The Japanese Journal of Curriculum Studies
Online ISSN : 2189-7794
Print ISSN : 0918-354X
ISSN-L : 0918-354X
Volume 13
Displaying 1-16 of 16 articles from this issue
  • Article type: Cover
    2004Volume 13 Pages Cover1-
    Published: March 31, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: October 17, 2017
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  • Article type: Cover
    2004Volume 13 Pages Cover2-
    Published: March 31, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: October 17, 2017
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  • Shuichi NINOMIYA
    Article type: Article
    2004Volume 13 Pages 1-14
    Published: March 31, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: October 17, 2017
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    The question about curriculum has always been located at the center of educational argument in Britain after the Second World War. Especially, in the realm of secondary education, it has been discussed about standardization of curriculum and/or creation of common curriculum. The problem concerned about common curriculum was posed theoretically and practically as a part of the comprehensive school refom which aimed at overcoming "the tripartite system" institutionalized by 1944 Act. This comprehensive school reform proposed the single-channel structure system as a replacement for the existing multi-channel structure system which was called "the tripartite system" in secondary education of those days. This movement was based on the social egalitarianism, whose goals was to achieve the equal education and to reduce the impartial gaps between social classes. Therefore, the attempt to creat a common curriculum in those days also had the implications of establishing the specific identity of comprehensive schools. This paper picks up three theorists, R.S. Peters and P. H. Hirst, J. White, who formed London liner and contributed very much to the theoretical questions involved in creating common curriculum. Because they consider to the problems not only what subjects should be set up as common curriculum but also on what basis those subjects can be made common, when they pose common curriculum. Peter's concept analysis of "education" and White's argument about the normative educational aim try to clarify the aim of common curriculum which is appropriate for new comprehensive school, through considering the question of "What is education" and "What is educational aims". Peters applies the conceptual analysis to this problem. His aim is to articulate the principle inherent in education and to present the universal educational theory which have no ideological inclinations, by analyzing concept of "education". And he calls the education which accords with the principle, "the education as initiation". Hirst identifies, according to Peters' theory, the object with which children are initiated as "forms of knowledge". White tries to develop their educational theories critically. He criticizes the conceptual analysis of "education" which was used by Peters in order to justify his educational theory and seek to replace it with his own normative philosophy of education. And, on that theory, he identifies "autonomy" as the normative educational goal. He argues that "autonomy" is the capability which the people in the liberal democratic societies requires to achieve good lives. It is the educational theory that do not set up a common value in the meta-dimension of analysis of an "educational" concept. White insists the capability as common value which people need in this society. What influence does the normative educational aim of this "autonomy" actually have on curriculum? In order to answer this question, in this paper, I take up a controversy between White and Lee about the goals of history teaching. On the one hand, Lee thinks that history education should be taught for the sake of history itself. On the other hand, White thinks that history education should be taught for bringing up the citizens of liberal democratic societies. In short, it is the controversy about what is field of history teaching. Then, through inquiring into the difference between them, I points outs that the normative educational aim, "autonomy" indicates personal value as a educational value distinguished from the scientific recognition, which children acquire in each subjects of study.
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  • Sayako OKUNO
    Article type: Article
    2004Volume 13 Pages 15-28
    Published: March 31, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: October 17, 2017
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    The purpose of this paper is to show how the excess of educational practice functions to an educational theory, by re-examining the documents of Scarsdale Alternative High School (SAS) where Lawrence Kohlberg's moral education program, Just Community, has been practiced. Just Community is a program of moral education produced by Lawrence Kohlberg, who is well known for his theory of stages of moral development and moral dilemma discussion program. Kohlberg himself criticized the moral dilemma discussion program for its hypothetical character oriented by the theory, and introduced the Just Community program as an alternative to overcome this theory-practice problem. He came to recognize that his theory of stages of moral development was insufficient to describe and evaluate what happened in ordinary settings of SAS's Just Community. At the beginning, he and other researchers used stages of moral development as a scale of evaluating how SAS' s Just Community program succeeded. But he was soon dissatisfied with this way of evaluation, which he called "system atic research approach". He also used "historical and anecdotel approach" as a new one in order to describe and examine what happened in SAS that the "systematic research approach" may have ignored. The fact that there is something only the "historical and anecdotel approach" can appreciate tells us about the excess of practice, which no theory is sufficient to explicate. Any theory may face to the excess of practice. This means that a different theory will be open to another feature of practice that the present theory fails to see. It is not easy to harmonize two theories--- "systematic research approach" and "historical and anecdotel approach" in our case, but educational theory has a chance to find out another possibility of educational practice.
