussion class subtitled ‘Introduction to Gender Studies’ in a Japanese university. There were 25 female undergraduate third-year students in the class. One student suddenly asked, ‘What do feminists actually do?’ After being asked this question, Aoki as a teacher was compelled to put her beliefs into words and used her personal essay about feminists and feminism. Describing the experience as an epiphany, she explained how this question led her to explore commonalities in teaching practices between feminist pedagogy and communicative language teaching (CLT) approaches, and how this further helped her deliver a lecture on feminist principles and behaviors for her students. She found that sharing her personal experience and feminist beliefs with her students can encourage students to find their own voice and express their opinions in the classroom. Although O’Mochain (2006) did not focus on gender issues, he discussed sexuality issues with EFL students at a women’s junior college in Japan by using life-history narratives as a pedagogical strategy. O’Mochain taught seven women students in a seminar course ‘Introduction to Cultural Studies’, which focused on cultural constructions of sexuality in people’s lived experiences. During the final 10-class periods out of 30, he used autobiographical stories from Queer Japan edited by Summerhawk et al. (1998) as reading materials and had students conduct face-to-face interviews or do text-based

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research. After that, students were required to report to the class on their work and initiate class discussions and activities with their own text. The data from audiotaped class discussions and students’ written products demonstrated that the narrative-based pedagogy was an effective way of exploring issues of sexuality and language. Illustrating three narratives, O’Mochain found that narratives held the interest of the students and stimulated a lively discussion on sexuality. He also discovered that the narrative-based pedagogy provided an opportunity to present differences among gay people and explore the role of social norms and mass-media representations of gays and lesbians in Japan. Gender topics can be productively discussed, not only in EFL classes at university level, but also in women’s groups. McMahill (1997, 2001) undertook a case study of two feminist English conversation study groups in Japan. One group was led by a Japanese feminist who facilitated discussions of women’s and environmental issues and another group was led by a Japanborn Korean feminist. McMahill (1997) attended discussion sessions as a guest speaker and analyzed the open-ended questionnaires filled out by 14 adult female participants. The participants included homemakers, freelance writers, an elementary school teacher, an office worker, a university student, an assertiveness trainer and a hair designer. McMahill (1997) found that these feminist language classes were a site for disclosure of personal experience and self-reflection from the point of view of gender. Using women’s issues as a topic for language practice encouraged learners to reflect more critically on their own gender socialization and raise their feminist consciousness. She also found that the acquisition of English as an internationally hegemonic language could be considered by learners as empowering and as a weapon to counter hegemony. These empirical studies focused on developing awareness of gender equality in linguistic, cultural and social contexts among Japanese women. Although I illustrated several different types of feminist teaching in Japanese contexts, there might be more diverse teaching practices according to feminist beliefs in many major and minor ways. Also, I suspect that even if some teachers are self-identified feminists and support gender equality and justice, they might not practice feminist teaching in their classrooms. What factors prevent them from practicing feminist teaching? I investigate this question as well as diverse feminist pedagogies using narrative inquiry.

Relevance Outside Japan Since the mid-1990s, feminist or gender perspectives have influenced a broad range of research in applied linguistics. Several researchers focus on gender and language or discourse (see Cameron, 1990; Litosseliti, 2006; Litosseliti & Sunderland, 2002; Tannen, 1993, 1996) and gender and second

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language acquisition (SLA), toward embracing social and cultural perspectives in understanding language teaching and learning (see Casanave & Yamashiro, 1996; Norton, 2000; Norton & Pavlenko, 2004; Pavlenko et al., 2001). TESOL Quarterly did a special feature on Gender in English Language Teaching in 2004 (see Chapelle, 2004). Feminist teaching and feminist pedagogy have been widely noticed in TESOL. In this book, I have focused on feminist EFL teachers in Japanese universities; however, their perspectives on identities, beliefs and practices are relevant to feminist ESL teachers worldwide and feminist researchers in the TESOL field. Feminist ESL/EFL teachers might experience being questioned about whether teaching gender issues is indoctrination or brainwashing. They might hear people argue that English teaching should focus on linguistic goals over sociopolitical concerns. Although they might have positive responses from students about learning about gender issues, they might also have negative and challenging comments from students (Benesch, 1998), or indifferent comments from students (Saft & Ohara, 2004; Yoshihara, 2010). Readers who are feminist ESL/EFL teachers might forge a link between stories told here and their own stories and find the commonalities and differences between them. Narratives told in this book are intended to support and encourage feminist ESL/EFL teachers outside Japan as well as within. My intention extends even to researchers and educators who hesitate to describe themselves as feminists or might even be anti-feminists. A lack of confidence, a sense of inappropriateness, anxiety or ignorance about feminist teaching among these educators might be caused by a lack of training, knowledge and resources for teaching about gender issues (Yoshihara, 2011). I found in my previous work that even though EFL university teachers acknowledged the importance of feminist teaching, they did not know what to teach and how to teach in their EFL classrooms (Yoshihara, 2011). The problem is not with them, but with their insufficient information about feminist teaching. It is important to make feminist pedagogy progress further in TESOL and to add to the academic literature on feminist pedagogy in ESL/EFL. I hope my book contributes to furthering research on feminist pedagogy in TESOL. At the same time, I hope my book inspires ESL/EFL teachers inside and outside Japan to practice some form of feminist teaching in many major or minor ways.

Feminist EFL Teachers in Japanese Universities I began this research aiming to explore feminist EFL university teachers’ identities, beliefs and practices. For my research, eight feminist teachers (three American women, one American man, one British woman, two Japanese women and one Japan-born Korean woman) participated in this study. Table 1.1 is a summary of some basic information about the participants in

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Table 1.1 Basic data about the participants

Gender Degree Nationality Age Position University teaching experience (years)

Gender Degree Nationality Age Position University teaching experience (years)

Akiko

Jennifer

Kathy

Linda

Female MA in English Literature Japan 50s Part-time lecturer 22

Female MA TESOL

Female MEd in TESOL

USA 40s Part-time lecturer 12

UK 50s Part-time lecturer 16

Female PhD in Linguistics USA 50s Associate professor 27

Mika

Sarah

Tom

Yu Ri

Female MA in Education Japan 50s Part-time lecturer 18

Female MS TESOL and MBA USA 50s Full-time lecturer 13

Male MA TESOL

Female MEd in TESOL

USA 30s Full-time lecturer 8

Korea 60s Part-time lecturer 6

alphabetical order according to their first names (pseudonyms), and a detailed description of each participant is provided in Chapter 2. In order to find participants who would help my research, I used purposeful sampling. I first determined selection criteria that were important in choosing the people or sites to be studied. To select the participants, I created a list of the attributes essential to my study: (a) persons who are self-identified feminists; and (b) who have taught EFL in Japanese universities. Although feminist research often highlights women as the subjects of research, as Ramazanoglu and Holland (2009) have pointed out, feminist researchers should not take ‘women’ as the only subjects of the research or assume that a feminist is simply a woman. Ramazanoglu and Holland asserted that ‘a politically sympathetic man’ should be included in feminist research (Ramazanoglu & Holland, 2009: 8). I agreed with Ramazanoglu and Holland’s perspectives toward the subjects of the research; therefore, I did not create ‘women’ as a list of the attributes. I started by posting a message about recruiting participants for this study in the mailing lists of academic circles in Japan such as GALE (Gender Awareness in Language Education SIG (Special Interest Group) of the Japan Association of Language Teaching), WELL (Women Educators and Language Learners), and EPA (Engaged Pedagogy Association) in January and February 2011. At the end

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of March 2011, the eight feminist teachers above agreed to participate in my study.

Overview of Chapters I consider this study feminist narrative research. Chapter 2 starts with a discussion of what feminist research is, how feminist research shifted from quantitative research to qualitative research and what feminist narrative researchers focus on. I also explain ethical issues in conducting feminist research and my positionality of this study. I then lay out the methods used for data collection and the process of analysis. This is followed by an introduction to the eight feminist EFL teachers who took part in this study. These teachers positively identified themselves as feminists or pro-feminists. The data analysis and the findings are discussed in Chapters 3 to 5. In Chapter 3, I first explain the sociocultural situation of women in Japan in order to understand my participants’ sociocultural situations. I then explore what feminism meant to the eight teachers in this study and how they became feminists and developed a feminist teacher identity. Exploring the meanings of feminism for each teacher helps reveal the relations with her or his teaching beliefs and practices. Chapter 4 focuses on multiple and diverse types of feminist teaching in EFL classes. I analyze the stories of what teaching beliefs individual teachers hold in relation to feminist identities and how they reflect their teaching beliefs in their teaching practices. Classroom observations and teaching journals help in understanding what and how the feminist language teachers in my study taught in their EFL university classes. I first focus on my participants’ practices of teaching about gender-related topics according to their feminist teaching beliefs. I then explore my participants’ other ways of feminist teaching, such as giving equal attention and treatment, teaching gender-neutral language, using group techniques for gender awareness, incorporating women’s stories into writing techniques, bringing in videos about girls and women, reclaiming local women’s issues and introducing gender-related events. Chapter 5 investigates the incompatibility among feminist teacher identities, beliefs and practices. Even though the feminist EFL teachers in my study identified themselves as feminists and had feminist teaching beliefs, there were some cases in which they did not practice feminist teaching. In order to understand the incompatibility among feminist teacher identities, beliefs and practices, I first explain the research contexts, such as the sociocultural situation of female teachers and EFL contexts in Japanese universities. I then explore what prevented them from practicing feminist teaching in relation to personal and contextual factors. The poststructuralist feminist view of identity theory has important implications for understanding the

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contradictions between feminist teacher identities, beliefs and practices. I report on gaps between feminist teaching beliefs and real practices by describing my participants’ stated beliefs and the lessons that I observed. Chapter 6 concludes the book by re-examining feminist pedagogy in TESOL and TEFL in Japan. Several researchers have focused on the multiplicity and diversity of feminist teaching (see Casanave & Yamashiro, 1996; McMahill, 1997; Schenke, 1996; Vandrick, 1994), but I have focused on deconstructing a binary opposition in feminist pedagogy. The poststructural feminist pedagogical view helps me redefine feminist pedagogy in TESOL and define feminist pedagogy in TEFL in Japan. I last conclude this chapter with thoughts for future directions and some suggestions for ESL/EFL teachers and researchers inside and outside Japan.

2

Method, Data Collection and Participants

Introduction I begin this chapter with a discussion of what feminist narrative research is. I illustrate what feminist research is, how feminist researchers shifted from quantitative research to qualitative research, what feminist narrative researchers focus on and ethical issues in conducting feminist narrative research. I also explain my positionality as a researcher, because it is important for qualitative researchers to report this. Many qualitative researchers, including feminist qualitative researchers, believe that knowledge production in qualitative research is strongly related to researcher positionality (see Atkinson & Sohn, 2013; de Fina & Perrino, 2011; Hammersley, 1992; Henwood & Pidgeon, 1995; Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011; Oakley, 1981; Reinharz, 1992). Then, I present the data collection and data analysis for this study. I last describe the eight participants who are featured in this book in terms of family, educational and teaching background.

Feminist Narrative Research Feminist alternatives to the positivist paradigm As for the question of what feminist research is, Lather (1991: 71) stated, ‘Very simply, to do feminist research is to put the social construction of gender at the center of one’s inquiry’. Brooks and Hesse-Biber (2007) narrowed it down and noted as follows: By documenting women’s lives, experience, and concerns, illuminating gender-based stereotypes and biases, and unearthing women’s subjugated knowledge, feminist research challenges the basic structures and ideologies that oppress women. Feminist research goals foster empowerment and emancipation for women and other marginalized groups, and 20

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feminist researchers often apply their findings in the service of promoting social change and social justice for women. (Brooks & Hesse-Biber, 2007: 4) Agreeing with Lather and Brooks and Hesse-Biber, I believe that feminist research places the issues of gender at the center of the research, uses personal experiences as resources, sees things from feminist perspectives and commits to emancipation, empowerment or change. Initially, feminist researchers used positivist methods and sought to improve the accuracy and objectivity of positivist research to take women’s activities and experiences into account (Brook & Hesse-Biber, 2007; Sarantakos, 2005). Therefore, feminist positivist researchers included women in research samples, guided research topics and issues about women and remodeled some traditional positivist methods to ensure reflection of women’s experiences. For example, several feminist positivist researchers in education conducted numerous quantitative studies to investigate the effects of women’s studies, that included: increased egalitarian attitudes toward women, increased awareness of discrimination against women, greater activism and commitment to activism for women’s causes, and greater selfconfidence (see Stake & Gerner, 1987; Stake & Hoffmann, 2001; Stake & Rose, 1994; Stake et al., 1994). As a reaction to more impersonal surveys and quantitative research, feminist researchers gradually distanced themselves from positivism and worked towards developing qualitative research based on women’s personal narratives (Chase, 2005; Hammersley, 1992; Henwood & Pidgeon, 1995; Sarantakos, 2005). This leads to feminists using new and innovative research methods including interviewing, oral history and ethnography techniques.

Narrative as a feminist method Feminist methodology has stressed the importance of bringing women’s personal narratives into the research process (Hammersley, 1992). Through women’s narratives, we can understand the socialized position of gender and examine how gender is constructed, reproduced or negotiated by dominant, patriarchal ideologies. Narrative as a feminist research method has been found in the educational field (see Bloom, 1998; Britzman, 1991; Chase, 1995; Lather, 1991; Maher & Tetreault, 2001; Pasque & Nicholson, 2011; Ropers-Huilman, 1998) as well as in the TESOL field (see McMahill, 1997, 2001; Norton, 2000; Pavlenko, 2003; Vandrick, 1999, 2009). Narrative as a feminist method lets us explore complexity, specificity and interconnectedness of the phenomenon of women’s narratives. Hereafter, I illustrate key factors involving experiences, sociality and political work in feminist narrative research. First, feminist narrative researchers focus on women’s experiences as resources (Brooks, 2007; Foss & Foss, 1994; Hammersley, 1992; Harding, 1987;

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Reinharz, 1992; Sarantakos, 2005) and treats women’s personal narratives as ‘essential primary documents for feminist research’ (Personal Narratives Group, 1989, cited in Chase, 2005: 654). As Brooks (2007: 56) puts it, ‘building knowledge from women’s actual, or concrete, life experiences is acutely important, … if we hope to repair the historical trend of women’s misrepresentation and exclusion from the dominant knowledge canons’. Therefore, feminist narrative researchers approach participants as subjects rather than as objects and are interested in getting at the ‘subjective’ understanding an individual brings to a given situation or set of circumstances (Brooks, 2007; Chase, 2005; Hammersley, 1992; Henwood & Pidgeon, 1995; Lather, 1991). Second, sociality, as well as experience, is an important issue in feminist narrative research. As well as narrative inquirers, feminist narrative researchers focus on social contexts that form the individual’s narrative, involving the existential conditions, the environment, surrounding factors and forces, and people around the individual (Bloom, 1998; Connelly & Clandinin, 2006; Falconer, 2009; Olesen, 2005). Leavy (2007: 154) noted that the chemistry between narrative and feminism extends to ‘the way many feminists conceptualized the relationship between agency and structure, or the individual and the larger society’. Borrowing her idea, narrative research employed by feminists is the way researchers bridge the women’s personal narratives within the social context in which those narratives are produced, and conceptualize the gendered relationship between the individual and the social and cultural structure. Thus, feminist narrative research focuses on social contexts that treat an individual as a hegemonic expression of social structure and social process, as well as a person’s thoughts and feelings. Third, I would like to highlight feminist narrative research as political work. Riessman (2008: 8) asserted that ‘narratives do political work’. She continued to discuss the social role of stories as an important aspect of narrative inquiry. She explained that stories foster a sense of belonging and mobilize others to action, by stating ‘commonalities in the stories created group belonging and set the stage for collective action’ (Riessman, 2008: 9). Stories told by the narrator might be shared by others who are in the same community with the narrator. Narratives also might inspire readers to engage with issues and actions. Feminist research aims to enlighten the community to the factors that generate the phenomenon and propose ways that can help alleviate the problem and ultimately contribute toward social change and reconstruction (Hammersley, 1992; Sarantakos, 2005). Feminist research is the study of theory and action and has the potential to inspire others to action for progressive change. Thus, in feminist narrative research, the researchers analyze women’s lives and experiences through narrative accounts, conceptualize the relationship between the individual and the larger symbolic and institutional structures, uncover the issues of gender inequality and injustice, and are committed to social change for women.

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Ethical issues in conducting research Like other feminist researchers who embrace reciprocal relationships with research participants, I was challenged by ‘concerns about ethics, reflexivity, emotions, positionality, polyvocality, collaboration, identification with participants, intersubjectivity, and our own authority as interpreters’ (Bloom, 1998: 2). To conduct an in-depth interview and discover insights through research participants, I rejected objectivity and neutrality. Instead, I employed an insider status in this research. Not only do I, but also many feminist qualitative researchers support subjective principles of research (see England, 1994; Hammersley, 1992; Henwood & Pidgeon, 1995; Oakley, 1981; Reinharz, 1992). They believe that it is important to integrate researchers themselves into the research process, incorporate their own values, theory, ontology and epistemology, and reflect their participants’ experiences and references as seen from the inside. It means that a researcher’s gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual identity and biography do influence the research. Therefore, it is important to state researcher positionality in all qualitative research, including feminist qualitative research. I explain my positionality as a researcher in more detail in the next section. As a result of subjective principles of feminist qualitative research, feminist qualitative researchers seek reciprocal relations with participants based on empathy and mutual respect, and often share their knowledge with participants (England, 1994; Hammersley, 1992). Such a reciprocal relationship helps researchers gain access to research participants, conduct in-depth interviews and gain an insightful understanding of the stories told by research participants (de Fina, 2011; Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011). Therefore, I took up an engaged, interactive and dialogic stance and reveal myself in the interviews. I hoped that revealing myself would encourage and empower research participants by reducing the distance between us. However, at the same time, the issue of power relations in the research encounter has been raised (England, 1994; Visweswaran, 1994; Wolf, 1996). No matter how welcome, even enjoyable, the researcher’s presence may appear, there exists unequal power relations between the researcher and the research participant. Researchers might be intrusive, exploitative and expose research participants to greater risk (England, 1994; Oakley, 1981; Stacey, 1988). The reciprocal relationship may submerge the intrusive and exploitative elements. As Olesen (2005) warned, feminist researchers must not exploit participants, dismiss or re-interpret in order to fit within a research discourse or steal participants’ words. To avoid exploiting participant’s experiences and minimize unequal power relations in the research encounter, Reinharz (1992) suggests that feminist researchers share the pre-publication text with participants for feedback, negotiate meanings and work collaboratively to generate knowledge. The participants’ involvement in knowledge construction might be one solution for dealing with power relations between

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the researcher and the research participants. In this study, I shared parts of my early drafts with my participants, checked my interpretations and negotiated meanings with them. Also, Bloom (1998) stated that it is important for feminist researchers to be critically self-reflective in terms of feminist analysis and interpretation. She explained that: To be critically self-reflective is not mere self-indulgence on the part of the researcher. Rather, our reflections must be acknowledged as analytic data and offered as part of the overall epistemological project of interpreting women’s lives and experiences – particularly when that interpretation emerges, as it does, from an intersubjective relationship between women. (Bloom, 1998: 149) The critical self-reflection allows feminist researchers to articulate their voice through the analysis. I believe that my voice, as well as the participants’, is an important resource for research and plays a significant role for analysis and interpretation. To be critically self-reflective and articulate my voice, I kept two kinds of research journals for this study; personal journals and fieldnote journals (see for more detail in section ‘data collection’).

Researcher Positionality Atkinson and Sohn (2013) noted that qualitative researchers need to report their positionality statements, because the positionality of the researcher is directly implicated in knowledge production in qualitative research. Agreeing with this point, I present my positionality statement. I consider myself a feminist qualitative researcher. My role as a feminist qualitative researcher in this study is not only to assemble feminist EFL teachers’ narratives into a meaningful whole, but also to share their identities, beliefs and practices with other ESL/EFL teachers, enlighten the community to feminist pedagogy and teaching, empower feminist EFL teacher-participants and ultimately contribute toward change in university EFL education in Japan from a feminist perspective. In pursuing this researcher role, I employed subjective principles of research. I am familiar with my participants’ situations including their teaching experiences in Japanese universities. Even though I am a middle-class Japanese heterosexual female EFL educator who has tenure in a large private Japanese university, I have taught as a part-time teacher in several universities in Japan for ten years. I am aware of the huge gap between tenured EFL teachers and part-time EFL teachers under different labor conditions. I am able to partially understand my participants’ working situations, struggles and discontent. Although we might have different feminist perspectives, even if we identified

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ourselves as feminists, I assume that we might have in common some feminist perspectives. I recognize that although I cannot pretend to present fully my participants’ voices, there must exist a continuum between me and my participants. Such partial commonalities and continua ‘help the research move along more smoothly and allow for more in-depth analysis’ (Park, 2009: 64; see also Kumazawa, 2011; Okada, 2009). I might not be allowed to identify with my research participants wholly; however, I hope to at least partially understand them (see England, 1994; Kitamura, 2009).

Data Collection and Data Analysis Data collection For this study, I collected multiple sets of data, such as an open-ended background survey, email communications, interviews, classroom observations, course materials, participants’ written artifacts and researcher journals. Data were collected from March 2011 through August 2013 (see Appendix B). At the beginning of the study, questionnaires were administered to ascertain my participants’ professional and academic backgrounds. To better communicate with participants and to better understand them, I exchanged email journals with participants from April 2011 to February 2012 while I was on sabbatical in Hawaii. I then conducted person-to-person interviews and Skype interviews with each participant, and did classroom observations during the period from March 2012 to August 2013. Each interview was between 30 and 150 minutes. To facilitate my participants’ telling their stories or relating their experiences with regard to a specific event, I conducted semi-structured interviews. Although I did not audiotape, I had private conversations with each participant over lunch, dinner and tea before or after interviews. The follow-up interviews were conducted by in-person interviews, emails and via Skype. In order to explore feminist EFL teachers’ teaching practices involving the use of gender-related topics and the participants’ teaching according to feminist principles, classroom observation data are significant. I observed six classrooms (Akiko, Kathy, Linda, Mika, Sarah and Yu Ri) during the period of April 2012 to December 2012. They provided me with course materials, supplementary materials, course descriptions and syllabi. One participant (Jennifer) preferred writing teaching journals on teaching about gender issues. She provided me with materials that she used in her classroom and explained more precisely in interviews how she taught. Another participant (Tom) allowed me to watch the lesson that he videotaped in 2011. He sent the DVD to me in 2012 and provided me with his teaching materials. I have kept two kinds of journals for this study: personal journals and fieldnote journals. I started to keep personal journals in April 2011 that

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contained my feminist thoughts, teaching beliefs and practices, philosophical responses to articles that I read for this project, and all my emotions such as happiness and frustration regarding this research in English and Japanese. I also kept fieldnote journals for interviews and observations. In the fieldnote journals, I wrote not only notes about interviews and observations in classrooms, but also my impressions about my participants and their teaching practices and what I learned from them. These journals helped me not only to write about ideas, questions, problems and decisions on a research project, but also to deal with ongoing anxieties, emotions and frustrations, and to critically reflect myself as a researcher (see Casanave, 2011).

Data analysis Transcription There are several styles of transcription including transcribing words only, transcription with some features of speech such as changes in pitch, stress, volume and rate, and non-linguistic features of speech such as pauses, gestures, facial expressions and body movements (Mishler, 1986), sentencelike prosodic transcription in stanza form (Gee, 2005; see also Bradley, 2011; Kusaka, 2014) and poetic transcription (Richardson, 2002; see also Bradley, 2011). Given that data analysis is ‘the process used to answer your research question(s)’ (Merriam, 2009: 176, italics in original), researchers must make a decision about what transcription system they use to examine interview data in their studies. I chose to transcribe the data with words only in all the interviews. I did not transcribe other features of speech such as pitch, volume, fillers, pauses, false starts and non-verbal expressions. Because I wanted to find thematic elements from my participants’ narratives, there was no need to transcribe all the paralinguistic and non-linguistic features of speech. Roberts (1997) discussed an issue of transcription; that is, managing the tension between accuracy, readability and political issues of representation. She suggested that researchers should use standard orthography even if the speaker used nonstandard language. As a transcriber and a researcher, I was aware that overly detailed transcription in the quest for accuracy might degrade participants as social and moral beings and cause unreadability, as sometimes happens in traditional conversation analysis. Therefore, I created a second version in which most false starts, conversational fillers and simple grammatical mistakes were eliminated, although I first made a version that included false starts, fillers and hesitant language.

Translation In this study, three participants were Japanese language speakers and I conducted an open-ended survey and exchanged journals in Japanese. I also interviewed these participants in Japanese. My concerns about translation were how competent I was and how I was able to translate

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what my participants meant precisely. I am not competent enough to use English like a native English speaker and I have not formally studied translation. To deal with this issue, I asked a native English speaker who understood Japanese to check my translation. I was also concerned about how I could precisely translate what my participants meant. Even though some interviews were conducted in Japanese, I might have misunderstood or over-interpreted what they said. To avoid this problem, I asked each participant to check my transcription and translation of the quoted interview data, because they were competent at checking my translation.

Thematic analysis Thematic analysis is a well-known form of analysis in qualitative research. Creswell (2007) noted that the researcher focuses on a few key issues and looks for common themes (patterns) that transcend the cases, not for generalizing beyond the case, but for understanding the its complexity. I used thematic analysis because I was interested in commonalities and differences (patterns) among participants in an overview of feminist teachers’ identities, teaching beliefs and teaching practices. To find thematic elements (categories) across the cases, I followed Riessman’s (2008) thematic analysis: familiarization with data, identifying common thematic elements, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and producing the final report. She emphasized that in thematic narrative analysis, the researcher should preserve ‘the sequences, rather than thematic coding segments’ (Riessman, 2008: 74). She stressed the importance of sequence and detail for interpretive purposes. Although there are multiple approaches to analyze narratives including coding-categorizing methods (see Holstein & Gubrium, 2012), Gergen (2003: 272) warned that an ‘analytic method of deconstructing stories into coded piles’ could undermine ‘the aims of the research’. To think narratively about experience, I used Riessman’s holistic thematic analysis for this study. I began with the category of feminist teacher identities. This theme was discussed most during the interviews. Under this category, I showed how the participants became feminists, what feminism meant to them and how they became feminist EFL teachers. In order to find thematic elements of feminist teacher identities, I created three themes: (1) what feminism means to the teachers; (2) the formation of feminist identity; and (3) the complexity of feminist teacher identity. The second category to be discussed was feminist teaching practices according to feminist teaching beliefs. I analyzed the data based on interviews, classroom observations, teaching journals and the DVD of one teacher’s class. To analyze and interpret the data, I divided them into eight categories: (1) teaching about gender-related topics; (2) giving equal attention and treatment; (3) teaching non-biased expressions; (4) using group techniques for gender awareness; (5) incorporating women’s stories into journal

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writing; (6) bringing in videos about girls and women; (7) reclaiming local women’s issues; and (8) introducing gender-related events. I illustrated their classroom practices, along with their feminist teaching beliefs. I also highlighted major and minor ways to reflect their feminist teaching beliefs on their classroom practices. The third category, incompatibility among feminist teacher identities, beliefs and practices, showed how the feminist teachers in this study did not always practice feminist teaching, even though they identified themselves as feminists and had feminist teaching beliefs. I analyzed three cases – Mika, Akiko and Linda – and attempted to find what prevented my participants from practicing feminist teaching.

Feminist EFL University Teachers as Research Participants Eight self-identified feminist EFL university teachers participated in this study. They became feminists as well as university EFL teachers in Japan at different times, under different circumstances, with different opportunities and reasons. This section provides a biography of each of the participants by describing how the person became an EFL university teacher in Japan, including each teacher’s hometown, family background, educational background, work experience and teaching history.

Akiko Akiko was a Japanese woman in her mid-50s who has taught English in high schools and universities in Japan. She was a single mother raising her daughter. She married in her 30s and divorced in her late 40s. She was born and grew up in the Kanto area, Japan. She was raised in a typical Japanese family where her father worked outside the home and her mother was a full-time housewife. She had two sisters. She was a bit of a tomboy and liked playing with boys (e.g. climbing trees). Since she was a child, she was critical of the gender roles that many people assumed. She went to a municipal university and then to the graduate school of a national university in the Kanto area. She majored in English literature in both undergraduate and graduate school. After Akiko received a master’s degree in English literature, she started to teach English as a part-time teacher at a high school. She worked as a part-time high school teacher for four years and as a full-time high school teacher for another four years. As she wanted to teach at university level, she tried to find a teaching job in a university. Since then, she has been a part-time EFL teacher in universities for 22 years. Although she had no chance to teach courses in English and American literature, she published many papers about English and American

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writers and a book about one famous British female writer with a Japanese publisher. While teaching part-time in universities, she married, had one daughter and divorced. She was not satisfied with a position as a part-time university teacher. Although she wanted to become a full-time university teacher, she did not have the opportunity. At the time I interviewed her, she was working at five universities as a part-time EFL university teacher and was a single mother.

Jennifer Jennifer was in her mid-40s and an American EFL teacher in Japanese universities, who also taught private English conversation at home. She was born and raised in a middle-class family in California, USA. She has always been independent since she was young. She started working at 14 and went to university at 16. She has liked the feeling of earning her own money and being independent. She went to a university in California and majored in English. She was interested in creative writing and wanted to be a journalist. While she was a university student, she was interested in students’ political activities and participated in a protest against apartheid and a protest about the United States’ involvement in Central America. She developed a commitment to peace, equality and justice while she was a university student. After she graduated from a university, she went to Japan to teach English. She actually wanted to go to Spain, but she was not able to find a job there; however, she accidentally found an English teaching job in Japan. She first taught in an English conversation school and as a result became interested in teaching. She went back to the USA and enrolled in graduate school majoring in applied linguistics to get TESOL certification. She married a Japanese man while she was studying in graduate school. Since returning to Japan with her Japanese husband, she has been an English conversation schoolteacher and an ALT (assisted language teacher) in a junior high school in Japan. She had two sons while teaching English in a conversation school and a junior high school. In 1999, she found an EFL teaching job at a university. She divorced several years later. At the time I interviewed her, while raising two sons, she was teaching in four universities as a part-time teacher and teaching private English conversation classes at home.

Kathy Kathy was a British EFL university teacher in her mid-50s in Japan. Kathy was born and brought up in a working-class family in England. For her, it was natural that she worked and supported herself since she was young. Also, she identified herself as a lesbian at an early age. When she was 16 years

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old, she went to Amsterdam with her partner, continuing to go back and forth between England and Amsterdam for 10 years. At the age of 26, she was asked to teach Dutch to mainly English-speaking women. At that time, she had no qualification for teaching, but she was one of the few Englishspeakers who were fluent in Dutch. So, she taught Dutch to English-speaking women who lived in Amsterdam and enjoyed it very much for a few years. Then her partner suggested that they go to the Dominican Republic together and Kathy moved to the Dominican Republic at the age of 28. She was asked to teach English privately to a variety of Dominican people including children, adults, elderly people and teachers. She greatly enjoyed teaching English to them. While she was teaching in the Dominican Republic, she went back to Amsterdam and took a one-month ESL/EFL teaching course to further develop her teaching skills. However, she honestly confessed that she never felt she was competent as a teacher. So, she went back to England, became a university student and majored in TESOL at the age of 37. After she finished an undergraduate course, she had a job interview with a Japanese English conversation school. She was accepted and went to Japan at the age of 40. When she went to Japan, she liked the country quite well. She worked for the conversation school for two years and then became a full-time teacher at a girls’ private high school. She really liked the job; however, she felt that she did not know enough about teaching and wanted to learn more about it. At this point, she went to an American graduate school located in Japan. After she received a master’s degree in TESOL, she was more confident about her teaching. While she was very happy at the girls’ high school, she was asked if she would like to teach English in a university. She first said no, but one university professor whom she did not know, but who was introduced to her by her friend, called her and begged her to teach English in his university. Kathy felt so sorry for him and thought that she could help him by teaching just one lesson a week. This was in 1995. After that, she was asked to teach English by other universities and gradually shifted to teaching more classes in universities. She enjoyed teaching English at university level in Japan and was satisfied with her life there.

