2024/01/08 by Yanping Fang, Linfeng Wang · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy #Global Education and Multiculturalism #Innovative Education and Learning Practices
paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/20965311231212213
openalex publication_date 2024/01/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Purpose This study aims to search for fitting lenses to view and interpret teacher learning in a Japanese secondary school teacher staffroom and capture the reconstituting of researcher subjectivities in this process. Design/Approach/Methods A narrative approach chronically documents the findings and use of the lenses in analyzing the staffroom daily interactions and traces the journey of transformation in our researcher subjectivities. Findings The telling of a Japanese staffroom (shokuinshitsu) as a thrice-told tale under the three lenses—cultural-historic activity theory, contextualism, and intimacy orientation—each uncovers a unique interpretation of the learning going on in the daily life of the Japanese staffroom. While complementary, Western-lenses are found to be unable to explain the nature of the everyday practices in the staffroom formed under the worldviews and ethics of East Asia. Our critical examination of the major academic encounters involved in the past two decades illuminates the complex dynamism behind our research perspectives, awakens us to the dominance of Western-centralism in our researcher subjectivities, transforms our worldviews, and returns us to our cultural roots to build alternative frames of reference as East Asia as Method. Originality/Value This study not only uniquely demonstrates what decentered, alternative, and diversified frames of reference would look like in studying East Asian practices but also what it would take for scholars to move toward East Asia as Method. Additionally, going beyond the three lenses, it contributes to our understanding of how space (staffroom as an entity) mediates forming of the character of those who are dwellers of the shokuinshitsu.