The Current State of Japanese Language Education in Australian Schools

Context

From the 1970s until the early 2000s, the teaching of Japanese in Australia expanded rapidly, and it is now the most widely taught language in Australia, in both schools and universities – a unique situation within the western world. The impetus for this expansion derived partly from the economic and strategic importance of the Australia-Japan relationship, which prompted government investments in promoting the teaching of Japanese. However, it was supported by many other factors, including the development of a core group of committed teachers, good resources and opportunities for students to travel to Japan. Importantly, the study of Japanese has captured the interest of many students, teachers and school leaders, who have recognised the humanistic and general educational reasons for learning Japanese, in addition to the more pragmatic ones which have often been the focus of government policy.

Today, the teaching of Japanese must fulfil a dual purpose:

1 Ensuring that individual Australians can communicate in Japanese and understand Japan.

Substantial numbers of Australians are being educated to interact with Japanese people and institutions in their working and social lives. The development of skills in Japanese starts at school and can be continued through study in tertiary and further education and beyond.

2 Providing the wider educational benefits of language learning to a significant proportion of the overall school population.

Language learning provides many cognitive, social and other educational benefits not restricted to fluency in the target language. As the language that more Australian students study than any other, Japanese provides a window into the wider world of other languages and cultures for over 350,000 primary and secondary students every year (over 10 per cent of the school population). This prepares them more broadly for an increasingly diverse and globalised world, whether they need to use Japanese extensively in the future or not.

This report argues that the teaching of Japanese faces significant challenges. Since 2000 there has been an overall decrease of approximately 16 per cent in the number of students studying Japanese, nearly 21 per cent at primary and 6.4 per cent at the secondary level, during a period when the total school population has been rising. In addition, there is a high level of attrition in the middle years and this is seriously threatening the ongoing health and effectiveness of programs. The decline in enrolments is strongly linked to changes in external conditions, particularly in the failure to develop policies and practices which value and support languages education in general by governments, education authorities and school managements, as has been noted in several recent reports (eg Liddicoat, 2007; Lo Bianco, 2009). In primary schools in particular this has led to conditions which undermine effective programs, while at the secondary level course structures which narrow student choices and discourage the study of languages have been allowed to develop unchecked.

There have also been issues more specifically related to Japanese which have exacerbated the situation. The lack of appropriate and detailed Japanese-specific curriculum and exemplar syllabuses in most states and territories, particularly at the primary level, coupled with inadequacies in teacher training and development, has contributed to issues in the quality of some programs, leading to student disengagement. Changes to the student cohort, including large numbers of students entering high school having studied Japanese at primary school, has created a need for different pathways and courses, but very few schools have responded by providing appropriately differentiated instruction or classes.

Despite an increasing number of home-background (Heritage) (Reference to footnote 1) learners, mainstream schools do not provide courses which cater for their needs. At the senior secondary level, a failure to provide appropriate courses and assessment regimes for different groups of learners has created disincentives for both home-background and non-background learners, although the ways in which these operate have differed in different states and territories.

Footnote 1 Terms for different groups of learners and different courses are not uniform across the country, and while terminology is currently being addressed in a number of different projects, no consensus has yet been reached. The authors have preferred the term ‘home background’ as more descriptive of the current group of Japanese learners in Australia in this category.

Over more than three decades, the teaching of Japanese has developed into an important component in the education of Australian students, and its achievements are widely respected internationally. It is ideally placed to capitalise on the economies of scale and advantages for continuity which come from widespread teaching. Recently, however, there are signs that the support and vision that led to these achievements has in some areas given way to complacency, and that a failure to address various problems has led to a decline in enrolments. Decisive action is required to reverse this decline, and to protect and extend the achievements of decades of investment and experience.

Within this context, the Australian Government’s support for Japanese language through the National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program (NALSSP) comes at a crucial time. As well as providing highly significant national leadership and recognition of the importance of Japanese language, the NALSSP offers state and territory education systems the opportunity to address a range of issues supporting and hindering Japanese programs locally. State and territory education systems generally report a positive ‘vibe’ around the NALSSP and are currently scheduled to deliver a range of projects and initiatives with NALSSP funding.

These initiatives include:

• 
  teacher training and retraining programs in most jurisdictions
  
• 
  new programs such as immersion programs and programs to link Japanese to other curriculum areas (particularly English literacy)
  
• 
  the development of online or technology-enhanced teaching materials and delivery systems
  
• 
  support for development of new structures to support Japanese (such as ‘hub’ schools), better data collection and public information campaigns.
  

Although further improvements could be made in the targeting of some programs, and in increasing national cooperation to avoid duplication and enhance effectiveness, these projects provide a welcome impetus for change and their initial implementation is making a positive first step in the work towards the NALSSP target of increasing the number of Australian students exiting Year 12 with high levels of Japanese proficiency. There are also a number of other important national projects in train which will provide further opportunities for positive change. One of the most important is the development of a national curriculum for languages, due to begin in 2010. There are also well-advanced projects to develop a senior secondary curriculum for Heritage (home-background) learners, to examine issues relating to senior secondary courses and to determine achievement levels in Asian languages.