Ryuko Kubota
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 95432 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Ryuko Kubota |
| NOMBRES | Ryuko |
| APELLIDO | Kubota |
| FIRMA | KUBOTA R |
| AFILIACIONES | University of British Columbia |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5072-7169 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 55 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 301 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 54 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1998 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Multiculturalism and Second Language Learning
Multiculturalism reflects cultural, ethnic, racial, linguistic, and religious diversity brought about by mobility of people in the processes of colonization, slavery, migration, and other historical causes.
Critical Race Theory
Critical race theory (CRT) developed in the field of legal studies in the United States and was later introduced to the fields of education and applied linguistics. It is built on the recognition that racism is endemic to American society, race is a socially constructed category, intersectionality between race and other individual identities shapes and affects diverse experiences of racialized people, and counterstorytelling enables the exposure …
Problematizing the Critical in Critical Applied Linguistics
Critical applied linguistics problematizes conventional assumptions, concepts, and practices related to language. It aims to uncover unequal relations of power and transform oppressive relations, structures, or practices. The field emerged in the 1990s in parallel with the critical work already discussed within applied linguistics as well as the work on critical pedagogy in the field of educational research. Critical applied linguistics has addre…
Multiculturalism and Multilingualism as Ideology
The concepts of multiculturalism and multilingualism promoted in applied linguistics research embrace liberal ideology that challenges the taken‐for‐granted legitimacy of the dominant forms of culture and language. Ideological underpinnings of both concepts can be examined through an overview of the development of multicultural education in the United States and Canada, as well as the recent popularity of the inquiry into linguistic diversity. In…
Timely and timeless topic
Decolonial and antiracist teacher education practice
Decolonial and antiracist perspectives offer critical and humanizing approaches to supporting justice‐affirming language teacher education. In this commentary, we provide a conceptual grounding for decolonial and antiracist pedagogies as constitutive of justice‐affirming language education. These pedagogical approaches encourage students, teachers, and teacher educators to question normalized assumptions that reinforce inequality among groups of …
Confronting the Raciolinguistic Hegemony of White Standardized English in U.S. Literacy Education
This conceptual article discusses language ideologies in the context of white standardized English hegemony by critically examining historical and contemporary perspectives on U.S. language policy across the intersection of race and language. Its primary goal is to promote equitable multilingualism in literacy education in the United States. Because educational language policy is inseparable from its colonial history, equity cannot be achieved wi…
Slogans as a policy distractor
This paper examines recent reforms in English-language testing in Japan using a policy distraction framework. We identify the term 'washback (effect)' and other related discourses as major distractors and investigate how 'washback' discourses have functioned as political slogans or catchphrases in policy deliberation processes and how they have diverted attention and resources from more essential issues. By analyzing advisory panel minutes and ot…
Race and Language Teaching
Race as a social construct influences the formation of people's identities, views, emotions, and experiences as well as the ways in which institutional systems, practices, and knowledge get structured. The idea of race is deeply connected to language teaching that involves diverse participants, including learners, teachers, parents, administrators, materials developers, and assessment specialists. This entry discusses how race, racism, and antira…
Another contradiction in AI-assisted second language writing
Linking Research to transforming the real world
During the last 20 years, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies has played an important role in advancing research on critical applied linguistics. Although the level of scholarly interest in critical research and its visibility have increased, issues that critical research has attempted to problematize, such as normative ideologies of language and language education, continue to dominate policies, practices, and ordinary people's consciousness in…
Your English is so good
Racism has increasingly been exposed and problematized in public domains, including institutions of higher education. In academia, critical race theory (CRT) has guided scholars to uncover everyday experiences of racism by highlighting the intersectionality of race with other identity categories, among which language constitutes an important, yet underexplored, component. Through the conceptual lens of CRT and counter-storytelling as a methodolog…
