Many education critics, teachers, and parents have lamented the recent poor achievement scores of Japanese school-age children, and have sought the reasons for the decline. Some critics, including the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, and Science and Technology, blame the practice known as yutori-kyoiku (literally translated as…

This paper stems from the ESRC TLRP Learning How to Learn--in Classrooms, Schools and Networks Project, and explores how Assessment for Learning (AfL) relates, conceptually, to learning how to learn (LHTL). The term LHTL was intended to draw attention to a primary focus on learning practices, and we have related the processes of AfL to LHTL. A…