English Edition
No. 18February 2018

Going Back to the Root of Learning: Between “Science” and “Social Studies”
2017 CCT Symposium Report

On December 17, 2017 (Sun.), a symposium entitled Going
Back to the Root of Learning: Between “Science” and “Social
Studies,” hosted by the Curriculum Center for Teachers, washeld at Tokyo Gakugei University. Social studies and science
are grounded in diﬀerent academic ﬁelds of social sciences
and natural sciences, respectively, and are often positioned ascomplementary. However, they have a common aim: to foster
competencies in discovering and understanding the state of
the world in which we live and to try to become involved in it
responsibly. By learning these subjects, what kinds ofknowledge and competencies do children obtain to live theirown lives?
We invited three speakers from teacher education sites:
Shimpei Kobayashi (Associate Professor at Tokyo Gakugei
University), who specializes in astrophysics and scienceeducation; Toshiki Sakai (Dean of the Department of
Education, Kaichi International University and Professor
Emeritus at Tokyo Gakugei University), who is a former
president of Japanese Association for the Social Studies and a
specialist in history education and Korean education; andEiichiro Harako (Director of the Field Studies Institute forEnvironmental Education, Tokyo Gakugei University), whoseﬁeld of specialty is environmental education. After we listened
to their address related to the purpose of learning school
subjects, we had a discussion crossing the boundaries of ﬁeldsof study.
Prof. Kobayashi informed the audience that original learning
is to know how free we were, dynamically connecting his
specialty of physics with our lives. For students studying to beteachers, he sent a message: “I want you to be teachers who
can show children how many choices they have, how big theworld is, and how free they are. To do that, teachers
themselves must be ʻfreeʼ from various constraints.
Furthermore, it is the very time when scholarship is needed.”Prof. Sakai discussed the theme of social "facts". For example,
considering history education, we might have regarded
absolute, unwavering "facts" as historical "facts" throughexamination of historical materials. Sometimes such "facts"
would be told as the public common sense. However, social"facts" including history are decided based on the"commonality" and "common consciousness" of many of us.
Therefore, they are relative ones. We must remain aware of this.
Otherwise, social "facts" are at risk of being distorted by thepolitical and socioeconomic situation of the time.
From the perspective of environmental education, Prof.
Harako explored his consideration of learning to “live as ahuman being” deeply, based on the drama of the trajectory oflife and the wishes of Masato Ogata, a ﬁshery worker in the
Shiranui Sea, and a patient with Minamata disease. Prof. Harako
said that “It is of the utmost importance to know what my truewish is and what I really wish for as a person, as a real humanbeing, tearing oﬀ so-called ʻmasksʼ such as titles and social
roles.”We planned the symposium in expectation of what organic
reaction would occur when fellow human beings sharing thechallenge of education listened to each talk rooted in their own
specialties and crossing the disciplines. I think what is common
to the three speakersʼ talks were the relations among aspects
such as humanity, self, freedom, and learning. Each of us
returned to the starting point of learning through a lively
question-and-answer session involving the audience. In
response to a participant questionnaire, there was an
expression that “It was a symposium overturning myunconscious assumptions of which I was not aware. It made me
mend my ways.” We would like to thank the three speakers andmore than 50 participants, including researchers, teachers,
students, and city residents. The symposium proceedings arescheduled to be published in March 2018. (Mariko Kaneko)

Introduction of a New Visiting Associate Professor
Curriculum Center for Teachers welcomes Dr. Jae Park from The Education University of Hong Kong as a Visiting Associate
Professor. He will stay from March to August this year. Before his visit to Japan, we asked Dr. Park to contribute an article relating
his personal history and research topics.

