The Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) emerged in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and rapidly spread throughout the world, becoming a “pandemic” in February 2020. The government of Japan suddenly ordered the closure of all public schools on February 28, 2020, thus depriving school children of opportunities to study and learn. On April 7, the government declared a COVID-19 state of emergency. Public facilities such as libraries, Kominkan and other social education institutions were asked to halt their activities and close their buildings. In Article 25 of the Japanese Constitution, the government is obliged to maintain and promote “social welfare” and “public health”. Under the Infectious Diseases Control Law, COVID-19 was categorized as a designated infectious disease. The law legitimated the orders to close Kominkan in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infections, resulting in the conflict between the basic human right to be given the opportunity to learn and the restrictions on this basic right due to public health concerns.

This paper is the report of a web survey about Kominkan operations under the unprecedented circumstances brought on by COVID-19. The survey was conducted by a special project team of members of The Japan Society for the Study of Kominkan, the purpose of which was to understand the difficulties faced by Kominkan and to identify practical countermeasures that were taken. Although the number of responses was small, a number of points emerged. First, as many as one-third of the Kominkan were pursuing new operational approaches in spite of the restrictions that had been placed upon them. Many people were able to access their Kominkan online, although it should be noted that various other communication tools such as telephones and printed materials were also utilized.

Given the new types of engagement that have emerged, it is necessary to consider the social networking that will support future Kominkan activities, especially the use of online resources. Online communication has become an unavoidable necessity as a result of the pandemic.

In addition, we should also pay attention to the anxieties of Kominkan staff. Many staff members were worried because of their lack of visibility and of mechanisms to support decisions that had to be made. This anxiety was not just about immediate decision-making; within the Kominkan that had been closed down, a considerable number of staff members felt that "the significance of the existence of Kominkan was being questioned."

This is a report on how Kominkan in Okayama City have coped during the COVID-19 disaster as well as the issues that the pandemic poses for Kominkan activities in the future. Kominkan have continued to play a role as Kominkan by introducing the new idea of "Kominkan that can be apart and connected". These Kominkan efforts can be divided into three areas: (1) sharing energy and wisdom, (2) supporting and helping one other in daily life, (3) efforts that utilize TV and ICT. What can be seen from these efforts is that the underlying strengths of Kominkan and their activities and programs, the deepening of the relationship with students enrolled in club courses, and the potential for online activities and those that take place in real space were reconfirmed. It is important to consider how kominkan will contribute to the solution of the social problems that have been laid bare by COVID-19, solutions that include support programs for families in need.

In this report, we introduce a case of Online Kominkan conducted at Kurume city, Fukuoka Prefecture. The visionAreal has been working on place making for parents and their children in Kurume city. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down public facilities including the kominkan. A new method to facilitate citizen gathering during the quarantine was searched. As a result, we launched Online Kominkan using online meeting system.

The Online Kominkan is hosted by the operation board and the activity planner. They met weekly on Zoom and utilized Facebook Messenger and Slack to finalize the activity plan.

The programs provided at Online Kominkan are not only limited to regular programs. There are spontaneous activities targeting different generations and weekly special activities, which is also known as the commitment activities. Some activities are hosted with the collaboration of other community centers and Online Kominkan throughout Japan.

These activities not only facilitated online interaction but also contributed to triggering offline communication between citizens. Preparing the network infrastructure of the participants and enhancing the operation team performance should be focused for further implementation.

The essence of social education is voluntary and collaborative learning. Staffs at the community learning center, and others involved in social education have been accumulating practices and methods of social education. However, those seem to be no longer applicable due to the traveling and activity restriction posed by the COVID pandemic. On the other hand, social education is expected to contribute to overcome this common crisis.

This paper introduces the strategy implemented at Nagano Prefecture to face the regional and social issues caused by the virus. The possibility of social education using online platforms will be discussed to develop new region and society post the COVID pandemic.

This paper offers an overview and discussion that focuses on responses within the educational sector to issues related to non-formal education that arose amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. This was carried out through a review of reports from international organizations and on-line interviews with educators working with Community Learning Centres (CLCs) in 4 Asian countries.

The reports by international organizations, including UNDP, UNESCO and the ILO, covered the situations that resulted from school closings and the loss of learning environments for school-age children and youths, though they did not cover adult learning, including education for those who are illiterate.

As for CLCs in Indonesia and Thailand, basic education for adults has been provided by the government through programmes that are equivalent to formal schooling. Non-formal education in Bangladesh and Pakistan are provided by NGOs, using their resources with some support from local governments. In these countries, community development learning activities have been suspended, although some related activities are being carried out by groups voluntarily.

It has been reported that educational disparities during COVID-19 have emerged, affecting socio-economically disadvantaged families and communities. Therefore, education for youths and adults is as important as that for school-age children. Governments have an obligation to ensure the right to education for all, which also requires the participation and collaboration of members of the community.

The aim of this paper is to discuss ways that social connections in local areas can be established in the “With Corona” Era. First, we review the existing guidelines that are in place for public institutions. In particular, we take up the guidelines for re-opening public facilities, which are important spaces for constructing social connections, as well as the guidelines for self-imposed (“self-restraint”) isolation at home.

