Expatriate High School English Teachers’ Experiences with Entrance Examination Creation in Japan: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Entrance examinations play a significant part of life in Japan as they are said to enable the social mobility of citizens; although contemporary economic and demographic forces may be proving the opposite, many Japanese continue to believe that once students enter prestigious universities, they are guaranteed good jobs upon graduation. To enter prestigious universities, students compete at the secondary level to enter high-status high schools, for the most part also by way of entrance examinations. Although these entrance examinations are commonly believed to be objective and fair in stratifying students, expatriate faculty participating in their creation often call that viewpoint into question. While institutions may benefit from having “native” speakers on their entrance examination creation committees, and that participating on such committees may offer opportunities to expatriate teachers, they may also face a number of challenges while working with their local (in this case, Japanese) colleagues. This chapter reports on expatriate high school English teachers’ beliefs about and perceptions of the entrance examination construction process and common themes that arise for them. This chapter contains background about entrance examinations, results of previous research with expatriate tertiary English educators, and findings of this particular study with a small population of expatriate high school English teachers. Significant themes that arose from interviews with this group include how they are treated differently from their Japanese colleagues, examples of social hierarchy at work in decision making, and issues surrounding fairness in scoring procedures. These findings may resonate with expatriate high school faculty participating in High-Stakes language test creation in countries around the world.