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This thesis critically examines the language ideologies underpinning the language
curriculum and language teaching practices in a nihonjingakkō, a full-time day school
for children of Japanese expatriates, in Belgium. By drawing on the theoretical frame of
ideology of authenticity and ideology of anonymity (Woolard, 2016), I investigate what
language ideologies the school, principal, and language teachers hold and how these
influence the school’s language curriculum and language teachers’ pedagogy.
In conclusion, this study proposes a critique of the language education policy of the
nihonjingakkō operated in non-Anglophone settings such as Belgium. By setting this
research in a nihonjingakkō in Belgium, I argue that these schools have the potential to
provide an excellent model for multilingual education for Japanese children and for
Japan since the majority of nihonjingakkō students will eventually return to Japan (Sato,
2019). The study also calls for a change in the monolingual language ideologies which
shape the equation of ‘foreign language is English’ (Erikawa, 2018; Kubota, 2019;
Seargeant, 2009) pervasive in the Japanese schooling context.
Academic dissertation (doctor)
