Collectivist Social Environments

Social norms within Asian collectivist contexts are often oriented toward hierarchy, and individuals within these societies may find acting upon requests from superiors more agreeable than requests from friends (Hwang, 2012). Studies have indicated that decisions made in agreement with a need-supportive authority may promote well-being (Chen,

Vansteenkiste, Beyers, Soenens, & Van Petegem, 2013). This phenomenon may stem from cultural norms of positive reciprocal relationships between social levels. Collectivist cultures such as Japan, China, Korea, and Taiwan have shown a greater orientation towards control from parents (Tseng, 2004). However, while this may represent the general trend within these societies, certain qualitative differences moderate how individuals experience top-down control.

Confucian ethics describe the concept of benevolent (as opposed to tyrannical or oppressive) authority, and maintaining order and balance requires authority figures to act with a view to the benefit of those lower in the social hierarchy (Chen & Farh, 2010). Within this paradigm, those above who are just, act in the interests of their subordinates, and attempt to harmonize are superior to those who coerce, are heavy-handed, or arbitrary. Teachers, parents, and leaders have an obligation to be authoritative, reasonable, and exert power in the interests of the subordinate; that is to say, authority must not simply be authoritarian and controlling.

While this is certainly not always the case in reality, this perspective may help to better understand the culturally socialized experience of autonomy in Confucian- related societies. Just as indicated in self-determination theory, East Asian cultural norms also indicate that the quality of interaction between teachers as authorities and students as subordinates must agree with the latter’s personal orientations (Littlewood, 1999; Chen, Vansteenkiste, Beyers, Soenens, & Van Petegem, 2013), even when the catalyst for action comes primarily from above. Asian learners also may feel more comfortable maintaining harmony with authority (Hau & Ho, 2010).

As with other East Asian countries, Japan also follows codes of Confucian ethics in

hierarchical social relations to a greater or lesser extent (Hwang, 2012, pp. 207–213).

Psychological interdependence between social levels is a well-documented phenomenon in Japanese culture (Doi, 1994; Tseng, 2004). In accordance with the idea of benevolent authority, nurturing relationships between teachers and students are also central to the classroom environment, especially in primary settings (Lewis, 1995).

As discussed earlier in this Chapter, the majority of elementary schools in Japan focus on fulfilling expected group and social roles (Cave, 2007), including vertical relationships.

However, this acceptance of hierarchical inequality extends only so far as instructions and directions are not perceived as objectionable. Indeed, Japanese students have generally been known to react strongly, even violently, to authorities perceived to exert non-legitimate power, even as early as elementary school (Kawakami, 1999). Thus, while respect for authority may be considered a virtue in Japanese society, the exercise of authority and control is couched in its ability to maintain order and smooth social relations.

As a result, the most successful elementary schools in Japan have been posited to be so not because of control from above, but due to the use of authority in support of students’

basic needs, met by building proactive discipline through classroom routines and rituals (Lewis, 1995). Schools create daily rituals, such as cleaning, with a view to supporting students’ sense of independent accomplishment, and teachers promote specific behavioral scripts to foster positive horizontal and vertical social relationships (Cave, 2007). These behavioral routines are often organized and directed by teachers as central authorities, though with a clear element of building student autonomy, in that teachers avoid micromanagement.

While orientations may change toward more authoritarian control in secondary school (Nakata, 2009), elementary teachers work towards exercising authority to satisfy basic psychological needs (Lewis, 1995).

Connected to the role of authority to oversee ritual and routine in Japan is the tendency to avoid and regulate uncertainty (Hofstede, 1984; Sorrentino & Roney, 2000).

According to the original research by Hofstede, individuals vary on a scale of their desire for predictability or acceptance of ambiguous situations. Research has extended this theory to show that different cultures perceive different levels of threat in ambiguity, and therefore may be characterized as certainty- or uncertainty-oriented (Sorrentino & Roney, 2000). The socialization process in Eastern countries is often organized around regularity and parental direction (Tseng, 2004; Wang, Pomerantz, & Chen, 2007), which may influence the development of this tendency. Accordingly, Japanese learners have been indicated to thrive in less ambiguous, more certain environments compared with Canadians (Szeto, Sorrentino, Yasunaga, Kouhara, & Lin, 2011). In this research, increasing situational uncertainty through choice and independence from the group or central authority led to disengagement among Japanese university students.

Connecting these ideas, research applying self-determination theory to classrooms in North America and Europe has also found a positive benefit for organization, clear explanation, and feedback from the teacher (Jang, Reeve, & Deci, 2010; Sierens, Vansteenkiste, Goossens, Soenens, & Dochy, 2010; etc.). Within this framework, these concepts have been grouped together to find a latent variable titled structure. Providing students with both autonomy-support and structure has shown positive benefits for both affect and achievement. More recently, studies have found that even students in western contexts benefit from an environment with structure and appropriate, though not excessive, autonomy-support (Furtak & Kunter, 2012). For these purposes, structure may be seen as the form of the lesson, autonomy-support the quality.

