Mieko Thompson,
Associate Professor – Japanese Language
Profile
Dr. Thompson joined the PEAK program in 2022 after teaching at various universities in Japan such as Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology and Waseda University. She began her career as a Japanese language teacher when she joined the Exchange Japan/ALLEX program, through which she received a graduate assistantship to teach Japanese at West Chester University in the United States. Motivated by this experience, she went on to teach at Kookmin University in South Korea and was dispatched by the Japan Foundation to serve as Japanese-Language Senior Specialist at the University of Bucharest in Romania. While she honed her teaching practice overseas and in Japan, she continued her research and obtained her MA and PhD in Applied Linguistics at Ochanomizu University. At the PEAK program, she teaches comprehensive Japanese from beginner to advanced levels, academic writing and presentation, and qualitative research methods. She is also engaged in developing a tutoring system for the Center for Academic Writing at Komaba (CAWK(https://park.itc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/cawk/en/)).
Research Interests
Dr. Thompson’s research interests lie in the field of language pedagogy based on socio-constructivism with an emphasis on the nature of collaborative learning. She explores how collaboration promotes or hinders learners’ and teachers’ cognitive development through the use of qualitative research methods. Her doctoral thesis revealed how Japanese language teachers with diverse backgrounds work together to facilitate collaborative learning among multicultural learners and realize multicultural symbiosis among themselves. Her current research examines how learners’ and teachers’ reflections lead to the internalization of collaborative learning and its application to other contexts. She has also joined several Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) Projects regarding advising in language learning, career development by international students, and assessment for narrative writing (https://narrativewriting20.wixsite.com/home).