English Edition
No. 6 December 2011

A Massive Complex Disaster, Teacher and School,
Hatsuo Mitsuishi
and Teacher Education
Curriculum Center for Teachers, Tokyo Gakugei University

There was a six grade teacher who encouraged children to draw
pictures with the theme of “kizuna” (bonds) and tried to display
them on a classroom wall. One of three cheerful girls explainedthat they drew pictures of their families, wishing “My dad and I
could ﬁnd my missing mom and live a happy life together.” ̶What did the teacher do with the pictures?
Looking at the pictures, the home-room teacher was unable topost them, shedding tears that “I have understood nothing.”(“NHK Special” re-aired on September 19, 2011)

On the occasion of a massive complex disaster like this, what
would I have done? While such an “imaginary” question has
been asked over and over again, the Curriculum Center for
Teachers too has asked itself what teachers, schools, and“people involved in education” should do and think. In thepreceding issue of this newsletter, we received a report on theactual conditions of disaster areas from Prof. Kenichi Tabata,Miyagi University of Education. Thanks to his great cooperation and help, we also had an opportunity to visit threeschools in Sendai and Ishinomaki cities. Realizing that our
impressions might be localized and fragmentary, we started
over by asking people who suffered from the disaster to give
their perceptions of life and work before and after “March 11”
as a member engaged in teacher education: (i) What do you
think of the roles and functions of teachers and schools? (ii)
How do you feel about the relations with parents, citizens,and local communities? and (iii) What and how do future
people involved in education envision how teachers andschools should be?
On August third and fourth, we (Center Director Prof. Sakai ,Prof. Iwata, Prof. Tabata, and I) made a visit to Y elementary
school near the coast of Sendai city, T elementary school near
the Tohoku Shinkansen Sendai Station, and I prefectural highschool. The buildings of Y elementary school had been madeunusable by the tsunamis. I high school had been affectedby seawater inundation of the school buildings. T elementary
school had voluntarily made the school buildings “open to
the public” as an evacuation center near Sendai Station andhad served that role for about two weeks.

In the case of Y elementary school, all homes had been
affected by the tsunamis. We were unable to even step into
the area around the school at the time of the visit. On the dayof the earthquake, facing the dilemma of having to evacuate
children but having no time for discussion, the principal used
his head when he heard “What are you doing? Tsunami arecoming!” He went beyond the conventional limits of instruction, ignoring the usual guide of “The rule says this.” For teachers engaged in educational activities during the disasterstricken life afterwards, he pointed out the importance tocontinue to have a sense of purpose and “fulﬁllment.” Telementary school voluntarily made a part of the schoolbuildings “open to the public” before receiving a request to set
up an evacuation center. Based on his own experience following the Chile Earthquake and its consequent tsunami, theprincipal assembled children in the middle of the schoolyard
and handed them over to their parents, or took them to theirhomes. It was just before seven the next morning when thelast one went home. In addition, the principal supplied anddistributed food and played a role of addressing complaints.
He placed an emphasis on “a proud sense of mission.” Theprincipal of I high school coped with difﬁcult situations suchas obtaining water and heaters and making rules for disasterstricken life by gathering together teachersʼ knowledge under
the circumstances that the whole area including the schoolbuildings was inundated by more than 1 m of water. He said
what he noticed from observing the teachers who sought thebest direction was the ﬂexibility that made use of their expertise, such as that of electrical technology, under restrictedcircumstances that were clearly out-of-the-ordinary.
In “Manual of Tsunami Disaster Education“ (2009) publishedby Kamaishi city, which escaped the massive tsunami disaster,
readers are encouraged and advised to “Do the best you canin the situation.” The “maximum” voluntary judgment isnecessary in a society with a high risk of widespread naturaland random disasters of human or infrastructural origin. I thinkthat every piece of varied experience and knowledge related
to a location surely accumulates as a primal experience, but animportant task is how to adapt and embody them in thechallenges of teacher education.

