抄録
In recent years, some local education boards across Japan have formulated standards for classroom teaching. These standards provide models of enacting innovative pedagogies that the national Course of Study promotes, such as application as well as attainment of knowledge, language activities, collaborative problem solving, and the use of information and communication technology (ICT). In some cases, they also provide models of classroom discipline to be applied to students. The boards are promulgating these standards through in-service training sessions with the aim of ensuring that teachers teach accordingly. It is assumed that local education boards can meet local educational needs by virtue of these standards. However, in reality, the classroom standards often only provide the means for implementing national educational initiatives in classrooms. Furthermore, while teaching professionalism will improve if teachers are given the freedom to study these standards, the standards themselves are likely to preset prescribed pedagogy and classroom interactions that may impede the professional development of teachers. Lastly but not least importantly, some of the models of classroom discipline fail to take into consideration students’ different needs, which is something that is worthy of criticism.
