Divs-poole

INTRODUCTION 

are impressive, if there were fewer exclusive structural impediments. 

Unfortunately, these resources are not always realized for various reasons, a fact 

that perhaps could be classified as institutional “culture.” It is rare that part-time 

colleagues are formally and systematically included in the curriculum planning or 

implementation; most of the interaction is limited to friendly pleasantries, not 

professional exchange. The primary responsibility they are given is that of the 

classroom—show up for the lessons. Although the part-time professors are on one-

year contracts, for all intents and purposes the contracts are renewable without 

limit. In fact, the university is so reluctant

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 to fire part-timers that even a part-time 

language professor who was absent without excuse for nearly half of the lessons 

one year was given a contract the next year, with no admonishment and at the same 

pay as the previous year.  

The part-time faculty are not expected or allowed to attend the many 

“confidential” staff meetings held by full-time faculty throughout the year. Since 

most full-time professors have experience as part-time faculty at other institutions, 

there is no illusion of either expecting or allowing adjunct professors to provide 

input into the language program. Beliefs about the peripheral status of part-time 

academic staff are so strongly held that even when the “progressive” step was 

taken of administering a questionnaire to elicit feedback and constructive criticism 

from part-time professors, the data was not analyzed and basically ignored. 

Conversely, a few of the (foreign) adjunct faculty feel that the tenured 

professors “work too hard [at administration]” and need to “get a life [outside the 

university] during school vacations.” There is the perception that the full-time 

faculty live and breath the university, even though the assumption is that they have 

a choice not to be so “busy” outside the 9 to 5 workday. This interpretation misses 

the symbolic significance of the core/periphery distinction at EUC, however.

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Even if the full-time professors actually have a lighter teaching load than the part-

time professors, they are involved in the powerful core activities of the university, 

not least of which is the faculty senate (kyōjukai).

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 There is high value attached to 

participating as a “core” member of an organization, related to positive views of 

stability in the career and life-course of individual workers in Japan—life-long 

employment practices are one example. Salaries for the permanently employed 

salaryman in Japan (usually company office workers, but encompassing school 

teachers and academics) progress by seniority increments, dependent on the 

number of years of employment rather than on a merit system. This system is 

commonly known as nenkō joretsu (cf. Stockwin 2003, p. 146). A part-time, 

peripheral member of an organization is outside such a system so has a lower 

status. There is a cultural stigma associated with unattached, itinerant work, a 

source of stress for, especially, male academics with only part-time, status. This 

stigma is arguably not felt as strongly by those minorities of society already “on 

the margins” in Japan, such as women and members of the foreign community. 

Another disjuncture arguably impeding educational change, is that between the 

Japanese and non-Japanese faculty. Of the forty some-odd language professors at 

EUC,

 

over half are “foreigners” (gaijin). There is very little interaction between the 

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INTRODUCTION 

Japanese and western professors, for example. In fact, in the past the once-a-year 

faculty meeting and party for part-time professors has been divided into two 

separate events—one for Japanese professors and one for non-Japanese professors. 

There is a definite, perceived gap in teaching methodology. The foreigners tend to 

believe that all Japanese teaching pedagogy is basically teacher-centered, lecture-

style, grammar-translation (GT), while the Japanese professors often consider the 

communicative classes taught by foreign professors “easy” courses. Probably due 

to both different ideas of teaching methodology and contrasting work ethics, the 

foreign staff is sometimes accused of not being “serious” by the Japanese staff. 

Other ethnographers have noted a similar observation. In his fieldwork, McConnell 

(2000) notes how Japanese English teachers have a rather serious, humorless 

attitude toward classroom teaching and lecturing (also mentioned in Rohlen’s 1983 

ethnography) and so consider any “fun” approach that foreign teachers may have 

in public school classrooms to be “classes without rigor.” 

Informally, as well, the professors’ lounge is divided by 

social

 space into two 

groups: westerners and Japanese. Interestingly, even the Taiwanese Chinese 

professor tends to converse more with western colleagues, in English, Japanese or 

sometimes Mandarin. Although discussions are predominately not about work-

related issues, peer support is evident, and teaching methodology and classroom 

management ideas are shared fairly openly among western colleagues.  

One of the major perceived differences involves divergent ideas of university 

education. Although most foreign-language professors are lenient in their assigning 

of year-end grades, 10 percent of all students still fail to pass the first-year English 

classes required for graduation. In informal interviews and on questionnaires, non-

Japanese professors reveal that the majority of these students fail because of lack 

of attendance.

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 Special classes are then set aside for second-year students to 

“repeat” the required coursework they failed to complete in their first year of 

compulsory studies. When the pedagogical appropriateness of this segregation was 

questioned, a Japanese faculty member commented that the practice, though not 

educationally sound and certainly not western, was in line with a perceived 

difference in the “Japanese philosophy of university education. By “giving” 

unmotivated students credits merely as a convenience, there is less conflict because 

the students are allowed to graduate.

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Interestingly, however, not all professors have the same ideology. As described 

in more detail below, a Japanese business professor refused to pass a student who, 

without excuse or prior communication with the professor, handed in a term paper 

two weeks late. The student, upset that she could not graduate, performed “ritual 

begging” (seiza) in the administration office together with her mother, and then 

later was found crying in the president’s office. She did not graduate. The fact that 

a Japanese professor did not budge on his decision to fail a student points out that 

even though there may be a gap between Japanese and non-Japanese staff, 

diversity among staff teaching philosophies is not strictly divided along 

Japanese/non-Japanese lines. 

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