This paper investigates how Japanese lesson study has been modified in the context of the U.S., and how this modification has affected teacher agency based on the framework of the ecological approach proposed by Priestley et al. (2016). There are two major findings. First, Japanese lesson study has been adapted and modified in the U.S. as an…

Education in Japan has drawn attention widely from overseas, including a quantity of research pointing out that the context of Japan's modernization and its present-day advanced science and technology can be found in the high literacy rates and prevalent education of Japanese society. However, there has been insufficient examination of the effect…

One of the most challenging questions in philosophical and anthropological inquiries on skill learning is how skills can be shared and acquired among people, especially when they cannot be easily verbalized or written. This paper examines the process of skill learning among Western and Eastern artists of puppetry. They learn the skill generally by…

This paper extracts the characteristics of the view of ability in educational practices during the period of rapid growth in Japan, focusing on the influence of these perceptions on the Ministry of Education's educational policies. The analysis draws on the debate about "vocational aptitude tests" and "observation guidance."…

Today, teaching literature has an established place within the school and university curricula in Western and East Asian countries. This seems so natural that we take the educational role of literature for granted. However, history teaches us that elevating literature to an academic subject required a defense of literature against the critical…

Service learning (SL) in higher education has been developed in various forms, mainly in the US, with an emphasis on linking services and learning, universities and communities. Many people view higher education as a means to a career which, in turn, renders education a subject of private interest. Owing to this, SL is expected to encourage civic…

After the Second World War, philosophers from former colonies began to work on a hermeneutic better suited to the postcolonial context, as the frameworks adopted in conventional academic philosophy were considered to be inadequate in this regard. This position had already been taken during the colonial period by thinkers like Rabindranath Tagore.…

In recent years, interest in studying at Japanese universities or studying abroad in a third country has increased among students enrolled in Brazilian high schools in Japan. However, although the career options of Brazilian school students have expanded, their parents' perceptions of this situation and the ways in which these perceptions are…

Both education for democratic citizenship and human rights education tend to emphasise political and legal learning. In both human rights education and moral education in Japan, however, there has been a tendency to give particular attention to interpersonal elements of learning such as kindness and sympathy. This article draws on feminist…

As arguments for the liberalization of education grow more heated, how are we to approach Japanese schools as a community? This paper clarifies the basic concept of the "small schools" theory typified by the METI "Future Classrooms" (functionalist and individualist reorganizations), and organizes the relevant points of debate.…

Part-time high schools function as an important safety net for marginalized students, including immigrants, who are often excluded from society and mainstream education. Since 2015, drawing on the participatory action research (PAR) approach, I have collaborated with a high school and a Non-Profit Organization (NPO) to develop an extracurricular…

As public education faces multiple issues, including the surfacing of children's struggles in society and the formation of capabilities suited to the times, free schools are tasked with expectations for their role as a supplement to public education, leading to a change in the onetime structure of opposition. However, attention must be paid to the…

This paper aims to examine the academic significance of the concept of "ibasho" (a place or community one feels at home), which emerged from the problem of truancy in Japanese society in the 1980s. Free schools were created as "places ibasho" for truant children. In the field of youth work, group-work-based youth organizations…

The purpose of this study is to analyze how immigrant children in Japan are included in the phenomenon of "gakko kino no fukushika" (Kuraishi 2014: 56)--henceforth "welfare-oriented schools"--by using the analytical framework of education-welfare. Fieldwork took place in an elementary school Japanese language class, along with…

As the research work of academic associations faces restrictions and reductions due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Japan Educational Research Association launched a jointly held participatory webinar series, "Pandemic and Education: What Should Be Done to Support Learning?" (4 sessions), through the JERA secretariat, Research…