Japan, a forerunner of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), positions itself as an advocate for embedding sustainability within pedagogy; yet these efforts remain stifled by a cultural adherence to ‘top-down’ hierarchical practice. Against this background, leaderful classroom pedagogy’s emphasis on collaboration, shared responsibility, and empathy emerges as a viable alternative to top-down leadership models. Accordingly, an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was undertaken with Japanese university students attending a global studies program. Through semi-structured interviewing, participants shared and reflected on their lived experiences of leadership and ESD, with findings indicating that hierarchical leadership structures hinder the egalitarian, student-orientated approach deemed prototypical to ESD and, thus, opportunities to inhabit meaningful leadership roles. While leaderful practitioners face considerable challenges if attempting to uproot leadership models firmly ingrained in the teacher-leader student-follower duology, we posit that the relationship between ESD and leaderful classroom pedagogy is mutually beneficial.

This presentation aims to explore how the autobiographical narratives of L2 learning experiences influence, inform and are integrated into the life narrative (McAdams 2018) of Kana, a Japanese learner of English. Grounded in data gathered from a longitudinal study, this presentation focuses on the stories contained and elaborated on when interview data was gathered alongside a visual language learning history representing Kana's pre-university experiences. The autobiographical narratives shared were analysed using Barkhuizen's (2016) short story approach. Based on the assumption that strong emotions facilitate the integration of experiences into a life narrative (Pasupathi et al., 2007), a micro-analysis of emotions was also conducted to understand the dynamic ways in which emotions interact with the formation of a life narrative. The analysis revealed a complex interaction between contextual factors, emotional evaluations of situations and core identity concerns which influenced which autobiographical narratives were integrated into Kana's various English identities.

This study illustrates how Exploratory Practice (EP) prompts teachers and learners to collaborate in gaining mutual understandings about the quality of life in the language classrooms. Participant observations and learner interviews were conducted in two undergraduate English courses in Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology. Learner reflective dairies, post-class learner reflective writings and teaching journals were also gathered in an attempt to understand how motivation is co-constructed by teachers and learners in class. Results of the study reveal that EP plays a crucial role in the circulation of a positive classroom motivation cycle through ongoing teacher-pupil communication and teacher reflection. EP urges effective communication in the classroom and this consequently fills the gap of the motivation cycle and prevents misunderstandings between teachers and learners. Research findings suggest that the adoption of EP can be beneficial to teacher motivation as well as learner motivation through participants' understandings about classroom life.

The effects of gamified instruction via the Classcraft website on Japanese ELLs' self-reported motivation levels are explored in this study. Classcraft is geared toward increasing ELLs’ motivation to study English by ‘gamifying’ the classroom through game elements like points, rewards, leveling, and teamwork. A2-level (the CEFR equivalent of elementary level) students across four compulsory Listening and Speaking classes at a university in western Japan were chosen for this study. Similar to traditional role-playing video games (RPGs), the participants were required to create and ‘level-up’ online avatars with points they acquired through good in-class behavior and performance. To measure changes in motivation over the course of the semester, the two instructors involved in the study recorded observational data and conducted pre- and post-study surveys. The data suggests that while students generally had a positive outlook on the rewards Classcraft offered, it had a negligible effect on their motivation.

Current qualitative research illustrates the need for further research in specific language learner motivation contexts. The focus of this presentation is exploring the Korean adult learner context. The research aims to expand on work done by Dornyei and Csizer (1998) and also to find emerging characteristics that can be used by instructors in the context of the Korean classroom. The phenomenological qualitative research approach will be used, utilizing two groups of participants; Korean adult English learners and foreign adult English language teachers. Through two different methods of data collection (open-ended surveys and one-on-one interviews) data will be formulated using the Otter.ai and NVIVO software programs. Data will then be coded into groups and themes to interpret results and derive conclusions. The presenter will offer recommendations based on current research and anticipated trends in Korea. Audience participation is invited and encouraged to contribute to the ongoing research.

Learners are socialized both into and through language by means of interactions with others. Drawing on a language socialization theoretical framework, this research examines narratives from a Chinese student, Jin (pseudonym) in Japan to shed light on her identity development in the struggle of learning Japanese and using English. Interviews were conducted twice based on fully consenting, after which the transcriptions were read through several times to grasp a whole picture of the interviewee and analyzed by MAXQDA. As a result, insights into language learning motivation and language choice are provided. In Jin’s case, she adopts English as a Lingua Franca to escape from being required as a part of the Japanese community and from acculturation into the local culture. On the other hand, Jin’s low motivation for learning Japanese can be also accounted for by the inconvenience of using Japanese as a foreigner in Japan.