This article describes an innovative teaching approach that can offer the changes needed for school improvement. When entering an Education: Basic and Interactive (EBI) classroom, one will see students focused on accomplishing self-guided tasks and eager to move on to the next challenge in their self-paced learning. The EBI Project described here…

This document is an English-language abstract (approximately 1,500 words) of a report on secondary education by the Japanese Central Advisory Council on Education. In the light of global educational trends, the Council was unanimous in its opinion that Japanese secondary education needed reform. The fundamental problems in Japan are these: (1)…

The 2002 restructuring of the national curriculum in all Japanese public elementary and secondary schools includes a reduction and reallocation of instructional hours, and the addition of a new "integrated studies" course, with an emphasis on more individualized, cross-curricular thematic projects. This reform comes at a time when a…