Corpus approaches to the sociology of curricula: A methodological case study of human rights learning in Japan

Abstract

This article discusses how corpus linguistic methods were adapted for critical research examining the content and pedagogy of human rights learning within texts approved for classroom use under Japan's official social studies curriculum. While human rights concepts are common facets of official curricula, designed to address social injustice and foster peaceful coexistence, such learning has undergone critical re-examination as being complicit in perpetuating social injustice. Drawing upon Bernstein's sociology of the curriculum and based on a corpus of upper-secondary curricular texts, this research is a pragmatic mixing of quantitative and qualitative methods that sought to understand the curriculum's potential role within learning for human rights. By way of empirical example, the article aims to inform future critical research designs within the sociology of the curriculum. Corpus-based analytical techniques were vital in demonstrating how the structuring of textbook human rights limits student engagement with social justice issues and functions instead to inculcate pride in Japanese ethnonationality.