Curriculum Studies is among the most important components of Educationol Research. But in modern Japan, it belongs to the least advanced fields in Educational Research. The Japanese Society for Curriculum Studies was founded in 1990 under these conditions in order to promote the research on curriculum studies, and it has marked a new epoch in the history of Educational Research. I propose that we should make much more of Positivism to promote more scientific Curriculum Studies. 1. I think that the ultimate object of Curriculum Studies is to develop a new curriculum adapted to the growth and development of the children, and to clarify the caracteristics of various terms and concepts concerning curriculum by analyzing the structure of the actual curriculums. 2. In Japan, the goverment strictly controls the formation of the school curriculum. Government policy for education has a great influence upon the formation of school curriculum. Therefore it is also very important in scientific Curriculum Studies to study government policy for education by objectifying it. 3. In Japan educational research lags far behind other countries in studies about secondary school. The curriculum for secondary school is composed of required subjects and electives, and each school has its own curriculum, being different from that of elememtary school in many cases. Therefore one of most important themes in the modern Curriculum Studies is to clarify the characteristics of the structure for secondary school curriculum. 4. I think it necessary for the promotion of positive Curriculum Studies to keep and open the documents on the process for making policy decisions about curriculum, including the documents of each school curriculum.

View full abstract

Environmental Education should aim to establish the basis on which students realize that they are responsible for taking initiatives in solving environmental problems. Therefore, Environmental Education at the high school level should consist of two parts. One part should deal with the ideas of interaction between man and nature, and the other part should relate to the establishment of a socio-economic system,which is believed to provide a drastic solution for environmental issues. I have suggested that the former be called the Science of Natural Environment and that the latter be called the Science of Environmental Policy. In this paper, it is suggested that the Science of Environmental Policy be taught in four different categories set up on the basis of the natural stratification theory and also that the idea of sustainable development be introduced as a key concept to help students find a solution to environmental problems. The categories are; 1) Public hazards caused by corporations 2) Public hazards caused by both the government and corporations 3) Environmental problems caused by the global system of Captalism 4) Developing a sustainable socio-economic system The above mentioned categories and ideas have actually been taught at two high schools in Hokkaido and a nursing school in Sapporo. During the course of these classes, students showed a clear understanding of the concept of sustainable development and became conscious of their responsibility to take the initiative in tackling these problems.

View full abstract

In the practice of home hospices, death education is extremely important for the patient and family . However, little literature on the subject has been available, indicating that this field has a lot of unsettled problems. The educational effects of the death education carried out by the author, using his distinctive philosophy and theory, are analyzed in 16 cases of the practice of home hospice which culminated in the eventual home death. The actual death education for patients and family was performed at least once in each phase along with the time course of home hospice, for a total of more than four times. The acceptance of the death of a patient was judged according to the way the patient spent the remaining time and according to the attitude of living with hope of life after death. In the author's judgement, 14 patients out of 15 were apparantly able to accept their own deaths. Additionally, in 5 cases out of 16, an autopsy was carried out. In only one case, the colleague doctor advised the autopsy to the family, whereas in the other cases it was performed with the patient's or family's spontaneous decisions without the author's advice. Since the author considers the ultimate aim of death education in the home hospice to be that the patient and family live out the final time of life accepting the death, death education which the author performed is thought to be effective in certain degree.

View full abstract

We are now facing the issue of reorganizing school subjects. One reason necessitating this reorganization is the reduction in school hours due to the start of the five-day school system, and another is the rapid development of a new ideology of school achievement. It is time to prepare for radical changes in the curriculum field, and therefore we should seriously pay attention to and reflect upon curriculum studies, especially its methodological aspects. In this article, through a historical analysis of the method and procedure involved in the construction of the curriculum, I discuss how the methodology in curriculum studies unfortunately came under the strong influence of functionalism. I then argue that the recent reproduction theory or correspondence theory in curriculum studies inevitably suffered from the hidden influence of functionalism. In conclusion, I suggest some fundamental points critical of functionalism, and propose a political approach that focuses upon the economic, cultural and political inequality and discrimination present in the actual process of curriculum development. The contents are as follows. 1) The objectives and task of this study. 2) The relationship between recent curriculum studies and post-modernism. 3) A perspective on methodological criticism. 4) A criticism of functionalism and the fact of social inequality. 5) From criticism of reproduction theory to the start of a political approach. 6) What is the political structure of the Japanese school curriculum. 7) A modest conclusion.

View full abstract

In this paper, firstly, I discuss the ideas of the structure of Subject contents in "Discipline-centered Curriculum" and clarify the concepts of making frame of knowledge base or cognitive schema. Secondly, I investigate "Experience Curriculum" and clarify the characteristic features of scope and sequence in the curriculum developments. Lastly, I propose on the restructuring of school curriculum from the standpoint of realizing "Children's Rights of Learning".