After examining these basic COVID-19 guidelines, we introduce two second-stage “With Corona” initiatives taken up by residents. The first is a survey that was conducted in Kashiwa City, Chiba Prefecture, of the groups responsible for the management of community spaces for elderly residents. The other example is a needs survey of child-rearing generation residents by a neighborhood association in Kamakura City, Kanagawa Prefecture.

From the findings of these surveys, we summarize methods for developing social connections in local areas. These methods offer suggestions for community learning centers (Kominkan) during the “With Corona” Era. This is about connecting social networks in places where face-to-face interactions are limited and social connections are often interrupted. In other words, we should make “investments” to reconstruct social capital. For this purpose it is important to understand the kinds of institutions or organizations that exist in each region, and what their activity status has been since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We should then start working to connect local and regional networks, no matter how small the scale.

The purpose of this paper is use Wako City, Saitama Prefecture, as a case study of Kominkan operations under COVID-19 in order to shed light on improvements that should be undertaken by Kominkan in the future.

After COVID-19 infections emerged in Japan in January 2020, Kominkan operations and learning activities for Wako City residents were suspended. This study sorts out the processes and the problems that emerged with the onset of the pandemic and identifies four issues that should be addressed in order to improve Kominkan services and the workplace environment in the event of a future infectious disease epidemic.

The first is to establish standards, in consultation with local citizens, for the use of Kominkan if an epidemic were to occur. The second is to install Wi-Fi in Kominkan. The third is to carry out lifelong sports activities. Finally, we should further improve Kominkan staff training.

The space in which learning takes place is rapidly expanding into the online world. The Amagasaki Online Kominkan opened in May 2020. Although it calls itself a "Kominkan," it is not a Kominkan (community center) facility, nor is it a project hosted by an official education institution. But "Kominkan-like" means a place or function where people gather there and learn together as a result by communicating.

In this paper, the impact of expanding online learning space is analyzed through a case study, focusing on social education. Social education can be seen as a organized educational practice that aims to implement democracy. We examined the significance and characteristics of expanding online learning spaces brought about by the development of technology, compared to the programs in person conducted in Kominkan facilities.

The "Online Kominkan" is a form of communication for extending our daily lives, in which we interact freely, share mutual interests and gain joint experiences. Communication is the basis of education, and the Online Kominkan, as a social environment, provides an opportunity to form a community, which can become a place to integrate life and social learning. One of the strengths of online is that they can be accessed "anytime” and “anywhere" as long as there is an internet connection. While transforming the quality of our communication, this has the potential to expand the nature of social education from a form that relies solely on administrative and legal system maintained by government toward an informal, decentralized and participatory orientation.

While literacy requires some commonality, recent research has shown that literacy is socially embedded, and that people use various “literacies” in different settings in their lives. This paper explores the UNESCO Fundamental Education Program, carried out from 1946 until 1958, as one of the early efforts that took this diversity into account. Three questions were examined. First, to what extent did UNESCO intend to ensure the diversity of literacy in the program? Second, what kind of diversity was taken into account? Third, what did UNESCO aim to ensure in common regardless of cultural and social contexts?

An analysis of the program, with a focus on its plans and ensuing discussions on literacy and language, revealed that the fundamental education was designed to respond to the immediate problems of each local community and to develop its distinctive culture and resources. UNESCO believed that the specific content of education should be diverse. It also recognized the cultural and social aspects of literacy, and the diversity of languages in terms of their linguistic characteristics and the meaning and values they held for local people. At the same time, UNESCO emphasized that the acquisition of literacy was crucial to tackle poverty, and that spiritual and moral development was essential to promote international understanding and solidarity. Finally, the international situation after World War II and the thought of J. Huxley, the first UNESCO director general, greatly influenced the program and its characteristics.

Sustainable Development Goals or “SDGs” is a term that is coming to be widely shared within and amongst corporations, government, local development programs and school education. The specific goal related to education is SDG4. However, in order to promote the realization of SDGs as a whole, attention has been placed on the establishment of links between SDG4 and other SDGs. Despite critical reflection on the fact that the educational goals of the MDGs were limited to the full dissemination of primary education, formal education and education for children are still high priorities in the SDG4.Little attention has been paid to ALE. Even though these shortcomings have prompted reflection and reconsideration within SDG4, it cannot be denied that the tendency to emphasize children / young people and formal education persists.

SDG4 is part of the process that emerged from the Education For All (EFA) movement that came out of the 1990 World Education Forum. This paper first points out some of the challenges facing SDG4 from the perspective of adult learning and education (ALE), taking into account the development of ALE during the Education For All (EFA) movement that arose during the SDG era. The paper then provides an overview of “Participation, Inclusion and Equity” which was the focus of the 1990 “4th Global Report on Adult Learning and Education (GRALE IV)” published by UNESCO, based on the reports of individual countries. It then examines SDG4.7 and education for active citizenship skills, which is the central area of significance for ALE from the perspective of “participation”. Finally, the paper provides insight into the prospects for Japanese social education practices that seek to align with international trends.