This article, which is related to a longer piece to be published in 2023, starts from the point of view that, despite some issues, there may be borrowable ideas in how South Korea and Japan developed their education systems, especially at the outset of their modern periods of educational development. However, in the popular press, and even among…

The author of this article demonstrates how the unified approach to answering economic questions employed in modern quantitative macroeconomics research can be taught to undergraduate students using the Solow model. Through an application to post-WWII Japan, students get hands-on experience with (1) documenting empirical facts, (2) developing a…

Sozo Kurahashi's (1882-1955) theories, formed from his profound respect for children, have influenced Japanese early childhood education and care (ECEC) practitioners for a long time. They also have influenced the national ECEC curriculum in Japan, which emphasizes the need for a rich environment where children can actively learn and play rather…

Though overshadowed by their Japanese counterpart, Taiwan's and South Korea's comics industries produce illustrated tales that represent and speak back to their host cultures, even when employing common Japanese manga conventions. As Japanese manga is popular with North American youth, Taiwanese and South Korean comics present a potential…

This paper examines differences between Bakhtin's dialogic view and argumentation theories with respect to questioning and analyzes the significance of these differences for the theories of pedagogy. In argumentation theories, a question is thought to be shared among the parties in a discussion. In the fields of argumentation and education, in…

The action-oriented approach (AoA) is a powerful basis to inform teaching, learning, and assessment in the classroom that identifies learners as social agents and focuses on language learning through language use. This paper answers the call for developments that help teachers teach and learners learn in an AoA-informed way. We argue that…

Against the prevailing outcomes-based education and the instrumentalization of education, a movement has arisen towards holistic education. This aims to go beyond objective measurement of the outcomes of education in order to treat the student as a whole person. In this paper, we shall examine some strands of education in Japan which in some way…

In Japan during the 1980s, there was an interesting debate about how to teach the area of a parallelogram effectively to primary school children. Yutaka Saeki criticized the standard method, which relies on a cut-and-paste procedure. He argued that the standard method inevitably failed to convince children because it does not provide any cogent…

In February 2019, two nations with the largest nuclear arsenals announced their withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Russia's interference in U.S. elections and the invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated tensions between the U.S. and Russia. These actions bring renewed attention to nuclear nonproliferation efforts…

Although modern education is expected to solve social problems, it has brought about new problems. While theoretical critiques of education have not always been successful, with the transition to a data-driven society, education as a historical product is actually losing its efficacy. However, this does not mean that acquisition of knowledge and…

Parental involvement in their children's education has been investigated in various ways, mainly regarding governance, the support provided to the children at home, or relationships between teachers and parents. However, parents also might be supporters and/or resources for teaching practices, an aspect which has not been studied in depth. In…

The impetus for this conceptual article was the authors' reflections on their experiences as teachers and teacher educators in various Asian countries (China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam), combined with their support for Social-Cognitive Theory and student-centered learning. Of course, great variations exist…

In this critical essay, Yumi Matsumoto uses the concept of English as a lingua franca to understand multilinguals' communicative practices and to support an alternative understanding of English language use among international students in US university classrooms. The essay draws on two examples of university classroom interactions involving…

Recent discussions around education for global citizenship continues to retrace notions of cosmopolitanism first laid out in Europe. Ostensibly seeking global inclusivity, much of this work ultimately returns to a rather narrow set of ontological and epistemic themes, primarily Stoicism and Pauline Christianity. The Kyoto School offers a…

This paper begins by revisiting my earlier critical review of the international scholarship on Japanese schooling (Takayama, 2011). In this work, I critiqued three books on Japanese schooling, by Ryoko Tsuneyoshi (2001), Nancy Sato (2004), and Peter Cave (2007), along with other English-language scholarships on Japanese education. Drawing on a…