This paper examines a socio­-political realization process of the concept of educational reform developed by Wilhelm von Humboldt at the beginning of 19^th century. Over 100 years history of research on Humboldt has formed an unshakable understanding that Humboldt remained within the realm of ideal construction of humanistic education and that, however, had never shown his interest in the actual political negotiation during educational reform in 1809-­1810. This traditional image on Humboldt (Humboldtbild) is to be relativized in order to find a new way to reconstruct Humboldt’s educational reform, which would have a quite significant impact on current educational reform after PISA shock in German.

Establishment of the Delegation of Science (“Wissenschaftliche Deputation”) is the focused case to be examined. With reviewing Humboldt’s philosophy on “Bildung”, which emphasized the interactive process as the fundament of professionalization and autonomy of every cultural practice such as politics, economics, esthetics or education, this paper will identify Humboldt’s struggle to create an autonomous arena for educational practice free from (but mutually communicating with) other cultural forms. Humboldt’s concept for educational reform claimed a liberal social interaction where individual practitioners and thinkers in the educational field were expected to produce uniquely designed ideas on education. Such uniquely produced ideas and practices would bring about the significant cultural means of education that were considered as the birth of professionalism in education. Humboldt determined his mission to create such an independent arena only for education and to stimulate interactive discussions among educational agencies. His struggle on reform is then found in his design of the Delegation including negotiation for recruiting delegates and his directions to them. The Delegates were to provide a kind of stimulant to such social interaction by canonical curriculum based on the latest scien­tific perspectives. The delegates from various fields worked as Humboldt expected in the way of providing their critical and peculiarly professionalized opinions to the discussion on what students had to learn in school. Results of detailed analysis on discussions in the Delegation show that social needs, political situation and industrial concerns were taken into consideration for designing canonical school curriculum as wells as the humanistic educational perspective and latest findings in each subject of science and arts. At the end of the dis­cussion, curriculum made by the Delegation embraced a unique structure that more natural scientific subjects had to be taught in spite of the well­-known fact that drastic development in natural science starts from the 1830s. As such, under the direction by Humboldt, the Delegation contributed to stimulating social discussions on education.

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This article aims at clarifying the process of curriculum reform and the characteristic of the school management at Fuji elementary school during the Taisho new education period. Despite of being a public school where was generally hard to engage in such movements, Fuji elementary school has shown a good performance of the curriculum development of life education for the whole school under the leadership of principal Uenuma. Former studies had put their eyes on what Uenuma had written or had said, evaluating his leadership. However, this paper focuses on teachers’ activities and their growth, and sees how the leadership or advice of Uenuma had worked. For that purpose, I investigated into various kinds of reports and reminiscences of the teachers, and analyzed the relationship of the staffs including the teachers and the principal. Then I could see how they were brought to the development of life-­unit curriculum and how they thought and acted during the process of the development.

Main findings of this paper are as follows. The first finding is about how curriculum reform had taken place. A bunch of practical leaders had led the lesson improvement, and then involved other teachers that would share the same concern. They came to understand that their students’ development of interest and abilities are very dynamic and became to establish the stance to find the problems from the observation of their students. The second finding is about the organization process of the teachers’ activity of research. The primitive voluntary group formed around the leaders came to be organized as a research section in the school, and the section got reformed furthermore to form a research community where they can learn from each other. And the third finding is about the Uenuma’s critical role as a principal. Without requiring reformer’s attitudes of the teachers forcibly, he took the responsibility of preparing the condition for teachers’ research activities and the role of being accountable to the public. Thus, he could support the curriculum development by facilitating the progress of the teachers and that was the kind of leadership he took in the school reform.

At last, I reflected upon what kind of implication this case study would give us for our educational reform. Through seeing the leadership as dynamic and multi­-function, I pointed out that we need the relevant environment and context in the teacher education system so that such function could really work.

This paper deals with case studies of the curriculum development in the pilot school system for research and development. The system not only provides research findings with Ministry of Education for the revision of national course of study but also encourages designated schools to create their new curriculum and their teachers’ culture through the experiences of research and development. Looking back upon the previous studies on the curriculum development in the Ministry’s pilot schools. It proves that little attention is paid to the teachers’ capability of curriculum development.

