Accepted Manuscript

Finding a niche in teaching English in Japan: Translingual practice and teacher

agency

Noriko Ishihara, Sherrie K. Carroll, Dennis Mahler, Amy Russo

PII: S0346-251X(17)30571-7
DOI: 10.1016/j.system.2018.06.006
Reference: SYS 1953

To appear in: System

Received Date: 1 July 2017

Revised Date: 18 June 2018
Accepted Date: 18 June 2018

Please cite this article as: Ishihara, N., Carroll, S.K., Mahler, D., Russo, A., Finding a niche in
teaching English in Japan: Translingual practice and teacher agency, System (2018), doi: 10.1016/
j.system.2018.06.006.

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Title Page

Title
Finding a niche in teaching English in Japan: Translingual practice and teacher agency

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Author names and affiliations

Noriko Ishihara ishi0029@gmail.com

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Hosei University, 2-17-1 Fujimi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8160, Japan

Carroll, Sherrie K. sherrie.carroll@montgomerycollege.edu

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Montgomery College, 51 Mannakee Street, Rockville, MD 20850, USA

Dennis Mahler dennislmahler@gmail.com

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Westgate Corporation AN
Amy Russo amy.russo@sjsu.edu
San Jose State University
1 Washington Sq, San Jose, CA 95192, USA
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Corresponding author
Noriko Ishihara ishi0029@gmail.com
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Mailing address: 1707 Boissnade Tower, 2-17-1 Fujimi, Hosei University, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
102-8160, Japan
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Phone: 81-3-5380-6207

Formatting of funding sources

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This research was funded by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) offered by the Japan
Society for the Promotion of Science (#15K02802).
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Finding a niche in teaching English in Japan: Translingual practice and teacher agency

1. Introduction

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This paper explores the role of translingual practice in supporting the agency construction

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of second language (L2) teachers, which has received little attention within the L2 teacher

education literature. Teacher agency can be manifested in actions and decisions made in

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pedagogy, assessment, and curriculum development and has been studied in the context of

educational reforms and language policies. Teacher agency is also inextricably interwoven with

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negotiations of positioning, power, values, personal and professional identities, legitimacy, and
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the like (Feryok, 2012; Johnston, 2003; Kayi-Aydar, 2015a; Lasky, 2005; Morgan, 2004;

Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2011; Trent, 2012). It is this complex interplay between agency and those
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factors that form the backdrop of our inquiry into the co-constructed narratives of socialization
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(Ochs, 1993) of two former assistant language teachers (ALTs) in the Japan Exchange and
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Teaching (JET) Program. We focus on these ALT’s translingual practice in the workplace, that is,

how they drew on linguistic and cultural resources from both English and Japanese. The teachers
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developed relationships and their pedagogies through translingual practice by capitalizing on

their knowledge of the local language, culture, and instructional contexts. Although the current
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government policy encourages all English teachers to implement English-only instruction in

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secondary education, our findings call into question the effectiveness of this overarching policy.

The underlying monolingual ideology underestimates and undermines teachers’ abilities to

respond to the complexity of their instructional and relational needs. Yet, the translingual

practice of the teachers in this study became a mediational tool. t facilitated their agency by

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providing a means through which they called upon sociocultural structures to support their

agentive acts to further their professional goals.

The JET Program was established in 1987 at the initiative of the Japanese Ministry of

Education, Culture, Sports, and Technology (MEXT) and was designed to promote

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internationalization at the community level. Most JET participants are native- and nonnative

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English speakers serving as ALTs teaching English. As of July 2016, the majority of the over

4,500 ALTs were from the U.S., while others came from the U.K., Australia, New Zealand,

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Canada, Ireland, Jamaica, and South Africa, and the like (Council of Local Authorities for

International Relations [CLAIR], 2015). ALTs are placed largely in public schools to team-teach

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with local predominantly Japanese teachers of English (JTEs), assist with the development of
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instructional materials, and oversee extra-curricular activities. Although expected to teach

primarily in English, many ALTs opt to communicate with students and colleagues in Japanese
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(Menard-Warwick & Leung, 2017). This choice to use a range of available linguistic and
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cultural resources in teaching and carrying out their professional lives constitutes translingual
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practice. In doing so, they resist prevailing monolingual ideologies which stigmatize hybrid

communication. Though ALTs’ roles and responsibilities in team-teaching and this top-down
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internationalization have been minimally researched (e.g., McConnell, 2000; Miyazato, 2009;

Nakatsugawa, 2014), the discursive construction of ALTs’ agency has hardly been explored in
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relation to translingual practice.

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In investigating ALT’s negotiation of agency with colleagues and students in this study,

we wish to highlight the mediational role of translingual practice, which has scarcely been

explored in the literature. In reporting our data from two focal participants, we attempt to answer

two questions: 1) How was teacher agency constructed, constrained, and (re)negotiated

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discursively in relation to their positioning by others in the local context? and 2) How was the

teachers’ translingual practice related to the negotiation of their agency?

