This essay explores a disciplinary hybrid, called here, philosophical ethnography. Philosophical ethnography is a philosophy of the everyday and ethnography in the context of intercultural discourse about coordinating meaning, evaluation, norms and action. Its basic assumption is that in the affairs of human beings truth, justice and beauty are not ultimate and fixed ends but, as Dewey would have it, guideposts hopefully to more refined considerations and more adequate appreciation and decisions. Philosophical ethnography takes its cue from practice in the post-modern world where intermingling of traditions, fragility of identities, a surplus of critiques and a loss of confidence characterize that world in foundational rationality and traditional liberal institutions. It offers to these traditions and identities a sense of exploration and a possibility for expansion and development. It offers to rationality greater texture, and to liberalism, a more expansive range of acceptable ways of life.

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The Western theory of education was in its Greek origin inseparably tied to the Greek concept of Being and truth. This is shown clearly by the metaphor of the Cave in the seventh book of Plato's Republic. This interdependence of education (paideia) with Being (which later was identified with Nature or God) has provided, since then, a firm ontological basis for the theory of education. However, with the rise of epistemology in the seventeenth century and the corresponding transformation of ontology (which transformed Being into sense-data or representation), the preoccupation of educational theory began to shift to the reorganization of our representations. Pestalozzi's educational method (Methode) is the classical example of this shift, even though his vision of the world is still impregnated with Platonic-Christian tradition. Now it seems that, with the rise of information technology, which increasingly abolishes the difference between the real and the virtual (this situation can be illustrated through the movie, The Matrix), the modern epistemological tradition, together with Descartes' fear of evil demon, has reached its apex, thus putting an end to the ontological dimension of education altogether. Taking Heidegger's thought on technology as a guide, we will interpret this shift from ancient ontology to modern epistemology within the context of history of ontology. We will thereby consider the problem of information technology as a fundamentally ontological problem. In order to face the challenge of information technology, philosophy of education must become keenly aware of its ontological background.

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This paper considers four notions of teacher professionalism - traditional, managerial, collaborative and democratic professionalism. While its focus is on England, the increasing convergence of education policy around the world means that its discussion and arguments have much wider relevance. The paper begins by outlining the different sociological approaches to defining professionalism, but highlights how, in practice, in most countries the characteristics of a profession are now determined to a large extent by the state. It goes on to document the policy developments that have challenged the traditional professionalism in place in England from the 1950s until the mid-1970s to establish a new managerial professionalism. These developments are linked to the 'New Right' concern from the 1980s to reform the public sector through marketisation and increased surveillance by the state, but the paper also notes the need to acknowledge separate from this the failure of teachers to deliver what society required of them under traditional professionalism. Rather than seek a return to these ways of working, the paper suggests that teachers should take the opportunities opened up by the Conservative and New Labour reforms of the last two decades to move towards a collaborative professionalism. Such professionalism would entail closer working between teachers and other members of the school workforce, such as teaching assistants, as well as professionals from other services concerned with children and young people. The paper concludes, however, that the education community should not be content with collaborative professionalism, but seek to move towards a democratic professionalism, which would entail working not only with other professional groups, but other stakeholders as well - including business, parents and pupils. This means being sensitive to a wide range of stakeholders, some of whose voices have traditionally been silent in education decision making.

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In spite of the fact that historical issues are challenges of political education, Japanese educational studies have not been able to properly deal with them. One of the reasons is that Japanese educational researchers have accepted without question the presence of nationalistic understanding of history as the most important cause of the difficulties in East Asia, while supporting textbook lawsuits over the last few decades. On this point, it is unreasonable to compare Japan with Germany which is more progressive in terms of overcoming its past, and to conclude that the undemocratic nature of the Japanese culture has bred such a social situation. Austria, which is deemed to be culturally closer to Germany than Japan, has likewise experienced history problems repeatedly since the 1980s. What this suggests is that the degree of progress made in efforts to critically examine history is dependent on the country's international environment rather than on its own culture. This understanding corresponds with a recognition that has gained increasing acceptance over recent years, which is that Japan is not necessarily the sole party at fault in these historical conflicts in East Asia. Needless to say, this does not release the Japanese and Japanese educational research from their special responsibility to deal with these issues. What is demanded of Japanese educational research today is to reveal what sort of axis of conflicts has been formed over the understanding of history in each of the post-war East Asian countries, and how they interact with each other across national borders. By seriously addressing this task, Japanese educational research will be able to construct a new research field that can respond to the expectations of peoples beyond East Asia who either already have faced or may face similar problems in the future.

