First Advisor

Susan B. Poulsen

Term of Graduation

Summer 1997

Date of Publication

6-23-1997

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.) in Speech Communication

Department

Speech Communication

Language

English

Subjects

Japanese schools -- United States, Language and culture, Japanese students -- United States, Primary education -- United States

DOI

10.15760/etd.7219

Physical Description

1 online resource (2, v, 135 pages)

Abstract

Based on the Ethnography of Communication perspective, this study explores the patterns and norms for interaction in a hoshuko classroom setting, as well as the participants' socially-constructed reality of hoshuko schooling. The focus of this study is the classroom communication patterns of the participants of a first grade hoshuko classroom in the U.S.

Hoshuko, Japanese supplementary school, is one type of school for overseas Japanese children which they attend on weekends or after regular, weekday school hours at local schools in their host country. The school is "supplementary" in the sense that the students learn subjects they would have learned if they were attending school in Japan. Thus, hoshuko students move between two educational systems -the host country (in this case, the U. S.) and Japanese -- that are likely to have different sets of cultural norms and values that they must learn.

Data were collected through observations of a first-grade hoshuko classroom, from cultural artifacts, and through interviews with the classroom teacher, some of the students, and their parents during a two-year field study.

Three key speech events were analyzed: kiritsu-rei, (Students) speak about their week, and practice Kanji. Results revealed that each activity in this hoshuko classroom had a certain set of norms that were set by the teacher, such as the "Japanese only" norm. Students were observed enacting norms with growing competency and were able, in the interviews, to articulate key norms. Also, the participants in this classroom setting interacted with each other according to the primary "hidden curriculum" (Jackson, 1968) of the class activities, which was "to enact the activities as close in form as possible to the ones that are enacted in schools in Japan." By having such "hidden curriculum," classroom activities served as ways for the teacher to transmit some of what she thought was important in Japanese norms and values. Children in this classroom were cooperative and active participants in receiving the transmitted values and fostering them through their participation in classroom interaction. Implications for Japanese teachers of returning hoshuko students were also discussed.

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Comments

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Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/30703

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