2. Theoretical Framework

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2.1 Translingual Practice

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Following Canagarajah (2013a, b) we define translingual practice as the capacity and

disposition to co-construct meaning across languages and language varieties. Translingual

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practice constitutes a shift away from a traditional monolingual orientation to a pluralistic

understanding of how language users create meaning by drawing on semiotic and discursive (i.e.,

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linguistic and cultural) resources deriving from more than one language or language variety. A
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translingual orientation emphasizes that language users “mesh” or “shuttle between” their

multiple cultural, semiotic, and discursive resources not by “compartmentalizing” individual

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languages as separate systems but through holistic integration (Canagarajah, 2013a, p. 7).
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Canagarajah argues that through accessing multiple resources, language users engage in subtle
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and nuanced negotiations of meaning, leading to complex expressions of identity. Unlike

monolingual ideologies that privilege native speakers and frame nonnative speakers as deficient,
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a translingual orientation regards hybridity and multiplicity as valuable expressive resources.

The teachers in our study developed their identities amidst local expectations largely
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grounded in monolingual ideologies. While they were sometimes construed as English experts,
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they were also seen as “foreign others,” transient teaching assistants. We will demonstrate how

they renegotiated some of these imposed identities while engaging in translingual practice and

how they attempted to assert agency when experiencing dilemmas in relation to their values and

sense of morality (Johnston, 2003). The next sections discuss our understanding of agency and

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review literature theorizing and portraying teacher agency, the major pillar of this paper.

2.2 Agency

Identity can be regarded as one’s understanding of their current and future relationship to

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the world (Norton, 2000), while individuals’ assertion of agency can be considered acts of

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identity (Duff, 2012). Individuals construct and perform their identities by deploying discourses

so as to position themselves as a certain kind of person and respond to how they perceive

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themselves being positioned by others and prevailing ideologies within sociocultural contexts

(Davies & Harre, 1990). Such positioning acts can be considered assertions of agency. Therefore,

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like identity, agency is constructed discursively and negotiated dynamically through language
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(Varghese, 2012). Just as identities are multiple, dynamic, and sometimes contradictory (Norton,

2000), agency is conceptualized not as a static individual property but defined as a dynamically
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negotiated capacity to act, assume new identities, or resist certain positionings actively and
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purposefully (Duff, 2012; Lasky, 2005; Rogers & Wetzel, 2013). Agency is interwoven with
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identity negotiation and can also be mediated by cultural resources that constitute the structure

(Ahearn, 2001). Individuals are viewed not merely as passive participants in the community but,
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through their agency, capable of making choices to either comply or resist and of exerting

influence (Duff, 2012).

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Following the literature (e.g., Ahearn, 2001; Deters, Gao, Miller, & Vitanova, 2014;
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Kayi-Aydar, 2015a, b; Duff, 2012; Lasky, 2005; Miller, 2014; Wertsch & Rupert, 1993; Wertsch,

Tulviste, & Hangsrom, 1993; Varghese, 2012), we understand agency to be socioculturally

mediated (Vygotsky, 1987); that is, it is enabled, facilitated and sometimes constrained by

sociocultural structures, rather than solely characterized by individual intention or free will.

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Mediation is self-generated (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 39) and involves “qualitative transformation”

(Vygotsky, 1978, p. 46); thus, individuals agentively take up resources available to them and use

them as mediational tools to transform their understandings and actions so that they can respond

effectively to a situation. At the same time, in order for an individual’s agency to be realized, it

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must also be supported by sociocultural structures, such as cultural and linguistic resources,

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practices, or individuals, which can also serve as mediational tools. For example, individual

teacher agency is mediated and shaped by the structure of the educational institution as well as

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the sociocultural, historical, and political configurations of the larger society. Vygotsky’s

sociocultural theory illuminates the dynamic relations between individuals and the sociocultural

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contexts in which they are located. Our activity, including enactments of agency, is mediated by
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an external broader system of social connections and relations in which cultural artifacts and

concepts interact dynamically (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006). In brief, agency can be considered a
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dynamically co-constructed “relationship” rather than a pre-determined property of the

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individual (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, p. 239; Miller, 2014, p. 8). Therefore, agency and structure
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are interdependent and mutually constitutive (Ahearn, 2001; Lu & Horner, 2013). While

sociocultural structures enable and constrain an individual’s agency as discussed above, agency
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simultaneously has the potential to constitute structure itself, leading to the reproduction or

transformation of the structure and its practices (Ahearn, 2001).

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3. Literature Review

While research exists on teacher agency in many academic disciplines such as sociology

and general education (e.g., Emirbayer & Mische, 1998; Priestley, Biesta, & Robinson, 2015),

only a handful of studies in L2 teacher education have investigated teacher agency in depth (e.g.,

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Feryok, 2012; Kayi-Aydar, 2015a, b; Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2011; Trent, 2012). Ruohotie-Lyhty’s

longitudinal study of 11 newly-qualified language teachers in Finland focused on their perceived

positioning in the work environment, investigating how they conceptualized the environment and

constructed practical knowledge of teaching. Most of the teachers were found to conceptualize

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their work primarily through restricting discourse, in which they positioned themselves as

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limited by work constraints. Only four teachers discursively constructed opening discourse, in

which they saw their work in a wider perspective. The author characterizes them as language

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educators with a stronger sense of agency rather than being mere language teachers.

Trent (2012) researched the discursive positioning of eight native English-speaking

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teachers in Hong Kong. When their self-positioning as professional language teachers came
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under threat in the local context, they contested the constraining positionings imposed by the

institution and other stakeholders. Trent argues that the binary construction of native English-
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speaking teachers and local teachers should be reconceptualized to emphasize teachers’ hybridity
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and proposes collaboration to overcome antagonism between these groups of teachers.