Linda Linda was a American EFL university teacher in her mid-50s in Japan who had taught for 27 years. Although she was American, Linda was born in England and grew up all over the USA and Europe because of her father’s business. She came from a well-off family and was raised by older parents. She first went to Japan as an exchange student when she was a high school student in California. After she graduated from high school, she went to a university in California and majored in child development and education. Because she quite liked Japan and had a Japanese boyfriend (later, her

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husband), she returned to Japan after she graduated from a university. She married and had children in Japan. After her son was born, she was offered a part-time teaching job in a university. Linda described her becoming a university teacher as an ‘accident’. She had not planned to become a university-level EFL teacher at that time. However, at the age of 26, she was welcomed and accepted as an EFL university teacher in spite of only having a BA degree, because there were not many native English-speaking teachers in Japan in the 1980s. After several years as a part-time teacher, one university professor whom she knew offered her a full-time position with tenure. While she was teaching in the university, she started an MA program in the field of TESOL in the USA through distance education, though there was no pressure from her employer to get a master’s degree. In the mid-1990s, she engaged in making a textbook with her colleagues and met a professor of the university where she is working now. He offered her a tenured position at his university, where she continues to work. She pointed out that nowadays the hiring practices are completely different; however, in the 1990s, it was not so unusual to be hired under the kinds of circumstances that led to her own hiring. After she moved to the university, she realized that high academic standards, such as doing research and writing academic papers for publication, were demanded in that university. One of her colleagues, whom she called a mentor, encouraged her to publish papers and do some research jointly. She started a doctoral degree program in Australia and received her PhD in applied linguistics while she was teaching.

Mika Mika was a single Japanese woman in her 50s who has taught English in Japanese high schools and universities. She was born and grew up in the Kanto area, Japan. Although her mother had worked part-time, her father’s salary was primary and her mother’s salary was secondary, like many Japanese families. Her father followed typical gender roles and made genderbiased comments at home. As a result of observing the situation in her family, she came to feel that it was important, even for women, to be financially independent. She went to a national university in Tokyo and majored in French. Even though she majored in French, she liked English very much and took many English courses in the university. While she was studying English, she gradually thought that she wanted to be an English teacher at a junior and senior high school. Therefore, as an undergraduate student, she obtained a teacher certificate of English and took the examination for a public junior and senior high school teacher in Tokyo. After Mika passed the examination and graduated from the university, she became a junior high school teacher in Tokyo.

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Like many other public high school teachers, she had been transferred over time to several high schools. She worked in a junior high school for four years, a technical high school for five years and a regular senior high school for three years. While she was a junior and senior high school teacher, she went to an English conversation school to brush up on her English-speaking ability. While learning English in an English conversation school, she became interested in studying abroad. At the same time she was rather tired of teaching at high school because of routine duties and taxing work. She finally decided to go to graduate school in the USA and majored in secondary education. After she returned to Japan with a master’s degree in education, she wanted to do something different. She worked at a publishing company where mainly English textbooks were published; however, she felt that something was missing, so she left that workplace after just one year and returned to teaching. At first she became a part-time English teacher in a high school and then found a part-time EFL teaching job at universities. She gradually shifted from teaching at high school to teaching at universities. She has been teaching English in several universities as a part-time lecturer now for 18 years. While teaching English in Japanese universities, she has also helped interpret when non-governmental organizations invited speakers, including feminists, peace activists and environmentalists. She is also very active politically and socially, such as taking part in anti-nuclear power protests and the defense of Article 9 of the Constitution. She is also involved in local community groups in relation to organic foods, garbage issues, local women and film gatherings.

Sarah Sarah was an American woman in her mid-50s who had taught English in various institutes including English conversation schools and universities inside and outside Japan. She identified herself as a lesbian and had lived with her partner for several years. She was born and grew up in California, USA. She was raised by a single mother who worked all her life and a grandmother whom she described as a strong woman. She was influenced by her mother and grandmother. Her mother was a role model in terms of a woman who worked all her life and raised a child as a single mother. Sarah described her grandmother as ‘the ruler in the house’ because her grandmother took care of everything in the house while she supported her husband’s business. She respected both her mother and her grandmother as independent women very much. She went to a university in California and majored in Spanish and linguistics. She had worked at a company for five years in California after graduation; however, she wanted to do something different. Her independence

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and curiosity led her outside the USA. She found a teaching job in Japan and taught English in an English conversation school for two years. Although she liked Japan, she wanted to see more of the world; therefore, she moved to Spain and taught English at a conversation school for another eight years. As she said, ‘My heart was always back here in Japan’ (Interview, 26 March 2012), she returned to Japan and got a job teaching in an English conversation school in Japan. She started a master’s degree program in the USA through a computer-based program online in TESOL, because she wanted to get a better job such as teaching English at university level. After she got her master’s degree, she had worked part-time and full-time at university level for 13 years when I first interviewed her. While teaching EFL in Japanese universities, she also received an MBA; however, this seemed to be somewhat accidental. The graduate school where she received a master’s degree in TESOL contacted her and offered her a scholarship. According to her, ‘they said, “Well, you run a volunteer organization, so some other things you learn here will probably be useful there”’ (Interview, 26 March 2012) and she agreed with them. She went through the computer-based program and earned the MBA. At the time I drafted this chapter, she was working in a university as a full-time teacher and in another university as a part-time teacher. She was happy to work in both universities. When I visited her school, she was growing onions, potatoes, beans, tomatoes and other vegetables at school and invited her students to help with farming and harvesting.

Tom Tom was a single American man in his late 30s who had taught EFL in Japanese universities for eight years. He was born and brought up in a middleclass family in Florida, USA. From a young age, he was conscious about human rights issues and the need for freedom from oppression. Although he was not actively involved in political activities and events when he was a university student, he said that human rights issues were always at the core of his life. He went to a university in Florida and majored in English with a concentration on writing and Spanish. After graduating from the university, Tom went straight to a graduate school in Florida, majoring in education with a specialization in Teaching English as a second language (TESL)/Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL). After completing his master’s degree, he taught ESL at a public school for four years as a part-time teacher. In the public school, he was also a resource teacher, that is, one who trains teachers and does paper work. After that, he worked for non-governmental and nonprofit programs on the east coast of the USA before going back to teaching ESL in a university as a part-time teacher. He continued teaching ESL parttime for four years. While doing this work, he wanted to do something different and take up a new challenge. As a colleague who had worked in Japan

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spoke of it highly, he started to look into teaching in Japan and applied for a teaching job there. He had worked full-time on a four-year contract in one university in Japan and had become full-time on a five-year contract in the university where he was working when I interviewed him.

Yu Ri Yu Ri was a ‘2.5-generation’1 Japan-born Korean (so-called zainichi) woman in her early 60s. She was a single woman and lived on her own. She was born and raised in the Kanto area, Japan. She self-identified her family as part of an underprivileged class even though her family was not poor. Her parents sent four children out of six to Korean schools in Japan, because they wanted their children to maintain their Korean identity, culture and language. Yu Ri was one of the children who were sent to Korean schools. In the 1950s and 1960s, there was still strong prejudice and overt discrimination against Korean residents and Japan-born Koreans in Japan. Therefore, it was common that the parents of Korean residents in Japan sent their children to local Korean schools. Her parents were not exceptional. For Yu Ri, it was a long journey to become an EFL university teacher. She started to teach English at university level in her mid-50s. She experienced several jobs before that, such as being the nanny of an American family in Japan, a maid for a New Zealander’s family in New Zealand, a clerical worker in Britain,2 a secretary in several foreign affiliated companies and foreign banks in Japan, and a translator and interpreter at various companies in Japan. When she was young, she wanted to be a working woman at a foreign affiliated company, in particular a Western affiliated company, and did not think of being a teacher. Her perspective toward career development was strongly influenced by her ethnic background. When she was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in Japan, it was difficult for Japan-born Koreans in Japan to get a job in a Japanese company, because of prejudice and discrimination against them. In those days, Japan-born Koreans seldom went to university after graduating from high school. Most of them got a job in Korean-owned companies and institutions. Under these circumstances, she noticed that she had to compete not only with Japanese male workers, but also with Japanese female workers. She had realized that English would be a powerful and effective tool to be a successful working woman in Japan. Although she acquired English and worked for a foreign affiliated company in Japan, she went to the USA to receive a university education. She enrolled in an American university at the age of 34, majoring in sociology. While she was at an American university, she took many other classes such as Black studies and some other courses about gender. As she described herself, she really liked learning and was energetic about it; therefore, even though she returned to Japan and started to work for a famous Japanese

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company as a professional interpreter and translator, she went to the graduate school of an American university located in Japan in her 40s and earned a master’s degree in TESOL. However, at that time, she did not think of becoming an EFL university teacher. She was just interested in learning, and besides, she was satisfied with her job at the company. By the time she reached her mid-50s, however, she wanted more time to be involved in feminist activities, in particular, helping Japan-born Korean women in Japan. For her, becoming a part-time EFL teacher in a university might be ‘unlooked-for’, but was perfect for her life plan. She has worked as a part-time teacher a few days a week and spent other time on her social and political activities. At the time I interviewed her, she has been working at two universities as a part-time EFL university teacher for six years.

Summary In this chapter, I have explained feminist narrative research by illustrating the focuses and ethical issues of the research. The exploration of feminist narrative research made me think of the importance of integrating myself into the research process. Although ethical issues are not easily resolved, I realized that it is important to locate myself in my research and to critically reflect on how my location influences the questions I ask, how I conduct my research and how I write my research. Because the positionality and biography of the researcher plays a central role in the research process, in the field as well as in the final text, I reported my positionality as a feminist qualitative researcher and my insider status in this research. Through the exploration of researcher positionality, I realized the limitation and partial nature of being an insider researcher. This raised further insights into the relationship between the researcher and the research participants. To be open and honest about research, I laid out data collection and analysis. I also discussed the issues of transcription and translation. Last, I introduced the eight feminist EFL teachers who participated in my study. The introduction of the research participants showed that each one had a different path to becoming a university EFL teacher in Japan. This made me reflect on how I became a university EFL teacher in Japan. I hope the readers will take a pause and think of how they became teachers.

Notes (1) Yu Ri is a ‘2.5-generation’ Japan-born Korean because her parents’ families have resided in Japan for two and three generations, respectively. (2) Yu Ri participated in the working holiday program in New Zealand and Britain. The working holiday program allow the youth of Japan to spend holidays and engage in employment as an incidental activity in its partner countries.

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On Becoming a Feminist EFL Teacher

Introduction In this chapter I explore what feminism meant to each of the EFL teachers in this study. I then illustrate how each teacher became a feminist and how each developed a feminist teacher identity. Understanding these themes might be related to their teaching beliefs and classroom practices that I discuss later (see Chapter 4). I also try to reveal complexities of feminist teacher identities. As I personally had struggled to negotiate my feminist EFL teacher identity (the feminist side and the sometimes conflicting EFL aspects), I asked the teachers in this study if they experienced any struggle negotiating a feminist EFL teacher identity. To negotiate their feminist EFL teacher identities, they might disclose mutability, multiplicity and contradictions of feminist teacher identity. Before I address these issues, I explain women’s sociocultural situations, including the feminist movement in Japan, in order to help readers understand my participants’ living and working situations.

Women’s Sociocultural Contexts in Japan Post-war reforms in Japan instituted women’s suffrage, opened educational institutions to women and provided women with more job opportunities. Women were also guaranteed equal pay for equal work under the Constitution of 1947 and the Labor Standards Law of 1947 (Mackie, 2003). Even though these laws were enacted, sexual discrimination in recruitment, hiring, promotion, training and retirement remained in the 1960s and 1970s. Not only employers’ policies, but also society’s attitudes toward women were shaped by traditional norms, which stipulated women’s place and role as primarily in the home. The traditional normative values included the ‘good wife and wise mother’ (ryosai kenbo) ideology, of the dedicated woman, devoted to the 36

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upbringing of her children and the welfare of her family (Ezawa, 2011) and the ‘myth of the first three years’ (sansanjishinnwa) ideology, that is, the message that as the first three years of a baby’s life determine whether or not the child will grow into a successful, thinking person, and so the mother should stay home and raise her child until the child reaches three years (Ohinata, 1995). In spite of the fact that more women were working outside the home, traditional gender roles in the family changed little. The situation created a sense of discontent and oppression among Japanese women in the early 1970s. The feminist movement of the 1970s began by attacking the dominant cultural values and traditional gender roles of Japanese society (Tanaka, 1995). Young women who were disillusioned with the New Left movements, including student radicals, the anti US-Japan Security Treaty demonstrations and protests against the Vietnam War, participated in the feminist movement because many of the male participants in the New Left movements continued to discriminate against women in the traditional manner of mainstream society (Inoue, 2011; Mackie, 2003; Tanaka, 1995). From such experiences, many young Japanese women began to consider the need to establish their own movement in order to liberate themselves and develop a clear self-identity among individual women. To develop a clear self-identity, Japanese feminists used consciousness-raising as a means, not only of getting women to recognize themselves as victims of sexual discrimination, but also to have them analyze their internalized social norms through their own personal experiences. They also made ‘sexual liberation’ an important objective of the feminist movement (Tanaka, 1995). They promoted knowledge about the female body and contraceptives to enable women to manage their own sexual activities. While Japanese feminists were influenced by the women’s movement in the USA and learned from feminist writers and activists in the Western countries, the Japanese feminist movement was not an import of American feminism and the movement developed in its own way (Senda et al., 2013). The tendency toward issue-oriented activities of the feminist movement has developed further since the late 1970s. Diverse groups and organizations were formed; for example, the Group to Protest Sexist Court Judgments against Working Women and Unmarried Women, the Group against Sex Tours to Korea for Japanese Men, The Group to Promote Coeducation in the Study of Home Economics in High School and the Group Supporting Abortion and the Contraceptive Pill (Tanaka, 1995). One renowned Japanese feminist activist, Yayori Matsui, founded the Asian Women Association (AWA) (later the Asia-Japan Women’s Resource Center: AJWRC) in 1977 in opposition to sex tourism among Japanese businessmen in southeast Asia. She also came into contact with ‘comfort women’, women who were forced into prostitution by the Japanese military during World War II and organized the Violence Against Women in War-Network Japan (VAWW-NET Japan) in 1998. Another significant issue taken up by the feminist movement in the 1980s was the enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law.

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The legislation was passed in 1985 and came into effect in 1986, and referred specifically to a prohibition on sexual discrimination in recruitment, hiring, promotion, training and retirement. The Labor Standards Law of 1947 already guaranteed that pregnant women had the right to maternity leave. Maternity leave covers a period of six weeks prior to the expected birth date to eight weeks after giving birth. During maternity leave, the employee salary will be covered by the social insurance up to a limit of around two-thirds of the base salary. Childcare leave took effect in 1992 and applied to both the mother and father. Either the mother or father may take up to one year of childcare leave. Payment of the employee’s salary during childcare leave is a matter for negotiation between employer and employee, or the subject of a union agreement. While maternity leave and childcare leave are applicable to full-time workers, it is very difficult for part-timers, including part-time university teachers, to be granted leave (Hikita, 2015). Although the Japanese feminists have achieved many things, unresolved issues remain in Japan. Japanese women’s status and situations notably reflect The Global Gender Gap Report 2016 (World Economic Forum, 2016). Japan ranks 111th out of 144 countries on the gender gap index scale. Although Japan ranks at the top in terms of women’s literacy rates and life expectancy, it ranks very low on other measures; 79th on women’s labor force participation, 113th on the rate of female senior officials and managers and 122nd on the number of women in parliament. In a word, traditional gender roles have been imbedded in Japanese society.

What Feminism Means to the Teachers What is feminism? Many feminists have been struggling to define it; however, Delmar (1994) provided a base-line definition of feminism that can be shared by feminists and non-feminists, as follows: Many would agree that at the very least a feminist is someone who holds that women suffer discrimination because of their sex, that they have specific needs which remain negated and unsatisfied, and that satisfaction of these needs would require a radical change (some would say a revolution even) in the social, economic and political order. (Delmar, 1994: 5) Similarly, a well-known Japanese feminist theorist, Yumiko Ehara (1990), emphasized the notion that women suffer discrimination and are treated unfairly because of their sex. She asserted that we must re-evaluate women’s history and status in the past, in the present we should focus on social conflicts and struggles that women suffer and for the future we must stress women’s liberation and better lives. Under these assumptions, both American and Japanese feminist theorists acknowledged that women suffer

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discrimination because of their sex and tried to achieve equal political, economic, cultural, educational, personal and social rights for women. They advocated or supported the rights and equality of women. Feminism has been presented with a framework containing two common ideas, gender discrimination and equality. I agree with ideas of feminism containing gender discrimination and equality; however, I also think that feminism should not be focused on gender equality in a narrow sense. It is important to interrogate gender in connection with race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, age, ability/disability, religion and other aspects. A lesbian feminist theorist, Adrienne Rich (1980), examined the political institution of compulsory heterosexuality and argued for sexuality as well as gender in feminism. A Black feminist theorist, bell hooks (1984), argued that to end sexist oppression feminism must necessarily concern race and class, as well as gender. She stressed that feminism should not benefit solely any specific group of women, or any particular race or class of women. In brief, feminism encompasses ideas seeking gender equality and justice to alter patriarchy and sexist oppression and, in a discursive sense, seeking social equality and justice by interrogating the relationships among gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, age, ability/disability, religion and other aspects (see Anzaldúa, 1987; hooks, 1984; Hotta, 1996; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983; Rich, 1980). I assume that my participants construct their feminist ideas from their personal experiences in specific sociocultural contexts. Many of both American and Japanese feminist theorists remarked that a notion of feminism often emerges from individual women’s experiences (for American feminists, see Anzaldúa, 1987; Belenky et al., 1986; Friedan, 1963; hooks, 1984; Rich, 1980; for Japanese feminists, see Inoue, 2011; Tanaka, 1992; Ueno, 2006). Through interviews with my participants, I attempted to find what feminism means to each of them. Although my participants experienced frustration and had difficulty defining feminism, there were two key themes that emerged repeatedly: (1) gender equality; and (2) gender, race, class, sexuality and other oppressions. I will discuss each in turn.

Gender equality For all of the teachers in this study, feminism meant gender equality and justice. The following stories from four of the participants provided clear examples of how they believed in gender equality and justice. As for the question of what feminism meant to him, Tom, who defined himself as a pro-feminist, had a clear idea about gender equality in feminism and stated in an open-ended survey the following: Feminism to me is both a belief system and a political movement. It means that women have the right to equality under the law and the right

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to equal opportunities in the workplace, in the family, and in society in general. It means that women have the right to full control over their bodies and their sexuality, and have the right to live in a society where they are safe and secure. (Open-ended survey, 8 April 2011) In an interview as well, he stressed gender equality and opportunity: There is a quote. I’m paraphrasing the quote but basically it says, ‘Feminism is the radical notion that women are people and basically the idea behind that is that women deserve equality, deserve equality of opportunity in all facets of life.’ That’s the essence of what it means. It just may be equality and opportunity, social justice. (Interview, 7 April 2012) For him, feminism is the belief and action to work for gender equality and justice. He even brought out the issue of personal control over the female body. For him, feminism meant not simply gender equality, but also sexual equality such as women’s control over their own body and their own sexuality. Linda also stressed equality between men and women. She stated in an open-ended survey that ‘It means hoping for, and/or promoting an ideology that recognizes equality between men and women’ (Open-ended survey, 6 February 2011). In an interview, she also said, ‘Definitely equality of sexes – that would be the core of it’ (Interview, 30 March 2012). She strongly opposed treating women unfairly, devaluing women’s jobs and limiting women’s possibilities. Like Linda, Kathy opposed treating women unfairly because of sex and restricting women’s possibilities. In her survey, she stated the following: Feminism is the worldview that women should not be denied their basic rights as members of society due to the fact that they are female. Women should be supported in developing their own concepts of what they as women are. Women need to develop within the cultural position they find themselves. As women develop their own opinions, views, and social rights, women will benefit by being allowed freedom from their traditional obligations. (Open-ended survey, 13 February 2011) Jennifer, an American woman, also mentioned that feminism meant gender equality and women’s rights issues. She put it this way: It [feminism] definitely means equality … and maybe why should we even have to mention equality? It’s a human rights issue. Of course, we should have equal rights. (Interview, 12 March 2012) Thus, this finding is consistent with the ideas explained by earlier feminist writers’ definitions of feminism (see Beasley, 1999; Delmar, 1994). They

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defined feminism as the idea that supports the rights and equality of women because women suffer discrimination due to their sex.

Gender, race, class, sexuality and other oppressions Whereas all of my participants affirmed that feminism meant gender equality, some of them extended the meaning of feminism. For instance, Kathy explained as follows: Well, to me, feminism originally had a narrow meaning because women were so oppressed; just because you are female, you cannot be denied certain rights. But this must be connected in the end. (…) Then, once we achieve those things to a certain extent, feminism will move because the energy is still there. The energy or a sense of something must be done in society. It can evolve and then it goes out into other areas. You can’t treat me badly because I’m a woman, and then it reverses back to Black, Muslim, Jewish, the handicapped, or the transgendered. (Interview, 1 April 2012) For her, feminism did not simply mean discussing gender equality and women’s rights issues, but considering equality of other oppressed groups such as ‘Black, Muslim, Jewish, the handicapped, or the transgendered’. She regarded feminism not only as gender equality, but also as something that integrated gender, race, class, sexuality and ability/disability. Similarly, Sarah defined feminism as ‘seeking equality among humans not only between men and women but between underrepresented, marginalized, oppressed (politically and otherwise) peoples and males in position of power in society’ (Open-ended survey, 5 February 2011). In an interview, she stressed that feminism was not just a male–female issue and added: I think feminism is kind of like wanting to care for everything. It includes the environment. It includes people, animals, and everything but with a kind of respect and desire to care for like mamoru, take care of or to protect. In that there’s this kind of idea of we’re all the same and we’re all part of one thing. (Interview, 26 March 2012) For her, feminism means not only seeking equality between women and men, but also considering and protecting under-represented, marginalized and oppressed people, and even animals and the environment. Mika also shared a similar idea about feminism with Sarah. Mika mentioned that feminism meant not simply the issues of women and men, but also support for the underprivileged and the marginalized. She put it this way: 男女だけではなく、すべての命とか弱い者とかをケアするというか。すべての 平等性を考えて、弱い者の立場にいつも立とうとする。そういうものがフェミ ニズムのバックボーンかなと思っているんですね。

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[Feminism means caring not only for women and men but also all kinds of lives and the weak. Feminism focuses on all kinds of equality and stands by the weak. That’s the backbone of feminism.] (Interview, 2 April 2012) Recalling one meeting, a bell hooks1 reading circle that impressed her very much, she continued to say, あういうの（ベティ・フリーダン）は好きじゃなかったんだよね。もともと恵ま れた人が勝手なことを言っているみたいなのがあって。ベル・フックスみたい に、やっぱり女性の中にだって階級格差があるし (自分も）本当に庶民の出 だからもともとそういうのがあったから。ベティ・フリーダンとかアメリカの女 性の自立の何とかああいうのを見ても、いまいちそんな共感できないという のがあったわけ。 [I didn’t like her (Betty Friedan). I thought that a privileged woman spoke out about what she wanted. As bell hooks says, there are differences among women. The idea of differences among women evokes my sympathy because I’m from a working-class family. When I learned about Betty Friedan2 and American women’s independence, I didn’t have empathy for them.] (Interview, 2 April 2012) She learned from the reading circle that there were different varieties of feminism and that several minority feminists, such as bell hooks, were not discussing simply gender equality, but also the connections between gender, race and class. Agreeing with hooks’s assertion that there were differences among women, her interests became centered on marginalized women in Japan and under-represented women in Asian countries. Similarly, Yu Ri focused on the connections between gender, race and class. In an interview, I asked her what feminism meant to her and she responded: ユリ:世界の中の差別構造、力関係の不平等の中にいろんな不平等があっ て、近代で言うところのクラスの問題とジェンダーの問題と… レイコ:人種だね。 Yu Ri: There are various types of inequality such as discrimination in the world and power imbalance. There are class issues, gender issues, … Reiko: And race issues. (Interview, 22 March 2012) She affirmed it and said that it was important to look at the social structure from the point of view of gender, race/ethnicity and class. She said that she learned this viewpoint from bell hooks and other Black feminist

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theorists. Thus, her ethnic background and Black feminist thoughts influenced her feminist ideas in which feminism means not only equality between men and women, but also social justice for underprivileged and under-represented women. Mika and Yu Ri were definitely influenced by hooks’s work. They believed that it was important to think of gender in relation to race, class, sexuality and other forms of oppression. Not only Mika’s and Yu Ri’s, but also Kathy’s and Sarah’s ideas of feminism are in line with the assertions of feminist theorists (e.g. Anzaldúa, 1987; hooks, 1984; Hotta, 1996; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983; Rich, 1980) and feminist ESL/EFL educators (e.g. Frye, 1999; Nelson, 2009; O’Mochain, 2006; Rivera, 1999; Summerhawk, 1998; Vandrick, 2009), that feminism must discuss gender in relation to race, class, sexuality and other forms of oppression and is a movement to end not simply sexism, but also racism, classism, homophobia and other destructive hatreds.

The Formation of Feminist Identity In the previous section, I illustrated what feminism meant to my participants. In this section, I demonstrate how my participants were aware of gender (in)equality and became feminists through their individual experiences and in their everyday practices. To better understand my participants’ feminist identities, I provide a brief overview of feminist identity theory. Identity is a problematic but significant issue for many contemporary feminist theorists (Alcoff, 2006; Delmar, 1994; see also Anzaldúa, 1987; Butler, 1990; Weedon, 1997). When the women’s movement flourished in the 1970s in the USA, a common identity for all women was assumed. The concept of identity rested on the idea that women share the same experiences, such as economic oppression, commercial exploitation, legal discrimination, the feeling of unfairness and inadequacy, and a sense of inequality (Delmar, 1994). A shared experience was put forward as the basis for social change and sisterly solidarity; however, identity based on a female nature and female essence was criticized by poststructural feminists, including women of color3 and postcolonial feminists. Poststructural feminist theorists argued that identities are not autonomous properties or discovered attributes, but constructed, maintained and negotiated primarily in the conditions under which people speak within institutional and community contexts (see Butler, 1990; Fraser & Nicholson, 1990; Haraway, 1994; Weedon, 1997; Zalewski, 2000). A distinguished poststructural feminist theorist, Chris Weedon (1997), focused on language in discourse in the examination of the relationship between the individual and the social worlds: Language is the place where actual and possible forms of social organization and their likely social and political consequences are defined and

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contested. Yet it is also the place where our sense of ourselves, our subjectivity, is constructed. (Weedon, 1997: 21) She replaced ‘identity’ with ‘subjectivity’ and described subjectivity as constructed, negotiated and contested through language interactions with individuals, groups and communities. I analyzed my participants’ interview data from poststructural feminist theory of identity. From the data, I categorized three significant themes of feminist identity formations. The first theme examines the influence of the participants’ sociocultural contexts. My participants’ personal experiences with gender inequality and unfairness in Japanese society play a significant role in how they raised their gender awareness and became feminists. The second theme concerns the impact of feminist discourses such as books, songs and other written artifacts. We shall see that this kind of interaction contributes to positive impressions of feminism. Such positive images of feminism are appropriated by the participants to create images of themselves as feminists. The third theme is interactions with feminists. Interactions with feminists in their personal lives, schools, women’s groups and feminist meetings influence my participants and provide them with a new perspective to look at the world. I must note that my participants construct their feminist identities based not only on a single event, but also on diverse and multiple events.

Sociocultural contexts One important theme that I identified through the participants’ accounts was that Japanese sociocultural contexts influenced the formation of feminist identities among Japanese-speaking participants in my study. As I described women’s sociocultural contexts in Japan in the beginning of this chapter, the tendency for women to become full-time housewives and depend on their husbands grew in the postwar period in Japanese society (Ezawa, 2011). My Japanese-speaking participants were born in the late 1950s and spent their childhood in the 1960s. Whether or not they were from a middle-class family, they were assumed to be influenced by gender role socialization that took place within the more informal setting of the family in the period. The stories told by three of the Japanese-speaking participants provided clear examples of how they formed their feminist identities through the influence of gender socialization within their family and Japanese sociocultural environments. In an interview, Akiko told me about inequality and unfairness in Japanese society, as follows: 制度的に、女だからとか男だからというので待遇が違うということはおかし いと思うし、日常的な雑用を女性だけがというのはおかしいと思うのね。

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[I think that it is not right to be treated differently by the system because you are a woman or a man. I think it is unfair that only women should do everyday household chores.] (Interview, 31 March 2012) She continued to talk about her childhood: それはすごい個人的なことで、私は数学とかが得意だったんだけど、かわい くないと言われたことかな。数学とか算数が速い女というのはかわいくない って。あと、勉強ができることに対して「女のくせに」みたいな。 [This is a personal story. I was good at math when I was a child. However, I was told that I was not desirable. That is, a girl who was good at math and arithmetic was undesirable. People view a smart girl as ‘unfeminine.’] (Interview, 31 March 2012) When she was a child, she was smart; however, her cleverness was not appreciated or praised; rather, she was treated coldly. She was too young to express unfairness in her words, but she questioned expected gender roles in Japanese society. Akiko also told me about her mother in an interview. Her mother wanted to work outside the home, but women of her mother’s generation were expected to marry, stay at home and raise children. Her mother followed the expected gender roles, an ideology of the ‘good wife and wise mother’, but she encouraged her three daughters, including Akiko, to have a job and be independent. While she was looking at her mother’s life, she kept questioning gender roles expected by Japanese society. Doubts about traditional gender roles developed as part of her childhood experience and family background. The more Akiko identified the unfairness of gender roles, the more she came to believe in gender equality and justice. Mika made a similar comment as Akiko. In an interview, when I asked her how she came to identify herself as a feminist, she first mentioned her family background (Interview, 3 September 2013). She was raised in a typical Japanese family that adhered to traditional gender roles. Although her mother had worked part-time since she was a child, her father’s was the primary salary and her mother’s salary was secondary. Her father promoted very typical gender roles and made genderbiased comments at home. 父親はとにかく「誰に食べさせてもらっているんだ」ということを口癖のよう に言う人だったので。それで反抗期になって父親が大嫌いになったりしたの で、早く独立したいと思った。それから母親は結構アルバイトっていうか、内 職とかね。…母親はちょっと働いているとはいえ、最終的には父親に従わざ るを得ないみたいなのは、やっぱり見ていてこういうふうにはなりたくないと いうのはすごく思いましたね。

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[My father often said, ‘Who feeds you? (It’s me.)’ When I was at the rebellious age, I hated my father and thought that I wanted to be independent. My mother did piecework at home as a part-time job. Even though my mother earned some money, she had to accept my father’s requests and proposals. When I was watching her, I thought that I didn’t want to be like my mother.] (Interview, 3 September 2012) In this situation, it was natural that she started to question her father’s gender bias and, furthermore, gender inequality in Japanese society. Even though she liked and respected her mother, she did not want to be like her mother. Akiko’s and Mika’s experiences of gender inequality and unfairness are in line with the argument of Delmar (1994) that women suffer discrimination because of their sex and have negated and unsatisfied experiences. These discriminatory and unfair experiences were put forward for gender equality and justice and helped promote their becoming feminists. In addition to gender, Yu Ri brought ethnicity and class into identity formation. She had questioned inequality and unfairness in Japanese society because of her ethnic background since she was young. She put it this way: この三つ（ジェンダー、クラス、人種）というのは10代のころから私の中に、言 葉としてはないよ、だけれども全部あったと思う。というのは、在日で民族差 別があったしね。あと、日本社会もそうだし、在日社会も性差別があったし ね。それとやっぱり貧乏だったから。なぜ貧乏なのかというのがわかっちゃ ったんだよね。何か知らないけど10代のころ。だって家族は一生懸命働いて いるわけじゃん。うちは別に暴力家族じゃなかったしね。どう考えたって、う ちが貧乏なのはうちの人たちが悪いんじゃなくて、何か世の中が変なんだっ てやっぱりわかってたんだと思う。言葉としてはわかってないよ。 [I had these three issues (gender, class, and race) inside me since I was a teenager. Although I didn’t have words to express them at that time, I sensed them. Because I was Japan-born Korean, I faced ethnic discrimination. In Korean residents’ society as well as Japanese society, there was sexism. Moreover, because my family was poor, I noticed classism. When I was in my teens, I realized why my family was poor even though my parents worked so hard. My father was not violent at all and rather worked very hard. I realized that the reason why my family was poor was not my family’s fault, but something wrong in Japanese society. At that time, I didn’t have words to express this.] (Interview, 22 March 2012) Inequality and unfairness toward Japan-born Koreans in Japanese society made her think of her own identity. In her autobiographical essay, she also expressed her own contested identity as follows:

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日本社会（マジョリティ）のなかの在日（マイノリティ）としての違和感、男性 優位社会における女性としての違和感、そして、 「一億総中流」社会のなかで 貧しい家庭に育ったものとしての違和感は、私の意識の中心にドンッと居座 って動こうとしなかった。 [Living as a Japan-born Korean (the minority) in Japan (the majority), as a woman in a male-dominant society, and as a member of a poor family in a society where middle-class families are in the majority, made me feel that I do not belong anywhere. The feeling lingered in my consciousness and could not be dislodged.] Living as a woman in a male-dominant society, a Japan-born Korean in Japanese society and an underprivileged class family member in a so-called all middle-class society made her think of the interconnected issues of gender, race/ethnicity and class, and differences among women in Japan. For her, it was important to think of gender in relation to ethnicity and class. Her formation of feminist identity development is in line with discussions of women of color theorists (e.g. Anzaldúa, 1987; Collins, 1990; Davis, 1983; hooks, 1984; Lorde, 1984; Moraga, 1983). As I explained in the previous section, Yu Ri was very much influenced by bell hooks’s and other Black feminists’ work. She asserted that speaking as if all women in Japan were Japanese made minority women like her feel invisible and ignored differences between women in Japan.

