Action Research for Public Japanese Education:

International Exchange Event for Parents and Children- Collaborative Project Between Local Government, Academia, and Private Sector


FUKUMURA Makiko, MIYO Jumpei


KEYWORDS: publicness, citizenship, “the citizen through language”, feelings of solidarity, community-based Japanese language education


This paper is an action research of the international exchange event for parents and children project (Oyako de Kokusai Kouryu), which was a collaboration between the local government, the academia, and the private sector. The local government, the academia, and the private sector aspect of this project refer to Hino Child & Family Support Center, Musashino Art University, and Tabunka Hiroba Aiai, respectively. The project holds international exchange events for parents and children living around the city of Hino, and these events have been conducted over the past four years since 2016.

The practical approach for this project is based on the concept of community-based Japanese language education. Under this approach, events are open to diverse participants, who discuss specific issues with each other in an equal relationship, thereby learning to communicate in Japanese in the process of resolving these issues. The project aims to foster a sense of citizenship among participants, bringing together individuals with diverse perspectives to cooperate with each other in a way that transcends the teacher/student relationship, and enabling mutual learning through community events.

This paper uses concepts of publicness and citizenship as a foothold for discussing community-based Japanese language education, using it as a basis for considering the international exchange event for parents and children (Oyako de Kokusai Kouryu) project, which was devised as a community-based Japanese language education initiative, and clarifying what individual participants learned in the process.


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