New International Visiting Professor
Dr. Shuwen Li Northeast Normal University, China

I am Shuwen Li from Northeast Normal University.
After graduating from
Yitong Normal School of
Jilin province in 1981, I
worked in a district middle
school as a mathematics
teacher. Through teaching
and learning mathematics,
I became increasinglyinterested in mathematics
teaching methods. During 1984‒1988, I studied for abachelorʼs degree in the Department of Mathematics at
Northeast Normal University and later worked as a teacher
there. During 1996‒2000, I studied for a masterʼs degree at
Miyagi University of Education in Japan. Subsequently, I
returned to Northeast Normal University and worked totrain middle school teachers. In 2006, I obtained a Ph.D. in
Education from the School of Education Science at Northeast Normal University.
Since 1996, when I studied at Miyagi University of Education, I conducted a comparative study of primary andsecondary school mathematics education of Japan and
China. Later, I conducted research on a comparative studyof Japanese and Chinese mathematics education, whichcentered on current primary and secondary school mathematics curriculum goals, contents and layout, etc., andon primary and secondary school mathematics textbook
composition as well as writing characteristics and otherskills. Consequently, I identiﬁed the primary features ofmathematics curricula and textbooks and differences in
the course contents and the layout.
In addition, I conducted a study of mathematics
problem-solving, and investigated and analyzed therelation of problem-solving and cognitive structure andthe inﬂuence of meta-cognition and solving strategy on
problem-solving. Moreover, I studied the differences
between characteristics of successful students and thoseof failing student in terms of problem-solving and learning
methods for successful problem-solving. Furthermore, I
studied solving strategies and difﬁculties confronted by
students in mathematics problem-solving from theperspective of comparative culture. Mainly, I speciﬁcallyexamine middle school students' problem-solving
strategies and difﬁcult points, I investigate and analyze
mathematical problem-solving teaching and studentsʼ
problem-solving behavior from the perspective of a"hidden curriculum" related to students' mathematics
learning environment.
It is my honor and challenge to work as a Visiting Professor here. I will take this opportunity to continue my investigation of the research topics described above. I will also
start my study of teacher education. I am very pleased to
be able to work with you here. Thank you.

New Internal Visiting Professor

Dr. Li Zang Tokai University Junior College

My name is ZANG Li. I have been working at the Center as a
Visiting Professor since July of this year. After having taught at auniversity in China for 11 years, I have been involved in earlychildhood teacher education in Japan for ﬁve years. Working
for the Center is a new challenge for me. I appreciate yourkindness during my stay.
In recent years, studies of education and teacher educationin East Asia are increasingly ﬂourishing in the course of the riseof Asian universities and the emerging of an idea of an East
Asian Community. Particularly, educational reform and teacher
education reform are being implemented at a dramatic rate in
China, where the economy has been growing rapidly. Under
what concept, for good or for bad, have the reforms in China
been brought about? How do Chinese people perceive andevaluate the reforms? I think that understanding these things
can be a stimulus and reference for Japan, where people areinﬂuenced similarly by Confucianism and where popular
images of education and teachers in the back of their mind aresimilar. In addition, the need is apparently rising. However,
although both Japan and China are located in East Asia,
differences exist between the two countries in terms of perceptions and thoughts about education and teacher and ways ofthinking about things resulting from situational and living
environment differences. For example, their images of teachers
are identical with regard to the basic premise: a teacher should

be an “education expert”
showing enthusiasm and asense of mission, specialized
knowledge, educational skills,
and understanding of children.
However, aside from those,
there is apparently a tendency:
Japan places emphasis on ateacherʼs “collaborative nature,”
whereas China attaches weight
to a teacherʼs “quality as an
exemplar.” These commonalities and differences exist. Therefore, we can view teacher education from both Japanese andChinese perspectives and review ourselves by stimulating andreferring to each other. Furthermore, if we take each otherʼscommonalities and differences as a research perspective, it will
be an opportunity for teacher education and studies of teacher
education not to be a national challenge but to pose a broader,
common challenge for all humanity.
I have spent half of my life in China and the other half in Japan.
From now on, using my experience and language abilities, I am
going to devote my small strength to education and teacher
education in Japan and China and the studies of them, pointing
to human commonality to the greatest degree possible.

