This study highlights research trends and teaching methods in inquiry-based learning in Japan's elementary school curriculum of the "period for integrated studies" by conducting a scoping review of existing literature. Thirty papers that focused on teaching methods for inquiry-based learning were reviewed, and five subthemes were…

Here the author shares his attempt to add, without financial cost, substantive and dynamic international experiences to the secondary social studies teacher education program he facilitates. He provides thick descriptions of (1) the overarching goals of a collaborative, online, international learning project, (2) the curriculum materials he helped…

This study is based on the belief that inquiry-based learning should be made an integral part of any student's learning, especially at university level. To find out the students' perceptions toward library user education, 426 questionnaire surveys have been collected from the Peking University (PKU), China and the University of Tsukuba (UT),…

While many studies indicate that "virtual exchanges" also known as telecollaboration are useful for developing intercultural communicative competence, there is a paucity of research on how learners acquire new knowledge related to their own culture and society before interacting with online foreign exchange partners. This study explores…

In summarizing this report Danielle Spencer states: "Japan truly was transformational for me. At that time I saw myself as a nurse just pretending to be a teacher. The Australia-Japan Foundation (AJF), Japan exchange enabled me to be a teacher who used to be a nurse." How did this transformation come about? Each year, a national…

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…

This volume examines the agency of second/foreign language teachers in diverse geographical contexts and in both K-12 and adult education. It offers new understandings and conceptualizations of second/foreign language teacher agency through a variety of types of empirical data. It also demonstrates the use of different methodologies or analytic…

The paper presents a meaningful discovery learning environment called "cache-cache comparison" for a personalized learning support system. The processing of seeking hidden relations or concepts in "cache-cache comparison" is intended to encourage learners to actively locate new knowledge in their knowledge framework and check…

Given the abundance of literature describing the strong relationship between inquiry-based teaching and student achievement, more should be known about the factors impacting science teachers' classroom inquiry implementation. This study utilises the theory of planned behaviour to propose and validate a causal model of inquiry-based teaching…

This study analysed 10 top-performing regions in PISA 2015 on their science performances and instructional practices. The regions include Singapore, Japan, Estonia, Taipei, Finland, Macao, Canada, Hong Kong, China and Korea. The science performances of the 10 regions and their teaching practices are described and compared. The construct of…

The dichotomy between content knowledge and 21st-century skills ("zest for life" in the Japanese context) has been an issue since the early 2000s in Japan. Recently it has been evident in the demand for a high school-university connection. In spite of such a division, involving apparently incompatible or opposite principles, Japan can…

This study examines best practices in teaching mathematics to minority students through two case studies conducted at high-minority junior high schools in the USA and Japan. Observations, interviews, and conversations with the teachers in both countries focused on the research question: how do teachers successfully teach mathematics to minority…

Where the author teaches is far from the ocean, bordered on one side by forests of ponderosa and by the High Desert on the other. So when his first graders walked into class on the Monday morning after the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami along the coast of Japan--and their usual light conversations about the weekend included some sobering…

This study examined similarities and differences in how U.S. and Japanese middle-school science teachers teach science through inquiry. Classroom practices were examined through observations in the United States (N = 9) and Japan (N = 14). The observational data were coded and quantified based on the rubric that incorporated 2 dimensions: student…

Lesson study, a form of school-based professional development widely practiced in Japan, has gained popularity in the United States over the last two decades. However, research on its effectiveness has been limited in scope, typically conducted shortly after the conclusion of the professional learning and focused primarily on the practices of…