Feminist discourses As well as sociocultural contexts, feminist discourses contained in books, songs and other written artifacts had an impact on the participants in this study. Two American participants constructed their feminist identities in sociocultural interactions with feminist discourses in the USA and two Japanese participants developed their feminist consciousness through feminist discourses in Japan and the USA. In an open-ended survey, I asked Linda how she became a feminist. She mentioned the 1970s when she was growing up in the USA and expressed her suspicion that the 1970s had had an impact on her as follows: I think the Helen Reddy song ‘I am woman’ had a strong influence on women my age because it made everyone think that anything is possible. I’m of the first generation where it came to be taken for granted that women would work outside the home whether they were married or not. Also we were the first generation to believe that it would be possible to succeed in the world. (Open-ended survey, 6 February 2011) In another interview she pointed out, additionally, that the 1970s when she spent her teens in the USA influenced her view of life as a woman (Interview,

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30 March 2012). She was a child of older parents. Her mother was fairly old and had a traditional mindset, and convinced her to a certain extent that she should go to a university to find a good husband. However, she noticed that her generation was different from her mother’s generation and believed in a lot of possibilities in women’s lives (see Friedan, 1963). The social contexts in the 1970s in the USA right after the women’s movement, the civil rights movement and the students’ movement that occurred in the 1960s influenced her, as well as many other young American women (see Davis, 1999). In an interview, Linda also said that although she did not take women’s studies classes or learn about feminism in any official way, she developed a feminist consciousness by reading feminist books (Interview, 30 March 2012). One book she mentioned was The Women’s Room written by Marilyn French (1977). The novel moved her and made her realize how powerless women in previous generations had been. Thus, she developed her own feminist identity through songs that praised women, feminist books and novels, and the social environment in 1970s America. Similarly, Sarah responded that she was influenced by women’s books and music in the 1970s (Interview, 26 March 2012). One book she remembered most was When God Was a Woman written by Merlin Stone (1976). She said that although the book was related to anthropology, it made her think of the position of women in religion and history around the world (Interview, 26 March 2012). She also mentioned that women’s music in the late 1970s in the USA influenced her developing a feminist identity significantly. Because of the women’s movement in the 1960s, women’s music bloomed in the 1970s (see Lont, 1992). She really liked the songs sung by Cris Williamson and Holly Near who were American feminist singer-songwriters and pioneers as visible lesbian political activists in the 1970s, because their songs encouraged and praised women (see Lont, 1992). During her university life in the late 1970s, although she did not have a lot of interactions with feminists in terms of discussion, she went to various meetings and events, had a lot of liberal women friends and gay friends, and often visited a women’s bookstore. Through these interactions, she gradually developed a feminist consciousness. Akiko and Yu Ri had questioned gender inequality in Japanese society since they were children; however, they also developed feminist consciousness through feminist books and discourses. Akiko said that she learned about women’s unequal status and unfair treatment from novelists of the early 20th century such as D.H. Lawrence, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf in her undergraduate and graduate courses (Interview, 31 March 2013). She learned not only about women’s unfair status and situation, but also about humanism, equality and social justice from English and American literature. When I asked her about the influence of Japanese feminist writers and activists, she referred to Yoko Kirishima (Follow-up email communication, 14 July 2016). Yoko Kirishima was a journalist who traveled around the world and went to Vietnam during the war

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period in 1967. While she lived in the USA from 1968 to 1970, she published her first book, Nagisa and Mio and Kaji: Letters from a Vagabond Mother, in 1970 and returned to Japan. Since then, she has been in the media with her books and as a TV personality and lecturer. She was a single mother who raised three kids. Her books were about mothering, women’s lives and traveling, based on her life experiences. Akiko liked her books and learned about women’s independence from them. Yu Ri told me that her study in the USA was highly significant in the development of her feminist consciousness (Interview, 22 March 2012). She took some Black studies classes and some other sociology courses including gender issues, which opened her eyes. The more she studied about AfricanAmerican women’s lives in the USA, the more she felt attachment and empathy with them. Their life experiences as minority women in the USA overlapped with her life experiences as a Japan-born Korean woman in Japan. She said bell hooks was her role model and she read almost all of her books. Thus, feminist discourses expressed in songs, books and other written artifacts helped my participants develop their feminist consciousness. This finding can be explained by the argument of Weedon (1997) that subjectivity (Weedon replaced ‘identity’ with ‘subjectivity’) is constructed through discourses. For Linda, Sarah, Akiko and Yu Ri, feminist discourses including songs, books and other written artifacts had a great impact on their feminist awareness and consciousness.

Interactions with feminists The third theme that I identified in the data was the importance of participants’ interactions with feminists. Several of my participants mentioned that they met and were influenced by feminists in their personal lives, schools, women’s groups and feminist meetings. Feminist awareness and realization occurred as my participants participated in feminist communities and acquired new knowledge and perspectives about feminism (Fisher, 1981; Schniedewind, 1981; Shrewsbury, 1987; see also Weedon, 1997). Kathy positively defined herself as a feminist and openly presented herself as a lesbian. When I asked her how she realized that she was a feminist, she told me that a lot of women she met in Holland had a strong influence on her. Before then, she took it for granted that there were traditional gender roles and gender difference, because she was raised in a Catholic family. However, because of interactions with a lot of Dutch women who were educated, had professional jobs and discussed gender equality, she was influenced by them and learned about feminism from them. The encounter with Dutch women opened her eyes to feminism and led her to affirmatively identify herself as a feminist. Similarly, Tom said that his former colleague and close female friend who was a feminist influenced him very much (Interview, 7 April 2012). This colleague and friend was an EFL teacher in his previous university. He learned

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from her about feminism, feminist teaching and feminist philosophy on both a professional and a personal level. In Tom’s words, My main influence has been from a close friend and former colleague of mine who is a feminist. She challenged me to think differently about the world, about my teaching, and about my own personal choices in life. Human rights and freedom from oppression have been important to me from a young age, and I realized that the patriarchy and the oppression of women were at the core. It became not only an issue of human rights for me, but a matter of economics and security throughout the world, as well as important in how I lived my life. (Open-ended survey, 8 April 2011) Although he was already conscious about human rights and freedom from oppression, he did not have overt feminist awareness before he met his feminist colleague. He became aware of women’s oppression in a patriarchal society. He started to reflect on his own behavior as a man, not only in his teaching but also in his personal life. The feminist colleague had a great impact on him in his teaching and personal life. Jennifer, Mika and Yu Ri also developed their feminist identity through meeting feminist teachers and activists in women’s groups. Jennifer did not know what it was called until she was in her mid-30s, even though she believed in gender equality and was concerned about women’s rights issues. In the 1980s, when she spent her university life in the USA, the women’s movement had already declined. She hardly saw any instances of women’s protests or feminist meetings in the period of time she spent there as a student. However, several years after she came to Japan, Jennifer attended her friend’s workshop in Japan about Buddhism, spirituality and feminism. Because of the workshop, she realized that she had become a feminist and as a result of this experience she found the word to identify herself. Then, she attended a women’s retreat and listened to some presentations about feminism in Japan. While attending feminist workshops and retreats, she gradually developed her feminist consciousness and the sense of feminist community membership (see Fisher, 1981; Shrewsbury, 1987). Like Jennifer, Mika was not interested in feminism until she was in her late 30s. When she was in her late 30s, she attended women’s self-study groups and meetings to learn about Third World women’s issues inside and outside Japan. In these meetings, she met Japanese, American, Korean and Filipino feminist activists. She learned about women’s issues from these women’s groups and meetings; however, she noted that she was most influenced by the Asian Women’s Association (AWA) (Follow-up email communication, 12 July 2016). The association took up women’s issues including sex tourism and trafficking, women and development, migration, nationalism, war and militarization, and violence against women. Mika also attended the Violence Against Women in War Network Japan (VAWW-NET Japan) and

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the Women’s International War Crime Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery4 in 2000. This experience made her affirmatively identify as a feminist. Before then, Mika had negative images of feminists, for example, feminists were too assertive, selfish, angry and claimed only their own rights. The more she met Japanese, Asian and American feminists, the more positive images she had of feminists. She told me that her negative images of feminists were made by the mass media (Interview, 2 April 2012). Yu Ri also pointed out AWA. For her ethnic and gender identity, it seemed to be natural that she participated in the association. Even though she did not attend VAWW-NET Japan and the Tribunal, she said that feminists of AWA supported her when she had difficulties in her life (Follow-up interview, 28 July 2016). At that time, AWA women encouraged her to study in the USA. In retrospect, Yu Ri noted that she felt a sisterhood with them (see Fisher, 1981; Morgan, 1970). This finding is consistent with the arguments of poststructural feminist theorists that identities are constructed and reconstructed in the conditions under which people speak within institutional and community contexts (see Butler, 1990; Fraser & Nicholson, 1990; Haraway, 1994; Weedon, 1997; Zalewski, 2000). Kathy, Jennifer, Tom, Mika and Yu Ri constructed and developed their feminist identities through interactions and engagement with individuals, groups and communities.

Complexity of Feminist Teacher Identity So far, I have focused on how my participants defined feminism and constructed a feminist identity. This section examines complexity in developing feminist teacher identity. Poststructural feminist theory highlights not only the construction of identity through discourse, but also the multiple, contesting and changing quality of identity (Anzaldúa, 1987; Butler, 1990; Fraser & Nicholson, 1990; Haraway, 1994). Poststructural feminists, including women of color and postcolonial feminists, criticized identity based on a female nature and female essence that structural feminists highlighted. Women of color theorists argued for the intertwining of race, gender and class, and highlighted the differences between women (see Collins, 1990; Davis, 1983; hooks, 1984; Lorde, 1984; Moraga, 1983). A well-known woman of color theorist, Gloria Anzaldúa, developed further the notion of multiplicity and diversity of identities and proposed hybridity of identity. She described the concept of a hybrid identity by deconstructing binary opposites (Anzaldúa, 1987). In her book, Borderlands/ La Frontera (1987), Anzaldúa used ‘mestiza’ to describe the concept of hybridity, using evidence from her own Chicana upbringing. She defined ‘mestiza’ as ‘a product of the transfer of the cultural and spiritual values of one group to another’ (Anzaldúa, 1987: 78). She argued that developing ‘mestiza’

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consciousness and hybrid identity is essential to break down the subject– object duality, which develops ‘a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity’ (Anzaldúa, 1987: 79). For her, hybridity means crossing borders and mediating between races, cultures and linguistic communities. One often-cited poststructural feminist theorist, Judith Butler (1990), also refuted the idea of identity that exists a priori and stated that ‘there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its result’ (Butler, 1990: 25). She focused on a changing quality of identity through discourses, social interactions with others and social contexts including society, culture and situations that influence identity formation. In short, identity is not ‘being’ but ‘becoming’ and ‘doing’. Butler referred to this kind of identity as agency. It is important to note here that I do not mean to present my participants as homogenous feminist language teachers. Rather, I draw on diverse, multiple, hybrid and changing quality of feminist language teachers’ identities in Japan. I investigate the complex ways they position themselves within, and across, multiple categories such as race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation and profession. From my participants’ interview data, I found two themes: the multiplicity and contradictions of feminist teacher identity and the mutability of feminist teacher identity over time.

The multiplicity and contradictions of feminist teacher identities Feminist teachers construct their teacher identities, not only with a feminist identity, but also with other identities including social, cultural and political identities (cf. McNamara, 1997; Norton, 2000; Tajfel, 1974; Varghese et al., 2005). Several of my participants expressed not only a feminist identity, but also other identities as an important element of teacher identity. For instance, for Yu Ri, ethnic identity was as important as feminist identity. While she expressed how diverse identities coexisted, she chose to display specific identities in specific places for strategic reasons. Although many Japan-born Koreans use Japanese names in Japan, 5 she retained her Korean name. So, when she first entered the classroom every year, she mentioned her ethnic identity of a 2.5-generation Japan-born Korean, because she did not want to surprise her students. She explained as follows: 言わないとびっくりしちゃうから。 「安心してね。私の第一言語は日本語なの よ」ということを言わないと、 「この先生、日本語しゃべれるのかな」って心配 しちゃうから。 [If I didn’t, students would be surprised. If I didn’t say, ‘Feel relieved. My first language is Japanese,’ students would be worried if I can speak Japanese.] (Interview, 22 March 2012)

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While she indicated her community identity in her classroom, she said that she did not like discussing Japan-born Korean issues in a straightforward way in her English language classroom (Interview, 22 March 2012). She continued to say that if Japan-born Korean issues were relevant to the English lesson, she would be willing to talk about the issues. She actually included Japanborn Korean issues in her classroom when she taught about immigrants as one of the international topics; however, she expressed hesitation to use Japan-born Korean issues in a straightforward way, because of the difficulty and tensions that she as an insider (a Japan-born Korean) would be talking about the issues. While she bravely disclosed her ethnic identity in Japanese society, she seemed to shuttle between communities and indicated her community membership as the situation called for (see Anzaldúa, 1987). Such conflicts and negotiations affected classroom interactions, discourses and topic choices. She also showed the contradictions between being a feminist and being an EFL teacher. She told me that she felt difficulty ironing out differences between what school wanted her to teach and what she wanted to teach (Interview, 22 March 2012). When I asked her if there is any contradiction between being feminist and being an EFL teacher, she responded, あるある。当然ある。というのは、学校側の要求というのがあるじゃないです か。それと、実際に自分がやろうとしていることの齟齬をどうやってすり合わ せをしていくか。 [Yes, it’s a matter of course. It’s because there are school requests. How do I iron out differences between what universities want me to teach and what I actually want to teach?] (Interview, 22 March 2012) In an interview that I had with her, she said that she taught TOEIC® (Test of English for International Communication) preparation courses in two Japanese universities. She was required to use an assigned textbook in one of the universities. School expectations, a teaching course and an assigned textbook made her feel it was difficult to reflect her feminist identity in her teaching practice, even though she mentioned that there might be some ways to incorporate her feminist perspectives into her lessons. Jennifer expressed racial identity as one element of her teacher identities. She expressed a mixed, complicated feeling of being an American. She explained a contradiction between being an EFL teacher in Japan and being a promoter of Western hegemony and culture as an American, as follows: If I had to mention any contradiction at all, it would be in my concern of the imperialism of America and English and that I am a part of that machine. I have some guilt about that because on the one hand, I hate to see that America is taking over so many countries and culture, and we’re

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taken in with American culture and American fast-food and even languages are dying out. I’m a part of spreading that. To compensate for that, what I try to do is to spread awareness about tolerance and even awareness to remind people, to embrace their own culture and don’t just buy into it. I recognize that English is a useful international tool, but I wouldn’t want Western culture to dominate the world. (Interview, 12 March 2012) She felt a contradiction with regard to her teacher identity as an American EFL teacher in Japan. She asserted that she did not want to be a party to the promotion of Western hegemony or a tool of American culture. Her assertion reminds us of ‘white privilege’ discussed by McIntosh (1988), the paternalistic attitudes of Western intellectuals discussed by postcolonial feminist theorists (e.g. Mohanty, 2003; Ong, 1994; Spivak, 1995; Suleri, 1995; Trinh, 1989) and the colonial attitudes of ESL teachers discussed by Vandrick (1999, 2013). Although it is very difficult to avoid or counteract such attitudes because they are part of the culture, her dilemma might be shared by native English speaking ESL and EFL teachers who have worked in countries outside the USA, UK, Canada and Australia. For Kathy and Sarah, sexual identity seemed to be one important aspect of their teacher identities, as they were openly lesbians who had come out of the closet. Kathy made her lesbianism explicit inside and outside the classroom. She told me about one incident that happened two weeks before I interviewed her: In the discussion class, one of the students said to me, ‘How did you meet your partner?’ (…) I said, ‘I met my partner in a political environment.’ She said, ‘How did you meet your boyfriend?’ I looked at her and I said, ‘girlfriend?’ She was totally shocked. I mean absolutely stunned. (Interview, 27 October 2012) She expressed her lesbianism explicitly when she thought it was appropriate and useful to her students. Then, she explained that her partner had died some years before. In the next week, one student came up to her with a small flower arrangement and said, ‘This is for your dead partner. I hope she is in heaven.’ (Interview, 27 October 2012). For Kathy, this moment meant that her student accepted lesbianism and had learned tolerance. Sarah said that she did not express her lesbianism in the classroom (8 August 2014). It did not mean that she hid her sexual identity or denied it. She said that if students asked her, she would say, ‘Yes, I am gay’ (8 August 2014); however, if it were not related to class topics, she would not express her sexual identity to her students. Instead, according to the course that she taught, she consciously used her sexual identity as a teaching tool. For example, in the American culture course, she taught about LGBT culture and

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history and required students to watch the film The Times of Harvey Milk for homework. During class, she played his famous speech appealing to people to come out and why. Then, she told her students that she is a lesbian and emphasized that there were many more people who have not come out yet. She expressed her lesbianism in a well-planned lesson. The way she came out in her classroom was similar to how Yu Ri expressed her ethnic identity in her classroom. Political identity is another one of the important teacher identities. For Mika, her teacher identity cannot be expressed without political concerns. She is very active politically, including anti-nuclear power protests, the defense of Article 9 of the Constitution, garbage issues in her local area and support of organic foods. When she was a university student, she was involved in student protests and political actions. When she was a high school teacher, she joined the teachers’ union and fought for better working conditions and a paid menstrual leave.6 As the To-hoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011 in Japan had a great impact on her, she has been actively involved in anti-nuclear power protests, and she said that it also had an impact on her teaching practices and classroom discourses (Interview, 2 April 2012). These political concerns occasionally kept her from teaching about gender-related topics in her classroom (see in more detail in Chapter 5). Akiko expressed her professional identity as one important element of her teacher identity. She considered herself a scholar of English literature. She said that she did not have any contradiction between being a feminist and being an EFL teacher because she was able to incorporate gender issues into her classroom. However, she felt a contradiction between being an EFL teacher and being a scholar of English literature, which she explained as follows: 英文学を研究していることとの間のほうが乖離がある。文学的なものがこれ だけ嫌われている時代に、文学的な教材を使うことにすごい壁があって、全 く別人にならなくてはいけない。 [I have a gap between being an English language teacher and a scholar of English literature. In these days, as literature is not preferred (in university EFL classes), it is very difficult to use literary texts. I must be a totally different person.] (Interview, 31 March 2012) Since 2001, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) has promoted oral communication and shifted from Cultural English to Practical English in Japanese university English education (Kuno, 2007), and there has been the atmosphere where some EFL teachers might feel difficulty using English and American literary works in EFL classes as a general course requirement. She was conflicted in the choice of her teacher identity; between that of an English language teacher and that of a scholar of English literature.

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Thus, many of my participants constructed their teacher identity from multiple elements. Multiplicity and diversity of identities did not always bring harmony, but led to contradiction and struggle (see Anzaldúa, 1987; hooks, 1984). While some of them negotiated their multiple identities and used each of them as a teaching tool, a few of them had mixed or contradictory feelings about their teacher identities and separated their identities from teaching. Such multiple and contesting identities occasionally prevented my participants from practicing feminist teaching (I will discuss this issue in more detail in Chapter 5).

The mutability of feminist teacher identity over time For some of my participants, it took a long time to practice feminist teaching in their classes. My participants gradually developed agency as feminist EFL teachers over time. In an interview, Mika said that she was not confident in teaching about gender issues, even though she already taught about social issues in EFL university classes (2 April 2012). However, she noticed that it was important to incorporate gender issues as well as social issues into the EFL classroom through interactions with feminist EFL teachers and activists. That is, her awareness as a feminist language teacher was raised as she engaged in feminist communities and acquired feminist knowledge (see Fisher, 1981; Schniedewind, 1981; Shrewsbury, 1987; Weedon, 1997). Sarah and Jennifer were also worried about the inappropriateness of teaching about gender topics in EFL classes when they were novice teachers, even though they already had feminist awareness and identified themselves as feminists. Sarah said, ‘When I first started teaching social issues, I was really afraid of the reactions of the students, and I thought maybe they’re not going to like this because it’s not teaching the past tense’ (Interview, 26 March 2012). However, as she taught about gender issues and social issues, she found that students enjoyed learning about these issues. Moreover, she received positive comments about her teaching from students. Similarly, Jennifer wondered if using gender topics in her EFL university classroom was appropriate; however, like Sarah, even though Jennifer taught about gender topics, nothing adverse happened. On the contrary, students were openminded and appreciated new and challenging topics. These students’ positive comments encouraged her to teach about social, environmental and genderrelated issues. Kathy and Tom introduced feminist teaching when they started to teach EFL at the university level in Japan. Kathy did not reflect her feminist identity in her EFL teaching practices when she first became an EFL high school teacher in Japan. She thought that it was important to focus on teaching grammar and preparing high school students for university entrance examinations. However, when she became an EFL university teacher in Japan, she wondered if university students wanted to learn only grammar and

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linguistic information. Through self-reflection on being an EFL university teacher, she realized that Japanese university students wanted to practice English with meaningful content, instead of just learning grammar. For her, meaningful contents meant gender and other sociopolitical topics. As I shared my dilemma7 of having women’s studies as my specialty and English language teaching as my job with Kathy and asked if there was any contradiction between being a feminist and being an EFL teacher; she responded, ‘I have to learn how to marry my areas that I’m interested in with relevance to them (lessons)’ (Interview, 1 April 2012). She told me that there were several ways to incorporate her feminist perspectives into the lessons that she taught. She seemed to negotiate between being a feminist and being an EFL teacher, which might be explained by Anzaldúa’s (1987) argument that hybridity is constructed through a negotiation of difference and develops ‘a tolerance for contradictions’ (Anzaldúa, 1987: 79). Tom was also a very typical ESL teacher in the USA; however, he began to question what an English language teacher was and what teaching English meant when he started teaching in Japan. He questioned traditional skill-based language teaching and introduced content-based language teaching into his university EFL classes in Japan. As well as his friendship with feminist and critical pedagogical professionals, his critical self-reflection of being an EFL university teacher in Japan influenced his teaching beliefs and practices. Thus, several participants in my study changed their teacher identity from simply being an English language teacher to a feminist English language teacher over time through their teaching experiences, interactions with students, their encounters with feminist teachers and critical self-reflections of being EFL university teachers in Japan. They were not ‘being’ but ‘becoming’ and ‘doing’ feminist teachers (see Butler, 1990).

Summary As for the question of what feminism meant to each participant in this study, all of the participants believed that feminism meant equality between men and women. For them, it was important to support gender equality and justice. Several of them extended the meaning of feminism; for example, Kathy, Sarah, Mika and Yu Ri believed that feminism meant considering not only women, but also the oppressed including the unrepresented, the underprivileged and the marginalized. For them, feminism meant pursuing social equality and justice for women and other oppressed groups. Their assertion is consistent with the arguments of feminist theorists (e.g. Anzaldúa, 1987; hooks, 1984, 2000; Hotta, 1996; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983; Rich, 1980) and feminist ESL/EFL educators (e.g. Frye, 1999; Nelson, 2009; O’Mochain, 2006; Rivera, 1999; Vandrick, 2009).

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My participants’ stories illustrate how the teachers became feminists as well as what feminism meant to them. First, the process of becoming feminists was different among my participants. I found that Japanese sociocultural contexts, feminist discourses and social interactions with feminists influenced feminist identity formation of my participants. For example, gender discrimination in Japanese society made Japan-born-and-raised participants (Akiko, Mika and Yu Ri) aware of the importance of gender equality and helped them develop a feminist identity. Feminist discourses such as women’s books and music in the 1970s in the USA and novels and other written artifacts discussed in university classes led my participants (Linda, Sarah, Akiko and Yu Ri) to the formation of a feminist identity. Also, social interactions with feminist activists and feminist EFL teachers had an impact on the development of feminist identity among my participants (Kathy, Jennifer, Mika, Tom and Yu Ri). These findings provide support to the view of identity formation offered by poststructural feminist theorists. Feminist identity is formulated not only by individual experiences in a given time and place, but also in discourses and interactions in institutional and community contexts. As for complexities of feminist teacher identities, I found that multiple identities including not only feminist identity, but also ethnic, racial, sexual, political and professional identities influenced my participants in terms of choice of topics, interaction with students, classroom management, discourse and practices. Multiple identities also made my participants feel contradictions between being a feminist and being an EFL teacher (Yu Ri), between being an American and being an EFL teacher (Jennifer), between being a political activist and having a feminist side (Mika) and between being a scholar of English literature and being an EFL teacher (Akiko). This evidenced a contesting and complicated quality of feminist teacher identity. I also found that the development of feminist EFL teacher identities was not a straightforward process, but an evolving and complex one. Some of my participants (Jennifer, Kathy, Mika, Sarah and Tom) gradually integrated their feminist side into English language teaching. There were some similarities and differences among my participants on defining feminism and developing feminist identities and feminist EFL teacher identities. Such development of feminist teacher identities is assumed to influence their teaching beliefs and practices. I explain this in further detail in the next chapter.

Notes (1) bell hooks (autonym: Gloria Jean Watkins) is a well-known African-American author, feminist and activist. Her writing focuses on gender, race and class in education, art, history, sexuality, mass media and feminism. (2) Betty Freidan was an American feminist writer and activist. She was a leading figure in the women’s movement in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s and her 1963

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book, The Feminine Mystique, was well-known and explored the causes of the frustration and insecurity of white, middle-class, heterosexual women in the USA. Minority feminists started to use the term ‘women of color’ in the 1980s. This term includes Black, Latina and Asian feminists, and other marginalized women in the USA. Their formation resides in political commitment and an agenda agreed upon by all who are a part of it (see Davis, 1983; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983). The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery was organized by the Violence Against Women in War-Network Japan (VAWW-NET Japan). Its purpose was to make a judgment on Japanese military sexual slavery before and during the World War II. There was a policy of pressuring Koreans under Japanese rule (1910–1945) to adopt Japanese names. After 1945, it was voluntary whether the first generation of KoreanJapanese and their decscendants used Japanese names or Korean names. However, because of discrmination in Japan, many Korean-Japanese and their descendants often used two names: Japanese names for Japanese society and their orignial names for the Korean-Japanese community. Menstrual leave (seiri kyuka) is a type of leave where a woman may take paid or unpaid leave from employment if she is unable to go to work because of menstruation. In 1947, a law was brought into force by the Japanese Labor Standards that allowed menstruating women to take days off work. Let me contextualize this by sharing my experience when I was a novice EFL teacher in Japanese universities. When I started to teach EFL in Japanese universities after I returned from the USA to Japan with a master’s degree in women’s studies, I was required to use an assigned textbook and a unified syllabus. Although I was excited to teach EFL in Japanese universities, I soon faced the dilemma of having women’s studies as my specialty and English language teaching as my job.

4

Teaching According to Feminist Principles

Introduction In this chapter, I focus on how and what my participants teach in their EFL classes according to their feminist teaching beliefs. In order to explore this issue, I report the findings from the interview data, personal communication data, email communication data, classroom observation data, including a DVD, and the teaching journals of the eight feminist teachers in this study. I also used my interview fieldnotes to analyze the data. I first illustrate the practices of teaching about gender topics in a straightforward way. I explore what teaching beliefs the feminist teachers in this study hold and how they teach about gender-related topics according to their feminist beliefs. I focus on critical thinking, voice and empowerment as the key concepts of teaching beliefs that my participants stressed and examine how they taught according to each concept. I then discuss giving equal attention and treatment, teaching gender-neutral language, using group techniques for gender awareness, incorporating women’s stories into writing techniques, bringing in videos about girls and women, reclaiming local women’s issues and introducing gender-related events. Even though the feminist teachers did not teach about gender-related topics in a straightforward way, they used several minor feminist teaching approaches and techniques without spending a lot of time to raise gender awareness and promote gender equality. While some of their approaches and techniques were already presented by feminist pedagogy literature, others were new and creative feminist teaching practices.

