This article aims to relativize the thesis raised in the debate over reform pedagogy in Germany that “reform pedagogy cannot offer suggestions for school reform” as a problem concerning the reception of reform programs in reform pedagogy within its epoch, and to clarify what reform pedagogy can offer for school reform. For this purpose, this article focuses on Jena-Plan initiated by Petersen and examines it based on Koerrenz’s understanding of reform pedagogy. Therefore, this article was developed as follows: first, by examining the characteristics of Koerrenz’s understanding of reform pedagogy, the approaches for analyzing reform programs in reform pedagogy within its epoch were presented; second, based on these approaches, Jena-Plan was examined to determine what kind of reform could be considered; and third, the image of Jena-Plan as a school model was relativized.

Through this article, Jena-Plan can offer two suggestions for school reform.

First, this article showed that the Jena-Plan can be understood as proposing didactics of arrangement as a teaching technique, as opposed to the Jena-Plan, which has been understood as a school model. From this, this article pointed out the problem of reception to understand the product of reform pedagogy within its epoch, as a “school model.”

Second, this article showed the importance of school reform being conceived in relation to teacher education. In Petersen’s thought, the concept of reforming schools was linked to that of academic teacher education which develops teachers who would be the driving force in school reform. Therefore, in reform pedagogy, Jena-Plan is worth referring to not only as an exemplary school model, but also as Petersen’s attempt at reforming schools. In other words, as educational reform.

The characteristics of Koerrenz’s understanding of reform pedagogy can be found in his ideology-critical standpoint of how reform is set up. This is suggestive in that it can capture how the “deficit” that justifies reform is engendered in today’s educational reforms, which tend to find an ideal image in something foreign from a perspective that is not necessarily based on the logic of pedagogy. Conversely, under the reform situation in which “updates” and “improvements” are being pressed on the “delays” in the educational system, this article highlighted that the issue for pedagogical research lies in how to find, from a pedagogical perspective, what social reality has a “deficit” that needs to be reformed, and how to draw out the guidelines for reform from the facts of educational practice.

The classical communities had the confidence that their difficult written languages placed an exclusive position as the literary language. Along with Latin, traditional written Chinese was also far from the colloquial language. In modern China, many intellectuals felt that it was necessary to overcome this situation and establish a new language education system. Hu Shih (1891-1962), picked up in this paper, is still one of the most famous philosophers, who reevaluated vernacular Chinese as the new “active” literary language.

This paper aims to examine the formation of curriculum theory for language education through the case of Hu Shih’s contemplation and practice. For this purpose, the author analyzes his statements concerning curriculum and instruction for language education.

Hu Shih went to the United States in September 1910 with the help of a government scholarship. During summer vacation in 1915, certain staff members at Chinese student office in Washington D. C. distributed documents on Chinese situation. Because of this incident, Hu Shih was regularly discussing about Chinese literature with his friends. At the same time, he formulated rules for the literary reform and published the improved version of them as the eight points. After studying in the U.S., he proposed the thesis “Guoyu de Wenxue, Wenxue de Guoyu (國語的文學・文學的國語 )” in his paper. This new thesis means “Literature written in national language, National language of literary value” in English. When returning to China, he read Edith Sichel’s book and wrote the impression in his diary. Referring to the history of European Renaissance, he pointed out that the accumulation of creating practical works based on vernacular Chinese would become the basis of national language with literary value as Chinese Renaissance. To promote these steps, he started to argue for the necessity of new curriculum and instruction theory for language education. In this context, he concretely suggested that all school textbooks composed in colloquial language should be distributed from the lower grades, and classical literature should be arranged after junior high school and high school stages.

This paper picks up Hu Shih’s statements on curriculum and instruction for language education. The analysis of this paper reveals that he proposed the thesis “Guoyu de Wenxue, Wenxue de Guoyu” with reference to European Renaissance. As Li Jinxi, a famous linguist in modern China, mentioned, Hu Shih’s argument played a key role in unifying the language unification and the literary reform. This background also set the stage for the development of his theory on language education and his contribution as the core policymaker for educational reform in the May Fourth Period.

