This paper begins by revisiting my earlier critical review of the international scholarship on Japanese schooling (Takayama, 2011). In this work, I critiqued three books on Japanese schooling, by Ryoko Tsuneyoshi (2001), Nancy Sato (2004), and Peter Cave (2007), along with other English-language scholarships on Japanese education. Drawing on a…

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…

This article considers the academic and practical implications of culturally responsive teaching and whiteness studies for the studies and practice of immigrant education in Japan. By reviewing what has been found and discussed about the teachers' roles and their privileges in the studies of immigrant education in Japan, I argue that Japaneseness…

This article explores the relationship between the freedom granted to teachers to shape curricula and the function of national standards. In recent years, many countries have begun to introduce standards-based reforms in education, such as standardized curriculums and high-stakes tests. As cultural diversity within schools increases, the tension…

Young people now more than ever live in a diverse, complicated world. In spite of the qualitative proliferation of differences, however, the current social situation in late-stage capitalism is articulated as superficial multiculturalism. Critically examining how bodies materially experience cultural boundaries is then important for enhancing the…

The recent introduction by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development of the notion of 'global competence' appears to install cosmopolitan understanding at the heart of education across the globe. Yet how far does the OECD notion, and the broader models of global education it means to stand for, consolidate a picture that fails to…

One important task in internationalizing Japanese education is educating Japanese citizens to become "global citizens." This paper is a philosophical analysis of how Global Education deals with the problem of cultural-moral difference (moral conflict that arises between different cultures). The usual approaches taken in Global Education…

This piece argues that the aversion of academic researchers to utilizing 'Japanese-ness' has become a major obstacle, restricting the potential contribution of Japan's educational research community to global debates. It argues that until research on Japan recognizes, embraces, and elaborates Japanese-ness it will lack originality and vitality. As…

This paper considers the contemporary prominence of the concept of social justice and identifies two influential strands of thought that currently affect thinking about education: John Rawls' notion of justice as fairness and a more emancipatory conception typified by critical pedagogy. With this prominence the term has gathered a rhetorical force…

This essay explores a disciplinary hybrid, called here, philosophical ethnography. Philosophical ethnography is a philosophy of the everyday and ethnography in the context of intercultural discourse about coordinating meaning, evaluation, norms and action. Its basic assumption is that in the affairs of human beings truth, justice and beauty are…