My Impressions from a Visiting Survey of the Education
Bureau of Huanren County, Liaoning Province, China
Kenji Maehara

Curriculum Center for Teachers, Tokyo Gakugei University

In late September of this year, as part of our joint research
project, we visited the Academy for Research in Teacher
Education of Northeast Normal University, and participated inresearch reporting, consultation conferences, and practiceteaching observation. In the ﬁrst half of the schedule, I took a
postgraduate student with me and visited Huanren County,
Liaoning Province, which is one of areas for the UGS experiment conducted by Northeast Normal University. We
conducted four interview surveys, including one with the
Director of the County Education Bureau.
The UGS experiment of Northeast Normal University is an
exchange program in which the university, the County
Education Bureau (Government), and schools in speciﬁc areas
mutually cooperate, mainly through teaching practice.
Student teachers are scheduled to attend the training campstyle practice for about two months.
The straight line distance on the map is approximately 200
km from the university to Huanren County, which we visited.
Northeast Normal University is a political, economic, andcultural center in northeastern China and is located in Changchun, the capital of Jilin Province, which is also an important
place for various means of transportation. The city has large
population and, naturally, numerous schools. Given that fact,
why are student teachers sent away to provinces far fromthere? The university side has difﬁculty in ﬁnding schools to
accept teaching practice in a big city like Changchun partly
because of the unwillingness of studentsʼ parents to participate. Meanwhile, on the acceptance side, there is a sense of
welcoming student teachers as a kind of cultural stimulation.
In addition, a system exists by which researchers of Northeast
Normal University provide menus of in-service teacher
training for the UGS experiment areas. They reported that
because Northeast Normal University had people involved incurriculum policy at the Chinese national or province levels
and leading researchers in the ﬁeld of lesson study, it was aInterior view of a highschool classroom: Morethan 50 students study ina classroom, which is thesame size as a Japaneseclassroom. Lessons are
conducted at a fast pace,giving one an impressionofcramming
both
qualitatively and quantitatively.

great advantage to receive instruction preferentially fromthese lecturers.
The Education Bureau of Huanren County is in a complex
facility called the Educational Field. In addition to the education
bureau, a facility for in-service teacher training (designated as a“teacher training school”) and hotel for training participants arearranged on vast grounds (For your information, lodging is free
for training participants.). To see the completeness of the facilities,
the bustle of the cityʼs main streets, and groups of buildings underconstruction, the city gave an impression of being like a regionalcore city in Japan. However, the city was positioned there as “acountryside with brutal trafﬁc.” Even TV and the internet havebeen sufﬁciently widespread, although a huge disparity remains
in terms of the cultural capital environments concentrated on
education. We thought that this point‒‒the extent to which we
grasp and truly realize the degree of disparity in the cultural
capital environments in different regions of vast China‒‒wasfundamentally important to understand the signiﬁcance of the
combination of teacher training and in-service teacher training in
the UGS experiment areas, as well as broadly understanding
education in China.
We plan to undertake a joint research project with the
Academy for Research in Teacher Education of Northeast Normal
University for a period of about three years. Please contact theCenter if you are interested in participating in the project.

Expectations for the Curriculum teachers, including teaching certiﬁcate renewal courses. (6)The use of ICT by and teaching ability of teachers must be
Center for Teachers
improved.
Yozo Takino

Osaka Kyoiku University

Member of the Advisory Boardfor the Curriculum Center for Teachers
I devote attention to the following matters with regard toteacher education. (1) Qualitative and quantitative examinations have been required for curriculums in relation toacademic achievement. (2) Because of changes to the title of
the School Health and Safety Act, school safety, such as
disaster prevention education and mental care in schools,
must be promoted. (3) Speciﬁc countermeasures by teachers
are expected for developmental disorders, child abuse, andsuicide. (4) Since the Education Personnel Certiﬁcation Act
was revised in 1998, students have come to have more
opportunities to receive practical training at educational sites,such as teaching practice and care experience because ofcooperation of universities, boards of education, and otherbodies and organizations. Consequently, more support foradvisers is needed. (5) Ideal means for various training for

Each problem and challenge is a matter for which early
response is expected. We expect the Curriculum Center for
Teachers to play a role in leading and supporting teacher
training courses at university through active and speedy
proposals and consultations.
The Great East Japan Earthquake this time put many
schools in a crisis situation. People involved in education areconcentrating on early recovery for children to have a safe
and secure school life. Under the emergent circumstances,many teachers are additionally deployed to affected areas tocarry out emergency response. In Hyogo prefecture, after theGreat Hanshin Earthquake, teachers for education restoration,
who were in charge of schoolchildrenʼs psychological careand disaster prevention education, had been deployedadditionally for 15 years. We also expect the Center to undertake a role as a specialized institution that can archive such
experience and learning in a usable form and provide timely
support at the time of a crisis, including provision of information according to the needs of each area and implementationof teacher training and consultation.

