Research Journal of Educational Methods
Online ISSN : 2189-907X
Print ISSN : 0385-9746
ISSN-L : 0385-9746
Volume 40
Displaying 1-23 of 23 articles from this issue
original article
  • A Case Study of the Teacher’s Responsive Actions to the Emotional Expressions of the Second Grade Child
    Yuka ASHIDA
    2015Volume 40 Pages 1-13
    Published: March 31, 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: July 19, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

      This study was designed to explore how a teacher responded to children’s emotional expressions and how she coped with their emotional needs through Emotional Scaffolding.  The data were collected from a second grade class.  Two typical cases were selected and were ethnographically analysed.  The following findings were revealed:

    1. Process of establishing Emotional Scaffolding:

      The teacher was forming Emotional Scaffolding by accumulating various responsive actions through scrutinizing the emotional states of a child, his desirable academic achievements, and the syllabus based on educational programs. This accumulation helped the teacher understand the emotional states of the child. Furthermore, having been detached from the child continually because of the school timetable, which prevented the teacher from establishing a series of Emotional Scaffolding, she tried to have direct contact with the child afterwards to compensate for what she had failed to do.

    2. Responsive Needs:

      The teacher was responding to “Academic Achievement Need” and/or “Socio-emotional Development Need” of the child, switching the targeted Needs interchangeably, moving back and forth between the two. The target-switching appeared as well when observing “Care Need” and “Instruction Need”. These four Needs are complexly intertwined, and therefore, she should always consider to whom she responds, i.e. to an individual or to the others in the class. She identified which Need to fulfil and tended to prioritize it. On the other hand, she occasionally put her judgement on hold to clarify the Needs for establishing the Emotional Scaffolding. In other cases, she placed herself in the middle of all the Needs to be able to act in response to whatever would happen next.

      In conclusion, the study suggests that, although the Needs create some complication, teachers try to respond to children’s emotions. They construct and provide the Emotional Scaffolding by coping with the Needs.

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  • Takahiro WATANABE
    2015Volume 40 Pages 15-26
    Published: 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: July 19, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

      Mantle of the expert (MoE) is a drama method where children assume the roles of experts and are assigned a task by a fictitious client. Children in the role learn several aspects of different subjects by tackling the task. MoE has been recognized as one of the tool kits for a lesson. However, for Dorothy Heathcote, who developed this method, it meant more than that. According to Heathcote, several lessons are necessary for MoE and the learning through MoE should always be cross-curricular.

      Indirectness is the key for bringing children into a role. An enterprise, a client and a problem are the three elements of the imaginary situation. Setting up an enterprise needs to be secured.

      After the 2000s, the potential of MoE which Heathcote had expected began to unfold by the emergence of schools adopting this method across the whole school. Bealings Primary School and Woodrow First School are among them. Cross-curricular learning through MoE is incorporated into the school curriculum as an integral part. Luke Abbot and the network he founded, MoE.com, have been playing an important role in this new development; he has kept the website active, while offering workshops for teachers.

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  • A Exploratory Study Based on the Analysis of the Lesson Records in High School
    Takayuki Hotta
    2015Volume 40 Pages 27-37
    Published: March 31, 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: July 19, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
      This paper is an exploratory study research aiming at clear evaluative standard based on the principle of a synthetic social study approach.
      In a knowledge-based society like today, it is necessary for high school students to perceive the society through a synthetic social study which exceeds some subjects, such as history, economy, and geography. However, the evaluative scales of the lessons were not clear enough to evaluate, verify, and improve the lessons.
      The principle of a synthetic social study approach is defined as follows. It develops into the study stage of a high dimension by the traffic of diachronic recognition and synchronic recognition. An evaluation index is developed based on this principle.
      The purpose of this research is to show evaluation standard by developing rubric, and to clarify the evaluation standard of general rubric, based on the lesson records and the worksheets students filled in.
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  • The Positioning of Gruschka's Didactic Concept
    Mitsuru Matsuda
    2015Volume 40 Pages 39-49
    Published: March 31, 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: July 19, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
      The purpose of this paper is to clarify the significance of pedagogical reconstruction of teaching and learning for didactic arguments after PISA in Germany by means of examining the concept of Gruschka's didactics based on critical theory.
      Gruschka, who studied science of education under Blankertz, made the concept of "Negative Padagogik" based on Adorno's critical theory. He pointed out the contradiction between theory and practice, or requirement and reality in education as he revaluated the native begriffs of pedagogy, as Bildung, Didaktik, and Erziehung, related to Geisteswissenschaftliche Padagogik and critical theory.
      He corresponds to the tendency of empirical educational research and presides over a lesson study project of "Padagogische Rekonstruktion des Unterrichtens". This project attempts to clarify "Padagogische Eigenstruktur" of teaching and learning in view of three begriffs through the transcription of class. He sets up the formula "Erziehen heiBt Verstehen lehren" in this project.
      He criticizes the pedagogical arguments after PISA, for not being considered of contradictions in school and class. He attempts pedagogically to reconstruct the reality of teaching and learning with rethinking the concepts in this reform by means of the above formula.
      Also the significance of his didactic concept is to define the problems and the responses in class by output-control and to indicate the possibilities to rethinking the current situation of didactic research, "Didaktisierung" .
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  • Chihiro SATO
    2015Volume 40 Pages 51-62
    Published: March 31, 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: July 19, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