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Three studies by Feryok (2012) and Kayi-Aydar (2015a, b) include in-depth analyses of

personal narratives of a small number of teachers and are more relevant to this study based on
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life-histories. Through interviews and class observations, Feryok (2012) examined the

socioculturally-mediated agency of an EFL teacher in her learner, teacher, and teacher trainer
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roles. Educated in Soviet Armenia and living through Armenian independence, the teacher’s
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agency was constrained by local, national, and international contexts. Yet as a teacher trainer, she

eventually succeeded in acting as an agent of change establishing new boundaries of acceptable

practice by conducting originally-prohibited professional developing seminars.

Similarly, Kayi-Aydar (2015a, b), using interviews and journals, examined how the

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identity negotiations of pre-service teacher candidates were interwoven with their agency. She

described how one Spanish teacher candidate (2015a), originally exercising agency in

constructing a bilingual identity, struggled to construct a professional identity when positioned as

an illegitimate speaker and linguistic/ethnic minority due to her non-native status, leading

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ultimately to a career switch to ESL, where she would be granted more legitimacy as a native

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English-speaking teacher. Likewise, intern teachers in Kayi-Aydar (2015b) positioned

themselves reflexively in opposition to their mentor teachers while also claiming conflicting

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identities for themselves, which at times constrained their agency. Although they identified

themselves as motivated and effective teachers, they sometimes felt discouraged or less

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autonomous in teaching and questioned the limits of their agency. These studies further our
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understandings of L2 teacher professional development by illustrating the discursive and

socioculturally-mediated enactment of teacher agency.

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4. Method
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In applied linguistics, narrative analysis has frequently been used to examine socially

situated agency and identity construction (e.g., Darvin & Norton, 2015; Edwards & Burns, 2016;
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Feryok, 2012; Kayi-Aydar, 2015a, b; Miller, 2014; Morgan, 2004; Stranger-Johannessen &

Norton, 2017; Tsui, 2007; Varghese, 2012; Vitanova, 2010) because it elucidates the meanings
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constructed by individuals through negotiation within given social contexts. We used life-history
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interviews as our major data source as they characteristically facilitate reflective meaning

making in dialogue with a researcher, leading to jointly-crafted portrayals of identities. Our co-

constructed meaning is reflexive (Riessman, 2008); the identity of the interviewer as perceived

by the interviewees shaped what they shared and how they shared it, while their experiences

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were interpreted through the researchers’ lenses. Our primary interest lies in the meaning and

identities the teachers co-constructed with the researchers in the interviews and data analysis

rather than a more “objective” understanding of ALTs’ status in Japan. It is not our goal to

discover generalizable configurations of ALT’s agency in Japan or language teachers in wider

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settings. Rather, we aim to reveal the complex interplay of our teachers’ agency within

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sociocultural structure and the role their translingual practice played.

The data for this study are drawn from a larger set of 46 interviews conducted by Ishihara

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with 34 pre-service and in-service L2 teachers located in California and Japan who engaged in

intercultural communication. Informed consent was obtained and pseudonyms used to protect

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participants’ identities. Each interview lasted from one to two hours. When participants had
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additional insights to share, they were invited to a second interview. Seven of the 34 participants

were JET teachers. Their data were initially coded based on the themes: agency, identity
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negotiation, values/morality, legitimacy, power, and positioning, all relevant to the notion of
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agency under investigation. These themes were highly developed in the interviews of two former
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ALTs as they discussed their social and professional interactions with their students and

colleagues. Thus, they were selected as the focal participants of this study.
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Next, each of the two focal teachers’ narratives was further analyzed iteratively by the

researchers to understand how the teachers were constructing their identities and enacting their
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agency by examining how they positioned themselves and responded to others’ positioning of
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them (Davies & Harre, 1990). The initial thematic coding enabled us to select the narratives

found within the interview data that could shed insight into the focal teachers’ enactments of

agency. Conspicuously present in these data, translingual practice was broadly identified when

verbal and non-verbal means (e.g. knowledge of culture and semiotic and discursive resources)

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were drawn from more than one language for identity negotiation. Agency and translingual

practice were examined in terms of how the teachers described them unfolding in their lives and

pedagogies with care taken to preserve as much as possible teachers’ meanings by reflecting the

language and concepts they used. These analyses along with the theoretical understanding of

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agency reviewed above were used to interpret how the teachers’ agency was constructed,

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constrained, and (re)negotiated discursively.

Then, to better understand and represent their perspectives, Ishihara invited the two focal

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teachers to be co-authors and to participate in the narrative analysis collaboratively conducted

with Carroll. The issue of anonymity was discussed in depth with these teachers, both of whom

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elected to participate with their own names. The narratives were recursively studied, and the
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interpretations were refined collaboratively to examine the dynamics of agency and positioning

and its relationship to translingual practice as represented by the teachers. We hope that by
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reconciling our multiple perspectives through extended recursive dialogues while rewriting, we
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have collaboratively reached a more complex understanding of the nature of teacher agency
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along with an enhanced awareness of power distributions in life-history research. In the

subsequent sections, we discuss particularly revealing excerpts of our co-constructed dialogues,

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in which researcher and teacher perspectives have been reflexively reconciled.

