Sessions

The need for educational leadership as an aspect of CEFR, and language education in Japan.

The overwhelming majority of K-12 and universities are lead by people without explicit leadership training, other than the occasional seminar. For Japan to progress and join the global ranking of schools, leadership must be considered as an integral aspect and this leadership must adhere to a set of standards that are both student focused and measurable (Green, 2016). This push for leadership is also an integral part of the adoption and implementation of CEFR or CEFR-J standards in Japan. The earliest call for educators to play a role in leadership in the implementation of CEFR was made by Nagai (2010) in the Japanese context and sequentially again by O’Dwyer and Nagai (2012) and O’Dwyer (2015), but since then, it has been largely absent. Nonetheless, with the push to bring the CEFR-J to public schools in Japan much work remains to be done, and a significant aspect of that work lies in the adoption of educational leadership standards and practices.