Teaching about Gender-Related Topics Many studies on feminist pedagogy in the women’s studies field have illustrated that teachers’ feminist identities influence their teaching beliefs and practices (see Bloom, 1998; Cohee et al., 1998; Lather, 1991; Maher & 60

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Tetreault, 2001; Ropers-Huilman, 1998). In this study, I found that in many cases my participants also reflected their feminist identities in their teaching beliefs and practices. All of the feminist teachers in this study believed that it was important to teach about gender topics in EFL classes to help students be aware of gender inequality and injustice and promote social change to end sexism. In interviews, they said that they have taught about a variety of gender topics such as gender roles, divorce, marriage, balance between work and family, childrearing, separate surnames in marriage, gender roles, birth control, female genital mutilation (FGM), domestic violence, women and AIDS, women’s health, LGBT issues, abortion and contraception, the Grameen Bank and female positions in main religions. For example, Akiko, Jennifer, Kathy, Linda, Mika, Sarah and Yu Ri have taught about safe (i.e. non-controversial) issues such as equal wages for equal work, work and family, and gender roles. Akiko, Kathy, Mika and Sarah have taught about unsafe (i.e. controversial) issues such as birth control, FGM , domestic violence, women’s health, women and AIDS and LGBT issues in their EFL classrooms. As Vandrick (1995b) argued, it is important to teach about ‘difficult but important issues as violence against women, sexual harassment, the influence of religion on the roles of women, the role of business and the media in reinforcing negative stereotypes about women, and the current backlash against, or negative reaction to, the gains women have made in the past 15 years’ (Vandrick, 1995b: 4). Although addressing such ‘difficult but important’ women’s issues is challenging in an ESL/EFL class, my participants affirmed the importance of teaching about these controversial issues to help students promote gender equality and justice. However, when my participants taught about gender-related topics in EFL classes in Japanese universities, their feminist teaching practices were varied. Hereafter, in relation to their feminist teaching beliefs, I illustrate three focuses of feminist teaching highlighted by my participants who taught about gender-related topics; teaching for critical thinking, teaching for voice/voices and teaching for empowerment. Although there were some overlaps with focuses of feminist teaching among my participants, I would like to illustrate their teaching beliefs and classroom practices by describing these three focuses.

Teaching for critical thinking Feminist pedagogy was influenced by Freire’s critical pedagogy. Freire’s (1996) best-known book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was about a theory and practice of curriculum and instruction intended to engender radical social change for the oppressed. Through his experience of teaching poor, illiterate peasants in Brazil, he developed a critical and liberatory pedagogy of adult literacy. He criticized a ‘banking’ concept of education, in which learners were

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regarded as an empty vessel to be filled by the teacher and were expected to deposit information given in class. He regarded learners as ‘critical coinvestigators’ (Freire, 1996: 68) who can investigate their unfavorable situations and problems, seek solutions in the process of ‘conscientization’, and engage in social and political actions. Several feminist pedagogues have discussed the similarity between Freire’s critical pedagogy and feminist pedagogy (see Fisher, 1981; Shrewsbury, 1987; Weiler, 1991, 2001). They focused on critical thinking, consciousnessraising, the examination of oppression and social change as the similarities between Freire’s critical pedagogy and feminist pedagogy. Weiler (2001) explained them as follows: Like Freirean pedagogy, feminist pedagogy emphasizes the importance of consciousness raising, the existence of an oppressive social structure and the need to change it, and the possibility of social transformation. … Like Freirean pedagogy, feminist pedagogy assumes as fundamental the need to challenge dominant assumptions of knowing and knowledge and to value all students. (Weiler, 2001: 68) Consciousness-raising, challenge of an oppressive social structure and social change are key concepts in both Freire’s pedagogy and feminist pedagogy. Both pedagogies hold a belief to challenge the status quo, a commitment to social equality and justice for a better world and liberation from oppression. On the other hand, several scholars in feminist pedagogy have explored differences between Freire’s pedagogy and feminist pedagogy (Ellsworth, 1992; Luke, 1992; Orner, 1992; Weiler, 1991, 2001). Some feminist pedagogical theorists critiqued Freire and other critical pedagogy scholars for their lack of attention to gender issues (Ellsworth, 1992; Gore, 1990; Weiler, 1991, 2001). They also critiqued the teacher’s role and authority in Freire’s pedagogy. Weiler (1991) noted that Freire failed ‘to address the various forms of power held by teachers depending on their race, gender, and the historical and institutional settings in which they work’ (Weiler, 1991: 460). Freire was not particularly concerned with power imbalances between teachers and students and was overly optimistic about teachers’ willingness to share authority (Weiler, 1991). Thus, feminist pedagogical theorists were critical of a lack of attention to gender issues and a teachers’ role as an authority in Freire’s pedagogy. However, as I mentioned before, both feminist and critical pedagogical educators focused on critical thinking, consciousness-raising and social change. Both of them tried to connect critical thinking with personal experiences. To develop students’ critical thinking, feminist pedagogy begins with and values dialogue between teachers and students, as well as personal experiences of both teachers and students (Shrewsbury, 1987). The importance of dialogue with students originated from Freire’s (1996) ‘problem-posing

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education’. Freire defined problem-posing education as an inductive questioning process that a teacher begins by asking a series of questions and encourages students to generate questions from within students’ own lives and make their own conclusions through dialogues with the teacher. The following cases illustrate my participants’ beliefs and classroom practices that highlighted the development of critical thinking.

Sarah’s case In her teaching beliefs, Sarah highlighted developing students’ critical thinking skills and building a safe environment, as well as teaching about gender-related topics. In an interview, she explained, I want them to understand even just a little bit that there are other worlds outside and other worlds are these social issues that they are a part of even though they’ve never considered it before. … So, like raising awareness of what we have, being grateful for that, don’t take it for atarimae (granted). But then maybe making a step further, taking the step further and doing something about it. That’s called activism. (Interview, 26 March 2012) Sarah wanted her students to question ‘atarimae’ (the taken-for-granted matters) and commit to social actions if possible. Actually, she encouraged students to participate in extracurricular activities. She introduced AIDS day walks, women’s day on 8 March, nuclear protests and hunger fast strikes to her students. She also organized extracurricular activities by herself; for instance, she has organized concerts with her students for charity and collected pencils and notebooks to send to an orphanage in Guatemala. Sarah was also concerned about creating a safe environment. She thought that a safe environment in the classroom provides students with an opportunity to express their opinions about sensitive, difficult and controversial gender-related topics in lessons in a non-threatening way, which she explained as follows: I mean hopefully it’s a safer environment, which is another thing to create a classroom to talk about these issues [gender and other sociopolitical issues]. A lot of times, especially university students can’t talk about these things. How many times have I read on the questionnaires at the end of the semester? ‘Thank you. I never had a place to talk about these things.’ Even just creating that safe environment, I think it’s meaningful, right? (Interview, 26 March 2012) She believed that a safe environment would make students less tense and nervous when she introduced difficult and controversial gender topics in her classroom. Such safety seemed to help her students actively engage in

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classroom activities and develop critical thinking skills. For her, developing students’ critical thinking skills and creating a safe environment in the classroom are inseparable in the way she practices feminist teaching. These teaching beliefs are reflected in her classroom practices. Sarah invited me to her English conversation class, which was an elective course for students majoring in international cultural studies in her university (Classroom observation, 4 June 2012). There were 21 second-year students (four male, 17 female) in the classroom. The class met once a week for 90 minutes for 15 weeks during the first semester. In this course, Sarah used materials that she created and made her own syllabus. The lesson that I observed was about gender roles and images. In the first 10 minutes, Sarah gave a small quiz about a homework assignment that required students to watch one video clip, ‘Hanna Rosin: New data on rise of women’ on TED.com.1 Hanna Rosin argued that more women are enrolled in universities and colleges in the USA and gain power in the postindustrial economy. The video clip gave a hint of the day’s lesson. After the quiz, she started to talk about the story of ‘Momoko’ in English. As Momotaro2 was a famous Japanese children’s story, she changed the gender of the main character from a boy (Momotaro) to a girl (Momoko) and told the revised story to the students. Then, she asked students to retell the story in English in pairs. She drew attention to the pronouns he/she, his/her and him/her to her students. Students started to retell the story in English while switching the gender of the main character and spent about 10 minutes doing this activity in pairs. Then, she asked students in English how they felt about this activity and if they had had any difficulty in retelling the story because of the gender switch. As there was no response from students, she asked students to talk about this in English in pairs. She presented some students’ comments such as ‘It felt strange’ and ‘It was confusing’ and shared with her students how she felt when she retold the story herself. She then moved on to the main part of the lesson. She first showed a few minutes of a Photoshop video clip in which a woman had her make-up and her hair done and became the sexy icon of a poster. She explained the last phrase ‘No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted’ during the video by supplying easier English terms such as ‘no surprise’, ‘our idea’ and ‘is twisted’ to help students understand the meaning of the sentence. Then, she had students get together in five-person groups and complete activities from a discussion sheet for gender that she made (Appendix C). In the discussion sheet, each student chose one of the sub-topics that she provided such as (a) what are gender roles?, (b) gender and identity, (c) gender and economics, (d) trafficking, (e) Photoshop beauty and (f) gender roles in other cultures, and then each student thought of the point she or he wanted to make about the sub-topic. Each also had to think of two reasons why she or he chose the sub-topic. Then, she had students discuss this in English in groups. In this group work, students shared the subtopic that they chose, the point that they wanted to make and the reason why

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they chose the sub-topic. She gave students 25 minutes to complete this group work. During the group work, she joined some of the groups in turn and made a few comments to facilitate discussion. She stopped the group work and showed another short video clip about the image of beauty. Then, she gave a short lecture about sex, gender, sexuality and a variety of family styles in English by using a slide for 10 minutes. She explained the nuclear family, couples with no children, single-parent families, gay or lesbian families, children raised by grandparents and aunts/ uncles, biracial families, and single people with adopted children. After that, she had an open discussion with all of the students for the rest of the class time. Students voluntarily made a big circle for discussion and Sarah joined the circle. She encouraged students to make any kinds of comments about gender roles and the lesson that she had taught. There was quite a long silence until students voluntarily spoke up. To encourage students to express their opinions in classroom discussion in English, she stepped back and did not call on students. For the same reason she did not tell her personal opinions, either. Students gradually made comments about gender roles and expressed their childhood experiences in relation to gender roles. During class discussion, she sometimes made comments, asked questions and facilitated the discussion. In the last few minutes, she summarized the class. During class time, she did not use Japanese at all, even though she is highly competent in the Japanese language. She used only English in the classroom. In her classroom practice, she used a lot of pair and group work. After the classroom observation, she told me that she used to use a teacher’s lecture, but she realized that a teacher’s lecture did not promote student awareness about the issues, nor did it develop critical thinking among students (Personal communication, 4 June 2012). She found that discussion and group work helped students to raise their own awareness of the issues and to develop critical thinking through her teaching practices. For this, she carefully prepared a discussion sheet about the topic that she taught. I also asked her how she felt about the rather lengthy silence at the beginning of the class discussion after the classroom observation. She said that as students needed time to organize what they wanted to say and express their opinions in English, teachers needed patience (Personal communication, 4 June 2012). She continued to say that when students felt comfortable or safe to speak up, they started to express themselves in the classroom (Personal communication, 4 June 2012). To summarize her teaching beliefs and practices, Sarah believed that it is important to develop students’ critical thinking, as well as teaching about gender-related topics. In her classroom practice, she tried to raise students’ interests about gender issues and develop questions about gender roles and stereotypes, which can lead to the development of critical thinking among students. To develop students’ critical thinking, she prepared a discussion sheet and used interactions between a teacher and students, and among

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students. She promoted students’ engagement in classroom activities and self-expression. To have students actively engaged in classroom activities including group work and class discussion, she was concerned with creating a safe environment in the classroom.

Tom’s case Tom believed that teaching English was not just about teaching the language, but also involved teaching the use of critical thinking skills and analysis. In an interview he said: Well, of course, one of the objectives is to improve their proficiency in English, but I think another equally important objective is to have them improve their own critical thinking and critical analysis, so as to be able to argue a position in English and support it with their experiences or evidence or data or examples. I think that’s really an important objective. (Interview, 7 April 2012) For him, teaching English meant improving students’ critical thinking skills and analysis with language practice through the use of sociopolitical topics, including gender topics. To help students develop critical thinking and analysis, Tom stressed the importance of incorporating gender issues into sociopolitical topics. Instead of teaching about gender topics in a straightforward way, he preferred incorporating gender issues into the topics such as media, identity issues, ethics, language and communication. He explained: It’s not that we’re going to talk about gays and lesbians today, but we’re talking about ethics, and as it happens, we’re going to talk about and use an example. Although the man happens to be a gay, he is talking about his experiences and defending his right to be a gay. That’s one of the examples. It might be on language and communication. I’ll talk about the myth that women talk – about stereotypes of women talking more than men. The stereotypes exist, given that the research doesn’t support that and so forth. Again, it’s not like we’re going to talk about women in language specifics. It’s talking about different perspectives and different approaches to it. (Interview, 7 April 2012) For him, it was important to teach the issues from different perspectives and using different approaches. He believed that these perspectives and approaches developed students’ critical thinking skills and analysis. Tom provided me with the DVD that he recorded of his own classroom in December 2011. The lesson in the DVD was a required course called ‘General English 4’ where he taught 27 second-year students (21 male, six female) who majored in economics in his university. The class met once a week for 90

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minutes for 15 weeks during the second semester of 2011. He used the materials that he created (Appendix D) and made his own syllabus. In the lesson, he taught about identity issues and incorporated gender issues into the lesson. In the lesson, he started to review the previous lesson on identity issues in English and explained how people identified themselves. He reviewed the previous lesson concerning colonialism, media effects, the history of racism, internalized racism and the speeches of two Japan-born Korean female students in Japan (DVD, December 2011). He moved to the main lesson of the day. He first showed the video clip of plastic surgery in which one Asian woman had surgery to construct double eyelids and tried to look like a Western woman. He handed out his material and asked students, ‘Why did the woman want to have surgery of double eyelids?’ in accordance with his material. A few students answered, ‘She wanted to be like gaijin (a foreigner)’. He also asked students, ‘What do you think of when you hear this word gaijin (a foreigner)?’ (DVD, December 2011). He had students discuss their reactions in small groups in English. While students were discussing their views in English, he walked around the classroom and encouraged students to actively engage in discussion. Although he encouraged students to speak English in the classroom, he was not strict about students’ using Japanese in discussion. He himself used Japanese a little such as ‘Nandemoii (Anything is okay)’ to encourage students to speak up in English. I saw smiles on students’ faces when he used Japanese (DVD, December 2011). After group work, he opened the class discussion in English. Students voluntarily responded to his question of what they thought of gaijin (foreigners), ‘cool’, ‘White’, ‘tall’, ‘friendly’, ‘aggressive’, ‘small face’ and ‘long legs’ (DVD, December 2011). He wrote down the words on the blackboard and he commented that all of these images were somehow related to hakujin (Caucasians) (DVD, December 2011). He wanted students to become aware of their assumptions. Although gaijin means foreigners, students assumed that gaijin implied Caucasians. In the last activity, a discussion of ‘mixed identity’, he showed the video in which a woman whose mother was Australian and father was Japanese gave a speech in English about her identity and experience living in Japan. Before watching the video, students worked in groups to complete a vocabulary learning activity in relation to the video. One student from each group wrote their answer on the blackboard. After going over the vocabulary learning activities, the class reviewed the comprehension questions and prepared to watch the video. After students watched the woman’s speech in English, students responded to the comprehension questions in groups. Tom initiated and checked the answers with students. In closing, Tom asked them to write a short essay about identity issues that they learned from the lessons and explained the writing assignment. For Tom, it was important to incorporate gender issues into the lesson on identity, not to teach about gender issues in a straightforward way. In order

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to raise awareness and develop critical thinking, he brought identity politics into his lesson and approached gender issues from one aspect of identity issues. For critical thinking to occur, he showed a video clip about an Asian woman having surgery to construct double eyelids, asked students a sequence of questions about their image of gaijin (foreigners) and made students aware of their stereotypes about gaijin (foreigners). Like much feminist pedagogy literature noted (see Fisher, 1981; Shrewsbury, 1987; Weiler, 1991), Sarah’s and Tom’s cases are evidence that feminist educators focus on the development of critical thinking skills among students to raise consciousness and challenge the status quo. To do so, Sarah and Tom used dialogues with students by asking a series of questions in English – which Freire (1996) called problem-posing education – as well as pair and group work.

Teaching for voice/voices Attention to women’s voice, connected to personal experience, has been central to the teaching practices of feminist pedagogy (Belenky et al., 1986; Briskin & Coulter, 1992; Crabtree et al., 2009; Maher & Tetreault, 2001; Tisdell, 1998; Weiler, 1992). Voice refers to the awakening and ability of people to speak for themselves, to bring their own questions, and to express their own responses connected to their personal experience and abilities that have been ignored or neglected in mainstream society and history. Because women’s experience has often been ignored and neglected in the academic disciplines, feminist pedagogy values the individual voice as a way of knowing (Belenky et al., 1986). Recovering, naming, and theorizing voice has been central to developing new knowledge (Briskin & Coulter, 1992). Maher and Tetreault (2001) discussed voice as one of the focuses in feminist pedagogy. They studied feminist teachers and students who took women’s studies courses at university level in the USA in the 1990s and explored the meaning of voice in feminist classrooms through their work and lives in the academy. They considered voice as ‘an important feminist metaphor for women’s awakenings’ (Maher & Tetreault, 2001: 18). In their study, female students engaged with feminist issues and theory, and shaped conscious feminist voices for themselves through the course materials on women, the personalized and interactive discussions, and journal writing. Each female student first struggled with creating a consciously female self, broke through and found a personal voice to interpret feminist theory. Maher and Tetreault asserted that feminist classrooms provided female students with a chance to shape and express themselves. While voice in feminist pedagogy is usually related to self-expression and connected to personal experience (see Belenky et al., 1986; Briskin & Coulter, 1992; Crabtree et al., 2009; Maher & Tetreault, 2001; Weiler, 1992), hooks (1989) provided a different perspective about voice and body. hooks argued for the importance of students’ presence in the classroom as follows:

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On a basic level, students are often turned off by the fact that I take attendance, but because I see the classroom experience as constituting a unique learning experience, to miss class is to really lose a significant aspect of the process. (hooks, 1989: 53) She continued to illustrate her feminist teaching practices: This is a practice I think is important not because every student has something valuable to say (this is not always so), but often students who do have meaning comments to contribute are silent. In my classes, everyone’s voice is heard as students read paragraphs which may explore a particular issue. They do not have the opportunity to refuse to read paragraphs. When I hear their voices, I become more aware of information they may not know that I can provide. (hooks, 1989: 54) hooks highlighted students’ existence and voice. She argued that even reading paragraphs was meaningful for silent students. I illustrate Yuri’s cases that highlighted voice, which is similar to hooks’s (1989) perspective about voice.

Yu Ri’s case Yu Ri valued students’ voice/voices, critical thinking and a learning community, as well as the importance of teaching about gender-related topics. She particularly stressed students’ voice/voices because she learned that for women, gaining voice through studying feminism and helping in feminist workshops is empowering. This feminist perspective was applied to her beliefs of EFL teaching. She believed that it is important even for students to gain voice. For her, voice meant not only expressing their own opinions based on their personal experience, but also using voice/voices. She said that even in Japanese, students felt it was difficult to speak out in the classroom. She explained how she valued each student’s voice, as follows: さっき私、ボイスっていったよね。私がクラスの中で英語の、たとえば TOEIC®であっても、実践していることは口を開かせること。まず口を開か せるということ。音を出すということ。自分の身体性をもっているということ ね。だから、ボイスという意味では口を空けさせる。 [I mentioned voice a few minutes ago. In my English classes, even in the TOEIC® course, what I’m doing is to have students open their mouths. I do make them open their mouths. I make them speak. It’s related to the issue of the body. So, in terms of voice, I have students speak.] (Interview, 22 March 2012)

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She continued to say, 口を開けさせる。そこに存在するということ。そこにあなたがいるんだよとい うことを確認させるの。だって、お互いがそこにいるということを確認しない と何も起こらないじゃない。Learning takes place するためには、お互いがそ こにいないとだめなのよ。 [I do make them (students) speak. I wanted them to understand their presence in the classroom. If they didn’t acknowledge their presence each other, nothing would happen. To make learning take place, they should acknowledge that we all are in the classroom.] (Interview, 22 March 2012) She connected voices to bodies. She said that if students were sleeping in the classroom, it would be equal to students’ not being there (Interview, 22 March 2012). To make learning happen, she wanted her students to speak up (voice) in her classroom, even though it was students’ just reading aloud paragraphs. Yu Ri’s perspective about students’ presence and voice/voices is similar to hooks’s (1989) perspective about voice. For Yu Ri, reading paragraphs aloud in the class is still meaningful for Japanese students who are culturally quiet in the classroom. Although I illustrate her classroom practice later, her belief about voice was reflected in her classroom practice. Yu Ri also told me that she used a lot of group work and tried to build a learning community for students (Interview, 22 March 2012). In her description in an interview, she usually asked students to organize themselves into a group of five or six, give them some activities and encouraged them to work in a group together. She described her teaching practice where she was walking around in the classroom while having students do group work and often had interactions with each group. When I asked her how she learned this teaching way, she responded that she learned from her experience of helping at her Canadian feminist friend’s workshops as an interpreter (Interview, 22 March 2012). When her Canadian friend provided workshops about domestic violence in Canada and Japan, she always helped at her workshops as an interpreter. Through this experience, she learned the importance of group work and cooperative learning. She hoped that group work would help create a good learning community and also enhance solidarity among students, which would lead students to an excitement about learning with their classmates (Personal communication, 28 November 2012). Her beliefs were reflected in her practices in several ways. The class that Yu Ri invited me to visit was a TOEIC® preparation course that was required for second-year students who majored in business (Classroom observation, 29 November 2012). The class met once a week for 90 minutes for 28 weeks during the 2012 academic year. There were 32 students (24 male, eight female) in her class. In the course, she was required to use an assigned textbook and complete all units of the textbook; however, she

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had the freedom to make her own syllabus and was able to incorporate different things into this course. The lesson that I observed was the one just after a mid-term test. She had an agreement with her students that after a midterm test, she would teach something different from the TOEIC® lesson, because students were a little tired of TOEIC® exercises. So, she chose the topic of ‘marriage’ and brought it into the lesson that had no connection with the TOEIC® study. She thought that students were interested in marriage. In the lesson, Yu Ri started by asking students to work in groups to make sure they understood the contents of an approximately 750 word English essay about marriage that she modified from an NHK radio text. The essay had been distributed to students the previous week and students were expected to read, check vocabulary and comprehend the essay at home; however, her students did not seem to have done their homework. So, she assigned each group to each paragraph to check the vocabulary and its pronunciation in the essay and to translate the paragraph from English to Japanese through group work. During the group work, she allowed students to do this work in Japanese because of their low English proficiency. While students were doing this work, Yu Ri was walking around in the classroom to make sure that students were actively engaged in the lesson. She sometimes used English, but mainly used Japanese for instruction. Students gradually called on her to help them with pronunciation, the meanings of vocabulary, translation and their summary. She allocated 40 minutes for this group work. Then, she had each group come up to the front, read one paragraph aloud in English, and read the translation of the paragraph aloud in Japanese. She carefully asked each student in a group to do some part and speak (voice) in the classroom. After one group finished, she gave encouraging comments about their pronunciation and translations in Japanese and English. It took 20 minutes to finish the presentations. She then collected the translations of each paragraph from each group and said in Japanese that she would make copies and distribute them to students the following week. She started to ask students in Japanese what marriage was and what kind of image students had about marriage. Although she did not call on students, several students voluntarily responded to her questions. She then explained about many kinds of marriages such as domestic partnership in the USA, PACS3 in France, same-sex marriage around the world, shot-gun marriage and separate surnames in marriage. As the time had run out, she said that she would continue to talk about this the following week. She instructed the class in Japanese and used very little English because her students had low proficiency in English, as she commented. To sum up her teaching beliefs and practices, she valued students’ voices and a learning community, so she had her students to read aloud the paragraph in English and its translation in Japanese in front of the class, and used the grammar translation method through group work. She strongly believed that it was important for students to read aloud and listen to other

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classmates in the classroom. Her focus of voice in her teaching might be explained by hooks’s (1989) argument for voice and body. She hoped that even reading aloud paragraphs and translations in the class might eventually lead students to self-expression, connected to their personal experience as highlighted by many feminist pedagogues (see Belenky et al., 1986; Briskin & Coulter, 1992; Crabtree et al., 2009; Maher & Tetreault, 2001; Weiler, 1992). To help students speak up, she was still searching for more innovative and progressive methods to teach English, instead of grammar translation methods.

Teaching for empowerment Empowerment is a significant element of feminist pedagogy. Shrewsbury (1987: 8) defined empowerment as ‘energy, capacity and potential’ and emphasized it as power to enhance autonomy and mutuality. She asserted that through the engagement of empowerment, students ‘find their own voices and discover the power of authenticity’ (Shrewsbury, 1987: 9). She also regarded empowerment as a means of connecting with others and discovering ways to act on their feminist principles. Thus, empowerment enables students to find their own voices, discover autonomous subjectivities and engage with social actions. In feminist classrooms, feminist teachers might feel a responsibility to empower their students. To help students discover autonomous subjectivities, feminist teachers use ‘I-message’ communication, in which students express their own feelings by saying ‘I feel’, not generalizing to ‘we’ or ‘women’ (Schniedewind, 1981). Schniedewind (1981) explained an advantage of I-messages in the feminist classroom, by mentioning that ‘“I-messages” are easy to learn, can be shared among peers and between students and instructors, and are effective in producing an honest classroom atmosphere’ (Schniedewind, 1981: 25). I-messages help students identify and share feelings in a personal way with other classmates and teachers, which creates an honest and trusting relationship among students and between teacher and student. When feminist teachers build such a classroom environment, they seem to be concerned with care. Noddings (2003), an educational philosopher, asserted that it is important to teach students with care, respect, and trust, which she called ‘a feminine approach’, because an ethic of care was found more among females than among males (Noddings, 2003). She developed the idea of care as a feminine ethic and applied it to the practice of moral education. Although this approach might not be specifically found in the feminist classroom but also in any classroom, an idea of care affects classroom management. However, as I explained in a previous section (see Chapter 1, Poststructural Contributions to Feminist Pedagogy), poststructural feminist pedagogues

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criticized the view that feminist educators see themselves as agents of empowerment (Orner, 1992). While structural feminist pedagogues assumed that they were already emancipated and able to empower students, poststructural feminist pedagogues pointed out the dangers in conceptualizing teachers as empowering students (Orner, 1992). Poststructural feminist pedagogues try to deconstruct hierarchal relationships between teachers and students, and between empowerers and the empowered, through teaching practices including interactive strategies and classroom management (Gore, 1990). Jennifer’s and Kathy’s cases illustrate their teaching beliefs and classroom practices that stressed empowerment.

Jennifer’s case Jennifer highlighted empowerment in her teaching beliefs. She wanted to empower students by teaching about gender-related topics, as she explained: I’m happy to empower the students through teaching about gender issues and different things, whether or not they agree. Again, I’m not here to indoctrinate but just to empower them with knowledge. If they still choose to be a housewife and quit working when they are 30 and change their names, that’s fine. I’m not here to change their political views. I just feel like empowering them with knowledge and want them to know the issues and then they can choose their own opinions. (Interview, 12 March 2012) To empower students, Jennifer used gender-related topics in EFL classes and encouraged students to discover their own ideas and thoughts. Jennifer allowed me to look at her teaching journal and handouts that she used when she taught the Intensive English course in a women’s university where she worked as a part-time lecturer. The Intensive English course met five times a week for 90 minutes for three weeks in summer, 2012. She taught two Intensive English courses; one was for 13 advanced female students and another had 18 intermediate female students. The courses were elective and the students were first- and second-year students who majored in English. In the course, she had the freedom to use any sort of materials and write her own syllabus. Accordingly, she chose not to use a textbook and instead prepared materials from internet news reports, articles and some short readings from books. For this course, she focused on gender-related topics such as news reports about Japanese women’s Olympic soccer players upgraded to business class on flights, separate surnames and double surnames in marriage in Japan, and body images of women. In lessons in the first week, Jennifer used a news report written in English about Japanese women soccer players in the 2012 Olympics upgrading to business class on a flight. The news was that whereas men players flew business class to and from London, women players flew economy class.

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After the women’s team won the 2012 Olympics silver medal, Japanese mass media asked one male committee member of the Japan football association why the women players flew economy class. The committee member made a discriminatory comment that this was because men players were ‘professional’. The Japan football association was soon criticized by the media inside and outside Japan. The association finally decided the Japanese women players would be upgraded to business class on flights. The news was a hot topic in the summer of 2012 in Japan. Jennifer thought it would be a good topic for her students. She brought in the news report from a website. In the first lesson, to warm up, she had her students talk in groups in English about the 2012 Olympics and business class on flights. Then, she opened a class discussion in English. Her female students actively engaged in discussion and ended up talking about gender inequality in Japanese society in English. In the second and third lesson, following her handout, she had students do pair and group work to fill in a chart about gender inequality and how to remedy it, and filling in the blanks by listening to the news report. Every time the students finished an activity, she opened up the class to discussion to encourage students to express their opinions in English. In the classroom she put issues and concepts ‘out there in a non-preachy way’ (Interview, 16 September 2012) and casually engaged in dialogues with students by asking questions. In the fourth lesson, she played the English song ‘Sisters are doing it for themselves’ and went over the lyrics in detail. The students and she discussed their ideas about the meaning of the song and about gender equality/ inequality in Japan in English. In the second week, she brought in a two-page handout about surnames after marriage from the textbook Feminism in Easy English [Yasashii eigo de feminizumu] edited by Yoshihara (2002). She put students in groups and asked them to discuss the surname issues in English. She opened a class discussion, reviewed students’ opinions and wrote them on the board in English. She clarified that separate surnames in marriage were not allowed under the law in Japan. She also brought in a four-page English essay, ‘The “Double Surnames” Issue in Japan’ written by Keiko Watanabe (2006) and divided the essay into four parts. She put students into four groups and each group summarized the part assigned to their group. She had students do a jigsaw reading in English to better understand the content of the essay. Last, she held a class discussion with the students to give them a chance to express their opinions in English. In the third week, she brought in two English essays of ‘A beauty contest for men’ and ‘Whose body is this?’ from books. Through these essays, she tried to have students critically think about and analyze beauty images. According to her teaching journal, ‘A lot of what the students said pointed to a shift from Asian beauty to Westernized beauty’, which did not surprise her (Jennifer’s teaching journal, 16 September 2012). She listened to all of their ideas before mentioning her own. In the reading ‘Whose body is this?’

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that discussed weight/body images, students expressed their experiences in high school with diets, and various thoughts regarding the topic in English. At the end of the course, she gave a survey. The two questions were ‘What did you like about this course?’ and ‘What did you learn in this course?’ She received positive comments from the students about her lessons. For example, ‘I had never thought about this topic before the class, so it was interesting to know why the surname is important to us’; ‘I learned about gender issues and critical thinking about what is thought of as natural’; and ‘All articles were interesting. I could learn about feminism in this class. Moreover, I learned some words related to feminism and beauty’ (Jennifer’s teaching journal, 16 September 2012). Thus, her students seemed to enjoy learning about various gender topics. To clarify her classroom practice as described in her teaching journal, I asked her how she facilitated classroom discussion (Interview, 9 August 2013). To motivate students to express their own feelings, opinions and ideas in English, Jennifer said that she often used interactions between herself and her students and among students (Interview, 9 August 2013). During the interactions with students, she often used the questions such as ‘What do you think of it?’ and ‘How do you feel about it?’ (Interview, 9 August 2013), which leads students to respond to them with ‘I-messages’ (Schniedewind, 1981). Jennifer also used encouraging comments and compliments such as ‘Good’, ‘That’s an interesting idea’ and ‘I like your idea. Can you explain it?’ to revitalize classroom discussions (Interview, 9 August 2013). Even if she did not agree with the student, she used comments such as ‘Why do you think like that?’ and ‘That’s an interesting way to look at it but consider …’ (Interview, 9 August 2013). She posed questions and tried to encourage students to express their feelings, ideas and opinions in English. To summarize her teaching beliefs and practice, she valued teaching about gender-related topics in her EFL course. Through teaching about gender-related topics, she tried to help students be aware of gender equality and justice, develop critical thinking, discover their ideas and thoughts and express them in English, which she believed empowered students. For her, empowering students is strongly connected with teaching about genderrelated topics.

