The purpose of this paper is to clarify the possibility of recognition as a theory in school education by considering K.  Stojanov’s educational theory and concept of school education.  When the issue of recognition is discussed in school education, while there is much debate about how to respect the difference and diversity of children in school, the theoretical educational significance of recognition has been overlooked.  In contrast, Stojanov attempts to reconstruct the concept of recognition by A.  Honneth as an educational theory.  It is features of Stojanov, on the other hand, that he views education as an interaction between the self and the world and positions recognition as the driving force for this interaction, and, on the other hand, he points out that the “world” is not positioned in the theory of recognition, which is insufficient from the perspective of educational theory, and incorporates perspectives such as others and culture into his theory of recognition.  Furthermore, Stojanov embodies this educational theory based on recognition as discursive initiation at the level of the teacher’s pedagogical action and as an comprehensive inclusive school at the level of the school.  By considering Stojanov’s educational theory, this paper shows that it is important to approve not only the dimensions of existence, such as differences and diversity of children, but also their potential for development and growth, and that recognition can be the principle that structures educational content and methods.

 The purpose of this paper is to construct a new lesson design for developing children’s political agency from the perspective of “relational freedom” with “mediated agent”.  The following two points can be mentioned through the work of this paper.  First, by redefine political agency relying on the concept of “mediated agent”, we have proposed a new theoretical framework for understanding the development of children’s political agency.  The “mediated agent” is a concept in which “agency” is not attributed to an autonomous individual who is independent of the surrounding environment, but rather, is considered to be involved in the context and environment.  Based on this concept, rather than avoiding intervention in political agency from the perspective of political indoctrination, we raised the question “How should children’s political agency is mediated through lessons”.  Then, we have proposed “relational freedom” in which the “mediated agent” is required to be actively involved.  Second, we proposed a new lesson design for developing political agency.  Specifically, we constructed a lesson design in which children criticize the teacher’s views through comparison with other views.  Thus, through reinterpreting the conventional theory of lesson design, which is centered on criticism of discourses that have power in the class, from the perspective of relational freedom, it is thought that a further lesson designs which develop political agency as a “mediated agent” can be expected.

 In this paper, detailed performance data on the musical expressions of 21 preschoolers in a fiveyear-old class at T kindergarten were individually generated using MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), and were positioned as documentation in the childcare setting.  From these records, we conducted an interactive analyzing of the data with the teacher to see if the data could contribute to a deeper understanding of the children’s exploration of sound and music, as well as to the development of ideas that would improve childcare activities.  In analyzing the MIDI information recorded, the teacher found the infants selecting methods of expression through sound, and infants experimenting with expression through sound while influencing each other.  These were specifically summarized in Cases 1 through 3 as ( i ) situations in which the teacher found “individuality” in the player’s performance, ( ii ) situations in which the teacher found the player’s performance different from his/her usual appearance, and ( iii ) situations in which the teacher found the player being influenced by the performance of others.  As a result of the discussion, the following two findings were made regarding the educational significance of using MIDI as a recording: The first is “support for analyzing expression from the perspective of pitch, note value, and velocity.  The second is “consideration of individual evaluation of expressive toddlers” in which teacher finds and reconsider the “individuality” of each infant’s expressions.

 This paper covers the theory and practice of language education by Catherine Wallace, who imagined classroom practices for culturally and linguistically diverse learners since 1990s.  Wallace criticized communicative language approaches that fix the social status of English second language learners.  She instead emphasized her educational objective “resistance”, which is to enable the learners to relativize themselves and rationally express their own position to others.  Furthermore, she criticized the practices that concentrated on individual experiences and empowering individual learners, and she aimed to enable “resistance” for everyone in the classroom in the future.  Wallace thus aimed to transform the classroom into an “interpretative community” which is open to multiple interpretations and to the possibility of dialogue.  For this stance she envisaged a practice in which everyone reads a common text and then dialogues with each other about the text.  Wallace proposed the use of “high-yield texts” that allow for multiple interpretations and the sharing of meta-linguistic terms in the reading process.  In the dialogue situations, students were required to share their interpretations based on meta-linguistic terms and analytical perspectives which they already learned in reading comprehension section, and at the same time students were able to deepen each other’s interpretations with “exploratory questions”.  In this way, Wallace’s theory and practice could be seen as an attempt to realize an “interpretive community” by allowing for diversity within the classroom on the one hand, while ensuring a commonality that links the classroom members together.

 In recent years, scientific literacy is recognized it enable citizens to make decisions on social issues involving science.  From the 1970s to 1990s, STS education was a representative example of education for scientific literacy.  Recently, socioscientific issues (SSI) have attracted considerable attention.  It has been recognized that SSI only suggests incorporating controversial issues in science education.  However, Dana Zeidler, a leading SSI researcher, criticized STS education and intended to transform the purpose, aims, and curriculum of science education.  Researchers have not examined Zeidler’s view in detail.  Thus, to discuss the significance of SSI in the science education research context, this study investigated Zeidler’s SSI research and the SSI-driven curriculum that he developed.  The findings indicated that Zeidler accepted Kohlberg’s stages of moral development.  Furthermore, he believed that by dealing with real-life ethical dilemmas (SSI), students can develop the reasoning skills necessary for decision-making and make reasonable moral judgments using the universal principles of justice.  Accordingly, he proposed developing an SSI-driven curriculum and internalizing the development of students’ moral reasoning into the goals of science education.  In this respect, he intended to go beyond the STS approach of teaching only scientific concepts and methods.  Moreover, the issues expressed in the critique of SSI are similar to those in moral education research, implying that Zeidler’s SSI proposal extended the scope of science education research discourse.