Sites Where Teachers Are
NurturedMorio Muramatsu

Principal, Kodaira 14th Elementary School, Tokyo

All teachers in our school open their classrooms to the public
and observe each otherʼs classrooms. The challenge has twogoals: to enhance their abilities for practicing class lessons andfor grasping childrenʼs learning status. We believe that enhancing these abilities can lead each of the schoolchildren toacquire “solid academic ability.”
We see so-called “jugyo ryoku (teaching ability)” from thefollowing two aspects and take the view that both aresupported by the “conditions supporting lesson plan andpractice”: (1) the “abilities for lesson plan and construction”
which are related to planning lessons; and (2) the “abilities for

Terminology of Teacher Education
Professional Development School
The Professional Development School (PDS) is a school established withthe aim of professional growth of teachers based on a cooperative
system of three parties: university teachers, school teachers, and school
administrators who are involved in teacher education. Not only doteachers of PDSs undertake educational practice for schoolchildren andstudents; they constantly develop teaching professional knowledge
through making reﬂections about their own practices. They are
growing as professionals in coming and going between the two.

Events Calendar
Lecturelesson practice and development” which are associated withpracticing lessons. Below is a simple table of the idea.
Abilities for lesson planand construction
1 Clariﬁcation of lesson goals
2 Creation of evaluation
criteria, etc.
3 Grasping of learning status
4 Understanding of learning
content(5‒10 omitted)

Abilities for lesson practiceand development
1 Basic understanding ofschoolchildren
2 Ways of talking to schoolchildren, etc.
3 Basic teaching skills
4 Higher level teaching skills
5 Flexible teaching

Conditions supporting lesson plan and practice
1 Eagerness and enthusiasm for study and training
2 Securing time to spend on study and training
3 Establishing systems for routine classroom observation andlesson study
Not only the lesson study described above, we plan toimplement in the future the “konai ichinichi ryugaku seido(system of one day studying abroad within the school)”
routinely. It is a system by which ﬁrst-year and second-year
teachers receive instruction, from morning to the time to go
home, from our in-house teachers who have more than 10
years of teaching experience. Teachers should act always
keeping in mind an attitude to continue to learn. We address
the challenge taking this as the most important point of all.
Advocated in “Tomorrows̀ Teachers,” a report released by the HolmesGroup in the United States in 1986, PDSs have been spreading, mainly inthe country. However, diverse interpretations of PDS do exist and thereal conditions are complicated.
“Teacher Development Schools (TDSs),” which can be designated as
an “East Asian version” of PDS, are spreading throughout China partly
because of the backing of the Chinese Society of Education. According
to Professor Wang Chang Chun (Capital Normal University) who isleading TDSs, the aim here is not merely to cultivate professional
competencies, but to develop a “teacher as self” comprehensively. This
point attracts attention because it is also related to differences in imagesof teachers that held in the East and the West. (Yasuyuki Iwata)

Lecture14:30-16:30, Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Mathematics Teacher Training in China

18:00-20:30, Friday, February 17, 2012

Dr. Shuwen Li (Northeast Normal University)

Dr. Naomi Miyake (University of Tokyo)

Lectures are held at the Curriculum
Center for Teachers.

Lesson Study and Cognitive Psychology
Staﬀ of Curriculum Center for Teachers
Director

SAKAI, Toshiki(Professor, History Education and Korean Education)

Center Researchers[Division of Curriculum Research and Development]
MITSUISHI, Hatsuo (Professor, Curriculum Studies)
KANEKO, Mariko(Associate Professor, Educational Sociology)[Division of Teacher Preparation Research and Development]
IWATA, Yasuyuki(Associate Professor, Historical Studies of Teacher Education)
UESUGI, Yoshimi(Associate Professor, Media Education)[Division of Research and Development for In-Service Teachers]
MAEHARA, Kenji(Associate Professor, Educational Administration)

The CCT is produced by the Curriculum Center for Teachers,
Tokyo Gakugei University.
Editor: Yoshimi Uesugi
Designer: Tsukasa Aoyama and Xiaohui Zhang(Aoyama Lab., Calligraphy and Arts, Tokyo Gakugei University)
Curriculum Center for Teachers, Tokyo Gakugei University
4-1-1 Nukui-kitamachi Koganei, Tokyo 184-8501 Japan
Tel: 81-42-329-7776

Fax: 81-42-329-7786

E-mail: currict@u-gakugei.ac.jp
Website: http://www.u-gakugei.ac.jp/˜currict/english/index.html