A number of the preceding researches on Seijo Elementary School during Taisho period have pointed out its epoch-making feature of its various educational practices which are historically eminent. But those preceding researches have been bound to the narrow conceptualization of curriculum, e.g., time table, fields of subject, and others. "It is important to understand the ideas and values which motivate the individual subjectivity by characterizing the quality of curriculum. This quality of curriculum is actually "invisible" underneath of the tangible curriculum as an explicit system. Instead of those researches, this paper attempts to analyze the theory and practice of school library at Seijo Elementary school in terms of a physical learning environment. For this purpose, I have tried to search for the teachers' practical recognition of organizing the epoch-making library space and structure as a learning environment. As a result, I have found that the school library played an important role in nurturing the individual student's reading ability as a basis of competence of the individual subject. The value of the library readings is linked with curriculum content well as the teaching method and subject. As a result of trial and error of practicing the school library, teachers struggled for building the ideal learning environment, and were gradually conscious of their own teaching method and curriculum based on the experiences. It is indispensable for the school teachers to organize the teaching members of the entire school in order to create the efficient learning environment. Those outstanding practices were made by teachers who could share the merits of using the library resources.

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This article argues on the characteristics and meanings of "contextual teaching & learning (CTL)" as an instructional method in US career education, focusing on practices in academic subjects at the secondary education level. CTL is proposed as an alternative instructional method to deal with problems of schooling. It suggests the importance of "connecting" among contexts and each learner's meaningfulness in learning at school. This is done through the relating of contents of learning to the real world and helping learners to apply what they learned, based on the learners' interests to motivate them to learn, especially in academic subjects. In the United States, CTL is considered as one of the key elements of career education. CTL in career education considers the "context" of CTL as occupations. It intends for all students, including students taking vocational courses, to achieve high academic standards, including applied competencies such as problem solving, and to become interested in occupational careers and gain the knowledge and skills of occupational tasks. The backdrop of this is problems of "transition from school to work." Practices of CTL in career education are shaped into classes introducing the context of careers in a subject, interdisciplinary learning on careers, and project-based learning on careers. Summarizing the above, the author discusses three characteristics of CTL in career education as an instructional method in academic subjects: 1) to motivate students to learn, occupational careers as a social context are used in teaching (namely, connecting personal context with social context through socially-constructed meanings of learning); 2) "learning by doing" in the process of teaching and learning is emphasized (namely, connecting contents of academic subjects with learner's experience); 3) applied competencies such as problem solving that can help to transfer what they learned to (future) workplaces as well as abstract knowledge is stressed as the goal of teaching and learning (connecting learning in the present with future situations.) Conventional methods of teaching abstract knowledge in academic subjects is decontextualized; most students don't feel this knowledge is related to their life. However, many people, such as the authors of the SCANS report, point out that knowledge in academic subjects is needed for students' lives, especially in their occupational careers. Thus, teaching in academic subjects needs contexts that deepen students' learning. In short, CTL in career education is the means of instruction and learning to explore relationships (namely "connecting") through occupations. In other words, it is oriented toward workplaces and working people, and the knowledge which learners should learn is embedded in them. CTL in US career education implies the following to the development of career education in Japan. First, CTL proposes valuable measures for underachieving students as an instructional method. Second, in contrast to the "New Value of Learning Ability" of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, which is oriented to value learning itself, CTL proposes an alternative paradigm of education which considers it important to learn in accordance with the learner's interests and career goals through social relationships. In the future, the authors will study the role of CTL in transition of learners to future social contexts (situations) and the meanings of CTL in technical (vocational) education.

