Tokkatsu The Japanese Educational Model Of Holistic Education

Though there has been much discussion on the academic aspects of Japanese education abroad (e.g., high scores on international tests, lesson study), there has been little information on the non-academic aspects of Japanese schooling. This non-academic aspect is called Tokkatsu (tokubetsu katsudo).Unlike math and reading, Tokkatsu is not confined to a certain period, but extends throughout the school day and even after-school activities — such as school excursions. It includes classroom activities such as classroom discussions, morning and afternoon meetings that take place daily, cleaning and serving lunch, school events such as sports day, school excursions, student councils, and club activities. Such activities occur every single day, throughout one's school years, from elementary school (actually, even kindergarten) to high school. They are, however, bound together by the common goals of the Tokkatsu framework.This book is the foremost attempt to address a gap in English literature on Tokkatsu.

"Though there has been much discussion on the academic aspects of Japanese education abroad (e.g., high scores on international tests, lesson study), there has been little information on the non-academic aspects of Japanese schooling. The non-academic aspect is called Tokkatsu (tokubetsu katsudo). Compared to math and reading, it does not occur during a certain hour of the day, and rather extends throughout the day, and to hours outside of the regular classrooms -- such as school excursions. It includes classroom activities such as classroom discussions, morning and afternoon meetings that take place daily, cleaning and serving lunch, school events such as sports day, school excursions, student councils, and club activities. Such activities occur every single day, throughout one's school years, from elementary school (actually, even kindergarten) to high school. They are, however, bound together by the common goals of the Tokkatsu framework. This book is the foremost attempt to address a gap in English literature on Tokkatsu"--

This book offers a geographically unique cultural comparative lens to examine the issue of transnational curriculum knowledge (re)production. Prompted by the ongoing competency-based curriculum reforms on a global scale, this book examines where global frameworks like the OECD’s core competency definitions are rooted and how they are borrowed, resisted, and/or re-contextualized in various European states with a Christian, foremost Protestant educational–cultural heritage and Asian countries with a Confucian educational–cultural heritage. It highlights the roles that various factors, such as history, culture, religious attitudes, ideology, and state governance play in nation-states’ re-contextualization of global curriculum policies and practices beyond a simplistic and dualistic globalism/power and nationalism/resistance dynamic. In doing so, it provides a global context to better understand individual nation-state’s continuing curriculum reforms and school practices. At the same time, it situates individual nation-state’s latest curriculum reforms and practices within an international community for healthy dialogues and mutual sharing. By selecting two educational–cultural systems and wisdom—Christian-Protestant and Confucian—it also offers a springboard for international curriculum studies beyond the usual confinement of geopolitical nation-state constructs. It not only sheds new light on each nation-state’s curriculum policies and practices, but also creates new collaboration spaces within similar and across disparate cultural–educational regions. With its wide geopolitical and educational–cultural scope, this book appeals to a global market and can be used in a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in comparative education, history of education, curriculum theory, school and society, and curriculum history.

Drawing on the case of moral education reform, this book provides an authoritative picture of how policy is enacted between state policymaking and school practice in Japan, focusing on how national policy is enacted locally in the classroom. The study follows the 2015 moral education reform from its genesis in central government, through the Ministry of Education to its enactment by local government and schools. The book looks beyond written policies, curricula and textbooks to examine how teachers, school administrators and others make sense of, and translate, policy into practice in the Japanese classroom context. Chapters explore how moral education practice has changed in response to the intentions of national policy, and analyzes the implications for understanding processes of policy enactment in the Japanese education system. This book presents a new perspective on the complexity of education policy making, practice, and the gaps in between. It will be of interest to postgraduate students, researchers, and academics in the fields of education policy and politics, moral education, school administration, and international and comparative education more broadly, particularly in Asia.