I am extremely honored to be the 2017-2018 awardeeof the Program ʻVisiting Professor of Educationʼ for the
Curriculum Center for Teachers at the Tokyo Gakugei
University. I was introduced to it by Prof. Iwata Yasuyuki,
with whom, I often coincide in conferences organized byinternational comparative education societies. As I will
explain later, I am a late comer to academia and my main
goal during the Program will be learning from theCurriculum Center for Teachers about Japanese
education while pursuing my own scholarship in
education studies.
I am a ʻThird Culture Personʼ because I was born inSouth Korea where I grew up and had basic schooling
until I became a teenager. Then, I migrated to Spanish
speaking Peru to complete my secondary and tertiary
education. I was in my second year of medical studies
when a terrorist war broke out between the Peruvian
government and ʻMaoistʼ guerilla groups. While thisarmed conﬂict was ongoing, I became a medical doctor
specializing in pediatric surgery and worked in childrenʼshospitals. Those were the years that I closely witnessed
pain, blood and the suﬀering of young people. I thoughtthat education for them was a right and a noble ideal but
they were only theories on paper amidst a huge wave ofviolence, blackouts and human casualties. Perhaps this is
the reason why I became passionate about humanities
and social science while watching innocent children
suﬀering the consequences of opposed ideologies andviolence as a language and currency. Peru in war andgeneral insecurity was my second culture. I think my
doctoral degree in medicine was more experiential thanon books̶perhaps the program of ʻVisiting Professorʼ at
Tokyo Gakugei University will be an occasion toself-reﬂect further and to share my experiences with local
colleagues and students.
I have always been interested in hands-on charity
works and social services. Perhaps this is not really my
innate character but my response to the surrounding
reality̶people of my age killing others and training
child soldiers. I was spotted by a European Union charityand ended up in my third culture: post-colonial andneo-liberal Hong Kong.
While working in a local educational charity, I
perceived another tragedy and suﬀering of an exam andskill-oriented education. Perhaps triggered by it, I

undertook a Masterʼs course in educational
administration and management. It was followed by adoctorate in philosophy of education at The University ofHong Kong. My doctoral thesis topic was on ʻleadershipof recognitionʼ and supervised by Prof. Colin Evers, who is
now at the UNSW, Australia. After the completion of my
doctorate, I was hired by my Alma Mater as a
Post-doctoral Fellow in 2009. This was my ﬁrst full-timeacademic job, yet I viewed it not as a career but a diﬀerent
way of serving society, particularly youth. By then, I was
far more critical and less naïve about the dynamics ofpower, be it subtle as in early education or observed as
symbolic violence as in many forms of pedagogy andsocial institutions, including contemporary neo-liberal
higher education as a state apparatus ʻin chargeʼ ofproducing knowledge and manpower.
I am currently an Assistant Professor and the Head of
the International Education Research Group in the Centre
for Lifelong Learning Research and Development of The
Education University of Hong Kong. My primary researchinterests are the sociology of education, cross-cultural
studies and comparative education. Related publications
in peer-reviewed international journals are in
Comparative Education Review, Educational Philosophy
and Theory, International Studies in Sociology of
Education, Comparative Education, Journal of Multilingualand Multicultural Development and International Journalof Comparative Education and Development.
I serve as the Immediate Past-President of The
Comparative Education Society of Hong Kong (thelargest education research association in Hong Kong)and am the Founding Editor-in-Chief of The International
Journal of Comparative Education and Development(Emerald, United Kingdom). I am also an editorial board
member of the book series Educational Leadership
Theory (Springer), as well as a board member of The
Routledge Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy andTheory and its editor for the ʻPeace Educationʼ section.
Another sizable area of my research is the sociologicaldimension of instructional technology. I have been a
co-investigator of Hong Kong government-funded
Public Policy Research on the ʻDigital Divideʼ for two
consecutive terms of two years each. In this project by ateam of researchers, my personal contribution has been
to come up with a framework of correlation between
ʻcultural capitalʼ and parenting/family. We have reported
our results in peer-reviewed and well-establishedjournals such as New Media & Society, Educational
Technology Research and Development, Asia-Paciﬁc
Education Researcher and Ethics & Behavior.
I hope that my stay at the Curriculum Center for Teachersat the Tokyo Gakugei University becomes an opportunity
for wide-open exchange of experience and knowledge. I
would personally like to grow in my knowledge in the ﬁeldof Teacher Education. I look forward to receiving inspirationand encouragement from colleagues and students.
Jae PARK
Assistant Professor, The Education University of Hong Kong

“Importance of Sustaining Teachersʼ Narratives”: From a lecture by Professor Jean Clandinin

