Japanese Elementary School Teachers’ Perceptions About English Teaching

Abstract

Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) will upgrade English to an official subject from 2020. The purpose of this paper is to investigate elementary school teachers’ perceptions about English teaching qualitatively during this period of moving into a new stage. The participants are six homeroom teachers (HRTs) in a public elementary school. Some of them have never taught English or taken any teacher development. Each teacher was requested to answer the open-ended questionnaire and was interviewed in order to better understand the questionnaire. Analysis was carried out by Modified Grounded Theory Approach (M-GTA). Results indicate that although homeroom teachers have negative opinions about teaching English at elementary schools, they also have understood the necessities of teaching English in this era of internationalization. The study found that regarding their teaching, help from ALTs and resources such as manuals to assist in carrying out the curriculum, forming lesson plans and designing materials are essential.