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  • Hisayoshi MORI
    Article type: Article
    2004Volume 13 Pages 29-44
    Published: March 31, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: October 17, 2017
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    The purpose of this paper is to make clear what activity "History" department at Dewey School was based on and how it differentiated from the activity to "study," by considering the style of curriculum development of "History" at School, on the basis of the examples at 1898 (1898〜99). At first, Dewey School was aimed to work as a social community and to be a place for living. Therefore, "History" was considered to be related with life and "indirect sociology" which was study on the social process of becoming and its mode of organization. Such activities of "History" were considered to have natural "correlation" with other studies. But, in Dewey School, the matter of "correlation" was that of "differentiation" rather than that of "correlation" as ordinarily understood. School's "correlation" or "differentiation" meant that the unity of life bound together and carried along the different occupations, the diversity of plants, animals, and geographic conditions when it was presented to the child. The image of "correlation" with other studies as a basis of the unity of life, in other words, "differentiation" into other studies was conceived in School. Secondly, the contents of the actual curriculum of "History" department were found to move from phenomenon of household and neighborhood to that of larger society, primitive period, American history, and Roman history, by examining the curriculum at 1898 (1898〜99) (Table 1), the outline of course of study at 1899 (Table 3),and the statements of Bacon who were a teacher of School at that time (Table 4). In Dewey School, the attempt of formulating the stages of child's growth had been made already since the earlier period (1897, 1898), and the planning of a curriculum which ministered constantly to the changing needs and interest of the growing child's experience was carried out. The concept of growth was thought as the main characteristic of life at all level in Dewey School, and the controlling principle of this growth was the guiding principle of School, As comparing, however, the curriculum at 1898 (Table 1) with the outline of course of study at 1899 (Table 3) and the Bacon's statements at 1900 (Table 4), there is a critical different point among the contents of these curriculums at six-year-old-stage. The six-year-old was included in the first stage of growth, and the subject-matters utilized at this stage were selected from the aspect of life which went into a child's own social environment. And, materials used were sound in an environment of home life and neighborhood. Then, the contents of the activity were extended to the "social occupation" that was a little remote from him. The main idea of this "social occupation" was interaction of country life and city life maintaining existing conditions, and activities much connected with child's clothing, food, and shelter were tried to pick up. According to this idea, various works had been practiced and were practiced under the heading of "Social Occupation" since 1899. Finally, as far as a Group of six-year-old-children concerned, the synthesized activity of which the contents of "History" and "Science" were core was practiced under the heading of "History" or "History and Science" in 1898, while the activity was set up as a frame of "Social Occupation" in 1899. The typical occupations in this "Social Occupation" kept the continuity with activities on household and neighborhood's phenomenon in the stage of early childhood education as pre-stage (Sub-primary department). At the same time, it was a basis of "differentiation" of "History" and "Science." That is, since the

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  • Akira Ninomiya, Ayami Nakaya, Tomoko Shimomura, Hitoshi Sato
    Article type: Article
    2004Volume 13 Pages 45-59
    Published: March 31, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: October 17, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    This study aims to clarify the theoretical and practical nature of Competency-Based Curriculum by comparatively analyzing the primary and secondary education curricula of the United States, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, New Zealand and Sweden. First, the term 'competency' and its relation to the curriculum and the national qualification system of each country were comparatively analyzed. The term competency could be found in the curricula of the United States, Australia, and Indonesia. In the case of South Africa, New Zealand, and Sweden, the term competency could not be found in the curricula, but in South Africa and New Zealand, the relation to competency in school curricula was observed with the introduction of national qualification system. It could be understood that Sweden also follows the concept of competency as an attainment standard in the school curricula by integrating the vocational and liberal education. Secondly, the similarities and the differences of educational targets of each country were clarified with the competency patterns made by OECD. It is assumed that each country in this study has common patterns of competency which include literacy, communication competency, self-competency, and study competency in their curriculum. We could say that these competencies are very important competencies in the world that should be learned in the schools of the global society, life-long learning society, information society and knowledge-based society. On the other hand, some patterns like value intention, ecological competency, cultural competency, health, sports and body competency vary in each country depending on the socio-cultural contexts particular to each country. Thirdly, the comparative analysis focused on