Kenichi Takaira (Tokyo Keizai University)
On October 19, 2017 (Thur.), a lecture meeting withProfessor Jean Clandinin, University of Alberta, Canada washeld at Iijima 20th Anniversary Alumni Hall, Tokyo Gakugei
University. The invitation of Professor Clandinin, who is
known as an international standard-bearer for narrativeinquiry, was made possible as a project of Grants-in-Aid for
Scientiﬁc Research, for which Professor Naomi Katsura at
Toyo University serves as the principal investigator. I serve
as a co-investigator. At the lecture meeting, “Toward
Teacher Education to Sustain ʻNarratives to be a Supportʼ
for Teachers”, the importance of sustaining narratives ofeach one of new teachers was discussed as follows basedon two Canadian studies of teachersʼ narratives.
Now teachersʼ work worldwide is burdened by stress. In
Canada, early turnover of young teachers has become
diﬃculty nationwide. Although the educational
administration has devised various measures to retain
teachers, they do not help sustain teachers. Through ananalysis of narratives of new teachers with two to three
years in the teaching profession and those who have beenout of the profession for less than ﬁve years, results showedthat when a teacherʼs life as a specialist and life as a person
are in a situation of conﬂict, the teacher feels considerable
stress and leaves the profession. The teaching profession istherefore an occupation that is deeply involved in the selfof the teacher. What holds the key to improving the qualityof teachersʼ work is not that their own narratives are
impinged or eliminated by their professional life, but thatthey are deepened by it. To that end, teacher educators
must narrate their own selves to teachers-to-be from a
training stage and must be given an opportunity tounderstand themselves much more deeply. On that basis,inquiring narratives to be a support for students (teachers)
and reconstructing teacher education as work to createknowledge to be a support is a pressing issue.

Terminology of Teacher Education

Mentor

The term originated from Mentor, a master who gave
guidance to a prince in a Greek myth. Later, it came to carry
the implications of “advisor,” “escort runner,” and “supporter”
for those who lack experience. At education sites for teachersin Japan, the terms “mentor” and “mentorship” are often
used in the context in which teachers with a certain amountof experience are expected to encourage novice teachers
professionally.
Under recent circumstances, in which educational issues
have diversiﬁed and where their handling is left to individual
schools, in many cases, support by co-workers with whomconcrete educational issues are shared in each schoolfunctions more eﬀectively for young teachers rather thanwhat is called “all call training” conducted by local boards ofeducation. It also has an eﬀect that engenders mid-careerand veteran teachersʼ professional growth through supportof young teachers. Given such a background, Yokohama andother cities have undertaken eﬀorts to support training,organizing a young teacher and a mid-career teacher as amentor team. There is no small number of issues such as
relationship building between a mentor and mentee andtheir respective workloads. Nonetheless, mentoring isincreasingly raising expectations in teacher training in Japan.
(Yasuyuki Iwata)

Nearly 40 people participated in the lecture meetingfrom all over Japan. A passionate and convincing talk byProfessor Clandinin, perfect translation by Dr. Eriko
Yamabe, a lecturer at Tsuru University, and accuratecomments by Professor Yoshiya Tanaka at the same
university enabled us to learn many things during thelecture meeting. In a question-and-answer session held
during the second part, we were able to hear a more
speciﬁc methodology for narrative inquiry. I would like toextend my deep gratitude to Professor Mariko Kaneko andmembers at Curriculum Center for Teachers, Tokyo
Gakugei University for their eﬀorts at preparation of thelecture meeting.

Latest publications from theCurriculum Center for Teachers( all in Japanese )Digital and printed publications
・ Record of the 17th Annual Symposium “Active Learning
and Teachersʼ Capability: Talking on elementary school
science” (February, 2017)
・ Project Report on Global Dimensions of Initial Teacher
Education: Comparative Study of Teacher Preparation for
the International Baccalaureate Programme (December,
2016)
Digital publication
・ Record of the lecture “Society and Teacher in Taiwan: Its
Public Images and Expectations”
Printed publication
・ Annual Report of Curriculum Center for Teachers, Vol. 16(March, 2017)
A list of other publications from the Center is posted on
the Japanese version of the website. If you wish our
publications to be mailed to you, please contact us at
currict@u-gakugei.ac.jp.

Sites Where Teachers
Are Nurtured
Center for Teacher Education and
Education Rersearch (ZLSB),
Technische Universität Dresden
Rolf Puderbach