The purpose of the paper is to examine how some schools with pilot school experiences have sustained the teachers’ capacities required to develop their curriculum by making the most of the opportunities and resource they have obtained during the designated period of research and development. Three public elementary schools have been selected among those with experiences of becoming a pilot school, in view of their rich history of curriculum development, the regional balance, and their exemplarity in research­-oriented climate. As a framework for analysis of teachers’ activities in curriculum development, the concept of ‘professional capital,’ which was proposed by Hargreaves and Fullan, has been introduced. Professional capital consists of human capital, social capital and decisional capital, and it grows as the three independent capitals function as independent variables. Teachers’ capacities to develop curriculum and its growth can be explained as an interactive and amplifying process of the three capitals.

In the data collection of curriculum development in the three individual schools, group interviews have been made with key persons of the schools, such as senior teachers in charge of research. The data gathered have been classified according to the three capitals mentioned above.

One of the overall characteristics witnessed common in the curriculum development of the three schools is the centrality of integrated study in their whole school curriculum. The design and implementation of integrated study is a core of teachers’ activities. Although the three schools are different in their experiences as a pilot school, they have in common made use of their status of pilot school, not as a starting point of curriculum development but as ‘an opportunity.’ They have similar orientations of realizing their educational objectives by exercising their discretionary power which is allowed only to pilot schools.

The three schools are successful in building a mechanism of forming teachers’ individual and collective professional capacities which includes a high level of teachers’ initiative, motivation, ingenuity, and judgment. They are also successful in sharing their capacities and passing them to their next generations. It is possible to describe the formation of teachers’ capacities in their everyday work as a process of professional capital movement. In conclusion, sustainable curriculum development in a school is a forming process of teachers’ profes­sional development. Professional capital grows in search for teachers’ common understanding of children as learners and of better class instruction through their periodical on-­site learning study.

Recently, the number of practical studies on two-­student pair learning in high school classes has been increasing. In such studies, researchers have encouraged students to share their roles, and to help their classmates by giving feedback to each other. However, studies have not examined the effect that pair learning has had on learning. They usually only examine formal pair learning, and they have not yet presented a methodology for pair learning that enhances the learning effect.

I reviewed the practices of, and research regarding, pair learning in Japan, and conducted a comparative study with peer learning studies in Europe and the United States. I then clarified issues in pair learning in Japan. Furthermore, I developed research methodologies to overcome these challenges.

In this paper, I have organized my findings into six points: a) the variables related to pair formation; b) the controlling of other variables, and calculating a constant; c) assigning non-­defined tasks such as essays, which require high levels of critical thinking; d) positioning formative assessment via general analytical rubrics; e) the necessities of structuring learning activities; and f) support for the argument that teachers should act as facilitators to help learners use the rubrics to eliminate their partners’ poor learning performance through feedback.

In this study, I investigated the learning effect that pair learning has on high school students in accordance with the six points explained above and compared it with my previous research on university students. The results clarified the following three points.

First, in the case of pair learning, which was evaluated based on rubric-­based formative assessment, it was shown that the effect on learning was large, with effect sizes of 0.78 and 0.91 obtained from high school students. These values were similar to the effect sizes produced by university students.

Second, the learning effects of pair learning have different meanings depending on the pair types. The results supported achievements made by university students through pair learning activities.

Third, it was found that gender differences were likely to impact the learning effect when pair learning was first performed. They also affected the pair types.

Furthermore, in my previous research, I was able to predict the pair types that appeared in pair learning activities with more than 75% accuracy based on a preliminary questionnaire, which contained 10 items on topics such as “collaboration” and “dominance,” whereas in this study, I were able to predict them with more than 80% accuracy.

This study covered SSH (Super Science High School) students, and the number of verified cases was small, so the results cannot be considered widely generalizable. However, they add to the research regarding the development future practice­-related research methodology.

The most widely endorsed approach to designing college and university courses is to start by writing statements of learning objectives.  These are seen as foundational to achieving coherence across teaching, learning and assessment activities, and for informing students about what to expect.  This approach is flawed.  Statements of outcomes lack concrete referents, so their interpretations are contextually dependent and can drift over time.  In addition, multiple objectives are samples from a larger universe of possibilities, and their structure implies discrete outcomes.  What is needed is a portrayal of the integrated higher-order cognitive capability that should characterise learning in higher education.  Also needed is clarity on the standard of student work required to earn credit in a course.  Starting from actual assessment tasks and graded and accessible student responses to those tasks would obviously necessitate significant changes to current practice but provide a direct, intrinsically valid foundation for curriculum development.