Process of making social issues "personal"

Learning in an industry-academia collaborative project as a CCBI-based Japanese language education practice

Abstract

Critical Content-Based Instruction (CCBI) for language education is considered to be a critical approach aiming to examine the society in a critical manner and build better societies. This paper addresses an industry-academia collaborative project undertaken by CASIO and Musashino Art University as a CCBI-based Japanese language education practice. For this project, students and the company cooperated to engage in activities aimed at creating an inclusive society and organized online events for solving social issues. The purpose of this paper is to understand what and how the students learned through this project. This analysis revealed that the students perceived the project as “a process of making the topics personal.” This process broadly consisted of two stages: linking past personal experiences with the topic, and then expanding current personal experiences. By discussing this process in detail, this paper will argue that in the context of critical approaches to Japanese language education practices, two design perspectives are needed: (1) a design for encounters with others and (2) the design as a social practice.