The neoliberal structures of English in Japanese higher education: applying Bernstein’s pedagogic device

ABSTRACT

As global neoliberalism continues to take root, States aim to produce linguistically-skilled human capital to gain an advantage within highly-competitive market conditions. With this relationship in view, English language proficiency constitutes a ‘rational’ educational pathway for national and personal-level success within an outwardly meritocratic knowledge economy. Yet, in Japan, as in many other locales, English has been accused of strengthening pre-existing power relations. Accordingly, this inquiry draws on Bernstein’s pedagogic device, to address the nested fields of production, recontextualisation, and reproduction shaping educational practice. Regarding production, normative OECD discourses framing essential key competencies favour an epistemic hierarchy privileging the orthodoxy of free-market capitalism. Through unequal pedagogic reform, meanwhile, the recontextualisation of regulatory discourse limits valued forms of knowledge to learners attending prestigious mass-market institutions. This, in turn, holds implications for reproduction. Through recognition and realisation, the classification and framing of English as a ‘valid’ knowledge privilege students from middle-class households. The appropriation of English as a ‘rational’ contact point for global communication, business, and finance thereby risks obfuscating the socio-economic order determining its practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education policy
• neoliberalism
• globalisation
• Bernstein
• Japan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Nihonjinron, or ‘theories of the Japanese’, came into prominence during the 1960s and 70s following the nation’s substantial economic growth. An ideology enforcing social, racial, and political conformity, the concept is no longer taken seriously in academia, yet remains prevalent within nationalistic and neo-conservative groups (Morita, 2010).

2 Original emphasis.

3 Emphasis added.

4 Emphasis added.

5 Emphasis added.

6 Emphasis added.

7 Original emphasis.

8 Following the foundational definition by Marshall (1998), ‘the Centre-Periphery model is a spatial metaphor which describes and attempts to explain the structural relationship between the advanced “Centre” and less developed “Periphery”’ (p. 71).

9 Original emphasis.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael D. Smith

Michael D. Smith is an adjunct lecturer in English as a foreign language at Kwansei Gakuin University, School of International Studies, Japan. Currently enrolled as a doctoral student at the University of Bath, he holds a postgraduate teaching license specialising in adult education, an MA in Applied Linguistics, and is an alumnus of University College London Institute of Education, where he gained an MA with distinction in Technology and Education. Michael’s research interests include the sociology of education, language policy, neoliberal governmentality, and the social and pedagogical implications of educational technologies