Koichi Haseyama is a visiting scholar and a PhD candidate at the faculty of Education, SFU. He also holds an Assistant Professor position in Tsurukawa College, Tokyo, Japan. He started his career as a childcare provider in his early 20s and has run his own international preschool for more than a decade. Haseyama earned a Master of Arts degree in Teaching English to Young Learners from the University of York, UK. Having a successful educational enterprise, Haseyama’s decision to pursue a PhD was solely driven by his interest to further his knowledge in education. Thus, Haseyama started his PhD in the Languages, Cultures and Literacies (LCL) program at the Faculty of Education at SFU. He is grateful to his senior supervisor, Dr. Danièle Moore, and the supervisory committee member Dr. Steve Marshall for their tremendous support and for introducing him to the world of academia.
After joining the LCL PhD program, Haseyama’s scope of work in Japan expanded considerably. He started working extensively as a consultant in Japanese higher education sector and was responsible for developing a newly internationalized faculty and its degree programs in Early Childhood Education and Care at Tsurukawa. Sponsored by Dr. Moore, Haseyama’s work as a visiting scholar at SFU initially focused on the quality development of degree programs and faculties in Japanese higher education institutes in terms of their transnational educational practices. With his expanding research interests, Haseyama is now focusing on multiculturalism, globalization and curriculum development in higher education, especially in teacher education for ECE/ elementary levels in Japan. The PhD at SFU has been instrumental for his career development at Tsurukawa College. He now runs Tsurukawa’s international practicum programs in Metro Vancouver. He has also been teaching at SFU and UBC as sessional instructor and has been a faculty advisor at UBC. Informed by these practical work experiences, his expertise and interests in teacher education have been extended to postsecondary education practice as community outreach and in diploma policy designs in teacher education for Sustainable Development Goals, set by United Nations and its Academic Impacts initiatives. As a scholar with expertise in plurilingualism and multiculturalism in education, Haseyama’s doctoral journey has been rewarding as he is garnering scholarship on higher education for teacher education and exploring new avenues for career development. In addition to
Tsurukawa, Haseyama has joined another university in Japan as a visiting researcher to support their establishment of a new faculty and its degree programs in this April.
Now, Haseyama is not sure of his future career, as it has always been so. Working closely with teacher education programs at UBC, sustainably developing Tsurukawa’s programs, and working with a larger project with another postsecondary institute in Japan, his researcher-educator identity is also transnational and fluid and is growing organically. He always sees ‘people’ around himself as the key. Haseyama believes that the reasons for his work and his being able to do what he is doing in this stage of his life is because of his relationships with people around him. It is always the people that bring him opportunities, resources, and skills for him to be part of their work, and to be able to feel meaningful in what he does. His research as a visiting scholar is only a fraction of his current work inspired by people he has met through his PhD journey at SFU.
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