Shadow education has been studied in areas such as comparative education, educational policy, sociology of education, education and economics, and lifelong education, but mainstream Anglophone curriculum studies have largely ignored this phenomenon. We argue that shadow education should be considered as an emerging (and significant) focus of…

Informed by recurring international controversies, this study explores representations of the Second World War as official history in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean secondary-level textbooks and theorizes about how they influence and function as collective memories about this time period. Using grounded theory, it finds that the examined Japanese…

Based on his own teaching experiences and findings, the author discusses the experience gap between U.S. and Japanese students' knowledge of World War II. He compares and contrasts how the subject of World War II is taught in the United States versus Japan. While it takes teacher effort to enrich the history experiences of U.S. students, the…

To support the review of the National Curriculum, the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) was commissioned by the Department for Education in the spring of 2011 to produce a report detailing curricular arrangements in a number of high-performing educational jurisdictions. The principal source of information for this report has been…

Teachers have been understood in their functional role and collective agency in sociology. In this article, the author rethinks the structure and agency dimension of teaching in the context of Japanese school education in transition. The new curriculum in Japan puts emphasis on children's subjective experience of learning. This article explores…

Examines how selected U.S. and Asian mathematics curricula are designed to facilitate students' understanding of the arithmetic average. Discusses similarities and differences of learning goals, focuses, and concepts among U.S. commercial, Asian, and U.S. reform curriculum series. (Author/KHR)

An educational psychologist visited a Japanese fifth-grade mathematics class that was discussing and solving the problem of how to divide two into three parts. Students learned to devise and describe methods for solving mathematics problems and to defend and explain their problem solving. American educators are adapting some methods that the…

This paper presents findings of a study conducted to identify where and how Japan is taught in the Canadian social studies curriculum. Social studies guidelines were obtained from the various provincial ministries of education in Canada and carefully scrutinized for treatment of Japan in the social studies. Findings are presented through a series…

Based on eight months of observation in Japanese classrooms, this book describes a Japanese technique of writing instruction, called "seikatsu tsuzurikata" (life experience composition), and shows how it can be successfully incorporated into American classrooms. A foreword by Kenneth S. Goodman focuses on the technique's importance both…

Discusses research into high school economics teachers' attitudes about U.S.-Japan trade policy and teaching about Japan. Compares teachers' and general public's responses to Harris poll on U.S.-Japan trade relations. Reports that, although 91 percent of teachers believe they should teach about Japan, only 53 percent spend 2-5 class periods on…

The thesis discusses some difficulties involved in teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Japanese universities and proposes cooperative learning techniques as a partial solution to these problems. This recommendation is supported by a selective review of the literature on group work in second language teaching and research on the…

Presents the results of the original "Teaching About World War II" survey conducted with junior high social studies teachers in Japan. The teachers generally condemned Japan's military conduct and favored a variety of instructional materials and strategies. Includes questionnaire, tables, and graphs. (MJP)