2021 Volume 45 Issue 2 Pages 195-211
In order to meet the requirement of Curriculum Guidelines (2017) of MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) for elementary school pupils’ comprehensive learning, a course unit was designed based on the following conditions by considering the qualitative abilities to be acquired, which have been assigned in the guidelines, and by setting an assumption that the pupils would grow with the changes in the network of people and things around them: (a) having all class pupils work on one common project, (b) setting goals and acting on them through pupils’ own efforts, and (c) selecting interesting local subjects from around the school．The effectiveness of this course unit design was tested during a year of practice in a classroom to which the author was assigned. To evaluate the pupils’ transformation process, actor-network analysis, text-mining analysis, and quantification analysis were applied mainly using portfolio data the pupils created. Coevolution of the growth of the pupils and of the expansion/deepening of the network with the whole class and with the local community was found, indicating the appropriateness of the above assumption and the importance of designing course units based on conditions (a), (b), and (c).