The focal participant teachers, Dennis and Amy, were both highly valued JETs and thus
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able to stay in their posts for multiple years. Dennis is an Anglo-American from the Northwest.
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He studied Spanish and Japanese at his state university while majoring in anthropology. Dennis

stated that his state’s largely conservative “cowboy big buff WASP [White Anglo-Saxon

Protestant]” identity did not quite fit him. Always interested in Asian culture, he joined the JET

program in 2007 and taught English in rural areas in western Japan in his late twenties until 2010.

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Amy was Anglo-American who grew up and attended university in the Southern U.S.

She learned French and Latin while majoring in European Studies and studied in the U.K. Amy

started the JET Program in 2010 in her mid-20s working at two high schools for five years in a

small city north of Tokyo. One of Amy’s original goals during her time in Japan was to master

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Japanese, “to be bilingual.” She eventually achieved an advanced level, although she initially felt

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“paralyzed” and “adrift.” Amy’s initial frustration also included her perceived lack of

sociopragmatic competence (e.g., being unable to switch between casual and polite forms in a

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range of social contexts).

5. Findings
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In this section while we explore focal participants’ narratives individually, we answer our

research questions in an integrated manner as the negotiation of their agency and its relationship
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with translingual practice was intertwined.

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5.1 Dennis’ agency and translingual practice

Dennis believed that being an anthropology major influenced his socialization into work
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and life in Japan, helping him “bend” in order to fit into Japanese communities. Dennis took

pride in his perceived ability to acculturate at his workplace, a flexibility he did not necessarily
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see among his peers. To focus on relationship building, he would work overtime, attend club
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activities to “hang out” with students, and participate in work parties. For Dennis, the ability to

“bend” signified the Japanese notion of gaman [perseverance]. His Japanese friends often

advised him not to display strong anger or frustrations but hide them internally and persevere:

… you should gaman and … shoganai things [let things go]…You don't show people

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you're upset... There were times when I just screamed in my pillow…why is everything

so … difficult here? Why do I have to always speak around things? Or why can't I just

say something directly?…There were times when … [I] freaked out. I never expressed

that to them… You should control.

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By choosing to gaman his frustrations and pursue his duties perhaps even more assiduously than

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some JTEs, Dennis reported establishing his reputation as more of an “insider” ALT:

The teachers always said, "He's good. He's willing to be like us… he's part of our team,

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he's not trying to just go home at five like the others." Some [other ALTs] were Asian-

American, but… they were just viewed as foreign others… behaving in a way that was

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not acceptable . . . later I would hear through the grapevine stories about them. And then,
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when other teachers would meet me when I went to a new school, they already knew who

I was. And they’re like, “Oh Dennis, welcome home.”

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Dennis compared himself to peer ALTs who were Asian-American and whose Japanese
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proficiency was more advanced; however, they were unwilling to take on cultural behaviors like
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working overtime. Therefore, being ethnically Asian or having advanced Japanese proficiency

alone appears not to be sufficient for social acceptance. While none of Dennis’ acts of alignment
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with local cultural and institutional practices seemingly represents his L2 linguistic competence,

we view these as part of his translingual practice, in which knowledge of the culture is
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manifested in verbal and non-verbal performance of his identity. He retained his position despite
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his city’s drastic downsizing of the ALT population and was invited to plan lessons

collaboratively with JTEs. Although his public expressions of emotion may have been

constrained by engaging in the translingual practice of gaman, this cultural concept also

mediated the negotiation of his social acceptance leading to greater agency as an ALT, which

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occurred through aligning his identity performances with the local structure.

While engaging in cultural practices, Dennis also tried to act in accordance with his

“liberal feminist” values by challenging local practices he perceived as racist or sexist. One such

social convention he resisted was the gendered expectation for women to pour beverages at a

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party. He saw young female teachers doing it and would join them. Or he would joke: “Oh, HE

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should be serving you tea. You’re older than him. He is new.”: These agentive attempts to

influence a common social practice were generally unsuccessful as Dennis explains:

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Ooh, sometimes they got [upset] and usually they just laughed and then she got up and

poured anyway, yeah. I think sometimes I made her uncomfortable by doing that but

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some of them were like, "Yeah. Right. That's true." but most of the time they just kinda
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said, "Oh, no. It's our custom. We should do it."

Although Dennis initially took it as his responsibility to pour drinks as a novice in the
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community, it gradually dawned on him that this was expected of young females. Yet, he did this
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nonetheless so as not to leave the sexist convention unquestioned. He was also aware that this
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was a socially acceptable occasion to “get drunk and let loose.” Therefore, his resistance was

presumably perceived as remaining within the limits of the social structure (Ahearn, 2001) and,
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while not sufficiently influential to overhaul the community convention, brought him few

negative consequences.
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Another social behavior Dennis resisted in his community was physical contact from
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some male students that was directed towards areas of the body that felt inappropriate to him.