View full abstract

This research paper is to study the development process of the 5-day school curriculum in Uozu City, Toyama Prefecture, which has been implemented every two week in a month and which also attempts to realize curriculum development with the assistance of community human resources. This study consists of 4 parts: (1) Organization and viewpoint of curriculum development as cooperative school in 5-day community life with Monbusho, the Ministry of Education. (2) Ideas for a new approach to create the community human resources and the variety of community cultural activities for children developed by those human resources. (3) Ideas for school activities developed by those community human resources. (4) Considerations about the nature of curriculum development.

View full abstract

In this article I attempt to design a new curriculum framework for a school in Japan with students attending just five weekdays every week, as in English or American schools. Nowdays in Japan most Japanese peolple work five days and have two days off each week. However, just as some Japanese have to work six days a week, so about half of the Japanese parents don't want to adopt the new system of the five-weekday school. Asuke Town in Aichi Prefecture have carried out a pilot study of five-day school activity for more than five years., and the parents have changed their negative attitude to that system to a positive one in these years. Therefore, we can accept the five-day school system. But if we accept this system, we have to reform the school curriculum. The new structure of the curriculum should consist of three subject groups as follows: (1) CORE subjects: Japanese Language, Arithmetic or Mathematics, Foreign Language (English) (2) BASIC subjects: Social Studies, Science, Music, Fine Arts, Technology, Home Economics, Physical Edmcation (3) INTERDISCIPLINARY subjects: one new subject whose content should deal with our ultimate social problems and be combined from environmental studies, energy or natural resources problems, population problems, etc. This third subject is needed in the contemporary world, particularly for younger generations. This curriculum design is based on the pilot study of Asuke Junior High School and is shown as a tentative one.

View full abstract

This paper is an attempt to clarify the tasks for the reform of the Japanese high school curriculum by paying attention to the new-type, credit-based high schools. The research the authors have conducted consists of two different approaches, a questionnaire and a series of school visits. The authors have requested the 39 credit-based high schools to answer a qrestionnaire, and have collected the answers from all of them. Questions refer to their graduation requirements, curriculum, special activities, guidance, students' sentiment, etc. Our findings are summarized as follows. Although the credit-based high schools are too diverse to be characterized in a few words, most of them offer a wide variety of courses and also give credits for learning in places other than their classrooms. The flexible management in curriculum and the individualized weekly schedule created by free course election are generally welcomed by the students. However, the schools also have the tasks they need to tackle in the special activity field, in their physical condition, and in the issue of students' dropouts. The authors' school visits are represented by Yuho High School, which appears to be most successful. In this school, students can freely organize their own daily schedule through their spontaneous combination of some of the six 90-minute class periods lasting from 8:50 am through 9:05 pm. The flexible system encourages students to learn based on their interest and on their life condition. And it requires them to be more self-controlled in everyday life. Finally, the following are the main conclusions the authors have reached. (1) The diversity and the flexibility observed in the curriculum of the school surveyed ought to apply generally the traditional high schools as well so that students can improve their self-control ability. (2) In addition, high school courses should generally be reviwed to make room for more spontaneous self-controlled learning.

View full abstract

It is important to put environmental education into practice at schools in Japan. But the contents and methods for such a practice are not clear. The purpose of this paper is to point out the problems of environmental education from the viewpoint of "purposes," "contents" and "types of curriculum construction," and to make clear the present conditions and the practical problems in elementary schools. Our chief instrument for doing this is a paper survey distributed to 160 pilot schools in Japan. We analyzed 66 schools' answers and pointed out the following problems; 1) We can divide the principles of environmental education into "the means for personality formation" and "problem solving concerning the environment." But each of concrete contents is not clear in practice and, moreover, it is influenced by the regional characteristics and the management conditions. 2) There are many types of environmental education curricula, and many schools practice their original activities. But actually there are not many schools that provide the special classes for environmental education in their school curriculum. 3) Many pilot schools point out some concrete practical problems about "special class setting," "money to practice with," "continuity in environmental education practice" and "teaching methods," and so on. We think that these problems mainly result from practices in the sphere of the subject-centered curriculum. We can not properly evaluate the school curriculum for environmental education from this paper survey alone, but we can clarify the problems in practice and give some points to select a typical type of pilot schools which have characteristic curricula in environmental education. We have to visit the pilot schools and the regions, make a concrete and synthetic analysis of the environmental education curriculum, and evaluate the curriculum from the viewpoint of children's growth related to awareness, knowledge, attitude, and participation in their local and wider environmental activities.

View full abstract