2023 Volume 90 Issue 1 Pages 38-50
Here is a question: how did Japanese teachers realize the meaning of evaluation and acquire evaluation skills in the eras when the term and theory of educational evaluation did not exist? The clarification of this process will contribute to identifying the factors that form teachers' educational evaluation capacity.
From this perspective, this paper addresses Chiba Meikichi, a remarkable practitioner in the Taisho New Education era, to see how his theory of assessment reform in schools enfolded. Previous studies on Chiba mention the characteristics of his thought structure and point out the logical incompleteness of his Creative Education Theory. This paper focuses on Chiba's educational research activities as a practitioner and investigates the reality of his research activities before he came to work at Nara Women's Higher Normal School. The following findings have been made clear.
First, Chiba became interested in assessment reform through his skepticism toward the moral education of that time, and amongst the groundswell of arguments on assessment in educational journalism, his interest turned to foreign research on assessment. He came to be impressed by Wilhelm Lay's experimental pedagogy and finally designed a practical reform plan based on Lay's “consideration of muscle sense, will, and action.” Chiba's assessment reform was combined with the reform of curriculum and teaching, with assessment positioned as indispensable activities for continuous day-to-day educational practice.
Second, Chiba introduced new Western psychological theories and educational measurement methods to identify children's status. He understood that the results of education could be grasped scientifically, and that experimentation is critical to set criteria for assessment. He made efforts to develop indicators for measuring children's growth through their “expressions,” while also becoming aware of the vast existence of non-measurable aspects, such as the children's internal development. Chiba insisted on the necessity of launching studies based on experimental measurements for teachers to understand the children in front of them and define their educational insight, positioning these studies as “training tools” to see and judge the children.
As seen above, assessment was an integral activity in Chiba's dynamic curriculum practice intended to support children's growth. Therefore, this paper concludes that his view on assessment occupied a key position in his own practical theory, and points out that in the case of Chiba's theory of assessment reform in schools, it was thought that teachers were to realize the meaning of evaluation combined with their intention to improve their teaching practice and to take a scientific attitude to the acquisition of evaluation skills through the educational facts before them, in order to develop their educational insight.