Project Coordination
Center for Teacher Education and Education
Rersearch (ZLSB), Technische Universität DresdenTechnische Universität Dresden is one of about
80 full universities in Germany, that are engaged inteacher education. Many actors from all over theuniversity are involved in conducting teacher
training degree courses. Currently, about 3,500
students are enrolled in diﬀerent teacher training
courses at TU Dresden. A variety of 24 subjects and9 vocational subjects can be studied as a part ofdegree courses for students who want to work ingeneral education schools (primary school,secondary school, and Gymnasium) as well as
courses that aim to train teachers for vocational
schools. Teacher training courses are carried out
mainly by six diﬀerent faculties. Indirectly, nearly allof the 14 faculties are involved in teacher education.
To coordinate the activities that are performed bythese faculties, the Center for Teacher Educationand Education Research (ZLSB) was founded in
2005. Since then ZLSB has become an important
player in organisation and administration of degree
courses, quality assurance, development ofcurricula and study programmes, advanced teacher
training, educational research, and other areas.
The ZLSB is managed by a board underparticipation of the most relevant faculties andstatus groups. A large number of work groups
provides the framework for an intense exchange
and cooperation of university members, second
stage representatives of teacher training (which isrun by state institutions), and the educational
authorities. Students Students are also represented.
A very essential component of ZLSB is the
Academic Aﬀairs Oﬃce for Teacher training. Here,teacher students will ﬁnd all contact persons for
Staﬀ of Curriculum Center for Teachers
Director
MAYAMA, Shigeki(Professor, Phylogeny and Taxonomy)
Center Researchers[Division of Curriculum Research and Development]
KANEKO, Mariko(Professor, Educational Sociology)[Division of Teacher Preparation Research and Development]
IWATA, Yasuyuki(Professor, Historical Studies on Teacher Training)
UESUGI, Yoshimi(Associate Professor, Media Education)[Division of Research and Development for In-Service Teachers]
MAEHARA, Kenji(Professor, Educational Administration)

student aﬀairs: the examination oﬃce, counselling
services, coordination of school internships etc.
Being an interdisciplinary institution, the ZLSB
coordinates research and development projects inteacher training. Its own research mainly deals witharising questions in the context of teacher training
courses and teacher training research (empiricalsurveys on studentsʼ choice of degree courses,
study behaviour, study termination, skill-building
development throughout oneʼs studies, lateralentry into the teaching profession).
Besides many other tasks and challenges, the
ZLSB is engaged in the cooperative project“Synergetic Teacher Training” (TUD-Sylber). This
project is funded by the Federal Ministry of
Education and Research as a part of a nation-wide
quality
improvement
campaign
named
Qualitätsoﬀensive Lehrerbildung (Teacher Training
Quality Campaign). TUD-Sylber contains of 16
sub-projects, that are located in all teacher training
faculties.
The
Projectmanagement
andcoordination are established at the ZLSB.
The sub-projects are working on three main tasks:First focal point is organisational development inuniversityʼs teacher training structures. That
includes to set up a graduate forum for young
investigators in educational sciences and subject
didactics as well as a centralised Academic Aﬀairs
Oﬃce for all teacher students.Additionally, theproject aims at establishing institutions in which
intensiﬁed communication, networking andcollaboration of the numerous involved players inteacher training take place.
Second focal point of TUD-Sylber is a sustainable
quality improvement in teacher training courses.
Researchers and lecturers develop new teaching
formats, i.e. with the use of classroom videos. Others
are working on the integration of relevant new issues
in the teacher training curricula, such as inclusive
education or teaching in multi-grade classes.
Third focal point is regional networking. Against
the background of a critical demographic
development in rural areas in the federal state of
Saxony, a closer cooperation of TU Dresden withschools, municipalities, cultural institutions andothers is needed to ensure a well working
educational system in these regions.
編集・発行
The CCT is produced by the Curriculum Center for Teachers,
東京学芸大学教員養成カリキュラム開発研究センター
Tokyo Gakugei University.
編集協力
Editor: Yoshimi Uesugi
東京学芸大学／美術・書道講座／青山司研究室／青山司／大浦恵実

Designer: Tsukasa Aoyama and Emi Oura

＊ご不要の方はその旨を以下の連絡先にお知らせください。
(Aoyama Lab., Calligraphy and Arts, Taxonomy, Tokyo Gakugei University)

Curriculum
Center for Terachers, Tokyo Gakugei University
184-8501 東京都小金井市貫井北町４−１−１
4-1-1
Nukui-kitamachi
Koganei, Tokyo 184-8501 Japan
東京学芸大学教員養成カリキュラム開発研究センター
Tel:
81-42-329-7776
Fax: 81-42-329-7786
Tel: 042-329-7776 Fax: 042-329-7786
Email:
currict@u-gakugei.ac.jp
E-mail: currict@u-gakugei.ac.jp
Website:http://www.u-gakugei.ac.j/~currict/english/index.html
Web: http://www.u-gakugei.ac.jp/~currict/index.html