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Visualizing oneself joining imagined communities of target language (TL) use represents a potent motivation for language study. Given that rationales for the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme include fostering internationalization, a student-centered classroom, and communicative skills, teaching to promote learners envisioning themselves gaining access to different imagined social groups via the TL is further warranted in this program. Yet no research has examined the actual role of imagined TL communities in JET teaching. This project responded by investigating how JET participants foster imagined communities of English use among learners. Materials produced by JET teachers from across Japan were collected with a content analysis being undertaken to determine how they portrayed connections between the language and social group participation. Results of this analysis of 5079 teaching materials indicated that most (2783) involved language practice divorced from social connections. The remainder ran the gamut from lessons in which social group information was tangential and not connected to particular language to a smaller number in which connections between language and potential future social group participation were strong. These results suggest that the possibility of leveraging connections between language and social group participation to promote imagined communities of TL use among learners is possible within the JET paradigm and that this avenue for learner motivation could be further exploited. Given the importance of these findings for motivation coupled with the adoption of initiatives similar to JET across Asia, these results have implications both within and outside of the JET Programme.

Thelazia callipaeda eyeworm was considered an exotic parasite in North America until an autochthonous case was reported in a dog from New York, USA, in 2020 (1). T. callipaeda eyeworm [...]

A quantum system's energy landscape may have points where multiple energy surfaces are degenerate and that exhibit singular geometry of the wave function manifold, with major consequences for the system's properties. Ultracold atoms in optical lattices have been used to indirectly characterize such points in the band structure. We measured the non-Abelian transformation produced by transport directly through the singularities. We accelerated atoms along a quasi-momentum trajectory that enters, turns, and then exits the singularities at linear and quadratic band-touching points of a honeycomb lattice. Measurements after transport identified the topological winding numbers of these singularities to be 1 and 2, respectively. Our work introduces a distinct method for probing singularities that enables the study of non-Dirac singularities in ultracold-atom quantum simulators.

This study empirically investigated the invisibility, or symbolic annihilation, in Japanese English education of social groups at risk of marginalization. To do so, I assembled a corpus of 3746 English teaching materials selected because they involved world social group representation and because they were disseminated through the JET Program, a Japanese government initiative intended to promote internationalization and interculturalism in schools across Japan. Corpus analysis indicated various forms of symbolic annihilation. Most broadly, the world was portrayed as a dichotomy between Japan and countries of the Kachruvian Inner Circle. Europe was of secondary prominence while other regions were poorly represented. These materials reflected Christonormativity as well with adherents to other religions being symbolically annihilated. The visibility of those other than Anglos and Japanese was likewise highly attenuated. Stereotypes equating ethnicity and nationality were prevalent with Inner Circle dialog characters, for example, rarely having non-Anglo names. Not only did this corpus thus evidence lingering Inner Circle-centrism, but this was a Christonormative, white, Anglo, Inner Circle/Euro-centric imaginary. These results thus evinced a hidden curriculum reinscribing stereotypes and regimes of social power, one working at cross purposes to the stated purpose of the JET Program as promoting internationalization and interculturalism.

With increasing canonicity, particularly within higher education assessment, the demonstrable achievement of goals, or the delivery of a program, or as one scholar wryly deemed it, the "manipulation of the independent variable" (Moncher and Prinz 1991, p. 247), are commonly referred to as implementation fidelity or fidelity of implementation (FOI). FOI research examines what the influential study by Carroll et al. (2007) summarizes as any impactful "variation[s] affecting the credibility and utility of research" (p. 1). Assessment scholars emphasize that quality data should lead inexplicably to better plans, with the ultimate hope for consequence of enhancing learning. Some universities' assessment processes involve peer-to-peer coaching. Essentially, they ensure assigned departments' end-of-cycle compliance with meta-assessment protocols typically reified within universities' formal internal processes. Institutionalization of FOI practices would require those coaches to provide more formative coaching, specifically in the form of implementational intervention auditors for the value-added five FOI protocols (i.e., 1. Program differentiation; 2. Adherence; 3. Quality; 4. Exposure; and 5. Responsiveness). Contrary to some current inferences, some bureaucracy and standardization of assessment processes are needed. However, since the standardized algorithm is intentionally designed to demonstrate continuous improvement success or lack of success, the proposed model places the emphasis where it should be in modeling an enlarged process for demonstrating assessment of improvement.