This study examines the impact of a Local Revitalization RPG in Ishinomaki City, Japan, as a tool for enhancing regional attachment, cultural awareness, and educational engagement among university students. Following the devastating Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, Ishinomaki has sought innovative strategies to foster recovery and preserve…

Purpose: This study aims to search for fitting lenses to view and interpret teacher learning in a Japanese secondary school teacher staffroom and capture the reconstituting of researcher subjectivities in this process. Design/Approach/Methods: A narrative approach chronically documents the findings and use of the lenses in analyzing the staffroom…

Japan is facing a problem of depopulation of rural and island communities. This research focuses on the island of Nakanoshima (Ama-cho), which has dramatically declined in population in the past 70 years. In 2007, the High School faced the threat of closure due to declining numbers, and were it to close would have further hastened the decline of…

Virtual exchange projects (VEP) are known for bringing learners together from all over the globe to develop skills and attitudes through collaborative tasks. However, the present understanding of learners' perspective transformation during a VEP remains limited. Based on a four-week VEP between students at a Japanese and Polish university, this…

This paper examines how public education can ensure equity and diversity by clarifying the "democratic aspects" that can be captured through school-community collaborative activities in Japan and the U.S. As a result of comparison and analysis, it is indicated that in both Japan and the U.S., these activities are conducted in the context…

The purpose of the study is to understand how Japanese women become social entrepreneurs. The challenges in fostering women's entrepreneurship include socio-cultural traditional views on women's roles and expectations and insufficient support systems. Despite such challenges, the rise of Japanese women as social entrepreneurs has been observed in…

Research in language learning indicates that process drama (PD), an educational approach where students and teachers work in and out of role to explore themes and issues, can be well suited to the Japanese higher education (HE) context. Despite the benefits highlighted in the literature, PD remains a niche approach to language teaching and…

This article aims to illuminate forms of transformative instructional practices that encourage a sense of agency, responsibility, and motivation in student learning by intervening in their "self-affirmation." Self-affirmation is subjective work done to create and construct new meaning while preserving a sense of personal integrity,…

The current research explores the transformative potential of Design Thinking (DT) pedagogy in Higher Sustainability Education (HSE) in a hybrid (mix of online and face-to-face) setting. The case study examined a Field Exercise in Sustainability Science (FESS) course, using DT pedagogy, in a HSE program at a university in Japan. The critical…

We engaged in duoethnographic research to deepen our understanding of Japanese educator Daisaku Ikeda's notion of ningen kyoiku, or "human education," a lifelong process of transformation based on commitments to dialogue, value creation, global citizenship and creative coexistence. In particular, we examine the cultivation of intellect,…

The purpose of this study was to describe and explain Japanese health and physical education teachers' experiences teaching sexuality education at the high school level. This qualitative study used the interview method, with an in-depth, semi-structured approach. The research sites were Japanese high schools located in the Kanto region of Japan.…

Although there is a growing recognition of the importance of pre-service teachers' experiences abroad, scant research attention has been paid to the lived study-abroad experiences of pre-service language teachers of English in non-Western countries. It is vital to shed light on the experiences of this particular group of teachers because their…

This case study examines how preservice teachers make meaning of "American culture" while being cognizant of personal bonding between a Japanese ex-inmate and the community he connected with in prison--whom he refers to affectionately as his Chicano homies--in the college course "Culture and Languages of the United States." The…

With online learning solutions responding to the novel coronavirus pandemic, it is important for educational technologists and other practitioners to understand how learners are experiencing the demands of socially distanced online learning and how they conceive of themselves within distant spaces and digital communities. Research into the…

This paper examines the "subjectification" function of political education in democracy, considering the present situation of political education in Japan. In particular, from the point of view of political science, it focuses on the relationship between democratic theories and political education and considers whether the possibility of…