Kathy’s case Kathy emphasized empowerment as an important issue for her feminist teaching philosophy, as well as teaching about gender-related topics. As the following comment shows, she connected successful English acquisition and students’ confidence. In her words, At the end of year, the most important thing is that all the students feel better about themselves as human beings. They feel more confident and many students say, ‘I really feel much better and I don’t care about my

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mistakes any more blah, blah, blah, blah. I know I’ve done a good job.’ Then, they are able to think and they’ve been exposed to these issues. So, to me, education is a holistic issue. I went to school to learn how to think better and to have more confidence, not to be able to pass tests. This is the chance we have in these universities. (Interview, 1 April 2012) Such successful experiences in which students expressed their opinions in English made students feel better about themselves and developed their self-confidence. To have students express their opinions in English in a nonthreatening way, she said that she used a lot of pair work and group work (Interview, 1 April 2012). Kathy also tried to create ‘a friendly and fun atmosphere to which students want to come back next week’ to help students express themselves in English and for future lessons to discuss difficult and controversial gender topics (Interview, 16 March 2013). She explained how to build a friendly and fun atmosphere: The first three weeks of the semester are nothing about teaching. The first three weeks are mind changing. Students don’t know about this. … But my main focus of the first three weeks is to get used to the ideas, ‘we come to like English,’ ‘it’s fun,’ ‘it’s fascinating,’ ‘we can work together,’ ‘as soon as we come in the room, we are on it.’ (Interview, 16 March 2013) For her, the first three weeks of the semester were devoted to helping students change their attitudes. In the first three weeks, students talk about themselves, such as their family, hometown, hobbies, favorite foods and favorite seasons in pair and group work in order to get to know each other and become comfortable using English. She believed that a friendly atmosphere would make students less tense and nervous when she introduced difficult and controversial gender topics in future lessons. The class to which she invited me was a required English course for English major students in a private university (Classroom observation, 14 June 2012). There were 15 second-year students (three male, 12 female) in the class. The class met once a week for 90 minutes for 15 weeks during the first semester of 2012. In this course, Kathy used materials that she created and made her own syllabus. The lesson that I observed was about LGBT issues. In the first 10 minutes, Kathy talked about the topic of journal writing that all of the students in the course were required to write as homework in English. The journal topic of the week was ‘Best Friends’. To help students get ideas about the journal topic, she talked about her best girlfriend when she was a child. Then, she moved to the main teaching about LGBT issues. However, she did not mention the topic of the day’s lesson before she started to teach. She first distributed a handout of the poem ‘Stop all the clocks’ written by W.H. Auden to students, read the poem aloud herself and explained

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difficult vocabulary in the poem in English. She asked students, ‘Who wrote this poem to whom?’ and let students discuss the question in English in fourperson groups for 10 minutes. Then, she opened a class discussion in English and each group started to say, ‘A woman wrote it to her boyfriend’, ‘A mother wrote her son the poem’, ‘A wife to her husband’, ‘A girl to her pet’, and so on. She made some comments such as ‘It could be so’, ‘It’s an interesting idea’ and ‘That’s true’. Then, she showed a short film clip of Four Weddings and a Funeral in which a man read the poem at his male lover’s funeral. At this point, students found that the poem was written by a gay poet. She wrote three questions on the blackboard: (1) Do you have any lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender friends, family members or schoolmates? On TV? (2) If you have a friend who came out to you, what would you advise them to do?; in school, at work, with their families? (3) Why are people against gay marriage in Japan? She asked students to discuss these questions in groups in English and gave them 25 minutes. During the group work, she walked around the classroom, stopped by each group and promoted discussion by asking questions and commenting on students’ opinions. As she found that each group seemed to finish their discussion, she opened a class conversation in English and joined in. It took quite a long period for students to speak up in English; however, she did not call on students and waited until students started to speak up in English. When the students gradually spoke up, she nodded and listened to students’ talk. In the last few minutes, she told students a humorous story in English about her cousin who was gay. Students laughed at the story and seemed to be relaxed despite the serious subject. For Kathy, it was important to empower students. To empower students, she used LBGT issues and instructed the class through interactions among students and between herself and her students. In our personal communication after classroom observation, she said that she used a lot of group work and class discussion because she believed that students’ awareness about sociopolitical issues, including gender issues, was not stimulated by the teacher’s lecture but by interactions with other students (Personal communication, 14 June 2012). She also said that students might feel nervous about speaking up in class, but a small group discussion might reduce their stress (Personal communication, 14 June 2012). But at the same time, I saw her caring attitudes toward students in her classroom. She talked in a friendly manner to each group in the classroom and chatted with her students during the 10-minute break. She seemed to build a friendly and trusting relationship with her students, which Noddings (2003) called ‘a feminine approach’. Such interactive strategies might help students feel empowered and actively engage in learning. Jennifer’s and Kathy’s cases showed that feminist educators value the importance of empowerment in their teaching practices. Both Jennifer and Kathy tried to empower students by teaching about gender-related topics, helping students discover their own ideas and giving them self-confidence. When I observed Kathy’s classrooms, she continuously taught third and fourth

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periods to the same students in the same classroom, which meant a 180minute class. After my classroom observation, I had a chance to talk to a few students in her class. I asked them if such a rather lengthy class period made them feel tired. One male student said, ‘No. I enjoyed her class. I didn’t feel like it was long’ and others agreed with him. Empowering classrooms might give the power of authority to students and enable them to engage in significant learning, which does not leave students feeling bored and apathetic.

Giving Equal Attention and Treatment One important feminist principle I identified through interviewing was the value that my participants placed on equal treatment and attention to female students. In feminist teaching, the importance of equal attention and treatment has been discussed since the late 1980s (Jule, 2002; Spender, 1989). A well-known feminist scholar, Dale Spender (1989), claimed that in mixedsex classes in the UK, girls received a small part of the teacher’s attention. In the TESOL field, Jule (2002) reported that in her study in Canada, the girls contributed little to the classroom discussion and the classroom discussion was dominated by the boys in the class. Also, in Japan, feminist scholars reported that parents’ different expectations regarding the academic achievements of boys and girls, teachers’ different attitudes toward boys and girls and discriminatory practices in the daily conduct of classes and recreational activities in schools influenced girls’ futures (see Inoue, 2011; Inoue & Ehara, 2005; Kameda, 1995). Clearly, more Japanese women have entered universities over time; however, according to ‘White Paper on Gender Equality 2016 (Danjo kyodo sankaku hakusho heisei 28nendoban)’ by Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office, the percentage of female students who go to four-year universities was 47.4% in 2015, while the percentage of male students was 55.4%.4 In higher education, female students are found in departments of literature, education, nursing, nutritional science, and health and welfare, whereas more male students typically are found in the departments of sciences, technology, law, economics, finance and other social sciences (Inoue, 2009). The data show that there are still sexism and gender stereotypes in education in Japan. Under these circumstances in Japan, Tom provided a clear example of the importance of treating female students fairly and equally, as follows: I’ve become more aware of making sure, for instance, that I treat men and women equally both in terms of teaching time and in terms of treating them, because a lot of times if you look at the literature, women usually participate less in conversations or are given less time to think and so forth. Teachers often concentrate more on boys than girls or men than women. You have to, as a teacher, be very conscious of that and

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make sure that you are not falling into that pattern. It’s just conscious awareness of my teaching practices. (Interview, 7 April 2012) He believed that teachers should pay more attention to female students and give more linguistic space to them, because female students were typically paid less attention in the classroom. Kathy also drew attention to the classroom activities inclusive of women by giving special attention and treatment to female students. She said, I usually have a feminist perspective on everything, but even in class, even in small things in class. If they have to be in a group and they’re going to be writing, some of them have to take notes. This often happens in my classroom. I’ll say, ‘Girls are not allowed to take notes. Boys have to take notes.’ (Interview, 1 April 2012) She did not want both male and female students to take it for granted that boys initiate a discussion and girls take notes. She gave equal treatment and attention, and even special treatment to female students. Although her special treatment to female students might be seen as discrimination against male students, her humor and personality seemed to moderate male students’ feelings. Similarly, Yu Ri said that she consciously encouraged female students, though she tried to treat male and female students equally (Interview, 24 September 2012). For example, by sharing her working experience outside Japan, she told her students that there are a lot of opportunities to study and work outside Japan. She encouraged in particular female students to develop careers and be economically independent. She used this kind of talk when it was related to the lesson that she taught. When I asked her if this choice of how to treat her students came from her feminist perspective, she affirmatively said, ‘もちろんです [Of course]’ (Interview, 24 September 2012). Thus, Tom, Kathy and Yu Ri taught according to their feminist principle of equal, or even special attention toward and special treatment of, female students. Vandrick (1994, 1997b) asserted that feminist ESL educators should be aware not only of equal attention and treatment, but also of gender differences in learning styles. Vandrick (1997b) noted that girls and women were often silenced in the classroom because of their cultural norms. So, she advised ESL teachers to wait longer for girls’ responses or ask girls to participate in conversations. Equal treatment and attention, and even special treatment and attention to female students, must be considered in the feminist ESL/EFL classroom.

Teaching Gender-Neutral Language In practicing feminist teaching, Vandrick (1997b) suggested that ESL educators should avoid gender stereotyping, false generics such as ‘he’, and

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gendered job titles. Some students, for example, do not know that ‘policeman’ is a sexist word or how to avoid the generic use of male nouns and pronouns such as ‘Everyone brought his books to class’. Therefore, it is important to teach gender-neutral language and expressions. Also, educators should not tolerate stereotypes, or jokes with racist or sexist overtones in class. This perspective was shared by many of the feminist teachers in this study as well. Yu Ri mentioned that she opportunistically avoids false generics such as ‘he’ and female diminutives of job titles in her classes. She told me that even if she did not bring in gender topics in a straightforward way, she would teach English from her feminist perspective (Interview, 22 March 2012). She explained: 教材の中にいろんなものが出てくるわけ。その時は、私は全部話す。絶対や るのはミズ（Ms.）って出てくるでしょう。それから、 センテンスの中にいろん なものが出てくるでしょう。ちょこっとはアメリカ社会のことも知っているし、 外資のことも知っているし。材料はいくらでもあるから、こっちがそういう視 点をもっていればいくらでも拾える。 [Even in the (TOEIC®) textbook, various words and topics appear. I talk about many things in relation to the words and topics. ‘Ms.’ always appears in the textbook and I definitely talk about it. Some sentences include various issues. I know about American society and foreign affiliated companies. As there are some materials related to gender in the textbook, if we have such a perspective (feminist perspective), we can incorporate it into the lesson.] (Interview, 22 March 2013) She said that when there was ‘Ms’ in the textbook, she talked about how ‘Ms’ started to be used in English-speaking countries and referred to a history of the American women’s movement in relation to ‘Ms’. She also said that when she found false generics such as ‘he’ and job titles such as ‘policeman’ in texts, she pointed them out, explained them and taught genderneutral expressions (Interview, 22 March 2013). This kind of teaching was unrelated to the planned lesson and the course purpose. It occurred by chance. Yu Ri said that if teachers had feminist perspectives, they could suddenly do something to reflect their feminist perspectives in their classrooms (Interview, 22 March 2013). These are minor but important ways that the teachers incorporate their feminist perspectives into their lessons. Warren (1998: 49) noted that the ‘traditional malestream curriculum’ was built predominantly on male examples in so-called human activities. Over two decades ago Sunderland (1992) pointed out sexist expressions in grammars, dictionaries and course books, and noted that females were depicted as relatively rare, of lower status and occupation and stereotyped in gender roles in ESL textbooks. Since then, textbook writers and publishers have eagerly introduced gender-neutral language and expressions, and discourses that avoid gender stereotypes.

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Therefore, like Yu Ri, when feminist ESL/EFL teachers find gender-neutral language and politically correct terms, it is a good opportunity to point out intentionally how these language and terms started to be used in Englishspeaking countries. It might also further arouse students’ interest in the English language (see Beebe, 1996).

Using Group Techniques for Gender Awareness Much feminist pedagogy literature has stressed the process by which feminist educators teach, as well as the content of what educators teach (Crabtree et al., 2009; Schenke, 1996; Vandrick, 1994). To teach feminist ways of thinking and learning, Parry (1996) offered group techniques including think-pair-share, journal-based group discussions and group teaching. In a think-pair-share activity, teachers assign readings and ask openended or pros–cons questions about readings to the class. Students first think about an issue individually, discuss the issue in pairs and then have a discussion with the whole class. Parry (1996) asserted that this technique helps students both to gain an awareness of the importance of the issue and to develop critical thinking skills in relation to the topic. Parry (1996) also proposed journal-based group discussions and group teaching. In journal-based group discussions, student journal entries can be used to structure class discussion. For example, an instructor assigns journal entries including observations, questions and personal responses to the course readings in a special format. The instructor asks each student to read aloud her or his most pertinent observations, questions or personal responses to the reading and writes them on the chalkboard. The class then decides the order in which they want to discuss the issues raised and then have the class discussion. Parry noted that students seem motivated to keep up with course reading and participate in discussions. In group teaching, each group of four or five chooses a topic and gives the presentation. The group as a whole teaches its unit to the rest of the class. Group teaching helps students develop a sense of autonomy, self-confidence and cooperation (Parry, 1996). Of group techniques, Schniedewind (1987) also proposed role-playing for conflict resolution and jigsaw reading for cooperation. For instance, by asking students to play the roles in a pro and con debate, students start to resolve the conflict and look for new ways of perceiving the issue through several exchanges (Schniedewind, 1987). By assigning each group member one part of the course reading, jigsaw reading develops skills for cooperation (Schniedewind, 1987). I found from my participants’ accounts and my classroom observations that many of them (Jennifer, Kathy, Linda, Sarah, Tom, Mika and Yu Ri) used these group techniques according to their teaching beliefs and feminist principles. When I observed Kathy’s and Sarah’s classroom, they often used

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a think-pair-share activity. From Jennifer’s teaching journals, I found her using this activity as well. Kathy, Sarah and Jennifer used this technique to help students develop critical thinking skills as well as express their opinions with less tension than usual. They also believed that awareness was not stimulated by teachers’ lectures, but emerged from interactions among students. Linda, Mika and Yu Ri used pair and group work for cooperation. Kathy gave me an example of group teaching (Interview, 1 April 2012). Parry (1996) stated that group teaching means that students get into groups of four or five and each group is assigned or chooses the topic to focus on and discuss. Kathy explained that in her classes she put the countries such as Somalia, Sudan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Liberia, Rwanda, Mexico, etc. on the blackboard and also wrote the topics such as honor killing, Sharia law, child soldiers, gang killings, female genital mutilation, trafficking, etc. Each group of three or four students chose one country and one topic, did research and gave a presentation. She included gender-related issues in the topics. She told me that this group work gave students an increased sense of authority and confidence. Kathy also told me about an example of role-playing (Email communication, 5 November 2011). When Kathy taught about abortion, she first explained the history of abortion and Christian beliefs about life. She also explained the ideas of the pro-life and pro-choice groups. She showed the Cher section of the movie If These Walls Could Talk and let students discuss the movie. Then, she had students do role-plays based on women’s stories she made. For example, one of the stories was: You are a 20-year-old university student who loves studying and is having a great time away from home. You had a love affair and are horrified to find that you are now pregnant. What are you going to do? Get some advice. She wrote another eight different stories like this and asked students to organize themselves into groups of five to seven. In a group, one student talked about the assigned story that Kathy composed and each member of the group gave her or his advice. She told me that this group activity helped students participate with greater ease, even though the topic was very serious and controversial. Like much feminist pedagogy literature which stresses group techniques in feminist teaching (see Fisher, 1981; Parry, 1996; Schniedewind, 1981, 1987), the feminist teachers in this study stressed group techniques to promote students’ autonomy, self-confidence and cooperation, as well as the development of critical thinking skills. The teachers also believed that group work provides students with a non-threatening, less tense learning environment, which feminist pedagogues often call a ‘safe’ environment in the classroom (Belenky et al., 1986; Briskin & Coulter, 1992; Manicom, 1992). Group techniques and less tense learning environments are like two sides of the same coin.

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Incorporating Women’s Stories into Writing Techniques Writing techniques are one of the effective feminist teaching methods. Parry (1996) explained the feminist meanings of journal writing: Journals can be used to address central feminist issues – gender, for example– and can serve as important elements of feminist teaching. By providing a safe space for self-expression, journals can help engage students in the exploration of complex ideas, such as the relationships between gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Journals help empower students who are usually silent by allowing them to develop voice and mastery. (Parry, 1996: 47–48) Journal writing creates the opportunity for students to express their voice/ voices that feminist pedagogy highlights. It allows them to explore their autonomous subjectivities in relation to gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, language, physical ability, nationality and religion. Journal writing can also help students critically analyze the issues by connecting their own feelings and experiences to their studies and the broader political context. Of writing techniques, Parry (1996) also proposed ‘quick’ writing, imaginary letters and interviews. ‘Quick’ writing means that students write for five minutes about what they did in class and what they felt about the lesson. This student-produced information seems to be helpful to instructors as they counsel students. In addition, Parry (1996) mentioned imaginary letters and interviews as worthwhile feminist writing exercises. In imaginary letters, students are asked to write to children explaining a difficult gender issue, write in the voice of the person concerned or write something important that they themselves want their parents or friends to know. Interview writing is based on students’ interviewing their mothers about women’s issues and interviewing women who are involved in the women’s movement, female unions and women’s organizations. These efforts/assignments help students develop feminist consciousness, as well as voice. In particular, writing a letter in the voice of the person concerned and interviewing others can nurture mutual respect and empathy and give students an opportunity to engage in a feminist community. However, some researchers remind us that journal writing is used not only by feminist pedagogues, but also by L1 and L2 journal writing advocates. One well-known scholar of L2 journal writing, Christine Pearson Casanave (2011), has pointed out that although journal writing should not always be considered a ‘feminized’ style of writing or a gendered activity, the personal and emotional features of journal writing should be taken into account when teachers use journal writing. She described Gannett’s (1992,

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1995) studies in which female students were more engaged with journal writing than male students, and in contrast, Mlynarczyk’s (1998) study in which there was no difference between female and male students when engaging with journal writing. Casanave concluded that she, as an ESL/EFL educator, used journal writing because she wanted her ESL/EFL students, male and female, ‘to learn to think and write reflectively, to develop fluency and confidence in their L2, and to respond to readings’ (Casanave, 2011: 216). In journal entries, she wanted her students to connect personal, interpersonal and academic issues. Like many journal writing advocates, feminist pedagogical educators focus on the nature of journal writing in which students can express themselves openly and freely, empower themselves and connect their personal experiences and their study. However, what distinguishes journal writing advocates and feminist pedagogical educators is that feminist pedagogical educators use journal writing not only for self-expression, self-reflection and empowerment, but also for addressing ‘central feminist issues – gender’ (Parry, 1996: 47) and raising feminist consciousness for gender equality and justice. Among my participants, Kathy, Linda and Sarah used journal writing for students expressing themselves in English and to raise students’ awareness about gender-related issues. They used journal writing as an outside classroom activity; for example, Sarah and Linda asked students to watch the assigned English speeches at TED.com and short clips in the website, write journals in English and hand in the journals to teachers. The speeches and short clips included famous women’s speeches and women’s issues around the world. When I observed Kathy’s classroom, she asked students to write about best friends as the journal topic of the week (Classroom observation, 14 June 2012; see above for more detail in section ‘Teaching for empowerment’, subsection ‘Kathy’s case’). She shared her story of her girlfriend in her childhood in the classroom and encouraged students to express their personal experiences in English in journals. By incorporating women’s stories into journal writing, they provided students with an opportunity, not only to express their own opinions, but also to know women’s lives and personal experiences. Mika told me that she often used ‘quick’ writing – which she called ‘reflective writing’ – to find out what her students learned in her lesson and what they felt about it (Email communication, 30 September 2011). Her aims of reflective writing were not only to find what students learned in her lesson, but also to give students an opportunity to express their ideas and feelings. Although she acknowledged that doing reflective writing in English was ideal, she let her students write in Japanese because of the students’ low English proficiency. She thought that even if reflective writing was written in Japanese, it would be helpful for students to express ‘their feelings and write if they liked the topic or not and why’ (Email communication, 30 September 2011). She also told me that reflective writing helped her

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remember students’ names and made it easier to have a rapport with them (Interview, 3 September 2012). In an interview, Mika shared a happy teaching moment with me (Interview, 12 March 2013). In one class, she showed a documentary film of girl trafficking in the Philippines and had her students carry out reflective writing after the film. One male student wrote, ‘I might be called a hypocrite, but I want to work for the organization which helps these children in the future.’ Before Mika showed this film, she was worried about how students felt, because the film included violence and prostitution. However, she was happy to read his comment, because the lesson helped the student develop a sense of justice and might lead to his engagement with social change. Through all of the interviews with her, I noticed that students’ reflective writing helped Mika understand how students felt about her lessons and gave her a chance to reflect on her own teaching. In my teaching, I have used interview writing. I asked my students to conduct a short interview with their mother, grandmother, aunt, female teacher or female friend in Japanese and write a summary of the interview in English. I hoped that this writing would help students learn about women’s lived experiences. Interestingly, a few of the female students in the class, who were usually very quiet, commented that they enjoyed interview writing very much. I as a teacher realized that this writing might not only give an opportunity to learn about women’s lives, but also empower students who were usually silent by allowing them to develop voice and confidence. Thus, my participants’ practices about writing techniques, including mine, helped students not simply express their ideas and opinions in a non-threatening way and develop voice and self-confidence, but also learn about women’s lives by incorporating women’s stories into journal writing. Furthermore, I noticed that as Mika’s case showed, to have students write reflectively can help feminist teachers understand how students feel about learning about gender-related topics, give them a chance to reflect on their own feminist teaching and help them remodel the lessons for future writing practice.

Bringing in Videos about Girls and Women Vandrick (1995b) suggested that ESL teachers can use videos about girls and women. In her paper, she introduced videos about the women’s suffrage movement and the current women’s movement and Still Killing Us Softly (Lazarus, 1987) that illustrates images of women in advertisements. She then suggested that the teachers have students write essays, short response papers and journals about these videos. My participants also brought videos and films into the classroom. In Sarah’s classroom that I observed, she required students to watch one video clip ‘Hanna Rosin: New data on rise of women’ on TED.com as a homework

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assignment and gave a small quiz about the video clip in the first 10 minutes of the class (Classroom observation, 4 April 2012; see above for more detail in section ‘Teaching for critical thinking’, subsection ‘Sarah’s case’). In an interview, Mika gave me one example in which she brought in a film about women and girls into her classroom (Interview, 2 April 2012). When she taught about one textbook chapter concerned with fashion, she showed the documentary film China Blue (Peled, 2005), in which women laborers were exploited in clothing factories in China. She wanted her students to understand Chinese women workers’ harsh working conditions, low-wages and long working hours. Moreover, she wanted them to understand that people in developed countries, including Japanese people, took advantage of them. In an interview, Sarah also told me that when she taught about water issues, she brought in a video about women and girls who had to go for water and were unable to get an education (Interview, 26 March 2012). She incorporated the issues of women and education into the lesson of water issues. She tried to give her students information on how each of the social issues was related to women and gender. I also intentionally brought in a video about a girl in Nepal into the lessons about child labor. I spent four lessons (90 minutes per lesson) in the EFL university classroom in Japan teaching about child labor. I began with reading materials about child labor and then showed one story of the Japanese documentary TV program (20 minutes), If the world were a village of 100 people (Fuji TV, 2009). The story is about an 11-year-old girl, Snita, in Nepal, who was a debt slave and worked from morning to night in a tea plantation. Children working in the plantation, including Snita, were not allowed to go to school and were required to work at the plantation all their lives. In the last scene of the TV program, Snita said that she wanted to go to school and live with her family in a big house. After the TV program, we had a small group discussion. Then I had each student write an essay about child labor in English as a final product of the lesson. Yu Ri used a film in a more straightforward way. For this book, I had a personal communication with Yu Ri in 2015. Even though she was teaching the TOEIC® course, she had the freedom to make her own syllabus and was able to incorporate different things into her lessons. So, in her class in the second semester of 2014, she showed a 2011 American documentary film, Happy (Belic, 2011), with Japanese subtitles (Personal communication, 16 March 2015). The documentary film explored happiness through interviews with hundreds of people in 14 different countries. It included many social and women’s issues such as bullying, domestic violence, poverty and disability. After she showed the film, she had students divide into groups of five or six, critically analyze the themes of the movie and give group presentations in English, because the students who she taught in the semester were able to present it in English. She spent two 90-minute lessons on this topic. Thus, the feminist EFL educators brought videos and films about girls and women into their language classrooms. There are some ways to bring

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women’s issues into the lesson by using videos and films, even if feminist teachers do not teach about gender topics in a straightforward way.

Reclaiming Local Women’s Issues Canagarajah (1999) started his book with a very impressive story and made ESL/EFL teachers think about language teaching in complex social, political, cultural and local environments. He began with the fictional story of one English teacher, Mrs K. In a town involved in conflict between the government and rebel troops, Mrs K taught English in her classroom. She used an ESL textbook developed by the Anglo-American publisher that discussed how one British male student spent his university life including studying, relaxing with friends and going to parties. She continued to teach English while ignoring the sound of a small explosion and a scream from outside. This story raised a question not only about Mrs K’s teaching practice with the textbook printed by an Anglo-American publisher, but also about the social responsibility of ESL/EFL teachers. Historically, English language teachers have emphasized linguistic goals over sociopolitical concerns and aspects of middle-class Anglo culture (Benesch, 1998; Casanave, 2004; Vandrick, 1999). Focusing on the grammar, vocabulary and rhetorical forms in a language classroom and fitting students into academic settings have been given priority over sociopolitical concerns in ESL/EFL courses. However, critical educators argued that this approach to language education is a way of maintaining social control of subordinate groups by ignoring their language, culture and history (Freire, 1996; see also Benesch, 1996, 2001). Localizing TESOL has been focused on and discussed by several scholars (e.g. Canagarajah, 1999, 2002; Kumaravadivelu, 2006a, 2006b; Pennycook, 1989, 2010). Kumaravadivelu (2006a: 20) claimed that TESOL methods ‘demand a move beyond the centralized concept of method and towards the localized concept of postmethod’. He proposed a local-oriented postmethod that takes into consideration linguistic, social, cultural and political local contexts. Utakis and Pita (2005), who studied the Dominican community in New York as a case study, also asserted the importance of the curriculum integrating materials that are relevant to students’ lives from their home country, as well as the USA. Along with their assertion, I believe that it is important to help students construct local knowledge with language practices, because the classroom is not separated from historical and social conditions. Feminist EFL teachers must view English as a local practice. In the past 20 years, both ESL and EFL textbook writers and publishers have made efforts to include gender-related topics in textbooks, though the presentation of women’s issues in ESL texts seems to be limited to ‘safe’ issues, such as women’s wages and legal rights, and family and work balance. Although some Japanese EFL texts have addressed controversial issues such as sexual

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harassment, domestic violence, same-sex marriage and sex-education in school since the late 1990s,5 gender and sexuality issues in Japanese EFL texts are limited mainly to discussions of these topics as American social issues. This might convey the impression that such problems do not exist in Japan; however, from my experience of publishing EFL textbooks in Japan, some publishers did not like including controversial gender issues in Japanese contexts because of marketing concerns. Under these situations, what feminist EFL teachers can do is bring in local women’s issues into the lesson. My participants supported the concept of localized classroom practices. For instance, as I described Jennifer’s teaching practice in this chapter, she used the issue of separate surnames in marriage in Japan to raise a question about the Japanese marriage law, and the issue of Japanese women soccer players in the Olympics upgrading to business class on airline flights to raise questions about gender inequality (Teaching journal, 16 September 2012; see above for more detail in section ‘Teaching for empowerment’, subsection ‘Jennifer’s case’). In an interview, Linda said that she often brought in statistical data and informed students of Japanese women’s status when she thought that it was relevant to the lesson that she taught (Interview, 30 March 2012). When I observed Sarah’s lesson, she started the lesson with a famous old Japanese tale, ‘Momotaro’, and asked students to retell the story by switching the gender of the main character from a boy (Momotaro) to a girl (Momoko) (Classroom observation, 4 June 2012; see above for more detail in section ‘Teaching for critical thinking’, subsection ‘Sarah’s case’). When I have taught about gender and sociopolitical issues, I have often brought in local women’s issues and related resources, as well as information including a short Japanese newspaper article. In particular, when the reading texts were limited to discussions of gender issues as American social issues, I talked about local women’s issues in mainly English (I use Japanese depending on students’ English proficiency) and brought a short Japanese newspaper article into the classroom. I do this because the gender topics that students learned about in my classroom are not only someone’s or some other countries’ issues, but also Japan’s issues and our issues. Localized feminist pedagogy is important in Japan, because students learn that Japan is not exceptional when they learn about gender-related topics. Feminist TEFL educators thus have an obligation to be even more vigilant about trying to teach local issues than do feminist TESOL-ESL educators.

Introducing Gender-Related Events In order to connect theory to practice and sustain feminism, feminist educators encourage students who are enrolled in women’s studies courses to engage in feminist activities outside the classroom (Schniedewind, 1987).

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Like Dewey’s (1957) progressive educational theory, feminist educators try to connect classroom activities to students’ lives outside the classroom. For example, Schniedewind (1987) suggested that feminist educators encourage students to attend workshops, conferences and events supported by feminist organizations, whether or not they are held on campus. She also suggested that after studying male dominance and power relations between men and women, teachers should encourage students to work as volunteers and interns in a battered women’s shelter. Feminist activities have ranged from marching and petitioning to letter-writing (see Rose, 2009). Engaging in these activities can be a good opportunity for students to learn skills for building feminist networks and forming support systems (Rose, 2009; Schniedewind, 1987). It can also provide students the opportunity to develop feminist consciousness and engage in personal and social change, as well as feminist research and praxis (Rose, 2009; Webb et al., 2002; Weiler, 1992). Similarly, Vandrick (1995b) suggested that feminist ESL teachers can encourage students to attend gender-related events on and off campus such as conferences, lectures, films and women’s group meetings. She also suggested that teachers can tell students about women’s studies programs or classes on campus and about specific female professors who are experts in their fields. In an interview, Sarah stressed the importance of social actions as well as critical thinking skills. She emphasized committing to social action. She wanted students to understand that everybody can do something and contribute to society by mentioning, ‘Doing something, taking action, and trying to make a change or make a difference for somebody’ (Interview, 26 March 2012). She encouraged her students to participate in social action and did so many things with students; for example, she introduced AIDS Day walks, Women’s Day on 8 March, nuclear protests and hunger fast strikes to her students. She has occasionally participated in these actions with her students. She has also staged concerts with her students for charity and collected pencils and notebooks to send to an orphanage in Guatemala. Mika also valued social actions. She said that through teaching about gender issues and other sociopolitical topics, she introduced extracurricular activities such as nuclear protests, southeast Asian women’s meetings, organic farming activities and other volunteer activities to her students (Interview, 2 April 2012). Yu Ri also talked about her Non-Profit Organization (NPO) activity about women’s safety and health in her language classrooms and introduced its events to her students (Personal communication, 16 March 2015). I also encouraged my students to engage in extracurricular activities related to gender issues. For instance, I encouraged my students to join the Pink Ribbon Smile Walk6 in Tokyo and walked together with them because I wanted my students, in particular female students, to know about breast cancer. I also went to the Tokyo Rainbow Pride Parade and Festa7 with my students together, because I wanted them to understand LGBT issues.