the critical thinking in Social Studies in the second grade of junior high school in order to study the curriculum structure which focuses on the subject structure and cultivating competency. First, in each country critical thinking is regulated concretely as the learning outcome, the action index and the evaluation standard. Next, the curriculum structure for attainment of goals is divided into some learning processes in which target, content and evaluation index are shown respectively and the curriculum is clearly structured from the target to the attainment of competency. Fourthly, the evaluation method of each country was comparatively analyzed. Evaluation aims better education, learning and improvement. Teachers are encouraged to the utmost to engage in evaluation, feedback and students' participation in them; as a method, the performance evaluation is encouraged. It is noteworthy to mention here that it is only in New Zealand where a national qualification system exists (Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand), there is a qualification qualifying examination outside the school and all items included in that examination are intended to measure the competency of students. In respect to nationwide scholastic attainment examination, literacy and numeracy examinations are held in several countries in order to maintain the national level, which also help to measure teachers' assessment of students' achievement. When Japanese curriculum is considered in this respect, we could find some special features in it. In the case of educational targets, most terms used in Japanese curriculum are not easily understood though most of the competency patterns of OECD are covered. In the Japanese curriculum, improvement of skills is not clearly structured and the evaluation index is not clear, though there are several measures of evaluation that have been improved by National Institute for Educational Policy Research. Therefore, it is very important to design a Japanese course of study which should consist of clear aims, processes, methods and criteria of evaluation based on the theoretical and practical nature of the CBC theory which

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  • Chie KANEKO
    Article type: Article
    2004Volume 13 Pages 61-73
    Published: March 31, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: October 17, 2017
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    The purpose of this paper is to examine the problems of the curriculum-making in modern Japan. A number of educational historians have assumed that the modern education in Japan was hindered from developing the autonomy and creative curriculum formation because of the strict national control. They pointed out that various types of activity-oriented curricula existed as planning at various schools and were introduced to the many schools for their practices. Those are called "New Education movement" in Japan. But they recognized that the goal of the movement turned out to be insufficiently accomplished, in particular, the curriculum development was not thoroughly elaborated. In this paper, I explored the achievement and the meanings of the experience-based curriculum-making at Tajima elementary school. The curriculum-making at that school can be considered as a pioneer of the New Education in the 1920s and 1930s in Japan. Hiroshi Yamazaki, a leader and the principal of the school led the teachers' practices to the curriculum steered by Soju Irisawa's theory, who was an associate professor at Tokyo Empire University at that time. In order to analyze fundamental problems underlying an innovative educational practice, I further proceeded my exploration to the structural formation and its intended ideas in making the humanized life science curriculum, called "Seikatsuka" at Tajima elementary school. As a matter of fact, it is a problem that the teachers could not understand the ideas and goals of their curriculum planning. At the same time, it should be recognized that it is imperative to further the exploration of the profound issues of their unsuccessful practices. Regarding the Tajima elementary school curriculum, the "Seikatsuka" was based on the theory of "Kultur Padagogik", which was the main tenet of their practices. The main characteristic of this theory is its assumption that the substance of the culture should be realized in the spirit which is formally structuralized by the cultural values intrinsically possessed by human beings. Its basic assumption should be interpreted as follows: Human culture is created on the basis of the historical heritages of human creatures. But it never ends as the status quo but always alters in the process of renovation and restoration of the human cultural creation. Thus it was assumed that a learner must be not merely a subject accepting the cultural milieu but a subject initiating cultural creation by interacting with the cultural heritages. Through this interpretation, Tajima elementary school had to be managed to plan their curriculum to continually renovate and reconstruct the meanings and the substance of the cultural heritage by children's experiences interacting with cultural heritages. Tajima elementary school teachers attempted to reconstruct the curriculum by investigating and coordinating both the community cultural heritages and children's spiritual structures, which are suggested by Edward Spranger's theory. But I found it problematic that they failed to identify and elaborate the structural formation of human aspects interweaving with cultural aspects. Tajima elementary school teachers were not aware of that it was needed to reinterpret the intrinsic values of the community culture into the appropriately structuralized cultural forms in terms of children's instincts. In other words, Seikatsuka was a subject which ideal could not be attained without understanding the children's cultural values which were created by their own cultural milieu.