Illuminating language users in the discourse of linguistic diversity
The field of language education has mobilized diversity paradigms during the last several decades. Paradigms, such as world Englishes, English as a lingua franca, and translanguaging, have illuminated how linguistic forms and practices vary across locations, contexts, and individual linguistic repertoires. Although they aim to raise teachers’ and students’ engagement with linguistic heterogeneity, they are largely founded on the postmodern/postst…
Decolonizing second language writing
Towards critical translanguaging
English as a medium of instruction (EMI) has recently dominated language-in-education policies in South Asia while bilingual/multilingual practices have historically been the norm in primary and secondary education. Although the research on translanguaging is rapidly undertaken in English-only spaces in other world regions (e.g. North America), such studies are rare in South Asia. To this end, this conceptual article focuses on EMI research and p…
Exploring lived experiences of Black female English teachers in South Korea
English language teaching has become a global phenomenon, involving racially and culturally diverse teachers travelling across national borders. While these transnational teachers bring diversity to host countries, the superiority of White native English speakers continues to be reinforced. This raciolinguistic ideology can uniquely shape the subjectivities of English language teachers of colour who sojourn abroad. Focusing on three African Ameri…
Racialised teaching of English in Asian contexts
Issues of race, racialisation, and racism have been increasingly raised in the field of applied linguistics and language education especially in the contexts of North America and other English-dominant regions. This special issue contributes to this scholarly and professional discussion by focusing on English language teaching (ELT) in Asian contexts, where ELT is aggressively promoted with the prevalence of White native-English-speakerism which …
Linguistic entrepreneurship
The impact of neoliberalism on language education has recently attracted scholars' attention. Linguistic entrepreneurship is a conceptual lens through which neoliberal implications for language learning and use can be investigated. This commentary offers comments on common threads of themes running through the four articles in this special issue. While neoliberal ideas provide people with hopes and desires to socioeconomically succeed through man…
Language‐in‐Education Policies in Japan Versus Transnational Workers’ Voices
Foreign language education primarily aims to cultivate learners’ competence to communicate in an additional language. However, the meaning of communication competence is not entirely transparent, especially given the current neoliberal valorization of communication in the knowledge economy. The meaning of communication can be scrutinized in two contradictory trends observed in language education: the exclusive focus on teaching English as a globa…
Fostering Antiracist Engagement in Japanese Language Teaching
Japanese language teaching and learning is influenced by various types of human diversity. Diversity of gender, language, and culture are often addressed in learning materials, instructional practices, and professional discussions in the field. Yet, issues of race are often glossed over in everyday pedagogical practices and professional discourses on equity, diversity, and inclusion. To fill this gap, this article will focus on issues of race and…
Bilingualism—But Not Plurilingualism—Promoted by Immersion Education in Canada
Race and language teaching
In this review article on race and language teaching, we highlight an urgent need for the international educational community to continue to develop a complex understanding of how language teaching and learners' lives are shaped by our global history of racist practices of colonial expansion, including settler colonialism and transatlantic slavery. We outline the genesis of research on race and language teaching and review literature that reflect…
Unpacking research and practice in world Englishes and Second Language Acquisition
Research on world Englishes and Second Language Acquisition has conceptualized language, language users, and language learning as diverse and dynamic, broadening conventional knowledge. Yet, research outputs have not influenced language education policies in Expanding Circle countries, which favor Inner Circle standardized English, promote teaching English to young learners, and require monolingual teaching of English, as seen in the case of Japa…
Re-Examining and Re-Envisioning Criticality in Language Studies
As critical perspectives in language studies have gained legitimacy and even mainstream status in applied linguistics, it is necessary to re-examine the meaning of criticality in language studies and to re-envision criticality for further development. The authors explore criticality from several theoretical perspectives as well as from the notion of praxis. They review three major theoretical threads—namely, postmodernist constructionism includin…