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However, as several part-time university teachers (Jennifer, Kathy, Mika and Yu Ri) in my study mentioned, they did introduce gender-related events and films to students, but it was difficult for them to do social activities together with students because they came to school only one day per week. Part-time university teachers generally teach 10 to 15 classes per week and commute daily by train to different universities, with one to two hours spent in commuting in Japan. They work for a low-salary, can be subject to unfair dismissals and receive no bonuses, health insurance or pensions. There is a huge gap between tenured teachers and part-time teachers under labor conditions in Japanese universities. Under these labor conditions, my participants who were part-time university teachers felt it was difficult to engage in social activities with students, even though they believed that it is important to do so.

Summary As Vandrick (1994) noted, there are many major and minor ways of engaging in feminist teaching. In this chapter, I identified eight categories of feminist teaching that emerged from my participants’ accounts: teaching about gender-related topics, giving equal attention and treatment, teaching gender-neutral language and expressions, using group techniques for gender awareness, incorporating women’s stories into writing techniques, bringing in videos about girls and women, reclaiming local women’s issues and introducing gender-related events. All of the eight participants believed that teaching English meant more than teaching the language; therefore, it was important to teach meaningful content such as gender-related topics in the EFL classrooms and teach English according to feminist principles. They used feminist teaching because they wanted to raise awareness and consciousness about gender issues, develop students’ critical thinking skills, value students’ voice, empower students, build a sisterly solidarity, create a safe environment to have students express themselves and promote social action. To achieve their aims, the feminist educators focused not only on the content of what they teach, but also on the process by which they teach. They used group techniques, problem-posing teaching and writing techniques. They also connected the lesson that they taught to local knowledge and information; however, readers might wonder how feminist teaching is different from good language teaching. That is, these teaching techniques are shared not only by feminist educators, but also by good language teachers. Feminist teaching is one kind of radical teaching, including Dewey’s (1957) progressive teaching, Freire’s (1996) liberatory pedagogy and a humanistic approach. Therefore, feminist teachers and other radical teachers use similar teaching approaches and methods. What distinguishes feminist

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teaching from simply good language teaching is whether the teachers identify themselves as feminists and have feminist views.

Notes (1) See https://www.ted.com/talks/hanna_rosin_new_data_on_the_rise_of_women? language=ja (2) Momotaro is a popular hero of Japanese folklore and is often translated as Peach Boy. Momotaro was born from a giant peach that was found by an old woman. The woman and her husband raised Momotaro as a generous and brave boy. There were devils bothering the villagers and Momotaro decided to fight against the devils with a talking dog, monkey and pheasant. (3) In France, a PACS (Pacte Civil de Solidarité) is a form of civil union between two individuals, which is registered by the clerk of the court. Although originally introduced for same-sex couples in 1999, currently the majority of couples taking advantage of its law are heterosexual. (4) See http://www.gender.go.jp/about_danjo/whitepaper/h28/zentai/html/honpen/ b1_s06_01.html (5) For example, Issues: Pro and Cons (McLean, 1996) published by Asahi Press includes gay marriage, Both Sides Now (Nishimoto & Porter, 1999) published by Seibido includes sexual discrimination, sex education and same-sex marriage and Taking Action on Global Issues (Asakawa et al., 2002) published by Sanshusha includes violence against women. (6) The Pink Ribbon Smile Walk is an awareness raising activity to disseminate correct information on breast cancer screening and encourage early breast cancer screening. (7) The Tokyo Rainbow Pride and Festa is an annual event that celebrates sexual diversity and offers a place for LGBT and allies to get together. It aims to promote a society where LGBT and other sexual minorities can feel comfortable with who they are, live fulfilling lives, and free from discrimination and prejudice.

5

Incompatibility Between Feminist Identity and Classroom Practices

Introduction In the previous chapter, I focused on compatibility among feminist teacher identities, beliefs and practices. In this chapter, I explore the incompatibility among feminist teacher identities, beliefs and practices. The poststructuralist feminist view of identity theory has important implications for understanding the contradictions between feminist teacher identities, beliefs and practices. I found three cases in which the feminist teachers’ identities and beliefs were not reflected in their classroom practices. Mika’s case showed that her multiple teacher identities influenced her teaching practices in terms of choice of topics. That is, for her a feminist identity was not central to her teacher identity. Her political interests, including the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 (hereafter referred to as ‘the 3.11 earthquake’), anti-nuclear power and environmental issues, were of primary importance. She also showed disinterest in gender issues lately. Such a multiple, changing quality of a teacher identity led to the disengagement of feminist teaching practice. Akiko’s case demonstrated an accommodating aspect of the language teacher. By accommodating to the teaching context that required her to use an assigned textbook, she felt difficulty practicing feminist teaching. As for teaching styles, she adhered to a traditional grammar translation method with a teacher-centered approach and avoided group techniques and writing techniques. Her teaching style brought up the issue of whether a feminist style of teaching develops naturally or needs to be taught. Linda’s case showed complex relations between feminist teachers’ beliefs and students’ needs. Although she self-identified as a feminist and believed in the importance of teaching about gender-related 92

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topics, she prioritized students’ needs to develop high-level English skills and prepare for productive careers. Also, her teaching environment influenced her avoidance of gender-related topics. I report on gaps between feminist teaching beliefs and real practices, describing my participants’ stated beliefs and the classroom practices that I observed. I look at both personal factors and contextual factors that influenced the incompatibility among feminist teachers’ identities, beliefs and practices. Before I illustrate the incompatibility, I explain female teachers’ status in Japanese universities and EFL contexts in Japanese universities in the following two sections. This helps readers better understand my participants’ living and working situations in Japan and why the incompatibility occurs.

Female Teachers in Japanese Universities Whether the teachers are Japanese EFL teachers or foreign EFL teachers, the number of female full-time teachers in Japanese universities is much smaller than that of male full-time teachers. Although there are no data specifically about English language university teachers, there are data about the gender gap among university full-time tenured teachers1 and part-time teachers. According to ‘School Teachers’ Data (Gakko Kyoin Tokei)’ conducted by MEXT (2013), whereas the percentage of male full-time tenured university teachers was 77.9%, the percentage of female full-time tenured university teachers was 22.1%. Although there were no data about foreign full-time tenured university teachers, it was assumed that there was a very small percentage of foreign full-time tenured teachers in Japanese universities. The number of female foreign full-time tenured teachers in Japanese universities was also assumed to be very small. These data show that Japanese universities are male-dominant. A glass ceiling remains, blocking the careers of high achieving female academics in Japan. Although there are no data at the national level specifically about the gender ratio of part-time English language university teachers, Ori (2014) has reported that the rate of the EFL teachers among all part-time university teachers is high and that, compared to other subjects, the ratio of women in the part-time EFL teaching profession is high. According to the report of University Teacher Union (2007), the average of part-time teachers’ salary was 3,060,000 yen per year. They taught 9.2 classes per week in 3.1 different universities, which was more teaching classes than full-time tenured teachers did. Although part-time teachers have no administrative responsibilities at the universities, they do not have private offices, long-term job security, benefits or opportunities for promotion to a tenured position. From my experience as a part-time university teacher for 10 years, English language parttime university teachers usually teach 12 to 15 classes per week and go to four or five different universities because of a large job market; however, they barely manage to research and publish papers and books while teaching.

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EFL Contexts in Japanese Universities For many years, English at university level has been regarded as a subject to expand the minds of Japanese university students, which leads to personal growth (Eto, 2006; Hatta, 2003; Kuno, 2007). Therefore, no matter what their majors are, university students are required to study English as a liberal arts subject. In the name of expanding students’ minds, some university language educators have taught English by using texts of American and English literature, mainly through intensive reading, grammar translation methods and teacher-fronted approaches (Kuno, 2007). It is believed that reading literary texts deeply and understanding the background of the literary work enriches students’ minds. This kind of English is often called Cultural English (Kyoyo Eigo); however, the lack of English speaking and listening skills among Japanese university students has been an issue for a long time. Several educators have advocated the importance of Practical English ( Jitsuyo Eigo) in universities that have focused on communication with others in English. It has focused on listening and speaking ability since the 1970s. Although the debate over whether EFL university educators should teach Cultural English or Practical English was heated in the 1970s (Hiraizumi & Watanabe, 1975), it has remained unresolved. In the 1990s, the Ministry of Education (now MEXT) required high schools to introduce English oral communication classes (Kuno, 2007). With this as a start, several universities in Japan began offering courses focused on speaking and listening and started to hire more native English speaking teachers at the university level in the 1990s. In 2001, MEXT reported that university English education still remained heavily focused on reading and did not promote listening and speaking ability (Kuno, 2007). The 2001 report accelerated the shift from Cultural English to Practical English in Japanese university English education. Simultaneously, the TOEIC® boom started in the mid-1990s. Many companies started to insist that their employees take the TOEIC® test and required a certain minimum score in order to prepare for globalization in business. An increasing number of companies have recognized the need for prospective employees to have a high TOEIC® score as a means to evaluate how effectively they might be able to use English at work. As a result, many Japanese universities have introduced TOEIC® courses to improve students’ career opportunities after graduation. In 2013, the Japanese government launched an ambitious scheme to encourage more Japanese students to go abroad to study, while attracting international students to enroll in Japanese universities (Kameda, 2013). Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that the two major themes of the plan were to improve English-language proficiency among Japanese students and to increase the number of international students to 300,000 by 2020. He

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stated that Japan aims to double the number of Japanese students studying abroad by 2020 and called for practical English teaching in reforming the educational system. The campaign announced by the Japanese prime minister might accelerate a shift in emphasis to verbal communication skills, more practical English language education and test-oriented curricula targeted to TOEIC® and TOEFL® (Test of English as a Foreign Language). However, at this point, curricula in Japanese universities are still diverse and often depend on teachers. Although some universities have introduced a specific course purpose, a unified syllabus and an assigned textbook in EFL courses, other universities provide a very rough course purpose and give each EFL teacher the freedom to make her or his own syllabus, choose a textbook that the teacher likes and use any kinds of materials. In Japanese universities, administrators such as department heads, key faculty and presidents often make the curriculum reform and decide class settings, course contents and purposes. Whether a syllabus and a textbook are each teacher’s choice or a university requirement depends on key faculty’s decisions.

Mika’s Case Mika was actively involved in anti-nuclear power protests and social activities for underprivileged people in developing countries in Asia as her personal political interests. Although she defined herself as a feminist, her political identity often took priority over her feminist identity when she decided to choose topics and design a syllabus. For her, feminist identity was considered a part of her broader teacher identities and not always situated at first when she decided what and how she taught in her EFL classroom. This shows that teacher identities are diverse, multiple and complex (Varghese et al., 2005; see also Anzaldúa, 1987; hooks, 1984; Kitamura, 2009). In addition to this, she had a changing quality of teacher identity through the 3.11 earthquake. Such a diverse, multiple, complex and changing quality of teacher identity affects and shapes her teaching practices. In this section, I analyze complex relations among her feminist identities, beliefs and practices by describing her teaching beliefs and classroom practices.

Mika’s stated beliefs When I asked Mika about her teaching beliefs, she wanted her students to be independent learners, work with others cooperatively and develop critical thinking: 一つは自律した学び手になる。インディペンデント・ラーナーになれるよう に、大学まで来たら、自分で学びのやり方とか学ぶリソースをどうやって見つ

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ければいいかとか、そういうことをできるようになってもらいたいし、それか ら自分が何に興味をもって何を追求したいかというのも大学にいる間に学ん でほしい。もう一つは、他者と仲良く協力していける。それが大学では一番弱 いんですけどね。他人といろいろと共感し合う、そういうことができるように なってほしい。三番目は社会的なこと。クリティカルにいつでも自分の問題と して捉えて考えられる人になってほしい。その三つがあるかな。 [First, I want my students to be independent learners. To be independent learners, students need to know their own learning styles and how they find resources by themselves, and discover what they are interested in and what they want to pursue while they are in a university. Another is that I want students to work with others. I think it is very difficult to work with others in a university environment. But I want my students to feel empathy with others and work together. The third is that I want students to be interested in social issues. I want them to regard the issues as their own issues and think of them critically. That’s all.] (Interview, 2 April 2012) In addition to critical thinking, she wanted her students to commit to social action: レイコ：クリティカル・シンキングを持ってもらいたいということ？ ミカ：シンキングだけじゃなくて行動まで。アクションもできる人になってほ しい。 Reiko: Do you mean that you want students to have critical thinking? Mika: I mean not only critical thinking but also social action. I want students to take actions. (Interview, 2 April 2012) As she valued social action as well as critical thinking, she introduced extracurricular activities such as nuclear protests, southeast Asian women’s meetings, organic farming activities and other volunteer activities to her students. She was more likely to be described as a critical pedagogical educator.

Mika’s classroom practice Mika invited me to a class that was a required course ‘English 2’ for firstyear university students who majored in sociology (Classroom observation, 24 December 2012). There were 22 students (16 male, six female). The class met once a week for 90 minutes for 15 weeks per semester during the 2012 academic year. The course highlighted English writing. She taught this class in a computer room, so each student was able to access a computer. She was required to choose one out of five textbooks for this course that full-time English faculty members in the university had chosen. She had the freedom

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to make her own syllabus and incorporate different topics and practices into the course. She allowed me to observe her class, where she had brought in her own materials. Mika first started to explain about the final test and then explained what she was going to do in the day’s lesson; the topics were nuclear power energy and the trade game. In the previous class period, she had discussed nuclear power energy plants and the 3.11 earthquake in 2011 in Japan and had students write reflections in Japanese about nuclear energy and nuclear power plants. In the lesson that I observed, she reviewed students’ reflections about nuclear power energy written in Japanese on the computer screen. She commented on them in Japanese. Then, she listed four themes: ‘(1) merit and demerit; (2) how dangerous; (3) history; and (4) waste’ on the computer screen, called on several students to share their ideas in Japanese and translated students’ responses from Japanese to English. Then, she showed the video clip, ‘Uncle Genpachi and Tama’, with English subtitles, to raise awareness of the dangers of nuclear power plants. She spent 45 minutes of the lesson on nuclear power energy and nuclear plants. Then, she started another activity called ‘the world vision trading game’.2 She asked students to divide into five-person groups and each group represented an industrialized country, a newly industrialized country or a developing country. As in the previous activity, she used Japanese for instruction. She prepared bags for each of the six groups. Each bag contained things such as scissors, templates, sheets of paper, fake $100 bills and pencils. While groups of industrialized countries had two scissors, five templates (shapes) with different values, a sheet, six $100 bills and four pencils, groups of newly industrialized countries and developing countries had only sheets of papers and a few $100 bills. Mika explained the rules of the game and how to play the game in Japanese. She asked for two volunteers in each group to be a president who was supposed to be a leader of the group and an ambassador who negotiated with other groups in English. Others were making and cutting templates (shapes). Ambassadors negotiated with other groups and traded resources they had with other groups. Groups tried to manufacture as many shapes as they could with their resources. The more they made, the wealthier they would be. This game highlights unequal trading situations and lets the participants realize how trading benefits the powerful countries. Although she was supposed to have students write their feedback about the game in Japanese, Mika ran out of time and did not get the students’ reflections. Through teaching about the issue of nuclear power energy, she hoped that students would take part in social action to oppose nuclear power plants (Interview, 12 March 2013). In the lesson where they played the world vision trading game in groups, she wanted students to understand unequal situations in the world and question the power imbalance between industrialized countries and developing countries around the world (Interview, 12 March 2013). She highlighted a nuclear energy issue and inequality, which were

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issues for people as well as nations. She instructed the class in Japanese and used very little English.

Multiple and changing identities preventing feminist teaching Mika’s case showed that a teacher identity is situated in a variety of social sites in which different subject positions are taken. For Mika, the 3.11 earthquake in 2011 in Japan had a great impact on her life and teaching. Because of the impact of the 3.11 earthquake, she thought that teaching about the earthquake and nuclear power issues was more important than teaching about gender-related topics. While she repeatedly said that it was important to teach about gender-related topics in the English language classroom, she showed her disinterest in teaching about gender-related topics after the 3.11 earthquake. Instead, she enthusiastically explained how more important the 3.11 earthquake and nuclear power issues were and how she taught about these issues, as follows: ミカ：でも去年は特別だったわけですよ、3.11があって。だから、去年は原発 のこととか放射能のことをかなり教えたのね。それは自分でも学びながら。 レイコ：それはテキストにないんだよね。 ミカ：もちろんないです。クイズを作って、日本ではいくつぐらい原発があるか とか、四択とか五択のクイズを作るわけですよ。 レイコ：教材を作るのね、自分で。 ミカ：そう。それで、原発の依存が何パーセント、水力発電と何とか発電が何 パーセントってね。エネルギーに関するDVDを見せたり、石油がなくなって いくとかいう映像であったりとか。 （中略）あとは、原発漫画みたいなのもい っぱいできているから、そういうものもやったりとか。 Mika: Last year was special because the 3.11 earthquake occurred. So, I taught about nuclear power plants and radiation effects from nuclear tests while I was studying about them. Reiko: The issues were not included in your textbook, were they? Mika: Of course not. I made a quiz. For example, how many nuclear plants are there in Japan? I made multiple-choice tests. Reiko: You made teaching materials. Mika: Yes. I taught how many percent we depend on nuclear power, hydroelectric power, and other energy power. I also show a DVD about energy issues which includes the scene of the petroleum resources exhausted. …I also introduced manga about nuclear power issues. (Interview, 2 April 2012) Thus, Mika’s case showed incompatible and complex relationships between her feminist identity and classroom practices. Her case was evidence that a diverse and multiple quality of a person’s teacher identity affected

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teaching beliefs and practices. Also, it showed that teacher identity changed over time and places and so did teaching beliefs. Whether feminist EFL teachers are ‘doing’ feminist teaching depends on teachers’ identities, personal interests, social contexts and classroom situations. While the multiple and changing quality of a person’s identity in poststructural feminist theory was opening up possibilities for ‘becoming’ and ‘doing’ feminist teachers (see Chapter 4), it also let feminist teachers disengage from feminist teaching.

Teaching environments affecting feminist teaching Mika also mentioned that she gave consideration to the teaching environment, in particular the male–female ratio in the classroom when she made a decision as to whether she taught about gender-related topics. She was reluctant to teach about gender-related topics because there were few female students in her class, as she explained: ミカ：A大学であんまりやらないのは、女の子がほとんどいないからなんです よね。むしろ、やったほうがいいのかもしれないけれどね。 レイコ：やっぱり女子学生がいないというのは、少し考える？影響を与える？ ミカ：関心の持ち方が違うんだよね。女の子のほうがやっぱりちゃんと反応 してくれるし。 Mika: The reason why I don’t teach about gender-related topics in A University is that there are so few female students. Maybe, I should teach about them there. Reiko: If there are fewer female students in the classroom, does it influence your teaching about gender-related topics? Mika: Female students are more interested in gender-related topics than male students. Female students positively responded to these topics. (Interview, 2 April 2012) She felt that female students were interested in gender-related topics and had positive responses; therefore, for her, it would be easy to introduce genderrelated topics if there were many female students in the classroom. Benesch (2001) noted that she received positive feedback from female students and found greater participation by them when she taught about anorexia nervosa in her EPA class but she had resistance from three of her male students to studying anorexia. However, she insisted on the importance of teaching about feminist issues involving eating disorders, because studying anorexia allowed female students to critically consider their relationships to food, body image and surveillance, and provided opportunities to connect private concerns and academic study. Benesch’s finding, as well as Mika’s account, showed that female students seemed to be more

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interested in gender-related topics and had positive feelings toward learning about these topics. Classroom environments involving the male–female ratio in the classroom might affect the introduction of gender-related topics.

Akiko’s Case Even though Akiko defined herself as a feminist and believed that it was important to teach about gender-related topics, she did not practice feminist teaching. Rather, she negotiated in the teaching environment and measured up to the school’s expectations. She also maintained her teaching styles, such as a traditional grammar translation method, teacher-centered instruction and test-driven teaching. Even though much feminist pedagogy literature advocated writing and group techniques as feminist styles of teaching to raise students’ awareness and consciousness toward gender equality and social change (see Fisher, 1981; Parry, 1996; Schniedewind, 1987), she seemed to be uninterested in learning about a feminist style of teaching. Hereafter, I illustrate Akiko’s teaching beliefs and practice and then analyze what prevented her from practicing feminist teaching.

Akiko’s stated beliefs Akiko prioritized her professional identity as a scholar of English literature, while also identifying herself as a feminist. When I asked her about her teaching belief, she stressed the importance of questioning taken-for-granted matters. She said: 学生はどっぷりと因習というか従来の考えに囚われて当たり前だと思ってい るけど、その当たり前なのかなということを目覚めさせるきっかけとして、その ほうが本人のためになるし、ひいては社会のためになるので。 [Students are bound by convention and accept the status quo. Teaching is one opportunity to have students question taken-for-granted matters. This is good for students and society.] (Interview, 31 March 2012) For her, questioning the status quo and taken-for-granted matters was a key concept in her teaching belief. Her teaching belief with respect to critical thinking and analysis was applied to her feminist teaching beliefs. To develop students’ critical thinking, she focused on reading texts about gender and other social issues and provided students with the information about these issues. She strongly believed that reading meaningful texts such as gender issues, sociopolitical issues and literary texts helped students develop critical thinking skills. In particular, she said that by using the texts of American and English literature, she was able to talk about women’s status

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and situations in the 19th century and give information about how differently women were treated at that time, as compared with now (Interview, 31 March 2012). However, because she was required to use an assigned textbook in some universities where she worked, she was unable to use American and English literary texts, which made her very discontented.

Akiko’s classroom practice Akiko invited me the class ‘English 3: Reading’ that was the required course for second-year students who majored in business (Classroom observation, 7 May 2013). In the course, she was required to use an assigned textbook, Q Skills for Success: Reading & Writing 2 (McVeigh & Bixby, 2010), published by Oxford University Press. Although the topics and its situations in the textbook were suitable for ESL students in Western countries, some of them were also relevant to Japanese students or local situations. As for syllabus and grading, she had some flexibility. Although there was a minimum of chapters that all teachers had to complete per semester, there was no unified syllabus, test or assignment. She seemed to have some freedom except an assigned textbook when teaching her class. In the class, there were 33 students (19 male, 14 female). The class met once a week for 90 minutes for 30 weeks during the 2012 academic year (Classroom observation, 7 May 2013). She started the lesson with a 10-minute vocabulary test in connection with an essay in which she told students the meanings of 10 words in Japanese and had students write them in English. To correct the test, she wrote English words on the blackboard and had students check them by themselves. Then, she started to play a CD and had students listen to an approximately 800-word reading essay in the textbook. The essay was about how to prepare for job interviews and what to do in the interview; more concretely, the essay discussed the notion that when we have a job interview, we should learn about the company, come to the interview punctually, be polite and listen to the interviewers and so on. After the students had listened to the reading essay through a CD, she read aloud the first paragraph in English and had students repeat after her. Then she called on students to translate a few sentences from English to Japanese. If necessary, she assisted students in translating them into Japanese. While doing this, she explained grammatical structure and modeled the correct pronunciation. Then, she went to the next paragraph, utilizing the same teaching methods. In her classroom practice, she used a traditional grammar translation method and instructed in Japanese. She focused intensively on translation from English to Japanese. She did not digress from reading the essay. Although there were some gender-neutral expressions in the reading essay, she did not point them out or explain them. Also, there were some cultural differences between Japanese and Western perspectives toward job

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interviews in the essay. For example, the essay suggested that eye contact and smiling shows an interviewee’s easygoing and enthusiastic attitudes; however, in Japan interviewees should not keep eye contact with interviewers or smile at them. Akiko did not refer to these cultural differences in her class. In an email communication after classroom observation, I asked her why she focused on grammar-translation in the classroom. She explained as follows: 私が訳読をさせるのは、学生が英文をちゃんと理解していることを確認する 方法が日本語に訳させる以外にないからです。訳をさせれば、構文なり語彙 なりがわかっているかどうかすぐにわかります。日本語を使って思考している 以上、ある程度複雑なことを述べた文章を理屈だてて理解するには、日本 語を介するのが合理的だと思います。 [The reason I had students translate from English to Japanese is that translation is the only way to make sure if students really understand the English sentences. If we have students translate, we would know if students understood structures of sentences and vocabulary. I believe that the use of Japanese is logical in order to have students understand complicated sentences with sensible explanations because we are using Japanese to think.] (Email communication, 11 May 2013) She seemed to feel that it was more important to have students understand the structure of English in Japanese, than to discuss the content in English. To have students understand the structure of English, she believed that a grammar translation method was effective in teaching and learning English. While her belief about language acquisition through a grammar translation method matched her classroom practice, her teaching belief about gender awareness and critical thinking did not match the practice.

Institutional constraints preventing feminist teaching In an interview, Akiko expressed discontent about the assigned textbook. She felt difficulty incorporating her feminist and critical perspectives into the lesson because of the assigned textbook (Interview, 31 March 2012). She mentioned that several universities in Japan had started to require EFL parttime instructors to use an assigned textbook, follow a unified syllabus and evaluation procedure, and sometimes include a common term examination. Even though Akiko believed that it was important to teach about genderrelated topics and other sociopolitical topics in EFL classes, she accommodated to the contexts in the Japanese university where she worked. These institutional constraints prevented her from teaching about gender-related topics, which is what Gore (1993: 142) calls ‘institutionalized pedagogy as regulation’.

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The institutional constraints such an assigned textbook and syllabus also seemed to disempower Akiko as well. As Simon-Maeda (2002) pointed out, power does not operate solely in a macro, top-down fashion, but rather power circulates in a network of micro-power relations in society whose members are often complicit in their own disempowerment. That is, she seemed to give up seeking for a way to incorporate gender issues into her lessons and to fall into a vicious circle of her own disempowerment and her restricted teaching contexts. She accommodated unwanted contexts in her teaching lives in micro-power relations. In addition, the discrepancy in working conditions between full- and part-time university instructors might be a significant contributing factor to whether and how feminist teaching is enacted. As I noted before, part-time EFL instructors in Japan usually teach 12 to 15 classes per week, go to different universities every day and are not provided private offices. From my experience as a part-time university instructor, I barely managed to teach on a day-to-day basis. I was too tired to create new materials and think of innovative lesson plans. I accommodated to unwanted contexts out of a need to survive. Akiko referred to gaps between being a full-time teacher and being a part-time teacher in salary, social benefits and working conditions, and expressed unfairness, inequality and discontent. However, she said, ‘I have no choice [選択の余地はない]’ because she did not want to lose her job (Interview, 14 February 2013). Working conditions definitely affect the decision-making process of whether teachers create materials and lessons to teach about gender-related topics.

Learning experiences preventing feminist teaching Akiko’s teaching according to traditional practices also raises the issue of whether a feminist style of teaching develops naturally or needs to be taught overtly. When I observed her classroom, I was curious about Akiko’s teaching according to a traditional grammar translation method. The assigned textbook that she was required to use provided a lot of pair and group work for comprehension and some exercises for writing skills that were suited for each lesson. However, she did not implement pair and group work and writing exercises at all. I found the reason why she did not use pair and group work in her classrooms through interviewing her. Akiko told me that she did not know how she could facilitate pair and group work and class discussion, because she had not learned English that way (Interview, 14 February 2013). Also, for journal writing, she told me that she did not know how to teach journal writing: 書かせるのはいいかもしれないけれど、教える技術がない。どういうふうにや ればいいのかよくわからない。書かせた後もそうだし、書かせる前もいろい ろと準備しなければならないと思うのね。自分でもやってもらったことがない ので、どういうふうにやればいいのかわからない。

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[Although journal writing might be good, I don’t have the technique of teaching with journal writing. I think I must prepare for this before I ask students to write and do something and after students get done journal writing. As I haven’t been taught English by means of journal writing by my teachers, I don’t know how I should go about it.] (Interview, 14 September 2012) Her lack of learning experiences and knowledge about group techniques and journal writing crucially influenced her teaching. She also mentioned that teaching many courses in several universities as a part-timer prevented her from implementing journal writing, because she did not have time to read students’ journals and give comments on them (Interview, 14 September 2012). Her disinterest in developing teaching techniques might also come from her identity as a scholar of English literature. I found that Akiko was very similar to one participant in Nagatomo’s study (2012), Miwa, who identified herself as a feminist. Both of them considered themselves as a scholar of English literature and had a contested feeling between being a language teacher and being a literature specialist. For them, reading literary texts was of utmost importance to gain satisfaction in their teaching. In their EFL classrooms, they used a grammar translation method and a teacher-fronted teaching approach. While they highly evaluated their professional identity and had a passion for literature, they did not show their interests in how they taught English in their EFL classes. In fact, like them, there seem to be many Japanese EFL teachers in Japanese universities who specialize in English and American literature and teach English according to traditional teaching approaches. When looking at Akiko’s case in my study and Miwa’s case in Nagatomo’s study, a question arises as to whether their persistence in teaching English according to traditional teaching approaches might not change. Still, there does seem to be a place for overt instruction of feminist teaching styles. By citing Freeman’s (1992, 1993) longitudinal study about cognitive change during in-service training, Borg (2006) noted that the teachers’ cognitions and practices changed as a result of professional discussion about their practices during teacher education. Borg highlighted the ‘professional discourse of education’ (Borg, 2006: 96) in Freeman’s study, in which teachers reflected on their own learning and teaching, critically analyzed their own practices, and changed their cognitions and practices. In this sense, feminist EFL teachers like Akiko might be aware of a feminist style of teaching and have a chance to change their teaching beliefs and practices through ‘professional discourse in education’. A feminist style of teaching needs to be discussed and taught in teacher education or from study group discussions. Even for teachers who learn mainly through experience, such overt education brings principles and practices to conscious awareness, thus giving teachers more control over them. It will not develop naturally just because they hold feminist beliefs.

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Linda’s Case Although Linda affirmed that her feminist identity influenced her teaching belief, she was not certain her feminist identity was reflected in her teaching practice. She believed in gender equality. She noted that as women were oppressed in many areas and believed we must promote a gender-balanced society (Interview, 30 March 2012); however, she said that she rarely brought gender-related topics in her classes. She thought that her job was not only to raise students’ consciousness about gender, but also to develop her students’ linguistic skills and prepare them for the target situation (Email communication, 15 October 2013). This account might be explained by the argument of Santos (2001) that the responsibility of the English language teachers was to focus on preparing students for the target situation. Another reason why she did not focus on teaching about gender-related topics was related to the nature of her university. Her university was a women’s university and had an atmosphere where the female students were expected to be female leaders inside and outside Japan. The university provided many gender studies courses and required students to take these courses; however, Linda felt that her students seemed to get tired of gender studies because almost all of the classes at the university focused on gender (Email communication, 15 October 2013). She explained that if she were teaching in the previous university where gender issues were not focused at all, she would willingly bring gender-related topics in her classes. Teaching environments affect the decision-making process of whether teachers teach about gender-related topics. Hereafter, I describe complex relations among Linda’s feminist identities, beliefs and practices.

