2023 Volume 15 Pages 13-21
The newly revised Upper Secondary School National Curriculum Standard (USS-NCS) was released by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (MEXT), in March 2018, and is being enforced from April 2022. The latest USS-NCS particularly emphasizes proactive, interactive and authentic learning, so called “active learning”, so that the students, who study under the regulation of this USS-NCS, will be able to keep up with the development of globalism, technological innovation, and other unknown issues, and survive in an unpredictable society. Therefore, student-centered learning that includes critical thinking, decision-making, presentation and discussion, is emphasized more than teacher-centered teaching. In addition, the latest USS-NCS specifies the number of biological key terms used in textbooks to be around 200 - 250 for Basic Biology and 500 - 600 for Advanced Biology, because MEXT asks biology teachers to shift their focus from cramming in knowledge to developing higher-order thinking skills. Thus, in every revised Basic Biology textbook used from the 2022 school year, the number of key terms is less than 250, and they are presented in some different ways such as in boldface type or in the glossary at the end of the book. Furthermore, these textbooks include several scientific methods to empower students to find questions and problems and solve them on their own. Moreover, there are many exercises that lead student to think deeply. Another feature of these textbooks is that, as part of giving priority to information and communication technology (ICT), QR codes have been incorporated to allow students to learn through the Internet.
