In the field of educational methods, much attention has been paid to German didactics. However, in Japan, German didactics has not been studied from the perspective of teacher education. This paper aims to clarify the role of didactics in teacher education and its contemporary transformation, taking as a starting point Astrid Baltruschat's study on didactics. Didactics has played a role in teacher education by providing knowledge and theory on lesson planning and analysis. However, the present role of teaching in teacher education is being shaken "in the crisis of didactics." Baltruschat proposes a method of teacher education that involves conducting analyses from the perspective of didactic theory via casework. She argues that, by adressing didactic theory through casework, teaching students and probationary teachers can learn perspectives on lesson planning and how to reflect effectively on lessons. Based on the above considerations and using Baltruschat's study of didactics as a guide, this paper shows that didactics is not only an action science for teachers but also plays a role as a reflective science.

This study included focus group interviews with early childhood teachers from Chinese Kindergarten C after they watched videos of outdoor play activities at Japanese Kindergarten J. It broadly solicits Kindergarten C teachers' perspectives on the outdoor play scenes at Kindergarten J and the differences between the schools, compared to their own teaching practices, attitudes of agreement or opposition, etc. By having Chinese early childhood teachers reflect on early childhood care and education practices from another culture, the study examines their intentions regarding the creation of educational environments in their own country and the childcare philosophies and cultural values latent within them.

Resilience is a concept that explains an individual's ability to adapt to stress and has recently attracted great attention as one of the non-cognitive abilities. The purpose of this study was to clarify nursery teachers' perspectives on resilience and to analyze their differences depending on their years of childcare experience. We compared 43 early-career nursery teachers and 58 veteran nursery teachers using a questionnaire survey. The results revealed that most nursery teachers are aware of fostering resilience through childcare practices. When considering conflict situations that require resilience, it is necessary to pay more attention to those in which stress is caused in young children by their teachers' behaviors. It is also necessary for nursery teachers, especially early-career ones, to understand the relationship between physical reactions and psychological conflict. In addition, it is desirable to secure opportunities to foster resilience by providing training on trouble situations for early-career teachers. This study suggests that it is important to create opportunities for veteran and early-career teachers to share their opinions on resilience, because while veteran teachers often have some better perspectives on the notion, there are some points that are more likely to be noted by early-career teachers.

Based on the actual situation in Chinese schools, this study identified the factors that lead to the establishment of trusting relationships, despite the expected burden on teachers in dealing with parents. The results of our questionnaire showed that not only the teacher's age and status as a classroom teacher, but also the teacher's working environment, the students' condition, and the parents' educational demands could be determinants of trust in their relationships with parents. In particular, we found that, although parental complaints increase the burden of dealing with parents, their demands on the education system have a positive impact on building trust with parents.

Therefore, it could be suggested that, if schools assigned a professional to handle complaints from parents, the burden on teachers could be reduced. Another finding of this study is that, in the process of building trust between teachers and parents, high educational demands from parents are given a positive meaning.

Osada Arata (1887–1961), a renowned Japanese educationalist, visited Japanese-occupied Beijing in 1942 and delivered five lectures to high school teachers there. He claimed that Eastern countries should absorb Western culture and create a more unified civilization. In these lectures, Osada showed his rich knowledge of Chinese Classics and his ambition to establish a new pedagogy that would surpass Pestalozzi's. This was one of the factors that drove his educational studies in the first half of the 1940s. However, his theory faced the dilemma of Chinese nationalism, so its influence was very limited.

This paper represents part of a larger research project on exploring the potential of a reflective reading program in classical literature for upper secondary schools used since 2021. The material for the research project, which can be found in several textbooks, is Chapter 89 from Essays in Idleness (Tsureduregusa), by Kenko Yoshida. In the story, a monk is swayed by his own delusion, in which he is tormented by a monstrous creature called "Nekomata." At the end of the chapter, the narrator reveals that the creature was just a playful pet dog, which would naturally cause any reader to laugh. Consideration is mainly given to the question "What text structure would persuasively cause such an effect on the readers?" This study was carried out with third-year university students who were not necessarily familiar with this piece of classical literature. With the above question in mind, the students analyzed how they could visualize themselves as readers of Chapter 89, in hopes of re-examining and improving the potential of the reflective reading program for upper secondary school teaching.