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  • Hyun-Sook KIM
    Article type: Article
    2004Volume 13 Pages 75-89
    Published: March 31, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: October 17, 2017
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    The purpose of this study is to analyze the influence of two types of primary English conversation curricula upon students' behavior, by a case study based on a questionnaire survey to graduates. I surveyed 657 students belonging to two junior high schools, and asked their affective orientations to English learning. The two types of curricula they experienced differed in the weight between English learning and intercultural learning. Primary English conversation in Japan was started within the hour for "Integrated Study" as a part of international understanding education. A point of issue is whether it has a synergy effect on students or not, to teach both foreign language and intercultural communication together. The task of curriculum stady is to elucidate the question on the effect of this curriculum; what is an educational influence on students when they experienced these two types of learning simultaneously? In this paper, I paid attention to the synergy effect of intercultural learning and English learning, and analyzed the students' attitude and their affective aspect such as interests and concerns by comparison with the curricula experienced in their primary school days which are named as "Intercultural and English learning balanced type" and "English learning weighted type". Firstly, in the aspect of English learning, I found the "Intercultural and English learning balanced type" curriculum is tend to make students smoothly adapted for the present junior high school English; and for the "English learning weighted type" curriculum, it became clear that students recognized English as a tool of communication. On the other hand, in the aspect of intercultural learning, the "Intercultural and English learning balanced type" curriculum showed a high tendency to raise students' intercultural concern on the whole. Furthermore, regardless of the characteristic of curricula, they showed clearly the affirmative attitude to English learning, acquired by the communication activities they experienced in their primary schools. This implies that their positive attitude to communication is the main factor to raise their intercultural consciousness.