The social imaginary of study abroad
Many universities around the world today are actively promoting study abroad to raise their international profiles. This trend is tied to the neoliberal social imaginary, which constructs study abroad as a tool for students to develop communication skills, a global mindset, intercultural competence and a competitive edge in global labour marketplaces. Such social imaginary is reflected in online descriptions of the imagined benefits that study ab…
Race and Tesol
The field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) brings people from various racialized backgrounds together in teaching, learning, and research. The idea of race, racialization, and racism are inescapable topics that arise in the contact zones created by teaching English worldwide and thus are valid topics to explore in the field. Nonetheless, unlike our peer fields such as anthropology, education, and sociology, the field of …
Race and language teaching
In this review article on race and language teaching, we highlight an urgent need for the international educational community to continue to develop a complex understanding of how language teaching and learners' lives are shaped by our global history of racist practices of colonial expansion, including settler colonialism and transatlantic slavery. We outline the genesis of research on race and language teaching and review literature that reflect…
Ideologies of English in Japan
A number of educators in recent years have argued that the dominance of English has created structural and cultural inequalities between developed and developing countries. Although they tend to dismiss ideological issues regarding teaching English in affluent countries in the Expanding Circle such as Japan, there is a growing concern and critique in Japan on ideologies of English. Critics argue that the dominance of English influences the Japane…
Japanese Culture Constructed by Discourses
Some of the recent applied linguistics literature on teaching writing and critical thinking to ESL students has presented pedagogical arguments by drawing on cultural differences between ESL students and the target academic community. In these arguments, authors tend to create a cultural dichotomy between the East and the West, constructing fixed, apolitical, and essentialized cultural representations such as groupism, harmony, and deemphasis on …
Your English is so good
Racism has increasingly been exposed and problematized in public domains, including institutions of higher education. In academia, critical race theory (CRT) has guided scholars to uncover everyday experiences of racism by highlighting the intersectionality of race with other identity categories, among which language constitutes an important, yet underexplored, component. Through the conceptual lens of CRT and counter-storytelling as a methodolog…
Neoliberal paradoxes of language learning
Neoliberal ideology compels people to develop language skills as human capital. As English is considered to be the most useful language for global communication, learning, and teaching, English has been promoted in many countries. However, the belief that English connects people from diverse linguistic backgrounds in a borderless society contradicts nationalistic trends observed globally. For example, growing xenophobic nationalism in Japan and J…
Race and language learning in multicultural Canada
Issues of race constitute an emerging area of inquiry in language education. Yet, race, racialisation and racism are still stigmatised topics of discussion in everyday and professional contexts in multiracial and multiethnic countries. Canada is especially an interesting context in this regard due to its official policy of multiculturalism that constructs a national identity of tolerance towards diversity. Drawing on the author's personal experie…
The Author Responds
In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 2, pp. 3-25). New York: Longman. Ingold, T. (1994). Introduction to culture. In T. Ingold (Ed.), Companion encyclopedia of anthropology: Humanity, culture, and social life (pp. 329-349). London: Routledge. Kubota, R. (1999). Japanese culture constructed by discourses: Implications for applied linguistics research and English language teaching. TES…
Diversity and Inclusion of Sociopolitical Issues in Foreign Language Classrooms
One aim of foreign language teaching is to broaden learners' worldviews and promote intercultural communication. Less discussed, however, are domestic diversity and sociopolitical issues. Through a survey of university students of Japanese, Spanish, and Swahili, the authors of this study investigated diversity in the classroom, students' backgrounds and learning experiences, and their perceptions about the relationship between foreign language le…
Teaching world Englishes to native speakers of English in the USA
The global spread of English has increased opportunities for native English speakers in the US to interact with other speakers of world Englishes (WE). However, these native speakers are rarely encouraged to develop the knowledge and skills necessary for intercultural communication, often resulting in a one-way communicative burden imposed on the WE speakers. To explore ways to redress this problem, a pilot project was conducted in an English IV …