Dennis explained that although this type of student behavior seemed to be locally tolerated,

many ALTs reported receiving similar “assaults.” Much of this experience was physical but it

was sometimes combined with direct and intrusive questioning about physical traits. He

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consulted his Japanese colleagues, and frustratingly, their response usually was: "…but he's just a

child." However, Dennis felt that at 13, a student is no longer a child and defined this behavior as

sexual harassment by US standards. His colleagues may have resisted framing the behavior in

sexual terms so as to preserve the child’s innocence. Although he complained several times, he

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was compelled to acquiesce to this student behavior until an outside force––a visitor from a

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Taiwanese partner school––intervened:

So I'm standing next to kocho-sensei [the principal] and then [these two boys]… grope

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me in front of everybody and the [Taiwanese principal] looks at me and looks at them,

looks at kocho-sensei …[with a surprised look]… So, that's when they did something

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[laughs]. When it made them look bad, they did something…
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Because his institution did not take the gravity of the problem seriously, he had no control over it

and was forced into a powerless position. This was a moral issue Dennis could not gaman
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[tolerate]. He quite decisively opted out of participating in the local practice of desexualizing the
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students’ behavior, which we view as a lack of translingual practice. His feeling of victimization
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grew when his colleagues minimized the situation. His agentive control was highly constrained

by the local social structure until the presence of a respected international visitor intervened.
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Without a translingual practice to mediate the situation, Denis was unable to stop the boys’

behavior despite all of his protests. Thus, his attempts at agency to resolve the problem were
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unrealized.
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In contrast, we argue that the classroom was where Dennis’s translingual practice thrived,

allowing him to exercise his agency more powerfully. Although many ALTs were relatively new

teachers unprepared for Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), upon arrival they were asked

to present a CLT lesson to seasoned JTEs, which they felt was insulting to these colleagues. This

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suggests that the ALTs were constructed – at least initially – as experts in both English and CLT

in addition to being cultural ambassadors. This positioning afforded ALT’s pedagogical agency

while simultaneously constraining it by expecting them to speak to the students exclusively in

English. However, Dennis resisted this constraint by using Japanese and engaging in translingual

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practices quite strategically for relational and pedagogical purposes.

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So I would speak with them in Japanese all the time especially [7th graders] and lower…I

decided to not go for a complete English-only rule because I felt that getting to know the

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students was more important … than just speaking English to them. I realized very early

that if I just spoke English to them, they would never get to know me and they would

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never let down their guard. And some ALTs didn't do that. Some ALTs never learned
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Japanese, they didn't even try.

Dennis further described how he shuttled between the two languages to scaffold students’
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learning. He “started pinpointing” areas in which he would use Japanese and then “speak only so
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much Japanese to get [students] to the next level of English.” Then he “tried to use the English
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that they knew and then back and forth.” He prioritized his pedagogy over following the

institutional English-only expectation which perpetuated dominant monolingual ideologies. Not

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only did he model translingual hybridity by using both languages, his pedagogy was also

grounded in his translingual practice, which encompassed his understanding of classroom culture,
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students’ level of English proficiency, and their bilingual way of learning. Dennis’ translingual
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practices and pedagogy were intertwined. He used his agency to carve out a space for a

pedagogy reflecting his values, understandings, and commitments. Simultaneously, this agency

was mediated, augmented, and reinforced by his translingual practices.

Dennis also exercised his agency to challenge students’ potential stereotypes by

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incorporating his values into his unstated curriculum. One example was his effort to challenge

heteronormativity by using an example sentence, “Dennis is seeing Ken” while teaching the

simple present and present progressive, as well as the shift in lexical meaning of the verb see.

When the students interpreted this as a hilarious joke, he stressed that men dating was not

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unusual. Also, Dennis resisted an underlying discourse occasionally surfacing in a government-

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approved textbook. When noticing that a Japanese girl and an American boy were depicted in a

semi-romantic relationship and Japanese boys were found only with Japanese girls, Dennis and

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his ALT colleagues felt that the textbook was “exoticizing this blond and blue-eyed American

boy” and “possibly creating a damaging effect” for both male and female students. Dennis

addressed these issues whenever possible:

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I think that it's . . . to scare people about the white or foreign male coming in and running

off with “our [Japanese] women” … And ultimately, it damages Japanese males as well
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because if this is being promoted, then they feel “English is a girls’ thing and it's not
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something for me,” and they also grow up feeling … “Oh, [American girls] don’t like
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me” … So I always promote my male students, like “You guys can do it” … And I will

tell the girls, "I am not a dreamboat." I would also tell the girls, "Foreign men are not
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necessarily Prince Charming. A lot of them are jerks and they will treat you bad."

Here, Dennis encouraged male students to believe that they could be attractive to international
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women while dismantling female students’ potential assumption that international men,
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particularly blond and blue-eyed Western males, were their ideal partner. In so doing, he is

reacting to prevalent discourses and marketing initiatives that promote English learning by

constructing Western white males––particularly English teachers––as objects of romantic desire

for Japanese women (Bailey, 2007; Motha & Lin, 2014). Once again, his pedagogy drew on his

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translingual practice, especially his understanding of the racialized and gendered discourses

shaping students’ worldviews.

5.2 Amy’s agency and translingual practice

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As with Dennis, Amy was positioned as a native English speaker who would model

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English monolingually to students. She contended that if she spoke or even showed any

indication of understanding Japanese, her weaker students would lose motivation to

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communicate with her in English. She also considered it part of her job to speak English to JTEs

to provide them with opportunities to communicate in English. Her constant use of English left

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little chance for her own language development. “ALTs,” including herself, “want[ed] to learn
AN
Japanese but it [was] actually comically difficult.”

