Sociocultural Values in Madogiwa no Totto-chan: A Narrative-Based Pedagogical Framework for Language Education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59011/austronesian.5.3.2026.731-750Keywords:
Sociocultural theory, Narrative-based pedagogy, Madogiwa no Totto-chan, Intercultural communicative, Zone of Proximal DevelopmentAbstract
Learners require the capacity to engage empathically with cultural difference, construct meaningful social identities through the target language, and internalise the moral and civic values that underpin responsible participation in multilingual communities. In this context, literary narratives are re-emerging as mediators in language education. This study examines the sociocultural values embedded in Kuroyanagi (1981) and develops a narrative-based pedagogical framework for language education grounded in those values. Employing a qualitative research integrating literary content analysis (Mayring, 2015) and document analysis (Bowen, 2009) within an interpretivist paradigm. The study systematically analysed all forty-three narrative chapters using a theoretically grounded coding matrix. The findings identified eight interconnected sociocultural value domains including individual dignity, empathy and interpersonal trust, learner agency, and moral character co-present across the majority of narrative episodes, reflecting the Sociocultural Theory (SCT) principle that values are transmitted as integrated dimensions of culturally situated practice. Character analysis revealed developmental trajectories for the three principal dynamic characters structurally consistent with Vygotsky’s account of internalisation, and identified a narrative ZPD enacted across seventeen episodes in the Kobayashi Totto-chan dyad. These findings were synthesised into a four-component pedagogical framework value identification, narrative analysis, character-based reflection, and language production whose sequential structure mirrors the SCT internalisation logic from social encounter to individual production. The study contributes the first systematic operationalisation of SCT constructs at the level of literary narrative analysis and provides language educators, particularly in Southeast Asian contexts, with a theoretically principled and practically implementable model for integrating sociocultural values into character-based language education.
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