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After 1990's, many trials have been promoted for globalization and marketization of higher education in the world. These are performed while seeking for an international framework as follows: promoting the education for sustainable development (ESD) by UNESCO, making cross-border higher education quality provision guideline by OECD, and negotiating for free trade of international educational services, etc. However, there are so many correspondence approaches of globalization and marketization by state or region. After modern times, education had been a important "device" for the formation of nation state. But, it can't be changed radically with unitary value, even if the present society has been transforming to the knowledge-based society. Each country and the institution affecting educational reform are conscious of the continuity by a background of politics, society, and culture. In other words, there are so many kinds of "nationalization" for educational circumstances strategically in each country, being conscious of global standard at the same time. It is very important to create a framework of concrete comparative analysis about correspondence strategy to globalization and marketization when Japanese higher education policy makers or institutions consider to them. In this article, I focused two points that analyzed higher education system of each country: concrete network construction policy to contribute for national or regional sustainable development, and its case of educational strategy formation. The former is the most important element of constituting sustainable development, and the latter is also important to analyze how higher education institutions form the concrete strategy and provide a premise of its curriculum management. I selected Republic of Korea as a field of case study, where has close international exchange with higher education institutions in Japan, and is our neighboring country. Korea established "Basic Law for National Human Resources Development" in 2002, and changed the definition of administrative participation with education fundamentally, and established "The Special Act for Balanced National Development" from 2003, what the government is promoting the decentralization and globalization policy at the same time. Present President Roh, Moo-hyun has carried the banner for fostering regional university as the core organization of balanced national development system in a pledge of his administration. This pledge became a policy as NURI (New Universities for Regional Innovation) Project, and it is enforced from 2004. In this article, I consider three points as follows: how Korea institutionalized the network construction about higher education as a national policy, how they were reflected concretely by the formation of educational strategy in a university, and what kind of impacts Korea's higher education system received about the reform for sustainable development in the circumstances of globalization and marketization. As a result, the Korea government has guided to construct cooperative network for bringing up local human resources of competitive industries with universities, local government, companies, and research institutes. For example, Daejeon metropolitan city in South Korea makes a network for training human resources of mobile communication business, for which Hanbat National University have a leading role. It may be said that a "horizontal network" for higher education with local institutions begins to be designed. However, in South Korea, developing this "horizontal network" has been led by the national government policy. In this mean, the "vertical network" created by the development process of a nation state has been left in South Korea at the same time.

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This study is a two-year longitudinal examination on how a senior high school used integrated studies in order to motivate students, and on the problems that students faced during the course of their studies. It is based on "Sotsugyo-Kenkyu" (graduation research / final projects), a form of integrated studies that has been used in one senior high school over the last 20 years. Integrated learning was adopted in senior high schools throughout Japan in 2003. There have been difficulties in implementing the program because teachers have found it difficult to develop a new curriculum in addition to performing their ordinary tasks. In order to examine the effects of integrated learning, we investigated how senior high school students perceive integrated studies, what kind of problems they encounter during the course of their studies, and what the program means to them. Hundred four students who conducted their final projects between year 2000 and 2002 participated in this study. They completed three questionnaires: pre-study, interim study, and post-study. The study found that: 1) Initially, the students were very interested in "Sotsugyo-Kenkyu" because they expected to develop as mature individuals through this program. However, the students' interest in their study decreased as they faced problems during research. 2) The main problems were the "burden of research" and the "dilemma between undertaking the research and preparing for the college entrance exam". 3) As the research progressed, the students gradually divided into two groups: a highly satisfied group and a dissatisfied group. The highly satisfied group had positive experiences from meeting many people and gaining considerable amounts of knowledge. By contrast, the dissatisfied group felt only fatigued by their study. In conclusion: a) Some of the students considered integrated learning burdensome, because they had to undertake numerous tasks simultaneously. These tasks included preparing for college entrance exams and being involved in school festivals. Nevertheless, 77% of the students were satisfied with their research, and reported that they had learned much from their study and gained valuable experience, b) Generally, integrated learning appears to have considerable significance for senior high school students. It is important to develop a balanced curriculum and to support the students' research, especially those students who are relatively poorly motivated.