Amy found that by developing personal connections with teachers in both English and
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Japanese, she was able to better access the “familial-style” community. Her efforts learning
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Japanese were commended, and she received “social credit” such as snacks appearing on her
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desk. Her use of Japanese with monolingual vice principals occasionally opened access to “the

real seats of power.” As she stated, “the more Japanese I could speak, the more intricate and
EP

better were my relationships with them.” As her Japanese improved, she and JTEs increasingly

switched between the languages. Such instances appear to mark the emergence of Amy’s
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translingual practice bringing her social recognition and ultimately greater agency.
AC

Her growing translingual practice seems to have been intertwined with her perceived

sense of legitimacy as a teacher. She addressed the question of whether ALTs were fully-fledged

teachers:

I think ALTs are teachers. I think they can be underutilized. Also, they're not always

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given the chance… I was very lucky… I had a very poster-child experience... because my

school let me try things.

Amy had four long-term projects, which included establishing an annual International Day and

launching an extensive reading project. Establishing herself as a legitimate and invested member

PT
of the faculty afforded Amy the support and flexibility needed in proceeding with her projects.

RI
Amy repeatedly stressed the importance of having “an ally,” or somebody who would endorse

and support her initiatives. Without such mediation, her projects would not have materialized.

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These projects, in turn, created for her “a way to belong,” serving as part of the structure within

which Amy’s legitimacy developed.

U
In explaining her “leeway or power,” Amy described her passion for truly academic
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learning. She stated that although language learning should be fun and engaging, ALTs can

promote “real valuable academic” learning. Though her desire to make her team-teaching
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meaningful and academic brought extra work, it created a unique space, a “niche” for Amy to fill,
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which enabled her to integrate her instruction more fully into the mainstream curriculum and
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ultimately to remain in her position to the school’s and her mutual satisfaction. Amy explained

why she stayed for so long.

EP

… [I] found a way to belong. A lot of the ALTs who leave, they never find their niche,

their thing, or they never find someone to give them … a chance … you have to have a
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space that’s yours… where you do or build something.

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Amy further elaborated that to enact real influence, ALTs needed to “work with or within

the system” and largely align with community norms. For example, simply characterizing how

English was taught there as “wrong” would not “get [ALTs] very far.” Amy believed it is

important to work with the system, proposing positive change in a culturally and institutionally

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suitable manner. Amy noted the power of “longevity:” she stated that with experience and

continuity, she was increasingly valued as a competent member of the community.

Amy also discussed another unwritten norm of relying on precedents and downplaying

her initiative:

PT
[I learned about] leveraging Japanese culture in order to get things that I want. …you use

RI
examples. “Well, [another school], they have International Days and I think our English

program is maybe better than theirs. Shouldn't we have an International Day?” Or if I

SC
wanted to do different things [that were] really my idea, sometimes I would say, "Oh I

learned this from another teacher or when I was in school I learned to like this." I got

U
more success because it was not my idea.
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Amy realized that following a precedent provided a sense of security and that by attributing her

own ideas to others, they appeared more credible and grounded. In striking contrast to typical
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American workplace culture where originality is valued, she viewed these discursive practices as
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characteristic of Japanese culture. As with Dennis, a crucial component of Amy’s translingual

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practice was her deliberate alignment with the local institutional culture, even if that meant

adopting practices that run counter to North American practices that might come more naturally.
EP

We view her active participation in the local practice as part of her agency through

recontextualization (Liu & Honer, 2013), a conscious and agentive act of identity performance.
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Like Dennis, Amy seemed to have negotiated pedagogical agency successfully in her
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classroom. Her translingual practice resulted in the development of a wide range of instructional

strategies. For example, she described activities in which she attempted to disrupt students’

construction of her. As part of her self-introduction, she created a quiz offering familiar binary

choices: “What was her favorite drink, tea or coffee?” “Which does Amy like better, Costco

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[American retail store] or Kaede Mall [local mall]?” and “What is Amy’s favorite Miyazaki

[Japanese animator’s] movie, Totoro or Spirited Away?”

I chose things that I thought they would get wrong. For example, everyone circled coffee

because I’m American, I must drink coffee. No, I like tea… That was intentional. I was

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trying to disrupt them a little bit and in a non-threatening way... Costco versus our local

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mall… “Oh, you’re American, you must like Costco.” Not really. Kaede Mall has way

better cake and ice cream. Or they’re like, “You must like Totoro. You’re a girl, Totoro’s

SC
cuter.” And I’m like, “No, actually I don’t like Totoro.”

Resisting such constructions, Amy attempted to dismantle students’ potential stereotypes.

U
Instead, she encouraged students to see her individuality beyond national and gender confines.
AN
Notably, she couched her pedagogy in a locally suitable manner, making it accessible and “non-

threatening” by drawing on students’ knowledge and localized (over)generalizations. This, we

M

argue, formed part of her translingual practice predicated on her knowledge of the languages and
D

cultures, which she agentively incorporated into her pedagogy.

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While Amy’s default medium of instruction was English, she occasionally drew on her

knowledge of Japanese in the classroom. For example, her Japanese competence provided a
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window into her students’ racial biases. In discussing concepts of beauty, she showed students

images of Americans of various races and ethnicities. When she heard students making negative
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comments in Japanese on the appearance of non-Asians and non-Caucasians, she decided to

AC

intervene. Although she was supposed to “play dumb,” pretending not to understand, she made a

clear statement: "Most Americans don’t look like me. I don’t look like you either, and that’s

okay." Here again, we see how she tailored her instruction based on her knowledge of language

and prevalent racial biases. Her understanding of students’ comments in Japanese played a

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pivotal role in her pedagogy, delivering what she felt an important message for social justice.

