Invisibility of social groups as hidden curriculum in English teaching materials from Japan

What is it about?

Acknowledging that more is taught in formal education than is explicitly stated in official curricula, the hidden curriculum concept especially refers to teaching that is unintended and that typically reflects relations of social power. Examining the hidden curriculum is important to learn how formal education may work to reproduce relations of social power and to guide materials creators, policy makers, and practitioners in embracing practice that averts the promotion of social injustice. In this study, I examined depictions of social groups in a collection of English teaching materials used to teach young learners across Japan in the Japanese government’s JET Programme. Despite the fact that the JET Programme was created to promote interculturalism and internationalization via English education, this study found evidence that these materials consistently emphasized a core of white, Anglo, Christian Westerners in portrayals of the world outside of Japan. Other people were symbolically annihilated, or rendered invisible, throughout these materials. These findings demonstrate the presence of a Japan-wide hidden curriculum in English education, one reinscribing many traditional relations of social power and working at cross purposes to the JET Programme’s goals of preparing Japanese students for a diverse world.

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