This paper is a critical systematic literature review of empirical work on creative pedagogies from 1990 to 2018. It responds to the increased international attention being afforded creativity and creative pedagogies in research, policy and practice and examines the evidence regarding creative pedagogical practices and the potential impact of…

Active learning is the outcome of a series of higher education policy reforms conducted in the late 2000s and early 2010s in Japan. This approach gained momentum after it was prioritised in a comprehensive report produced by the Central Council of Education (an advisory board of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology).…

In Japan, school teachers experience mental health issues, leading to absences or leave from their duties. While extended working hours significantly contribute to this problem, diminished self-esteem has emerged as the primary causal factor. Reduced self-esteem is frequently correlated with diminished self-efficacy across multiple facets of…

Group-level self-regulation significantly impacts online collaborative learning performance (Panadero & Järvelä, 2015). Recently, online collaborative learning has been actively implemented in English language education in Japan, and group-level self-regulation, closely related to online collaborative learning, attracts the attention of…

The use of three-dimensional virtual worlds (3DVWs) in language education has been widely acknowledged in the field, and researchers have expressed a growing interest in their proliferation in second language (L2) learning and instruction. In order to improve the Thai-speaking abilities of learners of Thai as a foreign language (TFL) in three…

Education in Japan and other Asian countries advocates the traditional passive style of learning where students learn through rote memorization in a teacher-centered environment. However, this is now changing due to globalization with Japan's Ministry of Education promoting learning strategies to involve students in the learning process actively.…

Despite progress in recent years, Japanese classrooms continue to present challenges for educators seeking to promote language learner autonomy. Adopting an action research/case study design, the present study explored how, in a 5-week student-led project, an intact group of learners could contribute to the development of their own autonomy. Data…

New technologies often influence the ways in which one shares linguistic experiences. One such technology, Augmented Reality (AR), may initiate concepts used in language learning through digital storytelling. This paper describes an exploratory research project based on Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) AR digital storytelling which investigated…

Although cooperative learning is a well-researched framework with many reports on its effective implementation in education, successful cooperative learning practice remains elusive in the classroom. The literature suggests certain elements of cooperative learning are key, but few studies have addressed their importance with respect to the…

This article introduces an empirical study of "Connected Learning" in a Japanese EFL classroom context, instantiated through the Bridging Activities pedagogical framework. Students considered their interests, made groups, and joined Reddit communities. Self-selected texts were then analyzed with rigorous teacher mediation. Students…

The purpose of this study is to examine which, and how, reflective practices as instructional strategies affect students' self-directed learning (SDL) competencies in second language university classes. To answer the research questions, an explanatory mixed-methods approach was used to extend quantitative research through qualitative research.…

This article reports on the use of an experimental material to enable discrimination between the periphrastic future (PF) and simple future (SF) intended for initial level university students in Japan studying French as a Foreign Language. A dyad was filmed using the material in a task on tense choice in short dialogues modelled on Galperin's…

Task-based language teaching research has investigated the impact of planning on task performance, but little has been reported on the processes that take place while planning is undertaken. This study builds on previous planning research by providing a detailed analysis of four Japanese university learners' collaborative pre-task planning (two…

The present paper aims to explore how a certain class mode emerges in the context of collaborative learning, which affects student motivation and learning. Multiple sources of data were collected from 51 high school students in three different classes (named A, B and C) where the same teacher gave them the same lesson content throughout a full…

Internationally, schools with small numbers of children and constrained funding are not able to group the children in classes based on their age. Rather, the children are combined into larger 'mixed-age' classes. Schools and teachers manage this situation in different ways, for example by teaching the class as two or more separate age-based groups…