This study examined effective means of preparatory learning for upcoming classroom instructions. In a summer seminar on history, 76 junior high school students were assigned to three experimental groups: the answering pre-questions group, the rating confidence group, and the answering and rating confidence group. The results showed that answering…

In this article, we analyze and compare photographic images from some of the most widely circulated Japanese and American high school history textbooks regarding their treatment of the Pacific War. We focus on the visual component of war technology, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the visibility or invisibility of women,…

This paper investigates the different ways in which the Battle of Okinawa in World War II is presented in and beyond formal education, using narratives and photos in Japan's state-authorized history textbooks and at a local museum. Specifically, this study examines 15 upper secondary school textbooks issued by six publishing companies from across…

A highly distinctive and structured approach to teacher development, Lesson Study emerged in Japan but has since been adopted much more widely and now sees growing interest in the UK. Tony McConnell, Davinia Daley, Rebecca Levy, Lisa Waddell and Richard Waddington describe the process by which their school first investigated and then adopted…

Teaching about the comfort women of World War II offers a compelling case study for the social studies classroom and human rights education. The topic will educate students to become knowledgeable about the larger world and its dark histories that have been omitted or scarcely mentioned in U.S. history textbooks. This article provides high school…

This historical study reflects on history curriculum debates over the last 20 years in Taiwan. To open up possibilities for contemporary Taiwanese to rethink themselves in terms of national culture and subjectivity, this paper explores the construction of Taiwanese subjectivity in the past. It focuses on the history of Taiwan under Japanese…

Informed by recurring international controversies, this study explores representations of the Second World War as official history in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean secondary-level textbooks and theorizes about how they influence and function as collective memories about this time period. Using grounded theory, it finds that the examined Japanese…

Given California's role in the Pacific economy, its historic Asian heritage, and the strong and growing presence of Asian communities and businesses in the state, it is imperative that students statewide understand the history of Asia. Unfortunately, the California state curricular framework and standards in history and social science limit the…

History praxis can transform perceptions of the "other" by reshaping ideas about events transpiring between groups. Nevertheless, peace education research has rarely examined history teaching. This article addresses the potential for teaching peace through history teaching. After laying out a conceptual framework for understanding the…

Trinity College Dublin was proud to host, in April 2016, the Second International Conference on Telecollaboration in Higher Education, with the theme "New Directions in Telecollaborative Research and Practice." Over two and a half days, 150 participants offered 95 research presentations, posters, and "problem shared" sessions.…

Secondary school history textbooks in South Korea, Japan, and the United States have long struggled to give meaning and significance to the war waged on the Korean Peninsula between 1950 and 1953. Comparing commonly-used, contemporary history textbooks from each of these three nations, this analysis suggests that students on both sides of the…

According to the California Department of Education's Curriculum Framework, the secondary curriculum for grades nine through twelve is geared toward students who are beginning "to develop [an] abstract understanding of historical causality--the often complex patterns of relationships between historical events, their multiple antecedents, and…

Japan has often been criticized for allegedly teaching its schoolchildren about the history of Imperial Japan 1895-1945 in selective and misleading ways. Is this criticism justified, and how does it compare with the record of another former colonial power in East Asia: England? International criticism of history teaching in England has been…

What would you expect the differences to be between Japan and England in how pupils learn history in the post-14 phase? Perhaps your guess would be: Japanese school students learn a lot of historical facts and focus upon their own identity and English school students talk a lot more in lessons and are more concerned with justifying opinions using…