These instructional decisions were supported by her translingual practice serving as a

mediational tool, which enabled her pedagogical agency to blossom.

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6. Discussion

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Our teachers were uniquely situated in their sociocultural, institutional, and instructional

contexts and often actively negotiated agency within structural constraints. Both Dennis and

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Amy underscored the importance of “working with and within the system,” that is, aligning with

the local sociocultural structure, though this manifested differently for each of them. For Dennis,

U
it was choosing to “bend” his lifestyle, habits, or behaviors, and practice the cultural notion of
AN
gaman. In Dennis’s view, having advanced Japanese proficiency alone did not guarantee

inclusion; it was his willingness to perform local values that opened the door (McConnell, 2000).
M

Dennis earned a reputation for being a team player, which assisted him in building rapport, as
D

evidenced by JTEs inviting him to plan lessons collaboratively. Consequently, he was able to
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elect to remain in his position as long as he wished. Amy aligned with the existing structure to

advance her instructional initiatives by finding allies who would endorse her projects. She did
EP

this by “leveraging Japanese culture,” proposing a new idea along with a precedent or with credit

attributed to others rather than herself. Accordingly, she was able to better coordinate her
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instruction with JTEs and organize new instructional projects, which allowed her to “find a
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niche,” thus giving her legitimacy and a sense of belonging. Within the confines of being ALTs

in Japanese institutions, their alignment appears to have afforded them greater agency than is

usual for most other ALTs. Notably, their translingual practice served as a mediational tool that

enabled them to assert agency; both teachers used Japanese and knowledge of the culture not

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only to survive their daily working lives in a largely monolingual institution but also to build

connections with students and colleagues and to inform and enrich their pedagogies. Without

such language skills and knowledge of local discursive norms and cultural practices, which

served as mediational tools, their pedagogical agency may not have been realized successfully

PT
(for the link between identity and pedagogy, also see Ellis, 2016; Ishihara & Menard-Warwick,

RI
2018; Morgan, 2004; Moth, Jain, & Tecle, 2012; Zheng, 2017).

While feeling mostly recognized and appreciated, both teachers occasionally found their

SC
agency stymied. When Dennis felt he was physically violated by his students, his numerous pleas

were left unanswered. Refusing to participate in the local practice of desexualizing the student

U
behavior, he was unable to successfully assert his agency until an incidental structural support
AN
from a visitor became available. When initially meeting local expectations of teaching in English

and choosing to interact with other English teachers in English, Amy did not have the
M

opportunity to engage in translingual practice. Once she began to use more Japanese and the
D

knowledge of the culture, however, the translingual practice appeared to help her cultivate a
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more nuanced rapport with her colleagues and better tailor instruction to students’ needs.

Because ALTs are often constructed as experts in English (Miyazato, 2009; Nakatsugawa,
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2014) and sometimes in CLT, the classroom was probably the place where the utmost agency

was negotiable for Dennis and Amy. Because they were relatively free from the constraints of
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the centralized national curriculum, both Dennis and Amy may have been able to enact greater
AC

pedagogical agency than local teachers to decide what to teach and how to teach it. Even though

they were formally advised to use exclusively English with students, both drew on their

translingual practice to craft their pedagogies. Dennis used Japanese to teach lower grades,

where students knew little English, in an attempt to build relationships first and then scaffold

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their cognitive development. Both teachers faced potential student bias in the classroom context

and acted upon it. When Dennis addressed the gender stereotypes promoted in the textbooks, his

pedagogy was informed by the values commonly found in liberal Western discourses on the one

hand and was simultaneously grounded in his grasp of the students’ knowledge and assumptions

PT
on the other. Similarly, Amy confronted students’ esthetics of beauty and their preconceived

RI
notions of her identities by couching her values and pedagogy in accessible and non-threatening

instruction given students’ knowledge and ways of learning (culturally relevant pedagogy,

SC
Ladson-Billings, 1995). Even though both teachers were using English in most lessons, we see

their pedagogies as performances of their translingual practice and identity, which informed

U
enactments of their translingual teacher agency. Of note, their translingual agency was both
AN
enabled and inhibited through mediation by cultural concepts and artifacts, as well as their

students and colleagues with their expectations and positioning of them, all of which formed and
M

embodied the structure these teachers were working within.

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TE

6.1 Limitations, Pedagogical Implications, and Future Research

Teacher participation in narrative research draws extensively on collaborative and

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iterative co-construction of meaning. Amy addressed a potential drawback of life-history

interviews such as those used in our data collection when she discussed the risk that events and
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emotions could be inflated out of proportion during the interview (see also Goodson, 2013). As
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mentioned earlier, this narrative inquiry focused on the teller’s understandings and self-

constructions (Bell, 2002; Menard-Warwick, 2011), namely, how our teachers experienced,

interpreted, and portrayed events. Given this approach, factual reality is less of an issue.