Women Faculty of Color in Tesol
Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist. (Lorde, 1984a, p. 112)
Exploring lived experiences of Black female English teachers in South Korea
English language teaching has become a global phenomenon, involving racially and culturally diverse teachers travelling across national borders. While these transnational teachers bring diversity to host countries, the superiority of White native English speakers continues to be reinforced. This raciolinguistic ideology can uniquely shape the subjectivities of English language teachers of colour who sojourn abroad. Focusing on three African Ameri…
Globalization and Language Learning in Rural Japan
Drawing on a study of current language use in a rural community in Japan, we question to what extent English actually does serve today as a lingua franca in multilingual, internationally diverse communities. Specifically, we report on a critical ethnography of a small Japanese community with a growing number of non—English‐speaking immigrants, largely from Brazil but also from China, Peru, Korea, and Thailand. We investigate how people in the com…
Racialised teaching of English in Asian contexts
Issues of race, racialisation, and racism have been increasingly raised in the field of applied linguistics and language education especially in the contexts of North America and other English-dominant regions. This special issue contributes to this scholarly and professional discussion by focusing on English language teaching (ELT) in Asian contexts, where ELT is aggressively promoted with the prevalence of White native-English-speakerism which …
Discursive Construction of the Images of U.S. Classrooms
Recent work in applied linguistics has critiqued the discursive construction of essentialized cultures of ESL students as the Other. Also discursively constructed are the images of the Self compared with the Other. This article focuses on the images of U.S. classrooms in terms of the goals of education, the characteristics of teaching, and student characteristics, and aims to reveal their discursive nature by reviewing literature in applied lingu…
Language‐in‐Education Policies in Japan Versus Transnational Workers’ Voices
Foreign language education primarily aims to cultivate learners’ competence to communicate in an additional language. However, the meaning of communication competence is not entirely transparent, especially given the current neoliberal valorization of communication in the knowledge economy. The meaning of communication can be scrutinized in two contradictory trends observed in language education: the exclusive focus on teaching English as a globa…
Unpacking research and practice in world Englishes and Second Language Acquisition
Research on world Englishes and Second Language Acquisition has conceptualized language, language users, and language learning as diverse and dynamic, broadening conventional knowledge. Yet, research outputs have not influenced language education policies in Expanding Circle countries, which favor Inner Circle standardized English, promote teaching English to young learners, and require monolingual teaching of English, as seen in the case of Japa…
Spanish Only for Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES)
Teaching Spanish has become increasingly popular in the United States due to demographic shifts. This study focuses on a Spanish‐only initiative for an existing Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES) program proposed by a southeastern public school district's school board. It analyzes discourses underlying the policymakers' rationales and resistance from teachers, students, and community members. Analysis of documents, video recordings …
Word Processing and WWW Projects in a College Japanese Language Class
This paper describes four computer‐assisted Japanese language and culture projects using word processing and the World Wide Web (WWW) conducted in a college‐level third‐year Japanese class, and reports the impact of the projects as assessed by student pre‐ and post‐questionnaires reflective comments from students, and instructor's reflective observation notes. Fourteen students provided their feedback on the four projects that they had engaged in…
Linguistic entrepreneurship
The impact of neoliberalism on language education has recently attracted scholars' attention. Linguistic entrepreneurship is a conceptual lens through which neoliberal implications for language learning and use can be investigated. This commentary offers comments on common threads of themes running through the four articles in this special issue. While neoliberal ideas provide people with hopes and desires to socioeconomically succeed through man…
Introduction
Canada constitutionally upholds its commitments to bilingualism and multiculturalism. These policies are not unrelated to the common Canadian self-identity as being good citizens of the world with
Learning Diversity from World Englishes
Learning Japanese via Satellite in an American High School
