Studies from Sociological Perspectives in Japanese Language Education

A Driving Force for the Reexamination and Extension of Research Vision

Abstract

In the course of the publication of Nos. 1 to 150 of the Journal for Japanese Language Teaching, 610 published papers had sociological perspectives. This essay examines how the themes of these papers have changed over the years on the basis of changes in social conditions. In general, the number and proportion of such papers showed a steady increase from the latter half of the 1980s. Thereafter, this trend slowed down for a while, but in the latter half of the 2000s, it reached the highest level seen yet. Initially, most papers focused on explaining conditions with regard to teaching overseas, but in the latter half of the 1980s, more papers focused on learners in Japan, reflecting the diversification among learners here. Additionally, diverse themes were newly developed depending on social conditions. To prevent these newly developed themes from being limited to a transient significance, the author emphasizes the importance of the involvement of other research fields and of the pursuit of universality and generalizability. The author also argues that the Japanese language education community must deepen its discussion on which types of research are necessary and must extend its research vision.