In order to better define the cross-cultural validity of self-determined motivation from

a situated cultural perspective, research is needed to investigate the subjective experience of autonomy-support. In western settings, support for student autonomy has been operationalized in terms of providing choice, allowing and accepting students to voice ideas and opinions (including negative affect), appealing to interests, and providing rationales for activities (Reeve, 2012). However, following the cultural relativist perspective, structure may offer a salient point for comparison. Following from the above discussions of cultural norms, structure and autonomy-support in Japanese school settings may exhibit as clear, caring, and unambiguous authoritativeness, oriented towards the benefit of the student. Working from this definition, a culturally appropriate definition of autonomy-supportive teaching may be derived and tested for application.

This Chapter has introduced the political, social, and cultural realities in Japan. Recognizing the key features of the Japanese education system will allow for the creation of effective hypotheses regarding how the learning environment and learners interact in Japanese schools.

Many larger issues stemming from the Course of Study both facilitate and hamper motivation to learn a foreign language, and demonstrate how self-determined motivation may grow in the humanistic environment of Japanese elementary schools. Final consideration for the surface-level differences in how learners in collectivist cultures may perceive the experience of autonomy-support may be used to illustrate how the underlying structure of self-determination theory’s cognitive evaluation microtheory within Japanese society. With these features of Japanese society established, I will introduce the methods of assessing the motivational features of foreign language education.

Chapter 4–Methodologies

Keywords: Mixed methods studies, pragmatic worldview, structural equation modeling, qualitative observation, research frameworks

Where the previous two Chapters have outlined the theoretical, social, and political issues surrounding elementary foreign language schools, this Chapter focuses on the practical aspects of research and investigating how learning happens in elementary schools. This necessitates a discussion of theories of knowledge (epistemologies), how evidence is gathered, measured, and analyzed, and how theory influences the interpretations found during the course of the research.

A commonly used metaphor for research methods is that of basic tools, such as levers, wedges, and inclined planes. For many purposes, a simple tool such as an inclined plane may suffice. For other situations, the same inclined plane may be superior if supplemented by a pulley system. Likewise, for some research questions, a single method may suffice. However, in order to answer questions of a multifaceted nature, an appropriate combination of tools may allow for greater comprehension of a specific phenomenon, experience, or trend. Based on the previous Chapters, I argue that how to build motivation in a school environment is a complex question requiring multiple data points and perspectives in order to answer effectively. The complex and dynamic nature of motivation in the school setting warrants multiple perspectives and methods of interpreting data, and thus a mixed-methods research design may be the most appropriate choice for researching this topic.

Mixed-methods research paradigms offer opportunities for more complete explanatory and predictive models (Creswell, 2008). Commonly, purely quantitative models are criticized as overly reductive or insufficient in describing complete experience. Likewise, purely qualitative data may be untestable, or may be overly specific to a certain context, thus

lacking in generalizability. However different they may seem, these methods are compatible and offer researchers the opportunity to understand clearly a phenomenon (Johnson &

Onwuegbuzie, 2004). In this Chapter, I explain the choices of research methods and their worldview to clarify why I have chosen a mixed-methods paradigm for approaching motivation and the classroom environment in elementary school foreign language activities before outline the general pattern of Chapters 5 through 9, explicating how the seemingly different studies fit together to form a cohesive whole.

To offer a note on terminology within this Chapter and throughout this thesis, I will discuss three basic elements of any series of research. The first is what Creswell (2009) describes as the ‘epistemology’ and ‘worldview’ (used interchangeably here in this discussion) as a philosophical series of beliefs which inform and create the foundation for the line of inquiry. All researchers carry a set of underlying beliefs and biases that they use to interpret data. This theory of knowing colors every piece of the research design, from the generation of hypotheses and research questions to the design of experiments or program of inquiry. While this is implicit in many studies, it is nonetheless important to declare this position in order to clarify how and for what purpose the research is conducted.

At the same time, ‘paradigm’ and ‘methodology’ will be used to refer specifically to an approach to data acquisition and interpretation. This methodology may be qualitative, quantitative, or both. The decisions researchers make on how to gather and treat information inherently changes how it may be understood, both by the researcher and readers. This is commonly the focus of research discussions and may be used as a broad way of classifying research. The methodology is generated based on how the researcher chooses to approach knowledge, and how they choose to gather the information in relation to good hypotheses.

Finally, ‘theory’ and ‘theoretical background’ are used to describe a lens on the data, brought by a previous framework of empirical findings and their interpretation. As all modern research stands on conclusions derived from a combination of previous observations and empirical findings, theory allows researchers to develop ideas based on solid grounding.

While theory does not have to be the grand theories outlined in Chapter 2, good research requires the use of a basic set of background knowledge about the field of inquiry. Strong theories allow for the testing of well-grounded hypotheses about the data.

Thus, all research occurs at the intersection of these three viewpoints. Theory allows for the generation of hypotheses. Method controls how the data is gathered gathered. Both are informed by an underlying worldview which grants affordances to—as well as placing constraints on—the method of interpretation. These three simultaneously influence every aspect of the data acquisition and interpretation. Figure 4.1 renders these in a three-dimensional space, with data seen and triangulated by the researcher. By clarifying this framework, the researcher may clarify existing biases, data gathering and interpretation methods, and intended outcomes.

Figure 4.1. Three primary frameworks used in data analysis and interpretation in any program of research.