Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program by David L. McConnell Page A

fragmentation.57 I also assumed that the numerous external
linkages in the JET Program had a significant capacity to shape internal
policy forms. Finally, I knew I had to take into account how the JET program was historically situated. In short, I needed a methodology that encompassed not only multilevel linkages and internal contradictions but
also the evolution of the JET Program over time.58
    My solution was to use an eclectic approach to gather as many kinds of
data as possible over a ten-year period. Most of the intensive fieldwork was
completed during two years of on-site research in Japan from 1988 to 1990,
but I returned for a month each in the summers of 1993, 1995, and 1996
and for a week in 1999. Having served as an assistant English teacher in
junior high schools in Iwate Prefecture in 1980 and 1983 to 1985 in two
similar but smaller programs, I had firsthand experience working in a municipal board of education and team-teaching English in secondary schools;
I also had good conversational Japanese.
    Initially, I decided to anchor myself in one locale in order to focus on
one prefectural board of education and its downward linkages. I received a
crucial introduction to the prefectural administrators in charge of the JET
Program from my Fulbright sponsor. These two men, one an English
teacher temporarily assigned to the board of education and the other a career civil servant, were more helpful than I ever could have expected. They
arranged for me to attend all prefectural orientations, seminars, and teamteaching workshops related to the JET Program. They also set up short visits to five district boards of education and twelve secondary schools in the
prefecture. Most important, they arranged for me to conduct regular visits
to a high school that had recently been chosen as a base school for a British
JET participant. I visited twice weekly for three months and for another six
months less frequently. I spent the entire day at the school on each visit
and was able to observe many team-taught and solo English classes and to
interview Japanese students and teachers. I also was able to acquire a variety of written materials on hosting the ALT.

    At the same time that I was relying on these formal channels, I also
made informal contact with numerous JET participants as well as Japanese
teachers of English. Usually interviews took place in a coffee shop, and I
guaranteed anonymity. Documentation thus includes field notes from observations of thirty-two team-teaching workshops and classes and notes or
audiotapes from interviews with sixty-five foreign participants, fifty-four
Japanese teachers of English, and thirty-five Japanese students.
    I was able to take short trips to other prefectures and to Tokyo to obtain
an overview of the program. At first, I found negotiating access to Ministry
of Education and CLAIR officials and gaining permission to observe
national-level conferences quite difficult; a general ministry policy forbids
any outside research on the JET Program. I met several Japanese researchers who had been turned down by CLAIR and heard that CLAIR officials had become incensed when a foreign researcher distributed a survey
at a conference even though they had denied him permission to do so. My
own relative success was aided by letters of introduction to key officials in
CLAIR and the sponsoring ministries from Caroline Yang, then at the Fulbright Commission, and from Mike Smith, then dean of the School of Education at Stanford University. By far the most crucial introduction, however,
was provided by my mentor, Tetsuya Kobayashi. In fact, Kobayashi-sensei
was a personal friend of Wada Minoru in the Ministry of Education, and his
phone call to CLAIR was instrumental in opening doors there as well. "You
must thank Professor Kobayashi," I was told by a CLAIR official years later.
"He is a very powerful person."
    I interviewed officials at the Ministries of Education, Home