京都教育大学紀要　No.114, 2009
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How to Develop Teacher Autonomy through Classroom Research
Emiko IZUMI
授業研究を通して教師の自律を促進する試み
泉　惠美子
Accepted December 18, 2008
Abstract : Based on the action plan for the training of “Japanese who can use English”(2003), the Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (hereafter, Monkasho) administered a five-year plan (2003-2007) for intensive
training of all English teachers, aiming at the improvement of competence and skills in teaching and methodology. The key to
success, however, depends on a variety of factors, one being the extent to which teachers are able to be autonomous
researchers of their own practice. An in-service teacher training focusing on lesson improvement through action research has
been implemented since 2002 in Hyogo Prefecture in Japan. The study has two purposes: to describe the teacher training
program of the past seven years, and to consider the kind of teacher development and classroom research desirable for future
enhancement of teacher autonomy. (Izumi, 2003; Izumi and Takahashi, 2004; Izumi, 2005).
Key Words : teacher autonomy, classroom research, action research, reflection
抄録 : 文部科学省は 2003 年に「『英語が使える日本人』を育成するための戦略構想」並びに行動計画を発表し，日
本の中・高等学校で教える全英語教師に 10 日間の教員研修を義務付けて実施した。しかしながら，教師の授業力
や指導力を高めるためには，教師自らが日々の授業を振り返り，問題を特定し，新たな目標を立て，それに合わ
せた指導案を作成し，授業を実践し，ビデオに撮り，ジャーナルに記載する中で内省を行い，授業観察眼や力量
を高めるといった過程を繰り返すことで，教師の自律が促進されると考える。本研究は中・高等学校の教員が，大
学教員をメンターに迎え各教師が抱える問題を中心にアクションリサーチを行なった実証的研究であり，教師研
修の概要を概説し，望ましい教室研究と教師の自律について提案することを目的としている。
（泉，2003；泉・高
橋，2004；泉，2005）
索引語 : 教師の自律，授業研究，アクションリサーチ，内省
Emiko IZUMI
2
1．Introduction
Improving the Quality of Teachers
The success or failure of school education depends, to a large degree, on the quality and ability of the teacher
and therefore it is important to promote systematic policies through the fostering, hiring and on-the-job training
stages. To this end Monkasho is making improvements in the teacher training curriculum in universities and is
urging prefectural boards of education, and other educational institutions to introduce improvements in the
process of teacher appointment, placing more importance on evaluation of the person -- for example, through
implementation of interviews, practical exams, etc.
Further, Monkasho is endeavoring to enhance teacher training based on the degrees of teaching and social
experience training in prefectural boards of education, and to encourage teachers’ self-training. This paper
concerns itself with the latter of these initiatives.
2. Background
Richards and Lockhart (1994) define action research (AR) in education as teacher-initiated classroom
investigation which seeks to increase the teacher’s understanding of classroom teaching and learning, and to bring
about change in classroom practice. AR typically involves small-scale investigative projects in the teacher’s own
classroom, and consists of a number of phases that often recur in an ongoing cycle: planning, action, observation
and reflection. Critical reflection provides the basis for further planning and reflection. In other words, these
phases recycle to form an action-research spiral. According to Freeman (1998), AR is initiated by a question,
problem or puzzle, and relevant data is collected, analyzed and interpreted. The results are made public, and the
process is under the control of the classroom teacher. Hopefully, classroom teachers themselves are motivated by
the research and are able to change and improve their classes; researchers, such as university professors or
supervisors, should give appropriate encouragement and positive feedback to participants.
Bailey, Curtis and Nunan (2001) proposed various methods for professional development. Among them are
teaching journals and action research, video, peer observation, self awareness, reflective teaching, teaching
portfolios, language reflection on learning experiences, and self observation. They are all important ways of
developing teacher autonomy. This study focuses especially on experiential learning, as well as exploratory
practice.
There has been increasing interest in the use of action research since the 1990s in Japan. A number of research
and experimental attempts have been made to explore real classes and the problems actually faced in a lesson with
the goal of increasing our understanding of classrooms and have offered a new tool in teacher education (Iseno,
1993; Sano, 2000).
According to Tamai (2003), for the purpose of self-development, teachers can analyze a lesson by keeping a
journal. When they explore their own observations of and reflections on students’ performance or their behaviors
during classes, it becomes an efficient strategy for training as a professional teacher, as well as useful to lesson
improvement. Knowledge, attitude, skill, and awareness (KASA) serve as important elements when teachers are
How to Develop Teacher Autonomy through Classroom Research
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developing their skills. How teachers are able to acquire KASA, therefore, is a crucial issue in developing teacher
autonomy.
