Japan’s Lower Secondary School Science Practices and Students’ Perceptions: A Filipino Science Teacher’s Point of View

Abstract

Japanese science education is regarded as among the best in the world, as shown by Japan’s strong and consistent performance in international assessments. This paper explores and documents the different facets of science education in a public lower secondary school in Japan to evaluate Japanese science education from a perspective of a foreign observer and reveal the differences in science teaching practices between countries in the context of a similar curriculum. In particular, this paper explains the perceptions of a foreign science teacher based on observations during immersion and the data gathered from the students’ perspective (N=205) using a questionnaire regarding their science classes. It was found that: 1) emphasis on the acquisition of content knowledge, particularly on the main branches of science, procedural knowledge, and skills through inquiry-based activities, are core to the science classes in lower secondary schools in Japan; 2) adaptive learning through the provision of academic support from the teachers, as well as from after-school learning platforms, enhances science education, making students more motivated and interested in their science classes; 3) while students enjoy freedom in some stages of inquiry such as in proposing hypotheses, inferences, and interpretation of results, they perceive that they do not have perfect autonomy in finding their own problems to solve and in designing their own procedures, and are required to simply follow the “recipe type” experiments; and 4) there is evidence of high levels of self-regulation among Japanese students. Hence, this paper advocates for the inclusion of activities that allow students to find their own problems, investigate, and design their own experiments to solve these problems. Further, the promotion of real-life science education and the use of e-learning and Information and Communications Technology in science classes are areas that have greater potential for improvement and advancement, especially in the globalized world.