The foreign language teaching profession in Finnish and Japanese society : a sociocultural comparison

The social basis of a teaching profession is created through behavioural and cultural patterns, specific artefacts, and their connection to certain institutional practices. The purpose of this study is to discover the conditions that structure the teaching profession in a cultural context and to find out what it is to be a foreign language (FL) teacher in Finland and Japan. Both countries have high educational equality but with contrasting patterns of management policies that are manifested in their teacher education curricula. Educational policy documents as well as teacher interviews and classroom observations were conducted in both countries and the findings compared by one Japanese and three Finnish researchers. The research themes are as follows: the FL teaching profession, teacher education paradigms, teachers’ professional development, and pedagogical orientation in teaching. The results show that the cultural context and its strong implications for the teaching profession are prominent in both cultures.