This case study observed a beginning‐level Japanese language class of eight students taught via satellite at a high school in the United States over a period of one academic year. The study investigated the nature of learning experiences, the level of students' motivation and attitudes toward Japanese speakers and learning Japanese, the degrees of language skills development, student‐teacher interaction during the once‐a‐week telephone conversati…
Ideologies of English in Japan
A number of educators in recent years have argued that the dominance of English has created structural and cultural inequalities between developed and developing countries. Although they tend to dismiss ideological issues regarding teaching English in affluent countries in the Expanding Circle such as Japan, there is a growing concern and critique in Japan on ideologies of English. Critics argue that the dominance of English influences the Japane…
"Comments on Ryuko Kubota's "Japanese Culture Constructed by Discourses
Ryuko Kubota, Comments on Ryuko Kubota's "Japanese Culture Constructed by Discourses: Implications for Applied Linguistics Research and ELT": Postmodern Applied Linguistics: Problems and Contradictions. The Author Responds, TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Winter, 1999), pp. 749-758
Japanese Culture Constructed by Discourses
Some of the recent applied linguistics literature on teaching writing and critical thinking to ESL students has presented pedagogical arguments by drawing on cultural differences between ESL students and the target academic community. In these arguments, authors tend to create a cultural dichotomy between the East and the West, constructing fixed, apolitical, and essentialized cultural representations such as groupism, harmony, and deemphasis on …
English and the Discourses of Colonialism
Word Processing and WWW Projects in a College Japanese Language Class
This paper describes four computer‐assisted Japanese language and culture projects using word processing and the World Wide Web (WWW) conducted in a college‐level third‐year Japanese class, and reports the impact of the projects as assessed by student pre‐ and post‐questionnaires reflective comments from students, and instructor's reflective observation notes. Fourteen students provided their feedback on the four projects that they had engaged in…
Learning Japanese via Satellite in an American High School
This case study observed a beginning‐level Japanese language class of eight students taught via satellite at a high school in the United States over a period of one academic year. The study investigated the nature of learning experiences, the level of students' motivation and attitudes toward Japanese speakers and learning Japanese, the degrees of language skills development, student‐teacher interaction during the once‐a‐week telephone conversati…
Learning Diversity from World Englishes
Discursive Construction of the Images of U.S. Classrooms
Recent work in applied linguistics has critiqued the discursive construction of essentialized cultures of ESL students as the Other. Also discursively constructed are the images of the Self compared with the Other. This article focuses on the images of U.S. classrooms in terms of the goals of education, the characteristics of teaching, and student characteristics, and aims to reveal their discursive nature by reviewing literature in applied lingu…
Teaching world Englishes to native speakers of English in the USA
The global spread of English has increased opportunities for native English speakers in the US to interact with other speakers of world Englishes (WE). However, these native speakers are rarely encouraged to develop the knowledge and skills necessary for intercultural communication, often resulting in a one-way communicative burden imposed on the WE speakers. To explore ways to redress this problem, a pilot project was conducted in an English IV …
The Author Responds
In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 2, pp. 3-25). New York: Longman. Ingold, T. (1994). Introduction to culture. In T. Ingold (Ed.), Companion encyclopedia of anthropology: Humanity, culture, and social life (pp. 329-349). London: Routledge. Kubota, R. (1999). Japanese culture constructed by discourses: Implications for applied linguistics research and English language teaching. TES…
Critical Teaching of Japanese Culture
Ryuko Kubota, Critical Teaching of Japanese Culture, Japanese Language and Literature, Vol. 37, No. 1, Special Issue: Sociocultural Issues in Teaching Japanese: Critical Approaches (Apr., 2003), pp. 67-87
Diversity and Inclusion of Sociopolitical Issues in Foreign Language Classrooms
One aim of foreign language teaching is to broaden learners' worldviews and promote intercultural communication. Less discussed, however, are domestic diversity and sociopolitical issues. Through a survey of university students of Japanese, Spanish, and Swahili, the authors of this study investigated diversity in the classroom, students' backgrounds and learning experiences, and their perceptions about the relationship between foreign language le…
Critical multiculturalism and second language education
It is commonly believed that ESL (English as a second language), EFL (English as a foreign language), or other second language educators are naturally sensitive to cultural and linguistic diversity. In educational institutions, they are usually regarded as liberal advocates for multiculturalism and diversity, striving to model for their colleagues and students. Qualities required for this liberal stance, which I shall call liberal multiculturalis…