In order to conduct classroom research, teachers need to collect data in order to analyze individual learners and
classes. This data can consists of journal reflections on their classes, the lesson plans and lesson observations,
videos and transcriptions of lessons, data from stimulated recall and think-aloud protocols, categorized teacher
talk, questionnaires, examinations, feedback from students, interviews between students and mentors, and so
forth. However, sometimes we find difficulties in reflection for various reasons. For instance, unfamiliarity or
uncomfortability with the practice because of the Japanese character and traditional values concerning shame,
respect for authority and elders, reticence to face any pain in probing one’s own weaknesses, anxiety as a learner
and a lack of sharing one’s experiences, thoughts and feelings in a communal fashion, which can prevent teachers
from reflecting and verbalizing their own beliefs.
Nevertheless, learners should be aware of the learning strategies in language classrooms. Nunan (1988:3) states
that teachers should take responsibility for presenting certain notions to their students so they can accordingly
account for the aims of the teachers. Teachers should provide learners with efficient learning strategies, assist
learners in identifying their own preferred ways of learning, develop skills needed to negotiate the curriculum,
encourage learners to set their own objectives, encourage learners to adopt their realistic goals and free times, and
develop learners’ skills in self-evaluation. This process can create learner-centered classroom, enhancing
learners’ motivation, which in it’s turn will influence learning.
3. Purpose of Research
The research tried to answer the following questions:
(1) Did participation in the action research result in changes in teachers’ understanding of their learners and their
classrooms?
(2) Did lessons improve as a result of the action research?
(3) While repeating the reflection based on classes, is analysis of their own lessons and/or their learners’
perspectives enforced, is self-education promoted, and is the result increased teacher autonomy?
4. Method
4.1 Participants
Twenty teachers participated in the teacher training program, held in the Hyogo Prefectural Educational
Institute for in-service teacher training and research, from 2002 to 2004. Many of the teachers are still continuing
their action research in an English classroom study group that the author conducts as a representative and teacher
trainer. A university professor, as a mentor, and a supervisor also support this training.
4.2 Outlines and Procedure of the Teacher Training
Emiko IZUMI
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The training course was planned as follows. In May, participants submitted a videotape and a teaching plan of a
lesson. They identified problems and issues in their classrooms from which they would later decide on their
research focus. Advance instruction and reading and writing assignments about action research were also given to
participants.
In June, a two-day training course was held and participants were given detailed explanations about action
research; in particular, the ways of analyzing a lesson and writing a journal. On the first day, there were several
activities to deepen the teachers' reflections and sensitize their feelings, which helped teachers learn how to carry
out reflective analysis. The teacher trainer also gave the participants an opportunity to understand the humanistic
approach to teaching and how to conduct research effectively. They were introduced to group encounters, the
Silent Way, cross-cultural understanding, collaborative group activities, and mind mapping.
Subsequently, they discussed the concept of an ideal teacher versus a poor one by summarizing their
experiences as teachers and as foreign language learners, and then, in groups, went on to analyze their strengths
and weaknesses as teachers. Later, participants organized several support groups. At this session, the teacher
trainer gave feedback to submitted journals or teaching plans, with suggestions on how to respond to others’
journals as well. Afterwards, research was conducted for six months from June to January.
4.3 Data collection and analysis of individual learners and classes
Participants made teaching plans and kept journals before and after the lessons. Further, data from lesson
observations, videos and transcripts of the lessons, questionnaires, examinations, and feedback from students
were collected.
Each week, participants exchanged comments on each others' journals by email or fax. They also had to submit
their journals to a trainer and a supervisor once a month. In July, a lecture was held, and participants gave their
mid-term presentations. One purpose here was to examine whether the action research was going well, and the
other was to allow participants to discuss their reactions to their situations and to decide on their individual
research questions.
In November, all participants gave final presentations and attended the final lecture by the university teacher
who had played the role of trainer and mentor. Finally, they submitted their reports, which the supervisor edited
and published as a report in March.
Research themes varied depending on school levels. For instance, elementary school teachers focused mainly
on suitable language for addressing questions, on giving directions to students, or on how they should give their
opinions or convey their attitudes when responding to students. Some junior high school teachers tried to seek
better communicative methods in teaching English to make classes active and interesting by introducing more,
varied activities or tasks. Many senior high school teachers dealt with reading ability by focusing on university
entrance examinations. The balance between improvement of communicative competence and preparation for
entering a university was a major issue for them. Some tried to create a study environment by designing an
effective teaching project and its materials appropriate to a small class.
