A Father’s Journey: Teaching Canadian Inclusive Education in a Japanese Elementary School Special Support Education Classroom

Publication: - T. Bonnah. (2024). “Chapter 15. A Father’s Journey: Teaching Canadian Inclusive Education in a Japanese Elementary School Special Support Education Classroom.” Barrier-Free Instruction in Japan: Recommendations for Teachers at All Levels of Schooling. Candlin & Mynard. 300-333 ISBN (Print): 9798879100150 ISBN (ebook): 9798224536085

Synopsis: Bonnah analyzes the journal he kept while volunteer teaching his autistic son in a Japanese elementary school. He notes Japanese Education Discourses that serve as barriers to learning, namely unadapted materials, improper teacher-student interaction, and overuse of repetition as pedagogic technique. He concludes with suggestions to make Japanese Special Support Education classes more equitable.

Author: Theodore Bonnah is a NunatuKavut researcher who returned to Canada in 2023 after two decades teaching at Japanese universities. He holds a PhD in Global society studies from Doshisha University in Kyoto, and was supervised by the renowned Sociologist Dr Anne Gonon, herself a student of Pierre Bourdieu. Bonnah is an interdisciplinary Discourse Analyst with wide interests, and has published on Neoliberal Discourse in US economic journalism, Pacific colonial discourse in Plato's Atlantis narrative, and the discourses of Japanese millennial work disenchantment and mental health in Sanrio's Gudetama yurukyara, He currently has an article on the attempts to exclude NunatuKavut (southern Labrador inuit) from land claims by denying their indigenous identity.