Professional Development through Kizuki – Cognitive, Emotional, and Collegial Awareness

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May. 02, 2011

Source: Teacher Development, Volume 15, Issue 2, 2011, 187-203.

In the current paper, the author traced an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher’s professional development by examining her narrative and identifying the transformation of her awareness or kizuki.

Kizuki is unique to Japanese culture. This term implies a sudden feeling of inner understanding of a phenomenon and can be roughly translated as ‘becoming aware of’, ‘noticing’ or ‘realizing’.

To show how powerful and important the concept is for teacher development in the Japanese context, the author studied team‐taught project‐based EFL learning in a Japanese junior high school for nine months.

A qualitative analysis of the teacher’s narrative highlights that different types of her kizuki – cognitive, emotional, and collegial – were generated and its transformative power enabled her to gain ownership of teacher learning, which it is hoped would lead to professional development.

Updated: Aug. 29, 2012
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