Papers by Tetsuya Fukuda
This exploratory study invited 285 Japanese university students studying English as a foreign lan... more This exploratory study invited 285 Japanese university students studying English as a foreign language (EFL) to reflect on what demotivated and remotivated them. Students charted the ups and downs of their English learning histories and then completed a questionnaire in which they explained the causes of their demotivation and the pathways, unintentional or intentional, by which they became remotivated. This data was analyzed in terms of the affective and attitudinal conditions which students brought with them into the classroom. Students with positive antecedent conditions were found to have experienced fewer periods of demotivation in the past and exhibited more dynamic use of a wide range of strategies in their attempts to remotivate themselves. There is evidence to suggest that these learners also had more exposure to such strategies in use. Based on this hypothesis, we compiled and returned the strategies they reported to seed their self-motivational practices.
This study connects social psychology in theory with pedagogy in practice through a framework we ... more This study connects social psychology in theory with pedagogy in practice through a framework we call present communities of imagining (PCOIz). Students' voices will be included in this paper to show how classroom PCOIz helped them develop as language learners. We quantitatively measured factors of motivational mind time frames, past experiences, present investment, and future aspirations, of over 400 students' reported beliefs relating to learning English, beginning and end of semester. We then shared their own data by looping it back to them, getting their interpretations of it. Findings indicate that motivations to learn English increased through engagement in student-centered activities, community formation, and aspiration contagion. Showing students their own data brought out their voices and critical feedback on the study, and also helped students further reflect on the ways of learning in the present as a means to work toward their aspired-to English-speaking future selves. to tives, classes, and researchers. We mean PCOIz to also encompass the accidental groups we cafes, and so on. We hypothesize that these many obvious and not-so-obvious groupings can potentially stimulate our senses of imagining to varying degrees and in varying ways, from negative to positive. Our imaginings are not necessarily shared among the members in the groups, and indeed our partners in imagining need not even be present or alive, as we can imagine having conversations with people not present and even with those who have lived centuries before us. Quinn (2010) calls this imagined social capital -
Most Popular Papers by Tetsuya Fukuda
Researching alone can be a lonely journey hampered by limited resources and interactions, and thu... more Researching alone can be a lonely journey hampered by limited resources and interactions, and thus many researchers turn to collaboration. But researching in groups can also become a journey impeded by false starts, roadblocks, disagreements, and uncoordinated follow-ups in the many messy stages of researching, writing, and submitting. However, when a group aligns itself with critical collaborative creativity, positive group dynamics can emerge with researchers saying what they truly believe without fear and the whole group benefiting from the critical perspectives that in other situations might not have been voiced. Such teams can be described as socially adaptive and critically creative, using such dialectic goal-directed processes as brainstorming, improvising, languaging, and playing. So, what is critical collaborative creativity more precisely?
CRITICAL highlights two characteristics of our working group. One is that we are always questioning things, the dogma in the world, and the growing dogma within each of us as to how things " have to be. " The second is that we are continuously searching for the " critical " elements that help make education work. We think we have identified several critical elements for learning that lead our students toward effective, motivated learning.
COLLABORATIVE highlights not only our mutually directed effort toward group goals but the socialization that we believe makes learning environments so much more productive. We collaborate with our students as well as with each other and the wider academic community.
CREATIVITY comes from the freedom to play and explore, and it tends to happen in groups when the critical and collaborative are well established. If we feel like we belong to a group that accepts us and can collaborate enthusiastically, we are not afraid of being critical and questioning things, and then new, creative ideas and insights tend to emerge. The diversity of our lives also adds to the mix of ideas that bubble up from our discussions and rants. Note also that while our group seems to be working well, there are times when it does not work well, and we have our ups and downs. We hope that in describing what works for our team, we might help other groups develop more productively.
Critically, collaboratively, and creatively putting these three elements together illustrates the concept itself and opens our minds towards other possibilities. Words and the meanings we give them can guide us toward deeper and more ecological understandings of our working and learning lives. Critical collaborative creativity gives groups the imaginative resources, alternatives, and insightful discoveries that together inspire more research than when individuals are isolated. Important for attaining these pivotal moments is that all of us do our own things for a while, and then come back and share and teach each other new things, and see how our evolving ideas might fit together. We are each a major part of each other's continuing education. We also see our own students as part of our extended research group, so we listen to our students seriously and involve them in our research efforts to help them learn better and teach us better.
Our collaborative projects eventually developed into papers in domestic and international vetted journals, and into book chapters with international publishers (see our publications at http://www3.hp-ez.com/hp/englisheducation/). In this paper we focus on the back-stories, narrating the other processes of critical collaborative creativity that we are so fortunate to have slowly emerging, and at times springing forth, from healthy group dynamics. We hope that our examples will encourage others to likewise experience prosperous researching in diverse groups.
Educational systems endemic of demotivation might signify a stagnating rather than nurturing ecol... more Educational systems endemic of demotivation might signify a stagnating rather than nurturing ecology of learning, due in part to an obstruction in the loops of shared information between the organisms within these systems, i.e., teachers, educational researchers, teacher educators, school administrators, and educational policymakers. Working within the ecology of English as a foreign language education in Japan, we have been endeavoring over several years to open loops of communication with students through a learning-teaching-researching process we call critical participatory looping (CPL). We reported successes in various publications about how CPL has improved our students’ motivations, and this paper elaborates upon two recent examples to provide a grounding of CPL in practices that support activating ecological adaptability. First, we theorize that individuals and groups (classes) can be seen as socially intelligent dynamic systems, and examine this perspective in relation to intrapersonal and interpersonal dynamics of students needing nurturing loops of open communication in order to foster greater self-awareness and mutual care. Then we suggest that through soft assembling expansive learning, students and teacher-researchers might open communications explicitly about themselves and their contexts, deepen mutual appreciation and understandings, and act purposefully as agents toward promoting healthy qualities in themselves. Finally, we show with two examples that the social life of valuable information can be extended by looping it not only back to those that created it but also by looping it forward (similar to paying it forward) across expanding networks that might benefit from it with ecological adaptability.