In their teaching plans and journals, participants were required to record learning objectives, teaching
objectives, post-class reflection, and any qualitative changes they had undergone. This was to enable them to
develop a deeper awareness of classroom events and of their learners. In the journals, we saw four types of
How to Develop Teacher Autonomy through Classroom Research
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reflection: 1) fact based reflections, 2) self-conflicts, including objective descriptions of the teachers’ own
emotions, 3) awareness of inner-conflicts on the part of learners and 4) theorizing. These stages reflected
teachers’ continuing growth through their individual experiences.
5. Results and Discussion
On the whole, almost all of the participants were able to improve their classes through action research through
deep reflection and analysis of their methods and the students’ needs and such. Izumi (2005) reported how the
participants were able to raise their awareness and change their attitudes in four areas: inner changes, class
improvement, collaborative relationships and teacher autonomy. This paper focuses, qualitatively, on two
examples of classroom research. In this section I will discuss two cases of action research, analyzing and
observing how participants deepened their understanding through reflection and developed themselves, as well as
their classes.
5.1 Case 1
The first research was conducted by a Japanese English teacher at a public junior high school in Kakogawa,
Hyogo. She has been working there for more than 10 years. Her research themes were “to build up the learning
community among students” and “the improvement of practical communicative ability”. At that time, she was
facing several problems. Students had already lost their motivation to learn English. They were so inactive in the
class that they were unwilling to speak up in reading practices. A number of students left things behind at home
and they didn’t do much homework.
As the first action plan in the first term, she put students into pairs and seated them in pairs and groups. Her
intention was to make students take the first steps towards taking responsibility for each other while studying in a
cooperative way. In this way, she believed, they would become companions, learning together. When they didn’t
understand, they could ask their partners for help without any hesitation and thus it would become easier for them
to read in a loud voice, feeling at ease with their partners.
Another reform was the introduction of a chat test. She set a time when students individually had a short
conversation with an assistant language teacher (ALT) and she then videotaped and transcribed the students’
conversation and returned it to the individual student. An evaluation standard was established with the ALT and
other English teachers.
Collected data from interviews and questionnaires was analyzed. According to the interviews and
questionnaires students liked the fixed pairs and the reserved seats. Seventy-five percent of the students answered
“they [=chat tests] were good”, 21% replied “they were bad” and 4 % had no response.
Students commented favorably upon other aspects of the classes. Some of their comments were as follows: “I
can ask questions easily and comfortably.” “Before, I left the problems I didn't understand, but I got to understand
them by learning together in pairs.” “I became positive.” “It became easier to ask my friends and to learn
English.” “Because we can start to practice immediately, it is good to work in pairs.” There were similarly
positive comments regarding the chat test.
Emiko IZUMI
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As the second action, she had been able to get some ideas from questionnaires and interviews with the mentor
as well as students and she changed pairs and seating arrangement in order to refresh the mood of students and to
make the classes more active. She gave Japanese translations to the students beforehand to allow them to spend
more time doing communicative activities, and she also introduced English songs into every class. Her action plan
was successful. In the end, she was able to change her classes to more active ones and build up the learning
community among students through the chat test. Students gained confidence in speaking with the ALT in
English, which improved their communicative competence. After the research, she continued to do her classroom
research about the effectiveness of pair feedback in speaking tasks. We can conclude her autonomy as a teacher
and researcher has been enhanced through classroom research.
In this case study, the teacher’s perspective of students and learning changed through the action research. She
observed each student carefully, listened to them, raised her own awareness and tried to change her attitude
towards them. As a result, she changed her normal teaching style and introduced several new teaching methods,
which enabled her to improve her English class and develop her autonomy.
5.2 Case 2
This research case was carried out by a Japanese English teacher working at a public senior high school in
Japan. She has been teaching English for more than fifteen years. Her focus was on effective reading activity. She
was puzzled that her students’ voices were too low and that they were very quiet during classes, so she tried to
introduce a reading aloud activity that would develop chorus reading. As an action, she appointed students to read
aloud at intervals in the chorus. She also introduced a pair reading activity.
She distributed a questionnaire to the student both in June and in July and analyzed them. The results of the
questionnaire held in June were as follows. The percentage of students who had chosen the statement “the
textbook can be read aloud” was 25%. Those who thought the practice of reading was important were 56%. Those
who hoped that they would be able to read the textbook were 56%. The number of students who were practicing
reading aloud at home was 3%. The result of the second questionnaire administered in July showed no significant
difference.