Linda’s stated beliefs When I asked her about her teaching beliefs, Linda highlighted teaching meaningful communication rather than focusing on teaching about gender issues. For her, meaningful communication meant communicating with others in English through learning rich contents. Through meaningful communication, she wanted students ‘to know how to express themselves well’ in English, ‘to believe that they can be bilingual’ and ‘to feel empowered’ (Interview, 18 February 2013). The reason why she focused on the development of high-level English communication skills was that she believed that it can provide a ticket for success for female students in Japan, which is what she called ‘linguistic empowerment’. The value of high-level English communication skills derives from the greater potential to access more prestigious education, desired positions in the workplace or higher positions on the social mobility ladder, which coincides with Bourdieu’s (1991) theory of language as symbolic capital (Pavlenko, 2001). For Japanese women, the

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acquisition of high-level English communication skills could be considered as a weapon to fight against a male-dominated society, which leads to empowerment and greater possibilities in their lives (McMahill, 1997, 2001). Linda explained the connection between the development of high-level English skills and empowerment as follows: For English to be empowering, the girls must be able to have sufficient ability that they can work freely in English and Japanese. If they develop high-level English skills, I assumed they are also developing high level thinking skills and knowledge about many issues (including their own academic areas) as well. (Email communication, 15 October 2013) Linda focused on developing high-level English communication skills among her female students, which she believed would lead female students to better jobs, and they would not become merely the subordinate staff of male workers.

Linda’s classroom practice In this sense, Linda’s teaching beliefs were reflected in her classroom practice. She let me observe her English writing class, English Academic Writing (Classroom observation, 4 December 2012). In the class, she used an academic writing textbook, Guidelines: A Cross-Cultural Reading/Writing Text (Spack, 2006), published by Cambridge University Press, which was a highlevel writing textbook. The course was elective and was offered to third-year university students. In the lesson, she started with a handout concerning an argumentative essay that she prepared. Following the handout, she took 20 minutes to explain the definition of an argumentative essay, organization, supporting ideas, refuting opposing arguments and language markers in English. Then, she had students open the writing textbook and look at the chapter about an argumentative essay, using two of the three sample essays in the textbook. She basically followed the textbook. She asked students to read essays in the textbook and to work in pairs to confirm what the essays were about. During the pair work, she walked around the classroom. Then, she asked a few questions about the essays and explained the characteristics of an argumentative essay in English. She also pointed out where the introduction of the topic sentences, arguments, personal examples and a closing paragraph were in the essay. During the class period, Linda used only English even though she was highly competent in Japanese. To summarize her classroom practice, she focused on the development of academic writing skills among students. She used pair work and interactions between her and students while teaching how to write an argumentative essay. As she mentioned in an interview (Interview, 31 March 2012), she wanted to help students develop high-level English communication skills,

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which empowered them and might bring them success in their careers. Instead of teaching about gender topics, she used a high-level English writing textbook and highlighted the acquisition of academic English writing skills, which she believed benefited female students’ careers and futures.

Focuses on students’ needs preventing feminist teaching Linda’s focus on the development of students’ English skills and students’ demands let her disengage with teaching about gender-related topics. Linda communicated with her students and found that students in her university got tired of learning about gender-related issues, because many courses in her university focused on gender. She mentioned that if she were teaching in a university that rarely provided gender studies courses, she would more willingly incorporate gender-related topics into her practices. Instead of teaching about gender-related topics that her students did not want, she highlighted the development of high-level English communication skills in her practice. Linda’s case reminds us of a debate between Benesch (1996, 2001) and Santos (2001). Benesch (1996), a well-known advocate of critical pedagogy, asserted the importance of teaching about social, political, global and gender issues in ESL/EFL classes to promote students’ critical thinking and social change in an ESL course. Other critical and feminist pedagogues and global educators (e.g. Cates, 2002, 2004; Peaty, 2004; Pennycook, 1997; Vandrick, 1995b) also supported Benesch’s assertion. However, some TESOL scholars and educators criticized it as indoctrination (see Allison, 1994; Reid, 1989; Santos, 1992, 2001; Smith, 1997). They believed that focusing on the grammar, vocabulary and rhetorical forms in a language classroom and fitting students into academic settings should be given priority over the use of sociopolitical issues in ESL/EFL courses (see Allison, 1994; Reid, 1989; Santos, 1992, 2001; Smith, 1997). Santos (1992, 2001) was a leading scholar of this school. Santos (2001) criticized Benesch’s (1996) article because Santos believed that ESL courses should ‘be primarily concerned with helping students achieve these goals [the norms and standards of academic writing]’ (Santos, 2001: 188) and the responsibility of ESL teachers was to ‘focus on preparing students as quickly and effectively as possible for their immediate, or imminent, academic needs’ (Santos, 2001: 188). Linda’s case might be explained by the argument of Santos (2001). Linda constructed and negotiated her classroom practice under the conditions that her students wanted and within institutional contexts. If students were tired of learning about gender-related issues, feminist teachers might offer the lessons that were irrelevant to gender issues. If students want and need English skills that focused on career preparation and ESL/EFL instructors offer the lessons to develop English skills, there will be no apparent conflict. Many feminist ESL/EFL researchers and educators have asserted the importance of teaching about gender issues in the language classes (see Beebe, 1996;

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Benesch, 1998, 2001; Frye, 1999; McMahill, 1997, 2001; Rivera, 1999; Saft & Ohara, 2004; Simon-Maeda, 2004b; Vandrick, 1995b, 1997b, 1998; Yoshihara, 2010, 2011). Although I agree with the assertion of many feminist educators, Linda’s case indicates that feminist educators do not assume that feminist teaching is always necessary for all the students. It could be undesirable with a certain group of students and in a certain teaching context.

Summary Feminist EFL teachers did not always prioritize their feminist identity or take up gender-related topics as priorities in their classroom practices. A poststructural feminist view of identity theory helps us understand how a multiple, complex and changing quality of teacher identity prevented feminist teachers from teaching about gender-related topics. Teacher identity is not composed of a unitary and solo element, but of multiple and diverse elements. Mika had a strong political identity as an anti-nuclear activist, which was given priority over her feminist identity. This situation led her to teach about anti-nuclear issues in her class and defer teaching about gender-related topics. Akiko’s case showed that institutional constraints, including an assigned textbook and her own disempowerment, led to feminist ESL/EFL teachers disengaging in teaching about gender-related topics. Her case also evidenced that a feminist style of teaching did not develop naturally and needed to be taught. Linda’s case showed that feminist ESL/EFL teachers construct and negotiate their classroom practices with their students within institutional contexts. Even if feminist ESL/EFL teachers hold a feminist identity, they might not enact feminist teaching. These cases show the complex and conflicting relations between feminist identity and classroom practices. For many, feminist identity is one element of their teacher identities. Because teacher identities are diverse, multiple and change over time, even feminist ESL/EFL teachers do not always prioritize feminist identity in their classroom practices. Because feminist ESL/EFL teachers’ teaching contexts and environments are varied and wide-ranging, feminist teaching might not be always possible, desirable or beneficial to all the students.

Notes (1) A full-time tenured position is comprised of a professor, an associate professor and an assistant professor. In Japan, tenure is lifetime employment and promotion to associate professor and professor occurs according to academic publications, teaching performance and contribution to university. (2) See https://www.oxfam.ca/sites/default/files/trade_game.htm.

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Introduction In this book I have explored feminist teaching in Japanese university EFL classes through the narratives of eight feminist teachers’ identities, beliefs and practices. In the concluding chapter, I first redefine feminist pedagogy in TESOL. Several TESOL researchers have discussed the multiplicity and diversity of feminist teaching (Vandrick, 1994; see also Casanave & Yamashiro, 1996; McMahill, 1997; Schenke, 1996). However, in this chapter I discuss the complexity of feminist pedagogy as well as its multiplicity and diversity by focusing on dichotomous issues of feminist pedagogy. Analysis of the deconstruction of dichotomies leads to the understanding of the complexity of feminist teaching. From the exploration of the eight feminist EFL teachers in this study, I found that they were situated in binary oppositions such as voice/silence, egalitarian/authoritarian, safety/unsafety, empowerer/ empowered and rationality/affectivity in their practices. This kind of teaching might be shared by other feminist ESL/EFL teachers around the world. Second, I define feminist pedagogy in TEFL in Japan. As one of the purposes of this book is to explore feminist EFL educators’ teaching practices in Japanese universities, it is important to define feminist pedagogy and to note concerns of feminist pedagogy in TEFL in Japan. I then discuss the implications and recommendations for ESL/EFL teachers, administrators, textbook writers and publishers as well as TESOL researchers who study feminist pedagogy. In particular, it is important to point out the implications of feminist teaching for ESL/EFL teachers, because the two major aims of this study are to share feminist teachers’ teaching practices and to encourage ESL/EFL teachers to practice feminist teaching in one form or another. I also note the achievements as well as the limitations of this study. Last, I write about my thoughts and feelings about the process of this study.

Redefining Feminist Pedagogy in TESOL A poststructural view that emphasizes deconstructing dichotomies helped me reconsider feminist pedagogy in TESOL. Over two decades ago, Vandrick 109

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(1994) attempted to define feminist pedagogy in ESL by focusing on the multiplicity and diversity of feminist teaching. In order to uncover the complexity of feminist teaching as well as the multiplicity and diversity, I have focused on feminist pedagogy by deconstructing binary oppositions. Feminist pedagogy in TESOL situates itself in binary oppositions such as voice/silence, egalitarian/authoritarian, safety/unsafety, empowerer/ empowered and rationality/affectivity. The feminist language teachers in my study often situated their teaching in conflicts. For example, while Kathy and Sarah encouraged their students to discover their own voices, they simultaneously accepted students’ silence as a process of learning. As I observed Sarah’s class, she did not call on students, but waited until students voluntarily spoke up. Kathy also used silence as a facilitating tool in the class that I observed. As Sarah said, as it takes time for L2 students to process and produce the language, ESL/EFL teachers need to be patient and wait for a while until students speak up. Her assertion is in line with Raimes’s (1985) and Sternglass’s (1997) assertions that non-native students need more time to talk, listen, read and write in order to organize the vocabulary they need. Furthermore, Sarah and Kathy seemed to give students control over classroom discourses by using silence. Their students seemed to take responsibility for their acts and control of classroom discourses, which can lead students to ‘the development of leadership’ (Shrewsbury, 1987: 13). Thus, feminist educators value the importance of students’ voice and silence as a process of learning. I also found my participants deconstructing the binary oppositions of an egalitarian figure and an authority figure as a teacher role. Several feminist pedagogical scholars advocated egalitarian practices, in which a teacher gives students more responsibility for teaching and students initiate in the classroom, by letting them choose what they will learn, how they will learn and how they will assess their own learning (see Parry, 1996; Shrewsbury, 1987; Webb et al., 2002). However, one TESOL feminist scholar, Stephanie Vandrick (1992), noted that although an egalitarian, student-centered classroom is desirable, an atmosphere of ‘we are-all-equal-learners-together’ usually does not work, especially with international students. By agreeing with her assertion, I propose that the teacher’s role be that of a guide. Some of my participants (Sarah, Kathy and Tom) entered classrooms viewing themselves as guides. They took charge of teaching methods that framed their classroom discourses. This practice differs from egalitarian practices and authoritarian teacher-centered approaches. As I observed Sarah’s class, I noticed that her class was teacher-directed in terms of the choice of topics, materials and classroom management, but Sarah maintained a wide opening for student input by using discussion questions and guides that she created, asking many questions, and using pair and group work. Importantly, she had a classroom discussion with students in a circle instead of a traditional teacher-fronted classroom setting. She acted as

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‘a guide rather than an authority figure’ (Frey, 1987, cited in Vandrick, 1998: 82). Kathy’s and Tom’s classes were teacher-directed in terms of the choice of topics, materials and classroom management as well. Even though these teachers did not mention Freire’s (1996) ‘problem-posing education’, they began by asking a series of inductive questions about texts, helped students uncover the issue or problem in the text, guided students toward group work and a class discussion in a circle, and coached students into suggesting solutions and consequences to the problem. While they were sensitive to their status, they were more sensitive and eager to facilitate students’ efforts to learn to think in different ways and educate students on issues of gender inequality and injustice in the world. Such teaching is explained by the argument of Tisdell (1998) that poststructural feminist educators maintain directive roles as challengers of unequal power relations and are proactive in teaching gender equality and justice, which blurs the dichotomy of egalitarian and authority. As for safety/unsafety, Kathy, Sarah and Yu Ri called for a safe learning environment. As feminist scholars noted, psychological safety in the classroom enabled students’ coming to voice and helped develop feminist critique and analysis (Belenky et al., 1986; Briskin & Coulter, 1992; Manicom, 1992). So, a safe environment in the classroom means something very special to feminist educators. Kathy, Sarah and Yu Ri stressed the importance of a safe environment to help students express themselves; however, they also did not reject a tense learning situation caused by introducing controversial sociopolitical issues to develop critical thinking and analysis. This assertion is in line with hooks’s (1989) and Kishimoto and Mwangi’s (2009) assertions that students are aware of the issue of sexism and racism in an atmosphere where differences, difficulty, conflict and contradictions are confronted. They noted that feminist learning might occur in ‘a rigorous, critical discussion’ (hooks, 1989: 53) and even in ‘threatening situations’ and ‘nervous conditions’ (Kishimoto & Mwangi, 2009: 89) by confronting differences among students. A poststructural feminist view of deconstructing binary oppositions helps us understand that feminist teaching situates itself best between safe and unsafe learning environments. Although Jennifer, Kathy and Linda often felt a responsibility to empower their students and see themselves as agents of empowerment, they also seemed to be empowered by their students. Orner (1992) described the dangers that she perceived in conceptualizing teachers as empowering students and criticized the view that feminist educators see themselves as ‘empowerers’, not as ‘oppressors’. This is an important point for feminist educators in thinking about their own position and teaching practices, including interactive strategies and classroom management. Gore (1990) noted that empowerment must be linked to pedagogical practices and occur in ‘sites of practice’ as ‘a process of knowledge production’ (Gore, 1990: 68) that teachers and students create. While Jennifer, Kathy and Linda tried to empower their students, they seemed

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to be empowered by their students in ‘a site of practice’. When I asked them about their happy moments, they often indicated students’ positive and even appreciative comments and attitudes about their teaching. Such students’ comments and attitudes encouraged them to continue to teach about gender and other sociopolitical issues in EFL classes. In this sense, feminist teachers do not simply empower students, but also are empowered by students. Empowerment is produced by the meaning-making practices of the class, not just by gifts of power that teachers grant to students. In relation to empowerment, several of my participants valued emotional aspects of feminist teaching. While Kathy, Jennifer, Linda, Mika, Sarah and Yu Ri took into consideration the role of rationality in teaching and learning, they stressed the importance of emotional aspects of teaching including compassion, caring and empowering (see Noddings, 2003). Such emotional aspects of teaching were evident in their perspectives about the teacher– student relationship and led to a trusting relationship between teacher and student (see Chapter 4). Thus, feminist pedagogy is situated in contradictory, complex sites. It does not always remain one sided, but rather floats in-between – what hooks (1994: 12) refers to as ‘transgressions – a movement against and beyond boundaries’. That is, feminist pedagogy in TESOL is more contested and less straightforward than it has been portrayed in some of the literature.

Defining Feminist Pedagogy in TEFL in Japan Over two decades ago, Vandrick (1994, 1995b) asserted that readings and discussions on gender issues in ESL classes in the USA were important. I believe that incorporating gender-related topics in EFL classes is also important. In particular, feminist teaching in Japanese university EFL classes, although still rare, is meaningful. As I mentioned in Chapter 3, The Global Gender Gap Report 2016 (World Economic Forum, 2016) showed that Japan ranks 111th out of 144 countries on the gender gap index scale. It ranks very low on women’s labor force participation, female senior officials and managers, and women’s participation rate in parliament. Under these circumstances, a generation of university female students can be encouraged more than in the past to take their place in society. Even male students who feel no particular connection to gender issues can have an opportunity to think about gender equality and justice. Although teaching about gender issues – in particular, controversial issues such as birth control, domestic violence, sexual harassment and LGBT issues – is fairly challenging for English language teachers, it is important that they are conscious of, and engage with, these controversial gender and sexuality issues in their classrooms, because what happens in our society is not separated from what happens in universities and classrooms. Teaching about gender-related topics evokes insights,

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enriches both female and male students, and changes their lives. Therefore, teaching about gender-related issues in Japanese university EFL classrooms is beneficial and meaningful. As well as the content of what educators in Japan teach, the process by which educators teach must be considered in feminist pedagogy (Schenke, 1996; Vandrick, 1994). If feminist EFL teachers in Japanese universities believe that one aim of feminist pedagogy is to oppose the traditional teaching views and approaches, they will question grammar translation methods that are widely practiced in Japanese universities. They could also consider introducing group and writing techniques according to feminist principles. Many feminist pedagogical researchers have already noted the importance of group and writing techniques to raise awareness and consciousness about gender equality and justice (see Crabtree et al., 2009; Fisher, 1981; Parry, 1996; Schniedewind, 1987). Many of the feminist teachers in this study also stated that teaching in traditional ways such as top-down teaching or lecture style teaching did not help students discover their own voice, feel empowered, raise awareness and consciousness, and build a learning community. To achieve the objectives of feminist pedagogy, feminist EFL teachers in Japanese universities must question traditional teaching approaches and think of alternative, innovative teaching approaches using group and writing techniques. In addition, feminist pedagogy in EFL classes concerns the use of L1/L2, though feminist pedagogy in ESL contexts assumes that teaching is conducted in English. Among my participants, only Kathy had a strict Englishonly policy in her classroom. She used only English to instruct the class and did not allow her students to use Japanese in her classroom, because she believed that the exposure of the target language helped improve students’ English proficiency and communication skills. Her belief about the use of the target language is in line with a monolingual approach advocated by Krashen (1987), Littlewood (1981) and Turnbull (2001), but strongly critiqued by others (e.g. Canagarajah, 2013). Other participants had gradations of opinion toward teachers’ and students’ L1/L2 use. Jennifer, Linda, Sarah and Tom did not refuse teacher using Japanese occasionally to instruct classroom activities and lower the students’ anxiety; however, they mainly used English in their classrooms. Although their students voluntarily used English in their classrooms, the teachers gave students a choice to use English and Japanese. Akiko, Mika and Yu Ri used Japanese for instruction and seldom used English in their classrooms. It is not only because their students’ English proficiency was low, but also because the teachers wanted students to understand the content in the lessons. They also believed that the aim of teaching English was not only to improve students’ English proficiency, but also to have students be aware of gender, social and global issues, and develop critical thinking skills and skills of analysis. They seemed to focus on students’ personal growth more than the acquisition of English.

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To make students understand what is going on in the classroom, the teachers’ occasional Japanese use might be a valuable tool for both L2 pedagogy and radical pedagogies, including feminist pedagogy, critical pedagogy and global education. As far as I observed in my participants’ classrooms, native English speaking teachers’ occasional use of Japanese made their students relax and smile. Atkinson (1993) also noted that for adult and late teenage learners, occasional use of the L1 gives them the opportunity to show their intelligence and sophistication. In this sense, the occasional Japanese use by both teacher and student in EFL contexts in Japan is valuable and it should be so in feminist pedagogy in EFL. The Japanese only medium of instruction in EFL classes is still under discussion. Multilingual awareness and a variety of Englishes should be also considered in local feminist pedagogy. Kubota and McKay (2009: 613) critically examined the linguistic stance in Japanese society and concluded that there is ‘double monolingualism’ of standard Japanese and standard English. They stressed the importance of linguistic awareness toward a variety of English in language policy and practice. For the purpose of students’ awareness in Japan, feminist EFL teachers can bring minority women’s voices into their classes including Brazilians, Chinese, Koreans and Arabs. To raise students’ awareness of World Englishes, Horibe (2008) offers a linguistic perspective of teaching Asian Englishes in the EFL classroom in Japan. By borrowing his ideas, teaching about Asian women’s issues with the use of Asian Englishes might be one possibility for local feminist pedagogy. To conclude this chapter, feminist pedagogy in EFL teaching in Japan concerns what to teach as well as how to teach. It is difficult (almost impossible), to offer an ideal set of feminist EFL practices because each teacher, student, classroom and social context is different. Feminist EFL teachers in Japan might need to concern themselves with the balance between traditional teaching and progressive teaching, between local culture and global culture, between English and a mother tongue, and between monolingualism and multilingualism.

Implications and Recommendations For ESL/EFL teachers My first recommendation for ESL/EFL teachers is to examine their teaching beliefs and views by reading, discussing with colleagues and reflecting. It is important for all ESL/EFL teachers to introspectively consider their own teaching beliefs and practices. Reflection on their own teaching beliefs and practices helps them be aware of their stereotypes about teaching, oppose conventional teaching, and invent alternative and creative teaching for diverse contexts. There is no right or wrong answer to this, but I hope that

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ESL/EFL teachers can think of the ESL/EFL classroom not simply as a site of linguistic improvement, but also a site of personal growth and change, and even social change, in spite of continuing controversies about this view. To develop personal growth and make the world a better place, there might be many teaching approaches, such as a humanistic approach, a holistic approach, a critical pedagogical approach and global education. A feminist pedagogical approach is one of them. If ESL/EFL teachers have decided that it is important to teach about genderrelated topics to develop personal growth and make the world a better place, my second recommendation is for them to choose a gender-related topic that they feel comfortable with. As many of my participants pointed out, ESL/EFL teachers can incorporate gender perspectives into the lessons that they teach. Several of them mentioned that when ESL/EFL teachers find gender-biased language and discourse, they can use them both to raise awareness and to teach bias-free language and discourse. Even if the teachers found gender-neutral language and other non-discriminatory language, they could explain how the language and expressions came about. As Beebe (1996) suggested, ESL/EFL teachers might not have to search for an interesting gender topic to import into language classrooms. but can teach about the English language itself by introducing topics such as sexist/non-sexist language and discourse. Also, some of my participants suggested that they would use video clips and women’s films to discuss women’s marriage, divorce, career, family, friendship and sexuality. It is very important to choose gender-related topics and texts that the ESL/EFL teacher can feel comfortable with while also feeling competent to teach. A third recommendation for ESL/EFL teachers is to join study groups and associations such as BAAL (British Association of Applied Linguistics): Language, Gender and Sexuality SIG, IGALA (International Gender and Language Association), which is an international interdisciplinary academic group that promotes research on language, gender and sexuality; GALE (Gender Awareness in Language Education); REN (Rainbow Educators’ Network) and WELL (Women Educators and Language Learners), all of which are accessible through the internet (see Appendix E). As several of my participants pointed out, they could get useful information and materials for teaching about gender-related topics in ESL/EFL classes from them. As these professional teachers’ study groups also provide the information about conferences and publications, they help ESL/EFL teachers become professional feminist teachers and researchers.

For administrators I recommend that administrators such as department heads, key faculty and presidents provide faculty development programs to full- and part-time ESL/EFL teachers who are interested in teaching about sociopolitical topics, including gender-related topics, in spite of possible difficulties such as

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institutional resistance, budget realities and teachers’ heavy workload. In Japanese university contexts, there are many EFL university teachers, including part-time teachers who have diverse academic backgrounds such as not only TESOL, but also literature, linguistics, cultural studies, communication, US/UK history, and other areas related to English and English-speaking countries. While some of them have been educated outside Japan, others have been educated in only Japanese educational institutes. Just as their academic backgrounds are diverse, their learning experiences are also diverse. Like one of my participants, Akiko, university EFL teachers who do not specialize TESOL might not know how to teach English with group work, class discussion and journal writing. Akiko taught English in a traditional grammar translation approach just as she was taught by her teachers. She seemed to have no opportunity to learn how to teach English with group and writing techniques in preservice teacher education and after she became a teacher. And she apparently did not read or study on her own. For these teachers who are interested in teaching about sociopolitical issues, including gender-related topics, with techniques such as problem-posing teaching, group work, class discussion and journal writing, administrators should provide further faculty development programs. Another reason why I strongly propose faculty development programs is that the programs help novice university EFL teachers teach about genderrelated topics in their classrooms. I often hear that novice EFL teachers who studied TESOL in graduate school overseas, returned to Japan and then started to teach EFL in Japanese universities, have struggled and are confused about adjusting to local teacher roles and teaching contexts (Yoshihara et al., 2016). Some of them are very interested in teaching about gender-related, global, social and environmental issues in their Japanese university EFL classrooms; however, they often have difficulty teaching about these sociopolitical issues along with langauge practices, because of external and internal factors. For these novice university EFL teachers, the faculty development program that each university provides is the place to learn about sociopolitical topics in a balanced way, including gender-related topics along with language practices, without imposing agendas on students. The programs also share lesson models, materials and students’ responses about the classroom practices.

For textbook writers and publishers Some of my participants mentioned that they chose a textbook that included gender-related topics when they had the freedom to choose a textbook. In the past 20 years, textbook writers and publishers have been concerned more than in the past about sexist language and discourse, including the danger of stereotypical role models for women. They also have made efforts to include gender-related topics in textbooks, though the presentation

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of women’s issues in ESL texts seems to be limited to ‘safe’ issues such as women’s wages, legal rights, and family and work balance. Nevertheless, some Japanese EFL texts have addressed controversial issues such as sexual harassment, domestic violence, same-sex marriage and sex-education in schools since the late 1990s. For example, Issues: Pro and Cons (McLean, 1996) published by Asahi Press includes gay marriage, Both Sides Now (Nishimoto & Porter, 1999) published by Seibido features sexual discrimination, sex education and same-sex marriage, and Taking Action on Global Issues (Asakawa et al., 2002) published by Sanshusha includes topics on violence against women. However, gender and sexuality issues in Japanese EFL texts are limited mainly to discussions of these issues in American or British contexts. This might convey the impression that such problems do not exist in Japan. Although good teachers localize the topics, I think that it is important for both local and international textbook writers and publishers to connect gender and sexuality issues to local culture and contexts, because students feel some connection between the topics that they learn in their classroom and their own lives. I would like textbook writers and publishers to continue to make efforts to include gender-related topics, and even controversial gender and sexuality issues to connect to local cultures and contexts in textbooks.

For ESL/EFL researchers who study feminist pedagogy My suggestion for ESL/EFL researchers who wish to study feminist pedagogy is to continue to build a research space for investigating feminist pedagogy within the TESOL field. Feminist ESL/EFL researchers can create a research community for exploring feminist pedagogy in ESL/EFL education by publishing papers, books and anthologies. Multiple multilingual studies on feminist pedagogy in a variety of social and institutional settings in different countries will go beyond the particular case and contribute to the collective and local knowledge of feminist pedagogy in the field of ESL/EFL. Considering that very few autobiographical narratives exist of the feminist or female EFL teachers in Japan, it would be worthwhile compiling feminist or female EFL teachers’ stories as well. I also recommend that feminist ESL/EFL researchers investigate students’ reactions and influences toward feminist teaching. A few studies have investigated students’ attitudes and perceptions toward gender issues (Benesch, 1996, 1998; Yoshihara, 2010) and sexuality issues (Nelson, 2009) in the TESOL field. Exploring students’ attitudes and perceptions toward feminist teaching can surely help us understand how they truly feel about the incorporation of gender-related issues and the application of feminist principles to their language learning experience and what they learn from this kind of instruction. Students’ perspectives are a necessary part of a research program on feminist pedagogy in TESOL.

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Reflections on the Study Achievements A major achievement of this study is that feminist narrative research helped me, and I hope will help readers, understand the multiplicity, diversity and complexity of feminist teacher identities in Japan. Through interviews and email communication, I articulated my participants’ feminist ideas and professional lives as feminist educators. I used poststructural feminist theories to interpret my empirical data. This helped me understand that feminist teacher identities were constructed and revised through social interactions and discursive practices. The identities were also formulated over time and place. In particular, Japanese-speaking participants developed their feminist ideas in gendered Japanese society. I was able to understand the relationships between their feminist identities and social contexts. This might be shared not only in Japan, but also in societies where traditional gender roles are still upheld. Second, feminist narrative research helped me look at the relations between my participants’ feminist teacher identities and their classroom practices. The combination of interviews, classroom observations, teaching journals and other teaching materials helped me understand the dynamics, variety and complexity of feminist teaching in university EFL classes in Japan and elsewhere, to get away from prescriptive and routinized ways of thinking. It also helped me understand both the compatible and incompatible relations between their teaching beliefs and classroom practices. I was able to understand the contextual factors influencing the feminist teachers in my study, which did not reflect their feminist identities and teaching beliefs in their classroom practices. Third, as Riessman (2008) considered narrative inquiry to be political work, feminist narrative research inspires the audience to engage with issues and actions. For example, while I went through the process of this study, such as interviewing and observing classrooms, I learned a variety of feminist teaching approaches from my participants. Even though I, as a feminist EFL teacher, had taught about several gender issues in my classes, until I did this study I was less concerned about how I had approached the teaching of these issues. My participants provided me with teaching tips for making a friendly and safe atmosphere and promoting students to express their own opinions in English. I actually practiced some of the teaching tips provided by my participants in my own EFL classrooms. Stories told and teaching practices demonstrated by my participants can encourage pedagogical readers to practice feminist teaching in their own classrooms as well. In this sense, their stories and practices potentially mobilize the audience to action. I think this is one of the noteworthy achievements of this study. I hope that readers will also be inspired by the

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teaching practices related by my participants and will, likewise, consider engaging in feminist teaching, or will consider enhancing their feminist teaching practices in new ways.

Limitations Several limitations can be described for this study. As for data gathering, although it is often unavoidable in qualitative research, my presence as a researcher no doubt affected my participants’ responses during interviews and their teaching practices during classroom observations. This inevitability is embraced in a social constructivist approach, and I tried to be as open and transparent as possible about my presence. Such transparency in a study like this one is essential. The accounts of participants’ feminist identities, teaching beliefs and classroom practices in this study relied on interviews in which my participants selectively talked through their own perceptions in interactions with me. Interviews with a different researcher might have produced different results. Although I planned to observe as many classrooms as possible, I depended on my participants’ willingness to volunteer their thoughts spontaneously and to recall and recount their experiences with as little prompting, and with as little framing from me, as possible. As a result, the accounts of classroom practices in this study relied on one-shot classroom observations and teaching journals that my participants wrote. The details of their accounts were thus limited. To investigate holistic aspects of the teaching practices of individual teachers, longer-term ethnographic approaches that feature regular observations would broaden the scope of the study’s findings. They would also illuminate aspects of teaching practices that cannot be revealed through one-shot classroom observations. With regard to analysis and interpretation, for me, it was very difficult work to classify each participant’s story into one category, because each story extended over two or three categories and was not so cut-and-dried. I confessed my frustration with data analysis and interpretation in my research journal, stating, ‘One frustration is to decide what I should reduce and what I should extend. Out of much data, it is very difficult to choose this and that’ (My research journal, 13 February 2013). I also admitted that categorization depended greatly on my own impressions, which were unavoidably guided by poststructural feminist pedagogical theory. As data analysis and interpretation were influenced by my personal biases and idiosyncrasies, as well as theories that I am wedded to, rigor in a traditional sense was difficult to maintain, assess and demonstrate. Last, as a researcher I selectively managed to convey information to readers. I provided readers with information about feminist EFL university teachers’ identities, teaching beliefs and classroom practices to the extent possible from my empirical data. I interpreted stories on the basis of lived

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experiences told by my participants and on the basis of performance reported by them. I hope that I have not failed to make the most of narrative inquiry or have not come up short in analyzing and interpreting the data, or missed pivotal findings. However, I admit that the stories did not represent the ‘truth’,1 but they were a version of realities that my participants purported to describe.

