Takaaki Hiratsuka

Abstract: This presentation deals with the topic of foreign assistant language teachers (ALTs), the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program, and team teaching. It is innovative in that (a) it is the first to elucidate ALTs’ comprehensive experiences, across both historical time (i.e., prior to, during, and after the JET program) and social space (i.e., inside and outside the school), thereby revealing their multiple identities that they come to construct and reconstruct over time and (b) it explores the meanings and perspectives of particular phenomena that ALTs experience within their specific social settings from their individual points of view. The study upon which this presentation is based does this by using personal narrative accounts gathered from multiple participants. Through these narrative accounts, I formulate a conceptualization of ALT identity, an effort that has hitherto been neglected. As a consequence, this presentation offers several practical and empirical applications of the conceptualization to future endeavors involving ALTs and those who engage with them, including the key stakeholders of Japanese teachers of English (JTEs), their local boards of education, the Japanese government, and Japanese learners of English.

Bio: Takaaki Hiratsuka is an associate professor at Ryukoku University in Kyoto, Japan, where he teaches a range of applied linguistics courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He currently supervises master’s and PhD students in related fields of language teacher education and narrative inquiry. He received his PhD in language teaching and learning from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His recent book publications include: Narrative inquiry into language teacher identity: ALTs in the JET program (2022, Routledge) and Team teachers in Japan: Beliefs, identities, and emotions (forthcoming, Routledge).