She continued to keep a journal, took a video of the class and analyzed them. In the process of analyzing the
class she thought of many new ideas, from which she chose what suited her teaching style and her character. In
September, she made a second plan for improvement of reading activities and took four more actions. Her
assumption was that she would help students read words and phrases aloud with more confidence if she used flash
cards. She also believed that if she made students read more often and held their faces up, their voices would be
louder. She introduced the slash reading, since she assumed that writing a slash between chunks would make
students conscious of semantic breaks and enable them to think about meaning. It would also become possible for
students to practice reading aloud by themselves. The pair reading activity was also continued. Her belief was that
the student might regard reading aloud as an important activity if the teacher joins the pair and reads together.
At the next stage in October, she set objectives to raise students’ awareness of reading aloud, as she realized the
importance of students’ motivation and self-awareness in reading aloud activities. For that purpose, she presented
reading checkpoints to students and explained the key points of reading aloud, such as accuracy of reading,
pronunciation and loudness. She actually set the time of the reading check and encouraged students to practice for
How to Develop Teacher Autonomy through Classroom Research
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the reading test. Students were directed to pay attention to meaning conveyed through pronunciation and
enunciation. She changed her previous action slightly as well. Regarding the use of flash cards, she thought that
only difficult words should be selected carefully because too many numbers of words might interrupt students’
focus.
As a result, according to the third questionnaire held in December, the number of the students who answered “I
am practicing reading aloud at home” had been drastically increased. Likewise, students who answered that “I
think that the practice of reading is important” had risen from 56% to 79%. She has been working on her
classroom research for more than five years. She has been deepening her reflection and exploring her teaching
methods energetically and seriously. Her belief has been changed from teacher-centeredness to learnercenteredness. With invaluable help from her mentor in the graduate school, her great efforts were crowned with
success, but it was through the carefully designed training course of classroom research that she acquired the
skills -- such as journal writing and student data collection -- of action research. These practices resulted in
changes in the teachers’ understanding and improvements in student learning.
When teachers, by raising their awareness through lesson monitoring and self-examination, come to recognize
various phenomena and characteristics regarding students’ attitudes and reactions, they are able to clarify their
view of the students and lessons that have previously gone unnoticed. These methods can improve their lessons
and develop their professional skills.
6. Conclusions and Suggestions for Further Research
Increasing numbers of case studies have recently been conducted as one type of qualitative research in the area
of second language teaching, learning and use in order to illustrate the approach across to understanding of the
complexities, difficulties and discoveries of how people learn and are taught foreign language on a more practical
level. Case studies have an underlying epistemology and ontology as well as methodology. Research using case
study may approach it from different philosophical positions and may also favor different approaches to data
analysis, accordingly. A whole analysis which has already been reported is not sufficient in the teaching context,
so this paper involves case studies that require in-depth analysis. A number of case studies were conducted in this
research but due to space limitations, I selected two successful ones.
One junior high school teacher, as mentioned earlier, succeeded in making her classes active and
communicative using pair work and a chat test. Another high school teacher, through various methods or devices
such as flash cards, shadowing, buzz reading and giving Japanese translation in advance, also succeeded in
changing her teaching style and attaining the goal of reforming reading activities. They are still performing action
research to discover new themes and explore their classes and practices. Teachers, students, teaching materials
and environment vary respectively, therefore a key to success in action research is to understand ourselves first
and have the courage to dismiss preconceptions and change our teaching styles. To discuss our beliefs with
colleagues at work and with mentors is also effective. In the process, we gradually learn what we are and our
presence in front of our students.
One of the features of action research lies in easiness to start. Teachers can see the problems of lesson in their
Emiko IZUMI
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educational environment. Teachers of the self-regulating type practiced raising their awareness, which was a
challenge sometimes accompanied by pain or despair. However, we can conclude that exploring ourselves
through reflection was greatly effective in teacher autonomy. Furthermore, a supporting system among teachers
proved to be important and effective in this program.
In summary, action research is desirable for teacher training and should be introduced and implemented in each
prefecture or school for several reasons. It gives participants significant feelings of achievement and fullness. It
offers an opportunity of research, development as a professional and of the profession, and a means by which
teachers themselves can continue to grow throughout their whole careers. In fact, they can experience and master
the research technique. A teacher can be brought close to his or her dream little by little, because if they can
change themselves, they can improve their classes, and thus, their students’ attitudes toward English lessons will
change as well. Moreover, good human relations, good working networks and a good community can be created.
The expansion of understanding of the classroom research among participants and their schools can be looked
forward to. It appears that a common direction, beyond separate school levels, and a connection and cooperation
between primary, junior high and senior high schools are desired.
This research has limitations - two being the lack of statistical analysis and the small number of participants but nevertheless, it shows what can be an important step towards a more advanced model of teacher training for
teachers’ fuller development.
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