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More Than an Assistant: ALTs, Inclusion, and the Future of Educational Roles in Japan
Paperback
General EducationGeneral SociologyImmigration & Refugees
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jan 16 2026
Pages: 540
Weight: 1.57
Height: 1.20 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
More Than an Assistant: ALTs, Inclusion, and the Future of Educational Roles in Japan
By Nathaniel Reed
For more than three decades, Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) have been a familiar presence in Japan's public schools-visible in classrooms, influential in daily routines, yet often misunderstood beyond the school gates. More Than an Assistant is the first full-length study to examine who ALTs are, what they actually do, and what their work reveals about Japan's relationship to language, identity, and inclusion.
Drawing on sixteen years of experience in Japanese schools and a review of more than 140 academic studies, Nathaniel Reed traces the ALT role from its origins in international exchange to its place in today's layered and often contradictory education system. Blending history, policy analysis, and lived narratives, he shows how English education became intertwined with nation-building, soft power, and the ideal of internationalisation-and how these forces shape the everyday realities of classrooms across the country.
Moving between classrooms, staffrooms, and Board of Education offices, the book illustrates how ALTs navigate ambiguity, hierarchy, shifting expectations, and competing interpretations of their purpose. It examines the experiences of JET participants, dispatch ALTs, direct-hire teachers, and other pathways that together form a workforce far more diverse-and far less standardised-than public perception suggests. Comparative insights from South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, the UK, the US, and Australia place Japan's model in an international frame.
Clear-eyed, grounded, and deeply human, More Than an Assistant invites readers to reconsider what it means to teach, learn, and belong in contemporary Japan. It is an essential resource for educators, policymakers, researchers, and anyone interested in the intersections of language, culture, and the future of global education.
More Than an Assistant ─ 日本のALT、インクルージョン、そして教育役割の未来
リード・ナサニエル 著
日本の公立学校では30年以上にわたり、ALT（外国語指導助手）が当たり前の存在として働いてきました。授業にも学校生活にも深く関わりながら、その実態や役割がここまで多角的に語られることは多くありませんでした。More Than an Assistantは、ALTとは誰なのか、どのように働き、その存在が日本の言語観・アイデンティティ・インクルージョン（包摂）への姿勢をどのように映し出しているのかを描き出す、初めての包括的な書籍です。
著者リード・ナサニエルは、日本の学校で16年以上教え、140本を超える研究を読み解きながらALT制度の歴史と現在を紐解きます。国際交流として始まった制度の背景から、今日の複雑で時に矛盾する教育システムに至るまで、歴史・政策・現場の物語が一つの流れとして示されます。英語教育がどのようにナショナリズム、ソフトパワー、「国際化」政策と結びつき、それが日常の授業や学校文化にどう現れているのかを、わかりやすく丁寧に解説します。
本書は、JETプログラム参加者だけでなく、派遣ALT、直接雇用ALT、その他の多様な雇用形態{
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