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Learning Outcomes for Participants and Future Challenges for the Iida City Kominkan “Cambodia Study Tour” Program for High School Students
2022 Volume 19 Pages 104-117
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2022 Volume 19 Pages 104-117
The purpose of this paper is to identify the methods and key points of the “Cambodia Study Tour,” a social education program for high school students hosted by the Iida City Kominkan that was designed to nurture changes in the outlooks of young people. The program was inaugurated in 2013 in response to calls from local society to develop in local youth the capacity to create a future vision of Iida City that is rooted in local identity with a global perspective.
In the process of planning and operating the program, the Iida City Kominkan has tried to develop an original social education curriculum for high school students and has embedded various schemes to stimulate and enrich the learning experience of the participants. Experience-based learning, action and reflection, collective learning, dialog and self-disclosure have been included in the process. The impact of these trials could be observed in the changes seen in the individual participants. These observations indicate that the program has offered participating students opportunities not only to acquire new knowledge and/or skills but to look at themselves and to consider how to live and how to develop, maintain and enhance relationships with others.
After holding a series of practical exercises for these high school students, the following 4 points were seen, from a social education perspective, as key in bringing about perceptual changes in young people
①To meet people who will willingly share their thoughts on life
②To nurture relationships with others
③To nurture self-esteem within a social context
④To organize one’s own thoughts and to communicate with others
In our society with its declining population, approaches to be taken towards the young people who are going to live in the next generation will become an increasingly important issue for social education programs. The lessons extracted from this trial program could have the potential to enrich future social education practices for young people.