      This paper analyzes the 19 pieces of educational slides for magic lantern, and examines the value of the magic lantern as technological educational media at school in prewar Japan, especially in the 1920s.  Most scenes drawn on slides are the places that referred to in the state-textbooks of Geography.  In the 1920s, picture postcards and wall maps were typically used as visual resource in geography education.  In comparison to these, slides have clear picture and can be enlarged and projected on a screen. Therefore, 19 slides had reliable utilization value as visual resource in school education in 1920s.  In catalogues by some major suppliers in prewar Japan, there are no slides in accordance with the statetextbooks, therefore 19 slides are not the goods of the market but a custom-made article of a certain school.  In prewar Japan, such feature could not be found in the didactic media materials that appeared after magic lantern.

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  • A discussion of “Middle-School Students’ Chinese Level” in the 1930s
    Guxin ZHENG
    2015Volume 40 Pages 63-73
    Published: March 31, 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: July 19, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

      Xia Mianzun was a representative middle-school language teacher and editor in China in the 20th century.  He initiated debates among teachers, educators, and students between 1931 and 1937 in the journal Middle-School Students (established by Xia in 1930), and here I examine these debates to clarify the problem regarding “middle-school students’ Chinese level” during that time. Three important issues emerged from these debates: (1) the standard and assessment of students’ Chinese level, (2) the selection of material for study, and (3) the methodology of reading and writing. In this paper, I examine how Xia’s methodology of language education could provide a key resolution to these problems because he not only argued for the basic level of Chinese reading and writing, but also required students to master a basic knowledge and understanding of global culture.  He aimed not only to train students in the technique and rhetoric of composition, but also respected the reality of students’ lives in developing their personalities.  It is clear that Xia not only borrowed the pedagogy used in Japanese writing education, but also tried to create a new vernacular style of prose written during the 1930s in China.

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  • A Study of Two Reports published by Mathematical Association
    Takuji OSHITA
    2015Volume 40 Pages 75-84
    Published: March 31, 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: July 19, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

      This paper examines the development of the teaching of geometry in secondary schools during the interwar England, focusing on two reports, The Teaching of Geometry in Schools (1923) and A Second Report on the Teaching of Geometry in Schools (1939), which were published by the Mathematical Association.  First, the history of school geometry from the latter 19th century to the development of the Perry movement is examined.  During this period, there was a move to design a curriculum which overcomes school geometry based on Euclid’s Elements.  In that time, school masters and mathematicians thought students should learn both “intuitional” and “logical” thinking in geometry.  Second, the main points of the two reports published by the Mathematical Association are presented.  It was argued in the reports that a fixed sequence was not desirable and that teachers have to design the curriculum on school geometry depending on the type of students they have in their classrooms.  The reports showed the stages for learning, experimental(A), deductive(B), and systematizing(C) geometry.  Third, the two reports are further examined in detail.  It was found that while the first report tried to establish an alternative curriculum of school geometry based on “similarity”, the second report divided the systematizing stage for logical thinking into two sub-stages and refined it.  In addition lots of practical pieces of advice for school masters were found in the second report.  Finally, this paper reveals that these developments came from the resistance to lectures which were done to obtain a School Certificate.

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  • Lillian Weber’s Practice and the Accompanying Discourse
    Yoshie KITTAKA
    2015Volume 40 Pages 85-96
    Published: March 31, 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: July 19, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

      This paper describes the practice and the accompanying discourse of Lillian Weber, a progressive U.S. educator, who played a key role in reviving and supporting the child-centered tradition of progressive education.  Progressive education from the 1960s to the 1980s is characterized by Weber’s work, and her work reflects the concerns and the ideals of her progressive contemporaries.  The three findings of this research are as follows.

      First, Weber was trying to promote every child’s right to education irrespective of their racial and socioeconomic differences.  Weber had a firm belief in every child’s intellectual capacity.  Second, in order to make traditional public schools more supportive of children’s learning, Weber started the Open Corridor Program in 1968. Within this newly created environment that emphasized interaction and was rich with materials, language development became the first focus regarding children’s cognitive growth. Third, the City College Workshop Center for Open Education was founded in 1972 and thereafter developed as a place for teachers to engage in their own inquiring activities.  With the deepening of Weber’s understanding regarding how children learn, primary-school science became the focus of Weber’s work.

      Weber pursued her vision of a democratic community.  She hoped for the schools to support every child’s right to education, and for society to support every person’s right to contribute to, and the creation of, new meanings within the world.

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Report of the 50th Annual Conference of National Association for the Study of Educational Methods
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