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  • Tsutomu OKANO
    Article type: Article
    2004Volume 13 Pages 91-106
    Published: March 31, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: October 17, 2017
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    As a part of the joint research on didactics with the group of Hokkaido University, the author constructed contents of education and teaching materials on the introduction to fractions in the form of a textbook. In order to verify whether the content and materials were suitable for children, the experimental lessons (a didactical experiment) were carried out. These lessons were carried out in the 4th grade class of the Niigata Prefecture Echizen Primary School in November 1998. A teacher, Yoshimi Tateishi, taught these lessons. These lessons were linked with the "Seminar on Educational Practice Research" of the Faculty of Education and Human Sciences, Niigata University. Based on these experimental lessons, the university students and the teacher underwent a change in their perceptions that will be described below. (1) Before the experimental lessons began, the university students were negative regarding the contents of the textbook and tended to criticize the content. This reaction seems to have been caused by the fact they were comparing the theory of fractions in the textbook with the traditional and the commonly accepted theory of fractions. In this theory, only the division aspect of fractions is regarded as important. On the contrary, in the textbook, fractions are explained as unification of the division aspect and the ratio aspect. By comparison, the theory of fractions of the textbook was entirely different and high level in content. The university students, based on their perceptions, set up a negative hypothesis on children's understanding on the content of the textbook. However, in the experimental lessons, it was indicated that this hypothesis was completely untenable. The intellectual level of the children was far beyond the level of the university students and their one-sided presumption on the premise of the intellectual level of the university students. In the experimental lessons, it was concretely and clearly indicated. By participating in the didactical experiment, the university students were forced to reexamine their own understanding of fractions and themselves who persisted in their own experiences of school education. At the same time, their focus of thinking shifted to the essential meaning of fractions. (2) In the case of the teacher, the evaluation on the content of textbook was positive and supportive on the following two points. The first point was the logical consistency of the development of the definition of fractions. This was the original nature of the content of the textbook itself. The second point was a high-level-assumption on the level of intellectual curiosity of children. This was a fundamental viewpoint underlying the didactical experiment. After the experimental lessons finished, the teacher told "In these lessons, we are forced to think about the meaning of fractions logically." Especially, the ratio aspect of fractions was contained in the textbook. It was the major point of resistance in understanding the contents of the textbook in the part of both the teacher and the university students. On the contrary, in the experimental lessons, the children that were generally negative toward the usual lessons in arithmetic were the ones that understood this content (the ratio aspect of fractions) quickly and were positive in learning activities. The teacher took note of this fact. This was a major factor in bringing about a change in the perceptions by the university students. In conclusion, the most essential and important feature of this didactical experiment was the viewpoint that the aim of mathematics education is to teach mathematics as a science and the contents of mathematics education should be constructed logically. It is important that this has become the basic stance as related to organizing the teacher education curriculum.
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  • Tomomi NETSU, Masachika INOUE, Toji TANAKA
    Article type: Article
    2004Volume 13 Pages 107-120
    Published: March 31, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: October 17, 2017
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    This is a case study on a six-year secondary school in Japan, aimed to clarify the function of leadership development within its school festival, especially "Music Festival" that has been done since about 40 years ago. In Japan, there is little study that focus on extra-curricular activities of six-year secondary school. Because the school, called "Chu-Kou-Ikkan-Kou" (in Japanese), is not popular so much in secondary education, though it has been increased little by little within these 5 years. We approached this important research question by case study method, using teacher records, school newspaper, participant observation, and informal interview. In this case, the school, attached to Univ. and boys 6year secondary has almost 50 years history and practice; above all, it has produced a lot of leaders in many fields. The academic achievement of its student is one of the highest in Japan, but we focused on its extra-curricular activities, not academic curriculum, since high academic achievement does not assure student's matured personality at all. We found three facts. (1) The extra-curricular activities of the school has two dimensions of articulation between junior- and senior- high, one is "smoothing" and the other "separating". These dimensions also can be seen in academic curriculum. (2) "Music Festival" has a function as "initiation", especially on junior-high students. (3) The festival has a judgment system with some professional musicians from outside the school. About leadership development, our results are following: a) The school orders each class to elect many leaders. In case of "Music Festival", including conductor, piano player, and committee, b) Many students have experienced some activities as leaders, and then they come to learn that "To be a leader is too difficult without followers". After "Music Festival", they feel like this seriously, and notice the importance of cooperation with other classmates, c) 12-18 years students work hard together for "Music Festival", and their performances of chorus are shown on the same one stage. It represents the range of development strongly to students' mind, especially of junior-high. They become to see high-school student as their "role model" through the festival.
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2004Volume 13 Pages App1-
    Published: March 31, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: October 17, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2004Volume 13 Pages App2-
    Published: March 31, 2004
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2004Volume 13 Pages App3-
    Published: March 31, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: October 17, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2004Volume 13 Pages App4-
    Published: March 31, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: October 17, 2017
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  • Article type: Cover
    2004Volume 13 Pages Cover3-
    Published: March 31, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: October 17, 2017
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  • Article type: Cover
    2004Volume 13 Pages Cover4-
    Published: March 31, 2004
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