Policymaking classes are commonly included in today’s civics education. Current approaches emphasize the act of policy proposal itself. This paper aims to examine groupwise differences in the learning process to investigate how the type of learning affects students’ solution quality in a policymaking class. Superior policymaking quality is found to be attributable to superior “problem structuring.”Specifically, policymaking quality depends on whether the problem is analyzed via “horizontal structuring”(listing the various stakeholders and describing their interrelationships and connections with the problem). In addition, this paper presents a policymaking class developed based on knowledge of public policy studies, focusing particularly on the “problem-discovery and issue-setting” stage.

　　This study examined individual cases of social studies multicultural education for second-generation Korean immigrants. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with such second-generation immigrants using the life story method. Conflict and educational needs were extracted from each participant’s story, and a concrete analysis was performed of what kind of multicultural education should be included in social studies programs for this population.

　　Two points emerged. First, routine experiences of exclusion based on nationality in education was reported to result in identity tearing. This suggests that social studies education for second-generation Korean immigrants should aim at hybrid identity formation and emphasizes the importance of overcoming social stereotypes. Second, it was suggested that this goal could be achieved by implementing a practice wherein Japanese and Korean-heritage students discuss historical perceptions of colonialism and post-war responsibility.

　　Future research should verify which design would make dialog on historical awareness most effective, investigate a larger number of cases to enable the generalization of these findings uniquely to secondgeneration Korean immigrants, make comparisons with Korean education in Japan, and examine individual case studies of people of different ethnicities.

　　This study aimed to critically analyze how disabilities are described in six junior high school civics textbooks and characterize the “disability messages” embedded in them using critical discourse analysis. The textbook descriptions were analyzed from three perspectives: “presence or absence of disability,” “causes and places of disability,” and “methods of solving disability.” The characteristics of the three perspectives were integrated and their relationships were considered to extract the “disability messages.”

　　The analysis showed first that, although the “causes and whereabouts of disability” are ambiguous, the necessity of resolving the problem of disability and the search for ways to do so were always highlighted. This has the problematic result of reinforcing the image of the disabled as “static object.” Second, the way the roots of and solution to disability are presented is inconsistent. Although the textbooks describe the root of disability as being ambiguous or residing in individual minds and bodies, society is presented as the agent that should solve the problem. This inconsistency raises the potential for people with disabilities to be portrayed as “weak people who should be given warm hospitality.” To make social studies education more inclusive, textbook descriptions should be reviewed based on the “social model of disability,” which views disability as a social problem. Social studies education should be aimed at overcoming this social problem, and teachers should be trained to spearhead this practice.