To address the grand challenges of the 21st century, societies must undergo substantial transformations. Whether the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), set in place by the United Nations as targets to be reached by 2030, can be reached will depend in part on how successfully education strategies empower learners of all ages with the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes to transform themselves, their communities, and their societies. Educational institutions have critical roles to play in facilitating and supporting these transitions. To fulfill this vision and be transformational, however, education and educational institutions themselves will have to be transformed. Digitalization, New Media, and Education for Sustainable Development explores how digitalization and new media are already shaping and will shape the transformation of international educational systems. It examines all aspects related to and interconnections between digitalization, new media, and education for sustainable development. Covering topics such as biased design, energy smart schools, and project-based learning, this premier reference source is an indispensable resource for educators and administrators of both K-12 and higher education, preservice teachers, teacher educators, government officials, policymakers, community leaders, researchers, and academicians.

This book is an up-to-date critical examination of schooling in Japan by an expert in this field. It focuses on developments in the last two decades, with a particular interest in social justice. Japan has experienced slow economic growth, changed employment practices, population decline, an aging society, and an increasingly multi-ethnic population resulting from migration. It has faced a call to respond to the rhetoric of globalization and to concerns in childhood poverty in the perceived affluence. In education we have seen developments responding to these challenges in national and local educational policies, as well as in school-level practices. What are the most significant developments in schooling of the last two decades? Why have these developments emerged, and how will they affect youth and society as a whole? How can we best interpret social justice implications of these developments in terms of both distributive justice and the politics of difference? To what extent have the shifts advanced the interests of disadvantaged groups? This book shows that, compared to three decades ago, the system of education increasingly acknowledges the need to address student diversity of all kinds, and delivers options that are more varied and flexible. But interest in social justice in education has tended to centre on the distribution of education (who gets how much of schooling), with fewer questions raised about the content of schooling that continues to advantage the already advantaged. Written in a highly accessible style, and aimed at scholars and students in the fields of comparative education, sociology of education and Japanese studies, this book illuminates changing policies and cumulative adjustments in the daily practice of schooling, as well as how various groups in society make sense of these changes.

This open access edited volume is a comparative effort to discern the short-term educational impact of the covid-19 pandemic on students, teachers and systems in Brazil, Chile, Finland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. One of the first academic comparative studies of the educational impact of the pandemic, the book explains how the interruption of in person instruction and the variable efficacy of alternative forms of education caused learning loss and disengagement with learning, especially for disadvantaged students. Other direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic diminished the ability of families to support children and youth in their education. For students, as well as for teachers and school staff, these included the economic shocks experienced by families, in some cases leading to food insecurity and in many more causing stress and anxiety and impacting mental health. Opportunity to learn was also diminished by the shocks and trauma experienced by those with a close relative infected by the virus, and by the constrains on learning resulting from students having to learn at home, where the demands of schoolwork had to be negotiated with other family necessities, often sharing limited space. Furthermore, the prolonged stress caused by the uncertainty over the resolution of the pandemic and resulting from the knowledge that anyone could be infected and potentially lose their lives, created a traumatic context for many that undermined the necessary focus and dedication to schoolwork. These individual effects were reinforced by community effects, particularly for students and teachers living in communities where the multifaceted negative impacts resulting from the pandemic were pervasive. This is an open access book.

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened awareness of the need for social emotional learning throughout all educational contexts. Given this, schools, most often P-12 settings, have begun to embrace practices for addressing social emotional learning. While there is a growing body of research and literature on common practices of social emotional learning, there is no standard for its implementation. Exploring Social Emotional Learning in Diverse Academic Settings highlights unique and varied approaches to addressing social emotional learning and wellbeing in educational settings. It features a broad perspective on the topic, presenting approaches from a range of educational locations and contexts. Covering topics such as personal empowerment, academic challenges, and teacher stress, this premier reference source is an excellent resource for administrators and educators of both P-12 and higher education, school counselors, government officials, pre-service teachers, teacher educators, librarians, researchers, and academicians.