 This study examines the process of starting a social studies learning assessment at the elementary school attached to the Nagano Normal School for men, focusing on its relationship with Performance Appraisal during the national elementary school period.  This study takes the following process using historical documents related to the Ministry of Education and the Nagano Boys’ Elementary School.  First, we examine the details and methods of the Performance Appraisal during the national elementary school period from the perspective of the Ministry of Education’s response to the national elementary school system under the leadership of Seishiro Aoki (1894-1956).  Second, we investigate the process of constructing perspectives and methods of social studies Effective Assessment based on social studies- related information in the early postwar period, and the nature of these perspectives and methods in relation to Effective Assessment.  Third, we clarify the nature of social studies Effective Assessment by focusing on its introduction to social studies instruction research in 1948.  We found that (1) Performance Appraisal during the national elementary school period was established as a method to ensure objectivity by developing perspectives according to the objectives to consolidate children’s learning and improve teachers’ instruction. (2) Social studies Effective Assessment shows the perspectives of “understanding,” “attitude,” and “skills,” as well as methods that consider the learning process and the assurance of objectivity. (3) Research on effects based on “understanding,” “attitude,” and “skills” are appropriately positioned in the learning and teaching process.  We believe that the elementary school attached to the Nagano Normal School for men was able to start social studies learning assessment, which had not been explored earlier, by collaborating with the Textbook Bureau and collecting information as an experimental school in 1947, based on the examination research conducted consistently under Aoki’s guidance since the national elementary school period.

 This article aims to clarify the nature of thinking dispositions.  To this end, John Dewey’s concept of disposition/habits and the development of the argument by Ron Ritchhart were examined.  Dewey depicted dispositions as acquired, persistent and action-linked qualities that are formed in the community.  According to him, dispositions can be found in interactions with people and the environment.  He stressed the importance of cultivating dispositions as they have the primary force of motivating and directing thinking.  Dewey also respected children’s natural dispositions and illustrated their dynamic expression.  Dewey’s concept of disposition/habits was linked to the recognition of the importance of the affective domain and its role in orienting thinking in educational research on thinking since 1980.  Among others, Ritchhart, while relying heavily on Dewey’s ideas, saw in dispositions an overt and active nature, learnability, persistence and the quality of controlling the whole action.  Furthermore, in continuation of Dewey’s ideas, he proposed the inclusion of ability as a component of disposition.  In his claim that the entire learning environment influences the development of dispositions, we found similarities between Dewey and Ritchhart.  For the formation of dispositions, Dewey envisioned a community, while Ritchhart envisioned creating a culture of thinking.  Ritchhart proposes approaches such as making thinking visible, creating a culture of thinking and thinking routines.  He also develops Dewey’s ideas into concrete educational methods.  From these arguments emerges the nature of thinking dispositions, which are learnable but have a persistent character, take time to transform, are formed by the environment and are found in actions.  These findings indicate a different theoretical basis from previous studies, where thinking dispositions were developed through the implementation of specific educational 

 According to an overview of the history of postwar educational methodology, “integration curriculum” is a general term for efforts to address current school education issues through curricular reforms that are not bound by subject boundaries.  Although it became widespread after World War II, Fumio Shiromaru’s principled criticisms were directed at it during the “ integration curriculum controversy” of the 1970s.  However, with the placement of “Period for Integrated Studies” in 1998, it spread nationwide, and in the 2000s, the curriculum administration adopted the concept of “integrativeness” as its basis.  However, the validity of this overview is questionable, since it assumes “integrativeness” as a given without responding to Shiromaru’s principled criticisms.  Therefore, we will examine the concept of “integrativeness” by taking “generalization of learning” as a clue, which is the essence of Shiromaru’s criticism, but it becomes clear that the validity of the concept is not found.  However, the understanding of “generalization of learning” in previous studies also overlooked the “action” and “discipline function of knowledge”.  Therefore, when Shiromaru’s argument is reviewed again, it is that there are two “generalizations of learning,” each of which is associated with curricular and extra-curricular activities.  It also becomes clear that the concept is to teach knowledge as a “way of seeing and thinking” in the subject education.  In light of this, it is appropriate to summarize Shiromaru’s criticism in the “integration curriculum debate” as a proposal for a curriculum based on the concept of “action” and subject lessons that teach “ways of seeing and thinking” in inquiry-based learning activities. “Period for Integrated Studies” can only be a meaningful theoretical and practical development if, apart from its abolition, it is conceived in close connection with the subject lessons that teach “ways of seeing and thinking”.