The Politics of Cultural Difference in Second Language Education
Cultural difference is an important topic of discussion in second language education. Yet cultural difference is often conceptualized as fixed, objective, and apolitical based on an essentialist and normative understanding of culture. This article challenges such conceptualizations by examining and politicizing multiple and conflicting meanings of cultural difference. Multiple meanings of cultural difference are illustrated in examples from contr…
Women Faculty of Color in Tesol
Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist. (Lorde, 1984a, p. 112)
Race and Tesol
The field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) brings people from various racialized backgrounds together in teaching, learning, and research. The idea of race, racialization, and racism are inescapable topics that arise in the contact zones created by teaching English worldwide and thus are valid topics to explore in the field. Nonetheless, unlike our peer fields such as anthropology, education, and sociology, the field of …
Critical Approaches to World Language Education in the United States
In today's rapidly changing sociopolitical world landscape, language education in the United States is in need of critical scrutiny. In schools and universities, often the rationale for teaching an
Spanish Only for Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES)
Teaching Spanish has become increasingly popular in the United States due to demographic shifts. This study focuses on a Spanish‐only initiative for an existing Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES) program proposed by a southeastern public school district's school board. It analyzes discourses underlying the policymakers' rationales and resistance from teachers, students, and community members. Analysis of documents, video recordings …
Race, Culture, and Identities in Second Language Education
Preface List of Contributors Chapter 1: Race, Culture, and Identities in Second Language Education: Introduction to Research and Practice Ryuko Kubota and Angel Lin Part I: Interrogating Whiteness Introduction Chapter 2: Unpacking White Racial Identity in English Language Teacher Education Tonda Liggett Chapter 3: The Ideal English Speaker: A Juxtaposition of Globalization and Language Policy in South Korea and Racialized Language Attitudes in th…
Globalization and Language Learning in Rural Japan
Drawing on a study of current language use in a rural community in Japan, we question to what extent English actually does serve today as a lingua franca in multilingual, internationally diverse communities. Specifically, we report on a critical ethnography of a small Japanese community with a growing number of non—English‐speaking immigrants, largely from Brazil but also from China, Peru, Korea, and Thailand. We investigate how people in the com…
Questioning linguistic instrumentalism
Learning a foreign language as leisure and consumption
Social inclusion typically refers to the integration of the disadvantaged into the mainstream society as a national agenda. However, social inclusion in a broader sense addresses aspirations to be included in a global imagined community as well as a local community of like-minded people. Drawing on a qualitative study of men and women learning eikaiwa [English conversation] in informal settings in Japan, this paper investigates the aspects of lei…
Critical Race Theory and Qualitative Research
Critical race theory (CRT) developed in the scholarly field of legal studies in the United States, and was later introduced to the fields of education and applied linguistics. It is built on the recognition that racism is endemic to American society. CRT foregrounds race‐based critiques exposing—through counter‐storytelling that challenges majoritarian narratives favoring White privilege—the injuries of racism experienced by people of color with …
Language and Education for Returnees
“Returnees” refers to individuals who return to their homeland after sojourning in another country due to displacement caused by war, conflict, natural disaster, economic migration, overseas business assignment, international marriage, child adoption, or education abroad.
“We Must Look at Both Sides”—But a Denial of Genocide Too
In language education, controversial issues sometimes emerge in either planned or spontaneous ways. Based on a classroom episode, this article illuminates dilemmas of approaching controversial issues for teachers who embrace critical pedagogy. A review of interdisciplinary literature demonstrates a general agreement on presenting balanced views while exhibiting disagreements on teacher neutrality. While advocates of critical pedagogy may not supp…
Multilingual Education and Policy (43 obras) · Sociology (43 obras) · Linguistics (35 obras) · Political science (32 obras) · Pedagogy (31 obras) · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning (30 obras) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (29 obras) · Psychology (26 obras) · Gender Studies (19 obras) · Philosophy (19 obras)