This exploratory study invited 285 Japanese university students studying English as a foreign lan... more This exploratory study invited 285 Japanese university students studying English as a foreign language (EFL) to reflect on what demotivated and remotivated them. Students charted the ups and downs of their English learning histories and then completed a questionnaire in which they explained the causes of their demotivation and the pathways, unintentional or intentional, by which they became remotivated. This data was analyzed in terms of the affective and attitudinal conditions which students brought with them into the classroom. Students with positive antecedent conditions were found to have experienced fewer periods of demotivation in the past and exhibited more dynamic use of a wide range of strategies in their attempts to remotivate themselves. There is evidence to suggest that these learners also had more exposure to such strategies in use. Based on this hypothesis, we compiled and returned the strategies they reported to seed their self-motivational practices.
JALT2010 Conference Proceedings., 2011
Over four hundred students from six Japanese universities were asked to imagine their possible se... more Over four hundred students from six Japanese universities were asked to imagine their possible selves as related to English with a variety of activities. Possible selves are future-projected identities that can generate goal-oriented behaviors. The study investigated how possible selves might be used in the classroom by examining the interrelationships between the motivations of past-projected and future projected identities, and effort in learning within social networks inside and outside the classroom. This paper focuses on activities for eliciting possible selves, expanding social networks, developing aspirations, and increasing motivation.
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Papers by Tetsuya Fukuda
Most Popular Papers by Tetsuya Fukuda
CRITICAL highlights two characteristics of our working group. One is that we are always questioning things, the dogma in the world, and the growing dogma within each of us as to how things " have to be. " The second is that we are continuously searching for the " critical " elements that help make education work. We think we have identified several critical elements for learning that lead our students toward effective, motivated learning.
COLLABORATIVE highlights not only our mutually directed effort toward group goals but the socialization that we believe makes learning environments so much more productive. We collaborate with our students as well as with each other and the wider academic community.
CREATIVITY comes from the freedom to play and explore, and it tends to happen in groups when the critical and collaborative are well established. If we feel like we belong to a group that accepts us and can collaborate enthusiastically, we are not afraid of being critical and questioning things, and then new, creative ideas and insights tend to emerge. The diversity of our lives also adds to the mix of ideas that bubble up from our discussions and rants. Note also that while our group seems to be working well, there are times when it does not work well, and we have our ups and downs. We hope that in describing what works for our team, we might help other groups develop more productively.
Critically, collaboratively, and creatively putting these three elements together illustrates the concept itself and opens our minds towards other possibilities. Words and the meanings we give them can guide us toward deeper and more ecological understandings of our working and learning lives. Critical collaborative creativity gives groups the imaginative resources, alternatives, and insightful discoveries that together inspire more research than when individuals are isolated. Important for attaining these pivotal moments is that all of us do our own things for a while, and then come back and share and teach each other new things, and see how our evolving ideas might fit together. We are each a major part of each other's continuing education. We also see our own students as part of our extended research group, so we listen to our students seriously and involve them in our research efforts to help them learn better and teach us better.
Our collaborative projects eventually developed into papers in domestic and international vetted journals, and into book chapters with international publishers (see our publications at http://www3.hp-ez.com/hp/englisheducation/). In this paper we focus on the back-stories, narrating the other processes of critical collaborative creativity that we are so fortunate to have slowly emerging, and at times springing forth, from healthy group dynamics. We hope that our examples will encourage others to likewise experience prosperous researching in diverse groups.
CRITICAL highlights two characteristics of our working group. One is that we are always questioning things, the dogma in the world, and the growing dogma within each of us as to how things " have to be. " The second is that we are continuously searching for the " critical " elements that help make education work. We think we have identified several critical elements for learning that lead our students toward effective, motivated learning.
COLLABORATIVE highlights not only our mutually directed effort toward group goals but the socialization that we believe makes learning environments so much more productive. We collaborate with our students as well as with each other and the wider academic community.
CREATIVITY comes from the freedom to play and explore, and it tends to happen in groups when the critical and collaborative are well established. If we feel like we belong to a group that accepts us and can collaborate enthusiastically, we are not afraid of being critical and questioning things, and then new, creative ideas and insights tend to emerge. The diversity of our lives also adds to the mix of ideas that bubble up from our discussions and rants. Note also that while our group seems to be working well, there are times when it does not work well, and we have our ups and downs. We hope that in describing what works for our team, we might help other groups develop more productively.
Critically, collaboratively, and creatively putting these three elements together illustrates the concept itself and opens our minds towards other possibilities. Words and the meanings we give them can guide us toward deeper and more ecological understandings of our working and learning lives. Critical collaborative creativity gives groups the imaginative resources, alternatives, and insightful discoveries that together inspire more research than when individuals are isolated. Important for attaining these pivotal moments is that all of us do our own things for a while, and then come back and share and teach each other new things, and see how our evolving ideas might fit together. We are each a major part of each other's continuing education. We also see our own students as part of our extended research group, so we listen to our students seriously and involve them in our research efforts to help them learn better and teach us better.
Our collaborative projects eventually developed into papers in domestic and international vetted journals, and into book chapters with international publishers (see our publications at http://www3.hp-ez.com/hp/englisheducation/). In this paper we focus on the back-stories, narrating the other processes of critical collaborative creativity that we are so fortunate to have slowly emerging, and at times springing forth, from healthy group dynamics. We hope that our examples will encourage others to likewise experience prosperous researching in diverse groups.