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The purpose of this paper is to make clear the process of recognition of "sexual independence" education which was part of the teacher's movement in the 1980's. However, the role of women in the Japanese Teacher's Federation (JTF) was unclear, and as a result, was largely ignored. The focal points of this paper will be on the leader of this movement and her papers and to analyze the relationship between her theory, teaching practices and students' reality. The "Independence" educational movement was started by Emiko Okuyama and Yasuko Ichibangase in the 1970's. Okuyama was the leader of the women's department of JTF, and Ichibangase was one of her advisers. Ichibangase introduced independence education from Sweden, where 3 conditions of independent life; economical, mental and living independence had been taught. They led teachers to teach these three conditions of independence, especially the economical one. In the 1980's, teachers discussed how sexual independence should be taught. One of the topics which inspired this discussion was the recent increase in girls' sexual behavior following World War II. Girls were labeled as immoral by guidance counselors ("seitosidou" teachers), who were male teachers in (junior) high school in many cases, and were taken or coerced to drop out of school. Many people had a double standard of sexual morality between men and women and thought those girls were sinful in those days. Okuyama and Ichibangase thought that 3 conditions (economical, mental, living) of independence should be learnt at school so that sexual independence would be established as a matter of course. Okuyama led teachers to teach the 3 conditions, especially economical independence, but most of the teachers' reports were about practices of teaching "sexual biology". They preferred teaching sex education to sexual independence because they needed the language not only to talk to students about genital organs, pregnancy and birth but also for themselves. Sex education had been taught in Sweden for 50 years, but that wasn't the case in Japan. Many female teachers had avoided using "vulgar language." Japanese women couldn't talk about their own bodies for lack of language. It can be said that lack of sex education weakened women's solidarity and the movements for women's needs and women's rights. In 1985, Okuyama explained that sex including the biology of sex, gender and sexuality, was just a part of being human, and we should teach students not only the biology of sex but also gender and sexuality. The words, gender and sexuality, were introduced in this educational movement earlier than other fields by Okuyama. She didn't change the theory of the 3 conditions of independence until 1993. But the consent to reproductive health / rights in the United Nations in 1994, made her reconsider the theory. The education of women's health and reproductive rights for life became part of women's rights. Sexual independence or sexuality need to be taught methodically at school. "Independence" was the goal of the feminism movement in western countries in the 1970's. In Japan, it can be said that this "Independence" educational movement was feminism trying to improve the curriculum.

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The purpose of this article is to illustrate an approach that can be used to describe and organize the content in the area of teaching grammatical knowledge. This article proceeds as follows. First, it points out the latent problem with a framework for task-based language teaching in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) environment, and suggests the need for an explicit grammar teaching. In this article, the main purpose of foreign language teaching is considered to be the development of communicative language ability in the language concerned. It seems that this is much the same objective of the Course of Study for foreign languages or several approaches proposed by second language acquisition studies. But both are different in that the latter basically presumes syllabus content would be specified in terms of learning activities or tasks. This article suggests that apart from language activities, it is necessary to teach grammar explicitly with reference to the framework for foreign language teaching curriculum which is based on the theoretical consideration of what constitutes communicative language ability in a foreign language. Second, it points out that currently employed ways of teaching lack explanations of the syntactic and semantic character of the English comparative expressions, reviewing some text books and grammar teaching books. Third, it proposes a basic structure of the teaching process, based on a theoretical examination of the system of the English comparative expressions and on a hypothesis of a possible learning process on the part of the learners. And it extracts "a module of the teaching content" from it, viewed from what could be contrasted with regard to choosing an appropriate expression in context. Finally, it proposes an approach to organize the module as a lesson plan in consideration of the differences of three pragmatic aspects: ideational, interpersonal, textual rhetoric (cf. Leech 1980). According to the character of these aspects, each question in the lesson plan presented partly is designed to ask which expression is appropriate in the present situation. For example, when we are talking about our trip, and one person proposes going to Okinawa but you want to go to Seoul, then I think Seoul is nicer than Okinawa and I think Seoul is as nice as Okinawa is presented to ask which is appropriate to express your wish, not being in discord with them, namely, as a question of the interpersonal rhetoric.

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The objective of this study is to evaluate the curriculum of a lower secondary school for children with intellectual disability, based on the individual needs of the children. After examining the individual needs, we examined the extent to which the current curriculum satisfied them. We also focused on the importance of guidance contents and the number of hours during the process of evaluation (see-plan-do-see / improvement). The process of evaluation was performed as follows. In the first semester, the student's needs were examined and a need-based curriculum was developed. In the second semester, whether guidance and time schedule of the classes were based on individual needs was examined. Next, the time schedule and the curriculum were made flexible on the basis of individual needs. In the third semester, specific needs and their integration into the curriculum throughout the year were examined.

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