Like the title says,
Is there or not? Maybe or maybe not?
Can recruiters be biased subconsciously or not when it comes to who they hire?
Feel free to share any thoughts or opinions about diversity in teaching in Japan.
Just curious because there can be many people that apply for teaching jobs and speak English who may not to fit the typical English Teacher look.
Thanks for reading and taking your time replying.
8 comments
In the academic world it’s 80% Japanese and the rest of us are from all over. International schools tend to hire people from the nation they get their curriculum from.
ALT and eikaiwa have a “ranking”. Attractive people with light skin and hair from North America or the UK are the most sought after because they think it gives the business a legitimate image. Then they look at “genki” people from those nations that may not be a beauty queen. After that they start looking at desperate people willing to take even lower salaries than the “premium” ones get.
Pretty sure most are consciously bias. Though some cities I use to work for are really taking up global English mantel and were far less bias with ALT hirings. Some were more traditional. Bias in Jet was all over the place depending on the small countryside town or school for various reasons. Some would only want women because of male JET hitting on high school students in the past, others would only want men because more traditional sexism. Many would be very oddly specific like Australian male who does not like to drink. This was normally due to Jets they had in the past, so if they had a good Australian guy they would try and replicate it.
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International school here so yes, there is diversity. Our staff are from all over, but the biggest 2 are US and Australia. That said, it’s not so much “gaijin image” because there are people (like me) who are Asian who hold a Western passport.
International schools generally recruit based on experience with the curriculum. So a GCSE international school might have a higher proportion of British teachers.
Ours is IB which is offered around the world but still a bulk of it being in Western countries hence we have more Western-passport teachers but we also have teachers from Singapore, Malaysia, China, India, Philippines.
I worked at a kindergarten dispatch with a bunch of disgruntled older white men, an ALT dispatch with a mix of colours and nationalities, and at a few universities. The universities have been surprisingly diverse, actually.
I work at a private JHS/SHS and am on the interview panel for potential JTE and native teacher hires. The school also uses ALTs.
As a base, the school aims to have every foreign employee be from a different English speaking country. (Anglosphere)
While it’s never been directly said to me or acknowledged, it’s quite obvious school administration prefers to avoid younger male teachers under 30 in all subject hires, Japanese included.
We use a dispatch company and JET for our ALTs. Only female ALTs are considered. The school also requests they are not fresh out of university.
I haven’t noticed a preference at all by English department teachers or admin for race when hiring.
University teacher.
There’s lots of diversity where I work. There are white Americans, white Brits, white Canadians, and even white Australians.
Still seem to be a majority of female teachers and staff. I would say probably only 30% or less male teachers and staff in elementary. Hopefully we can work on changing the culture to encourage more men to improve diversity and representation.