This study conducted action research on three high schools that focus on preparing students to get into universities, and examined the mechanism of teacher and school development through the practice of inquiry-based curriculum in high school based on the concept of “professional capital” from the collected data obtained by semi-structured interviews with 12 teachers. As a result, a phenomenological model was generated to show the mechanism of teacher and school development through the design, practice and improvement of inquiry-based curriculum. The following three main findings were obtained from this model.

Firstly, the three high schools in this study designed inquiry-based curriculum in different processes, depending on whether teachers had experience with inquiry-based learning, either as individuals or as a group, against the background of the conflict between two competing teacher cultures: a conservative and individualism, and a challenging and collaborative. In this process, the improvement of curriculum was driven by organizational activities. The process of promoting the practice of inquiry-based curriculum simultaneously builds and strengthens the social capital of collegiality inside school organization and outside network, and this social capital leads to enhance individual teachers’ human capital and to draw individual and group decisional capital of teachers.

Secondly, the practice of inquiry-based curriculum was associated with the acquisition and improvement of the pedagogical skills of individual teachers, the acquisition of interdisciplinary knowledge that integrates knowledge of subject matter with inquiry-based curriculum, and even with a renewed their beliefs toward teaching. This was all based on the collaborative system developed within the schools. The practice of inquiry-based curriculum contributed to teacher professional development by enhancing the human capital while promoting the organizational development of the school through the power of social capital.

Thirdly, the practice of inquiry-based curriculum that has uncertainty requires teachers to accumulate practical experiences and judgments based on reflection in and on practices, observing students in their inquiry-based activities, and to devise and improve to solve problems, such as difficulties in practices and stagnation in teacher collaboration and external partnerships. Therefore, the practice of inquiry-based curriculum demands constant investment on individual and collective decisional capital of teachers. It also strengthens teachers’ autonomous and collective judgement, encourages collaborative reflection on practices, contributes to the accumulation of rich case experiences, and arouses their sense of challenge.

These findings reveal that the practice of inquiry-based curriculum in high schools implements the mechanism that contributes to teachers’ professional capital and school organizational development with promoting students’ growth alongside innovation of the inquiry-based curriculum itself. However, it is not a given that this mechanism automatically works when inquiry-based curriculum is designed and practiced. Its success depends on solid investment in strengthening social capital, such as building of a collaboration system among colleagues and promoting collaborative partnerships with external institutions.

This paper is intended to clarify the level of awareness of a “hidden curriculum” that improvisational theater encourages in teachers. Improvisational theater, often called “impro,” is a form of theater in which the performers create stories without scripts. Impro practitioners have developed many games, and the teachers, who are inexperienced in theater, can use impro easily in their classrooms by playing impro games with their students. However, impro has become “how-to” and “packaged.” Therefore, in 2021, I formed “Teacher x Impro Project in Mie” as a venue for action research, setting up a place for teachers to continuously learn about impro, and we started discussing how impro prompted teachers to reflect.

In this paper, I analyzed the sixth impro workshop held in March 2022. In addition to two elementary school teachers (Teacher A and Teacher B), three non-teachers participated. The workshop began with my question “Do you have anything you want to do?” Teacher A replied, “I want to do something that is seemingly useless.” We then played two games the meaning of which I cannot quite explain. During the final “reflection” session, it was confirmed that even things that seem “meaningless” can achieve “meaning.” Teachers continued to talk and think about “meaningless things” and the situation in their schools.

This paper describes a teacher who is caught up in what is “meaningful.” Teacher A felt the similarities between impro and the fun of doing unplanned and unintentional things that she experienced in her homeroom class. Then, in her post-impro “reflection,” she realized that “meaningful or non-meaningful” was decided by someone, and she referred to the “contradiction” of schools and organizations. Teacher B is exhausted by other teachers’ “attacks on ‘what is the meaning of this?’” in her school and continues to attempt to find clues for “giving meaning” to resisting such attacks. She feels uncomfortable with the fact that the various “meanings” that the word originally has been trivialized by being raised as an “educational goal.”

What is the “hidden curriculum” that impro made the teachers aware of? It is based on the idea that the school is a place to do “meaningful things” and that the teacher’s job is to convey to children the “meaning” of what is said to be “meaningful.” “Meaningful things” are praised, and “meaningless things” and things that cannot be clearly “meaning” are neglected or eliminated. And the work of schools and teachers is so full of “meaningful things” that there is no room for “meaningless things.”