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Much has been said about the difficulties that Latin American children of foreign Japanese descent (Nikkei) face in the Japanese school system since the implementation of Japan's new immigration law in 1990. The underlying monolingualism and cultural exclusion of the school system are often blamed for these difficulties. However, little detailed analysis has been provided on ethnonational belonging and the standardization of education, and their cultural practices. This study attempts to provide a missing piece of ethnographic analysis in this area. This paper focuses on the school rituals and the transition experiences of the child must traverse national borders during his or her elementary school years. Through the experiences of these Nikkei Brazilian sixth graders, the study presents an ethnographic investigation into how imagined Japanese nationalized ethnicity constrains the Nikkeis' involvement in Japanese schooling and the society at large. The study took place at a local elementary school in an urban multi-ethnic context. Despite efforts at ameliorating the marginal position of children of foreign origins, some hegemonic structural influences have remained from Japanese ethnonational identity, positioning the children against the meritocracy of Japanese school system and the society at large. The personal and collective senses of continuity tied to the experience of Japanese national "ethos" were intimately connected to the symbolic efficacy of the academic credentials of the students. This national "ethos" emerges from the rituals of the school, for which the graduation ceremony is the final institutional rite. In this complexity, the role of Gakkyu, or class, is the most salient constitutive element. This study suggests that the structural analysis of Gakkyu will be crucial in any further study of these issues.

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My paper looks at "signatures" in the form of "ciphers" (kao) and other personal marks made on population registers, town rules, and apostasy oaths in the early seventeenth century to provide some empirical evidence of very high literacy among village leaders. The essay also argues, using the same data, that literacy had already begun to spread to household heads, particularly those in cities as well as to farming communities that were engaged in commerce. Signatures on documents--never before used for literacy study in Japan as far as I know--also provide some hints of early literacy among women in commercial farming families. Wide differences in the spread of literacy in cities and in the rural areas of the country are also clearly evident in these documents through analysis of signatures and other personal marks made on oaths and petitions.

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Today, work and other societal practices are experiencing accelerating paradigm shifts from mass-production-based systems toward new systems based on networking between organizations, collaboration, and partnerships. This shift requires new paradigms in the fields of education, learning, and development. As human activity quickly changes to networking and partnering among diverse cultural organizations, we need to ask ourselves whether schools and other actors are equipped to prepare people for such practices. We also need to think about what kind of learning can generate critical and creative agency among learners. Such agency will help people shape their own lives and future. In this paper, I discuss the potential offered by cultural-historical activity theory for analyzing and redesigning new, expanded pedagogic practices in schools. Putting the third generation of activity theory to pedagogic practice, I propose that new forms of expansive learning that are transforming pedagogic activity structures in schools can occur in advanced networks of learning that transcend institutional boundaries of schools, turning them into societal agents of change. To concretize the notion of expansive learning as one new form of pedagogy in which boundary-crossing networks of learning and the changing agent role of schools emerge, I will illustrate and analyze a children's after-school activity project called New School: a multi-activity collaboration in which a university, an elementary school, families, and expert groups and community organizations outside the school cooperate to create advanced learning networks. Based on the New School project, a new landscape of expansive learning in the field of pedagogic practices that attempts to create a hybrid activity system will be discussed, along with its sustainability. I will argue that through such a collaborative endeavor, participants can be motivated to engage in shaping and sustaining collaborative learning and their own development.

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After the establishment of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, the implementation of the Convention became the obligation of the government of each country and the responsibility of every society. However, in reality, many infringements on the rights of children, both visible and invisible, exist not only due to starvation, insecurity and warfare in developing countries, but also as a result of poverty in many of highly developed countries. In this paper I will first discuss the state of children in the world briefly according to UNICEF reports, and then the situation of children in Japan according to NGO's and Citizens' reports. Secondly, I would like to comment on the development of the ideas of "discovery of childhood", and children's rights from modern age to the Convention. Thirdly, I will construct the contents of the rights of children in the global age, reconsidering the relationship between human rights, children's rights and children's human rights. A Child is a human being. A child is a child, not miniature adult. A Child is growing being. Thus, the right to live, to develop, to express views, to learn and to require and receive education are the cores of the rights of children. The fulfillment of children's rights involves the fundamental basis of human rights. In conclusion, a child has to be respected as a human being, to be heard and to be responded to. We must widen our perspective beyond the frontier of one country. Peace and living-together in harmony with nature will be the prerequisite conditions for protecting children and for implementation of the Convention.

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