Citizenship Responsibility Sociology In English Higher Learning: Empowering Students and Teachers Giving Hope Of Eliminating Institutional Constraints To Critical Higher Learning

University class social life is a system with connected individuals and groups who choose to participate or not and relate to one another in any number of ways.  People are what make a system "happen," and without their active and involved and invested participation, any system exists primarily if not solely as an idea with some physical reality attached.  People make systems happen, and systems lay out paths of least resistance to shape people's participation.  The foreign language (e.g. English in the Japanese setting) classroom can be used for communication and interaction development and knowledge construction where the main goal is neither operational (i.e. skills) nor epistemic (i.e. knowledge acquisition) but phronetic and affective.  Student understandings, indeed teacher understandings, of everyday life and society in a sociological study environment are not distinct from how they experience their own immediate study society as it unfolds.  University foreign language sociology in English study can be directed towards defining (or redefining) and molding relationships in a community.  Social life flows from relationships, and we as university educators need to consider how we approach higher learning and how our approach contributes to furthering social constraints over people, or how our overall teaching approach can help empower students and teachers (ourselves) to give promise of eliminating or at least alleviating inequities in higher educational practice.  This presentation will map a path of higher learning (i.e. a sociology in English) that empowers rather than constrains people to participate in their learning.