Future Research My future research is a continued pursuit of feminist pedagogical research along the same lines within the TESOL field through the use of interpretive, qualitative, longitudinal, narrative-based research approaches like the present one. There is not enough theory- and practice-based research on feminist pedagogy in the TESOL field. As a feminist pedagogical researcher, I would like to conduct multiple multilingual studies, conducted where possible by bilingual and bicultural researchers, on feminist pedagogy in relation to teachers’ teaching beliefs and practices with qualitative approaches in a variety of social and institutional settings. Each case study will contribute to the collective and local knowledge of feminist pedagogy in the field of ESL/EFL. The students’ reactions were not analyzed in this study, but it is important to scrutinize in future research how students feel about learning about gender-related topics. Also, collecting data from administrators and colleagues in the same department might be interesting and help us to understand how they feel about teaching gender-related topics in Japanese university EFL classes for future research. In my study, Akiko was the most conflicted of the participants who had contradictions between her interview responses and actual teaching practices. The contradictions represent the contradictions that many of us as ESL/EFL teachers experience in our private and professional lives. Doing a follow-up study with Akiko might be a future study. As a feminist qualitative researcher I am interested in female teacher identity, more specifically female EFL teacher identity in Japan. It is important to pay more attention to the situation of women working in universities in Japan and discuss feminist issues that are intertwined with their work environments. Considering that gender roles and gender-segregated activities are still upheld in Japanese society, it is worthwhile investigating how female EFL teachers construct and develop their professional identity in Japanese institutions and deal with gender separation and homosociality (see Sedgwick, 1985). However, as I focused on feminist educators’ teaching in this book, I did not ask questions about my participants’ working environments and conditions in Japanese universities and was not able to scrutinize their perception about them. Although Simon-Maeda (2004a) and Nagatomo

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(2012, 2016) already investigated the development of female teacher identity in Japan, more research on female identity formation in connection with their working environments and situations is needed. Although it is potentially an evaluative approach, as a critical feminist researcher I also hope to investigate ESL/EFL teachers who are reluctant to teach about sociopolitical issues, including gender issues. As TESOL scholars such as Benesch (1998) and Casanave (2004) have noted, TESOL, with its foundations in the scientific traditions of applied linguistics, has historically emphasized linguistic goals over sociopolitical concerns. Exploring teaching beliefs and practices of the ESL/EFL teachers who are reluctant to teach about gender or other sociopolitical issues has the possibility of revealing the reasoning behind other ideologies in the TESOL field. Also, such exploration is capable of demonstrating the complex relations between teacher beliefs and external factors.

Concluding Personal Reflection Although I learned many things from my participants, one important thing that I learned from them is that teachers take different paths in becoming feminist EFL university teachers in Japan, as they most certainly do elsewhere as well. Even though they might not have taken up women’s studies and gender studies as part of their academic education, their own gender awareness and consciousness can be raised through the process of identity formation by means of social interactions, including interactions with feminists and feminist discourses. Whereas some prioritize gender concerns over other social concerns in their lives, others prioritize these concerns differently. My participants’ stories about identity formation reminded me of the struggle of my own feminist teacher identity formation and made me rethink what feminism means to me. As a university EFL teacher, I learned from my participants that how we teach is as important as what we teach. I had to admit that I had previously focused heavily on what I should teach – gender topics – in my EFL classes before I started this research. I had a critical and judgmental attitude toward ESL/EFL teachers who did not use gender topics in their classrooms; however, my participants taught me that how we teach according to feminist principles is important as well. Even if we do not introduce gender topics in the ESL/EFL classroom in a straightforward way, we can teach English according to feminist principles. Our approach to teaching is every bit as important as the content of the lessons. Through this study, I also learned that labels such as ‘feminist’ and ‘feminism’ both constrain and expand our view. One participant, Mika, used to dislike being labeled a ‘feminist’ because she had negative feelings about feminists. Not only Mika, but also some ESL/EFL teachers, might have

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negative feelings about ‘feminist’ and ‘feminism’, which limits our view toward feminist teaching. On the other hand, positive feelings about ‘feminist’ and ‘feminism’ might expand our view and develop feminist teaching. Labels move and shift as people change and evolve. Learning through the practical utilization of the methodological tools of feminist qualitative research has been meaningful and indispensable for my research and my intellectual life. In graduate school, I had studied feminist theories such as liberal feminism, radical feminism, lesbian feminism, socialist feminism, women of color, poststructural feminism and postcolonial feminism in relation to the second-wave feminist movement in the USA. Since then, I have explored historical and theoretical arguments of feminism in the USA and written papers about it. In addition to my knowledge about feminist theory, learning feminist qualitative research methodology has broadened my knowledge as a feminist scholar. Although I have achieved much and learned many things from this study, two words, ‘struggle’ and ‘patience’, represent my research when I reflect on the whole process of this study. The first struggle was about data collection, through email exchanges, interviews and classroom observation. I knew that my participants were all busy throughout the years and it was difficult for them to correspond frequently via email. I did not push them to spend their time and energy to respond to my emails. Although they were very understanding and most cooperative with my research, it was sometimes difficult to set up interviews with them due to their busy schedules. Classroom observation was the biggest challenge for data collection. When teachers were reluctant to be observed in their classroom, I did not insist that they allow me to visit. My own reluctance to put too much pressure on them kept me from asking them for further commitment to this study by, for example, allowing me more visits to their classrooms, or asking them to check my transcriptions or my interpretive data. The second struggle was data analysis and interpretation. As I mentioned in the previous section, classifying each participant’s story into one category was difficult work because each story extended over two or three categories. When I read my research journal at that time, I expressed frustration, confusion, anxiety, stress and even anger. The third struggle was to take a non-judgmental stance. I must admit that I had a very judgmental stance when I started this research. I had an accusing attitude toward ESL/EFL teachers who were reluctant to teach about gender-related topics. When I had an email communication with my advisor in the doctoral degree program, she suggested that it is important to ‘take a non-judgmental stance: not what teachers SHOULD do, but who they are, what they think and what they actually do and why’ and ‘be patient’ (Email communication with Christine Pearson Casanave, 12 May 2013). Through this research, I learned the importance of taking a less judgmental stance and being patient as a researcher.

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Note (1) According to Atkinson and Sohn (2013), qualitative research has resisted objectivity and absolute goals of absolute truth. From a poststructural view, it is widely acknowledged that truth is subjective and relative and something that shifts through various kinds of knowledge in contexts and history.

Appendix A: Lists of Abbreviations

EFL ESL LGBT L1 L2 TEFL TESOL TOEFL® TOEIC®

English as a foreign language English as a second language Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender First language Second language Teaching English as a foreign language Teaching English to speakers of other languages Test of English as a foreign language Test of English for international communication

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Appendix B: Timetable of Data Collection

Date 2011/2/5 2011/2/6 2011/2/13 2011/3/7 2011/4/2 2011/4/8 2011/4/14 2011/4/27 2011/5/3 2011/5/17 2011/6/6 2011/6/13 2011/7/23 2011/8/26 2011/10/1 2011/10/23 2011/10/24 2011/10/31 2011/11/5 2011/11/6 2011/11/21 2011/12/18 2011/1/20 2011/1/22 2012/1/29 2012/3/12

Akiko

Kathy

Jennifer

Linda

Mika

Sarah

Tom

Yu Ri

OES OES OES OES OES

OES OES OES EC (1) EC (1)

EC (1) EC (1) EC (2) EC (2)

EC (2) EC (3) EC (2) EC (1)

EC (3) EC (3) EC (4) EC (5) EC (2) EC (3) EC (3) & (4) EC (4) EC (6) IV (1) (1:19:58)

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Date

Akiko

Kathy

Jennifer

Linda

Mika

Sarah

Tom

2012/3/22

IV (1) (2:19:17)

2012/3/26

IV (1) (1:44:51)

2012/3/30 2012/3/31

IV (1) (1:31:40) IV (1) (1:08:51)

2012/4/1

IV (1) (2:22:26)

2012/4/2

IV (1) (1:49:12)

2012/4/7

IV (1) (1:30:29)

2012/6/4 2012/6/14 2012/9/3

CO CO IV (2) (0:31:02) IV (3) (0:42:30)

2012/9/11 2012/9/13 2012/9/14

IV (2) (0:40:28) IV (2) (1:20:00)

2012/9/16

IV (2) (0:32:35)

2012/9/24

IV (2) (0:21:47)

2012/10/9

IV (2) (0:20:35)

2012/10/17 2012/10/27 2012/11/29 2012/12/4 2012/12/24 2013/2/14 IV (3) (0:58:38) 2013/2/18 2013/2/19 2013/2/25

Yu Ri

IV (2) (0:20:01) IV (2) (0:35:07) CO CO CO

IV (3) (1:18:36) IV (3) (0:20:05) IV (3) (0:38:30)

Appendix B

Date

Akiko

Kathy

Jennifer

Linda

Mika

2013/3/6

Tom

Yu Ri

IV (3) (0:28:29)

2013/3/12 2013/5/7 2013/8/9

Sarah

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IV (3) (00:32:17)

IV (4) (0:52:14)

CO IV (3) 00:31:52

Notes: OES: Open-Ended Survey; EC: Email Communication; IV (hours: minutes: seconds): Interview; CO: Classroom Observation.

Appendix C: Sarah’s Handout

Name:

Class: M1

M2

T1

T2

F1

Number:

Week 7 Discussion Sheet for Gender My sub-topic is: (check one) ( ) What are gender roles?

( ) Trafficking

( ) Children and identity

( ) Photoshop beauty

( ) Gender and economics

( ) Gender roles in other cultures

(eg. single mothers) The point I want to make about this sub-topic is (in your own words – do not copy):

Reason 1: Example:

Reason 2: Example:

Discussion Questions 1. 2.

New Vocabulary I will use:

Reflections on today’s class (How well did you learn, what did you learn, problems, etc.)

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Appendix C Team name: Moderator

My role today is (circle one): Vocab Resource

Quiz Time!

Evaluator

Note Taker

Questioner

Overall participation points (out of 5)

Contributed to Discussion in English

Used eye contact/ Body language

7.

Used “Tools” phrases

6.

Number

Used strategies

Name

Asked questions

3.

Came prepared for discussion

2.

5.

Reflector

EVALUATOR’S CHART

1.

4.

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8. 9. 10. Total /10

very much

ٌ some

-- not much

Appendix D: Tom’s Handout

Plastic Surgery for Asians CNN: http://bit.ly/asianplasticsurgery (1) Why is ‘double eyelid’ surgery becoming more popular? Do you think ‘double eyelids’ are more attractive than ‘single eyelids’? Why or why not? (2) Would you get plastic/cosmetic surgery? Why or why not?

Vocabulary plastic surgery/cosmetic surgery Alter operating room Caucasian Impress to turn your back on something/someone Confident society/societal

Permanent Controversial Standard ‘G.I.’ Critic ethnicity/race Tremendous Consider

Comprehension (1) Annie thinks that to be really pretty, a woman needs to have [small/ big] eyes. (2) Annie thinks that ‘double eyelids’ make the eyes look [smaller/bigger] and make the woman look [prettier/less pretty]. (3) [T/F] One of the reasons why Annie wants to get surgery is because she sees many Asian actresses in the media who have ‘double eyelids’.

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(4) Eyelid surgery began in the [1930s/1950s/1970s] after [World War II/the Korean War/the Vietnam War] when women wanted to look more [Asian/ Caucasian] to impress American soldiers. (5) [T/F] Those who oppose this kind of surgery say that women who get surgery to change their eyes are rejecting their cultural identity. (6) Annie says she looks [better/worse] after her surgery. (7) The reporter says that she thought about getting plastic surgery, [and she decided to do it/but she decided not to do it].

Discussion (1) Dr Lee, the plastic surgeon, says: ‘The bigger question is whether the standard of beauty is changing, but that is a little bit of a different question than whether you are trying to change your race.’ Do you agree that the ‘standard of beauty’ is changing? If so, how is it changing, and how do you feel about this change? Do you agree with critics of this surgery? (2) The reporter says that many Asian women feel ‘tremendous pressure’ to get eyelid surgery, and that ‘the media has a lot to do with it’. Do you agree with the reporter that Asian women get a lot of pressure from the media? How do you feel about this? (To be continued) (3) What would you do if your friend wanted to get eyelid surgery? Would you support her, or would you try to convince her not to do it? What if it were your partner? What if it were your sister? What if it were your mother? (4) Read the essay by ‘Yumi’ about her experience with plastic surgery. What is your reaction to her story? What would you say to ‘Yumi’ after reading her essay?

Assignment Choose one of the discussion questions above to answer. Write at least five sentences and use at least three vocabulary words. Use specific details, such as examples, personal experiences, or data to support your opinion.

Appendix E: List of Feminist ESL/EFL Associations

BAAL (British Association of Applied Linguistics) Language, Gender and Sexuality Special Interest Group: http://www.baal.org.uk/sig_gender_lang.html GALE (Gender Awareness in Language Education): http://www.gale-sig.org/website/index.html IGALA (International Gender and Language Association): https://www.facebook.com/ InternationalGenderandLanguageAssociationIGALA REN (Rainbow Educators’ Network): http://www2.gol.com/users/aidsed/rainbow/index.html WELL (Women’s Educators and Language Learners): http://welljapan.org

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Epilogue

When I found eight participants in my study, many of my scholarly friends said that there were too many participants for qualitative research; however, some of them said that a few people might drop out from my research for some reasons, and therefore, suggested that I should keep them. Fortunately, no one dropped out from my research. It reflects their kindness and generosity, but I am sure that there was also a sort of ‘sisterly solidarity’ and ‘a sense of alliance’ between my participants and me, because we all are feminists or pro-feminists. By the end of my study, my participants continued to teach English in Japanese universities as full-time or as part-time teachers, except for Tom. After he ended the contract with the university, Tom moved back to the USA and looked for a new job there. Thanks to advanced technology in our world, I still keep in touch with some of them through Facebook, emails and Skype sessions. I sometimes meet them in conferences inside and outside Japan. They encouraged me to publish this study in a book. In my professional life, I continue to teach English and women’s studies and currently teach TESOL courses in Japanese universities. In EFL classes, I am required to use an assigned textbook; however, I try to incorporate my gender perspectives into the lessons as much as possible. And as I am allowed to make my own syllabus, I am using the last three or four classes out of the 15 classes in each semester to teach about gender issues in my EFL classes. I also use teaching tips and practices taught by my research participants. In TESOL courses, I introduce feminist teaching as well as mainstream TESOL methods and assign students to read articles about feminist teaching and research in TESOL. It is sheer bliss for me to witness students’ growth in person. For me, teaching is a joy and a hope for the future.

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Index

Abe, Shinzo, 94–95 ability and disability classroom discussions of, 86 and feminism, 41 student narratives, 7, 83 abortion. see reproductive rights activism on Central American issues, 29, 63, 89 charity concerts, 89 and critical thinking, 89, 95–96 environmental issues, 55, 89, 92 as extracurricular activity, 11, 88–91 feminist research as, 21–22 HIV/AIDS, 63, 89 human rights, 33 hunger strikes, 63, 89 in Japan, 35 labor, 86 on local issues, 28, 87–88, 90 against nuclear power, 55, 63, 89, 92, 95–98, 108 organic farming, 89, 96 student writing on, 83–84 in United States, 29, 47–48 water, 86 administrators, 115–116 Akiko background, 17, 28–29, 44–45 classroom practices, 25, 100–104, 113 teacher identity, 55–56, 92, 100–104, 108 Amsterdam, Netherlands, 30, 49 animal rights, 41 anorexia. see eating disorders Anzaldúa, Gloria, 47, 51–52, 53, 57, 59n3 assisted language teaching (ALT), 29 Auden, W.H., 76–77 Austen, Jane, 48 Australia, 54, 67 autobiographical narratives. see also journaling

about feminism, 14, 39 confessional, 7 of EFL teachers, 117 as feminist research method, 20–22 of marginalized students, 7, 27–28, 83 and sexuality, 14–15 and subjectivity, 72, 83 as writing technique, 83–85, 90 autonomous subjectivities, 8 AWA (Asian Women’s Association), 50–51 BAAL (British Association of Applied Linguistics) Language, Gender, and Sexuality SIG, 115, 132 beauty standards and body image, 64–65, 67, 73, 74–75, 99, 130–131 birth control. see reproductive rights Black studies, 34, 49 Bourdieu, Pierre, 105 Brazil, 61–62, 114 Butler, Judith, 52 California, 29, 32 Canada, 54, 70, 78 career development, 6, 79, 89, 105–106, 115 Casanave, Christine Pearson, 3–4, 12–13, 83–84, 122 childcare, 38 China, 86, 114 class. see also privilege economic oppression, 43, 64 and feminism, 39, 41–43 in Japan, 46–47 poverty, 86 in United States, 42 working-class students, 2 classroom practices. see also textbooks discussion, 65, 74, 77, 116 equal attention, 27, 78–79, 90 145

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classroom practices (Continued) essay writing, 86, 106 faculty development, 115–116 group work, 70, 74, 77, 81–82, 86, 90, 92, 103, 116 I-message communication, 72, 75 intensive reading, 94 interview writing, 85 jigsaw reading, 74, 81 journaling, 27–28, 76, 81, 83–85, 92, 103–104, 116 music, 74 note-taking, 79 pair work, 106 poetry, 76–77 role-playing, 81, 82 safety, 7–8, 63, 66, 76, 82, 85, 87, 109, 111 and teacher beliefs, 5, 98–108 think-pair-share, 81 translation, 71–72, 92, 94, 100–104, 113 videos and films, 28, 55, 60, 64, 66–67, 77, 84–87, 90, 97–98, 115 ‘world vision trading game,’ 97, 108n2 Collins, Patricia Hill, 47 colonialism, 54, 67 communicative language teaching (CLT), 14 community and junior colleges, 12 community education, 10–11 content-based language teaching, 57 conversation study groups, 15, 29 critical literacy, 10 critical pedagogy. see Freire, Paolo critical thinking, 60, 63–68, 76, 82, 83, 89, 95–96, 100, 107, 111 cultural diversity, 11 cultural studies, 14–15 Davis, Angela, 47, 59n3 Dewey, John, 90 disability. see ability and disability domestic violence. see violence against women Dominican Republic, 30 Dutch language, 30 eating disorders, 10, 13, 99 economic oppression. see class Ehara, Yumiko, 38 empowerment, 8, 20, 60, 72–78, 81, 83, 105, 109, 111, 113

English language Asian Englishes, 114 Cultural English vs. Practical English, 55, 94 in EFL classrooms in Japan, 13, 65, 74, 113 international hegemony of, 15, 53–54 literature, 48, 55, 94, 100 environmental issues, 1, 15, 41, 55, 89, 92. see also activism EPA (Engaged Pedagogy Association), 17 Equal Employment Opportunity Law (Japan), 37–38 Exploring Gender (Sunderland), 9 extracurricular activities, 9, 10, 63, 88–91 family structures, 65, 115 feminism. see also intersectionality; teachers of EFL/ESL; violence against women backlash against, 1, 16, 61, 107, 121–122 Black feminism, 39, 42–43, 47 consciousness-raising, 37, 62, 68, 90, 113 definitions of, 38–43, 58 in discourses on education, 104, 107 diversity of teaching methods, 109, 118 in Japan, 37, 58 in Korea, 50 lesbian, 39 lesbian feminism, 122 liberal, 122 male feminists, 17, 39–40, 49–50 and male students, 1, 79, 99–100 and migration, 50 music of, 47–48, 74 mutability of, 56–57, 98–100, 105 in Netherlands, 49 pan-Asian, 42, 96 in Philippines, 50 postcolonial, 43, 54, 122 poststructural, 5–8, 13, 43–44, 51, 58, 72–73, 109–110, 118, 122, 123n1 and qualitative research, 20–21 radical, 122 second-wave, 5, 37, 47, 122 sexual liberation, 37 socialist, 122 and solidarity, 70 structural, 6 Third World, 50, 61, 82 in United Kingdom, 9, 101

Inde x

in United States, 37, 47–48, 58, 59n3, 82, 101, 122 women of color feminism, 43, 47, 51–52, 59n3, 122 Feminism in Easy English (Yoshihara), 74 feminist pedagogy. see feminism; teachers of EFL/ESL Florida, 33 Four Weddings and a Funeral, 77 France, 71, 91n3 Freire, Paolo, 61–62, 68, 90, 111 French, Marilyn, 48 French language, 31 Friedan, Betty, 42, 58n2 Fukushima disaster. see Tohoku earthquake and tsunami GALE (Gender Awareness in Language Education), 17, 115, 132 gender. see also feminism; intersectionality and hybridity; LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues; sexism bias. see sexism equality, 39, 40 and ethics, 66 and identity, 64 roles, 2, 28, 31, 44–45, 61, 64–65. see also sexism segregation, 2 social construction of, 20–21, 43–44, 52 Gender Issues in Language Education (Casanave and Yamashiro), 12–13 gender-neutral language. see grammar Grameen Bank, 61 grammar classroom practices, 101 false generics, 9, 79 forms of address, 13 gender-neutral language, 9, 13, 60, 79–81, 90, 101, 115 incorporating LGBT topics into, 12 pronouns, 64 and sexist language, 9, 13 titles and forms of address, 13, 80 Group Against Sex Tours to Korea for Japanese Men, 37 Group Supporting Abortion and the Contraceptive Pill, 37 Group to Promote Coeducation in the Study of Home Economics in High School, 37

147

Group to Protest Sexist Court Judgments against Working Women and Unmarried Women, 37 Guatemala, 63, 89 handicapped people. see ability and disability Happy, 86 hooks, bell, 7, 39, 42–43, 47, 58n1, 68–69, 72, 111 housework, 44–45 humanism, 48, 90 If the World Were a Village of 100 People, 86 If These Walls Could Talk, 82 IGALA (International Gender and Language Association), 115, 132 immigrants ESL classes for, 10 and feminist pedagogy, 1–2 migration as feminist issue, 50 inequality. see class international students and feminist pedagogy, 1–2 from Japan, 32, 59n6, 79, 94–95 interpreting, 32. see also translation intersectionality and hybridity, 7, 10, 39, 41–43, 51–52, 57, 59n3, 83 Islam, 41 James, Henry, 48 Japan. see also Japan-born Koreans class in, 46–47 Constitution of, 32, 55 domestic violence in, 70 ‘double monolingualism,’ 114 education discrimination, 78 feminist pedagogy in, 12–15, 16–18, 112–114 gender gap in, 38, 93, 112 gender roles in, 2, 13, 36–37, 44–45, 78 history of feminism in, 37–39, 48–49, 58 marginalized women in, 42, 46–47 MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology), 55, 93, 94 post-war reforms in, 36–37 same-sex marriage, 77 sex education in, 88, 91n5, 117 US-Japan Security Treaty, 37 women’s suffrage in, 36–37 during World War II, 37, 59n4

148

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Japan Association of Language Teaching, 17 Japan-born Koreans and African-Americans, 49 autobiographical narratives, 67 and class, 46–47 classroom discussions of, 52–53 discrimination against, 34, 46–47 and feminism, 15 names of, 52, 59n5 Japanese language among EFL teachers in Japan, 65 in EFL classrooms in Japan, 13, 67, 69, 71, 97–98, 113–114 feminist materials in, 74 literature, 64, 88, 91n2 reflective writing exercises in, 84, 97 Jennifer background, 17, 29 classroom practices, 56, 73–75, 77–78, 81, 113 feminist pedagogy, 73–75, 111–112 journaling, 25 teacher identity, 53 Jewish people, 41 journaling as classroom practice, 27–28, 76, 83–85 and critical thinking, 83–85 as research method, 24–26, 118 by research subjects, 25, 118 junior colleges. see community and junior colleges Kanto, Japan, 28, 31 Kathy background, 17, 29, 49 classroom practices, 25, 56–57, 75–78, 81–82, 84 definition of feminism, 41, 43 feminist pedagogy, 75–78, 79, 110–112 Kirishima, Yoko, 48–49 Korea. see also Japan-born Koreans feminism in, 50 under Japanese rule, 59n5 Korean War, 131 sex tourism in, 37 sexism in, 46–47 women’s voices from, 114 Labor Standards Law of 1947 (Japan), 36, 38 Lawrence, D.H., 48

LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues and autobiographical narratives, 14–15 classroom discussions of, 1, 11–12, 54–55, 61, 66, 76, 112 compulsory heterosexuality, 39 family structures, 65 homophobia, 43 in Japan, 15 lesbian feminism, 39 Pride parades, 89, 91n6 queer theory, 11 same-sex marriage, 71, 77, 117 and teacher identities, 54–55 transgender people, 41 in United States, 54–55 Liberia, 82 Linda background, 17, 30–31, 47 classroom observation of, 25 classroom practices, 81, 84, 105–108, 113 definition of feminism, 40 feminist pedagogy, 111–112 teacher identity, 92–93, 105–108 Lorde, Audre, 47 marriage and divorce classroom discussions of, 71, 115 laws, 61 same-sex marriage, 71, 77, 88, 91n3, 91n5, 117 surnames, 61, 71, 73, 74, 88 Mexico, 82 Mika activism, 92, 95, 108 background, 17, 31–32, 45–46 classroom practices, 25, 56, 81, 113 definition of feminism, 41–42, 121–122 feminist pedagogy, 86 teacher identity, 55, 92, 95–100, 108, 121–122 Momotaro, 64, 88, 91n2 Moraga, Cherrie, 47, 59n3 Nagisa and Mio and Kaji: Letters from a Vagabond Mother (Kirishima), 49 nationalism, 50 Near, Holly, 48 Nepal, 86 New Left, 37 New York City, 11 New Zealand, 35n2

Inde x

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire), 61–62 Philippines, 50, 85 Pink Ribbon Smile Walk, 89, 91n6 Poe, Edgar Allan, 48 positivism, 20–21 privilege, 1, 8, 42, 54 qualitative research, 20–21 Queer Japan (Summerhawk et al.), 14 queer theory. see LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues race, 39, 41–43, 49, 54. see also feminism; intersectionality and hybridity; privilege racism, 7, 9, 43, 67, 111. see also intersectionality and hybridity Reddy, Helen, 47 religion Buddhism, 50 Catholicism, 49 Christianity, 82 REN (Rainbow Educators’ Network), 115, 132 reproductive rights. see also feminism; women’s health; work abortion, 37, 61, 82 birth control, 37, 61, 112 female genital mutilation (FGM), 61, 82 researcher positionality, 23–25 Rich, Adrienne, 39 Rosin, Hanna, 64, 85–86 Rwanda, 82 Sarah background, 17, 32–33, 48 classroom practices, 25, 56, 81, 84, 113 definition of feminism, 40, 41, 43 feminist pedagogy, 63–66, 110–111 handout, 128–129 Saudi Arabia, 82, 114 sexism. see also feminism; gender; intersectionality and hybridity; violence against women; work in advertising, 85 economic oppression, 43. see also class and feminist pedagogy, 1, 5 feminist research on, 20–21 gender stereotypes, 9, 61, 66–68, 79 gendered job titles, 9, 80 institutional and structural, 22, 62 in Japan, 46–47, 87–88

149

in Korean communities, 46–47 in language, 9, 13, 27, 115 student awareness of, 111 sexual harassment. see work single-sex education, 2 “Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves,” 74 skill-based language teaching, 57 Skype, 25 Somalia, 82 Spender, Dale, 78 Still Killing Us Softly, 85 Stone, Merlin, 48 Sudan, 82 Sunderland, Jane, 9 symbolic capital, 105–106 teachers of EFL/ESL autobiographical narratives, 117 colonial attitudes among, 54 faculty development, 115–116 as feminists, 4, 7, 27, 36, 52–58, 60–61, 98–108, 118–120 full-time and tenured vs. part-time, 24, 90, 93, 103, 108n1 gender gap among, 93 and LGBT issues, 11–12 LGBT people as, 29–30, 32, 54–55 localizing curriculum, 87, 117 and power, 62, 72–78, 102–103, 110–112 and privilege, 8 reflection on teaching beliefs, 3–5, 114–115, 121 social responsibility of, 1 work environments, 99–104, 105 TESOL. see teachers of EFL/ESL textbooks about feminism, 74 Both Sides Now (Nishimoto & Porter), 91n5, 117 Guidelines: A Cross-Cultural Reading/ Writing Text (Spack), 106 Issues: Pros and Cons (McLean), 91n5, 117 in Japanese, 87–88, 91n5 mandatory/assigned, 59n6, 92, 95, 96, 101–103 portrayal of gender issues, 12, 13, 80, 87–88, 117 Q Skills for Success: Reading & Writing 2 (McVeigh & Bixby), 101 recommendations for writers and publishers, 116–117

150

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textbooks (Continued) Taking Action on Global Issues (Asakawa et al.), 91n5, 117 TOIEC (Test of English for International Communication, 80 Western-centric, 87, 101, 117 Times of Harvey Milk, The, 55 TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), 95, 124 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, 55, 92, 95–98 TOIEC (Test of English for International Communication, 53, 69–71, 80, 94–95, 124 Tokyo Rainbow Pride Parade and Festa, 89, 91n6 Tom background, 17, 33–34 classroom practices, 25, 56–57, 66–68, 81, 110–111, 113 definition of feminism, 39–40 feminist pedagogy, 66–68, 78–79 handout, 130–131 as male feminist, 39–40, 49–50 transgender people. see LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues translation. see also interpreting as classroom practice, 71–72, 92, 94, 100–104, 113 of research materials, 26–27 Turkey, 82 United Kingdom EFL teachers from, 17, 29–31, 54 feminist pedagogy in, 9 history of feminism in, 101 sexism in education, 78 working holiday program, 35n2 United States abortion politics in, 82 class in, 42 EFL teachers from, 17, 54 feminist pedagogy in, 9–12, 49 history of feminism in, 37, 47–48, 58, 59n3, 101, 122 immigrants in, 10–12 imperialism and hegemony, 53–54 international students in, 3, 32, 59n6 involvement in Central America, 29 LGBT culture in, 54–55 same-sex marriage, 71

US-Japan Security Treaty, 37 women’s suffrage in, 85 Vandrick, Stephanie, 9–10, 12, 54, 61, 79, 81, 85, 89, 90, 109–110, 112 Vietnam War, 37, 48–49, 131 violence against women domestic violence, 1, 13, 14, 50, 61, 70, 86, 88, 89, 112, 117 female genital mutilation (FGM), 61, 82 gang killing, 82 honor killing, 82 rape, 37 sex tourism and trafficking, 37, 50–51, 59n4, 64, 82, 85 in war, 37, 50–51 Violence Against Women in WarNetwork Japan (VAWW-NET Japan), 37, 50, 59n4 voice, 68–72, 109–110, 113. see also autobiographical narratives Watanabe, Keiko, 74 Weedon, Chris, 43–44, 49 WELL (Women Educators and Language Learners), 17, 115, 132 When God Was a Woman (Stone), 48 Williamson, Cris, 48 women athletes, 73–74, 88 Women’s Day, 63, 89 women’s health. see also reproductive rights breast cancer, 89, 91n6 HIV/AIDS, 61, 63 Women’s International War Crime Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery, 51, 59n4 Women’s Room, The (French), 48 women’s studies, 3, 10, 59n6 Woolf, Virginia, 48 work child labor, 86 garment workers, 11, 86 housewives and housework, 44–45, 73 job discrimination, 36, 37–38, 43, 61, 74, 91n5 maternity leave, 38 menstrual leave, 59n6 sex work, 37, 85 sexual harassment, 1, 87–88, 112, 117 wage equality, 61, 73–74, 86, 87, 88 work-family balance, 61, 87 World War II, 37, 51, 59n4, 131

Inde x

Yu Ri background, 17, 34–35, 49 classroom practices, 25, 81, 86, 113 definition of feminism, 42–43

151

feminist pedagogy, 69–72, 79, 111 as Japan-born Korean, 34, 35n1, 46–47, 52–53 teacher identity, 52–53