However, visiting and re-visiting the teachers’ experiences in researcher-teacher collaboration

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appeared to construct a more balanced and nuanced understanding and mitigated against

representations that were exaggerated in the moment of a particular telling. This benefit resulting

from the iterative nature of collaborative meaning-making lends support to the existing literature

(Barkhuizen 2011, 2013; Johnson, 2009; Johnson & Golombek 2011; Kayi-Aydar, 2015a; Tsui,

PT
2007).

RI
Life-history interviews encourage dialogic reflection as they are wide in scope,

addressing issues related to identity construction and its dynamic negotiation in context. Dennis

SC
stated that, through dialogue, experiences buried deeply in the past were recalled and started

taking on new meaning; those that initially appeared random became relevant in later reflections.

U
He felt that these new understandings were applicable not only to his values and beliefs about his
AN
current teaching but also to language program administration. Amy concurred, finding that

disconnected pieces of experiences became interpretable as a whole while facilitating further

M

recollections and analyses leading to principled teaching. These points regarding teachers’
D

knowledge construction have been documented in the literature, for instance, as inquiry-based
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collaborative sense-making (Johnson, 2009; Johnson & Golombek 2002, 2011) or narrative

knowledging (Barkhuizen 2011, 2013). Future research could continue to inform how teacher
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educators can encourage reflection and further exploit collaborative and iterative narrative co-

construction of teacher identity as part of knowledge construction.

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Teachers’ participation in self-reflective research can offer exposure to theoretical

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constructs and help them develop a contextualized understanding of those constructs in practice.

Teachers’ first-hand experience of life-history interviews can also facilitate practitioner research

in learners’ experiences (Bell, 2002) as evidenced by Amy’s course project (2016). This supports

narrative practitioner research as being an effective, legitimate, and potentially empowering

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means of teacher development (Edwards & Burns, 2016; Johnson & Golombek 2002, 2011,

Johnston, 2003; Morgan, 2004). Moreover, the extended reflection afforded through practitioner

research can lead teachers to explore the interaction of their values with issues of power,

legitimacy, exclusion, and positioning within their personal and professional lives (Johnston,

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2003; Kayi-Aydar, 2015b). In fact, such critical reflection is crucial in language teacher

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education if unequal distribution of power associated with language learning/teaching is to be

addressed and challenged (Ellis, 2016; Motha et al., 2012).

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Finally, iterative, dialogically-constructed narratives and reflections can assist in

developing a more complex view of translingual practice featuring dynamic hybridity. This study

U
has demonstrated preliminary yet promising findings regarding how teachers can negotiate their
AN
agency by modeling translingual practice themselves through mediation by students and

colleagues as well as other cultural concepts and artifacts. Since this study focused on successful
M

teachers’ agency in the JET context, it would be important to explore a wider range of teacher
D

experiences. This is particularly vital given that teachers’ fluid identities and their status of
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inclusion varies vastly depending on the cultural and institutional contexts, which affect their

agency accordingly. Translingual practice shows promise as a productive framework in

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understanding and empowering learners’ and teachers’ agency in instructional and language

practices.
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AC

7. Conclusion

The study illustrates how translingual practice can become a mediational tool, facilitating

language teachers’ agency and providing means through which teachers call upon sociocultural

structures to support their agentive acts. Ironically, our teachers were successful ALTs who

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negotiated agency by sometimes using Japanese and knowledge of the culture in interacting with

students despite governmental recommendations against it. As demonstrated in this paper, they

thrived on their translingual practice. While representing the values, pedagogies, and discursive

practices they had been socialized into in their US contexts, they drew on their capacity to use

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Japanese to establish rapport with their students and colleagues. They also capitalized on their

RI
translingual knowledge of Japanese culture in general, students’ ways of learning, and the status

of students’ translingual practice, which made their pedagogies accessible and culturally relevant.

SC
Through translingual practice, they were able to better negotiate their roles as ALTs and became

more integrated into their school communities. If agency and structure are truly mutually

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constitutive (Ahearn, 2001) in educational institutions in Japan, the reality of ALTs’ translingual
AN
practice revealed in this and other studies (e.g., Ishihara & Menard-Warwick, 2018; Menard-

Warwick & Leung, 2017) can bring about changes to the traditional construction of ALTs’ roles
M

defined by monolingual ideologies.

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Moreover, the teachers in this study pointed out that local (predominantly Japanese)
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teachers’ translingual practice should also be encouraged. Influenced by monolingual ideologies,

JTEs may see themselves as deficient English speakers. However, through greater awareness of
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linguistic power dynamics and their legitimacy as owners of English (Kayi-Aydar, 2015a; Tsui,

2007), they may become more confident in their multicompetence. In fact, ALTs and JTEs can
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act as foils, mutually and synergistically eliciting positive attributes while engaging in
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translingual practice. In turn, students may find such hybridity inspiring. The current government

policy appears to view the exclusive use of English as ideal and encourages even JTEs to use

English as the sole (or dominant) medium of instruction across the board in high school starting

in 2013 and in junior high school in 2018 respectively. While using English as much as possible

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can contribute to the development of L2 competence that becomes the foundation of students’

and teachers’ translingual practice, we argue that an overarching policy that mandates English-

only underestimates and undermines teachers’ and students’ potential for rich translingual

practice that can respond to the complexity of their instructional and relational needs. When

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students and teachers’ translingual practice is truly valued, honored, and nurtured, their agency

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can flourish as they position themselves and each other powerfully in collaboration.

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