Education for sustainable development (ESD) has for decades been a focus internationally and has been embraced in the Japanese curriculum since 2008. Given UNESCO's emphasis on teacher training for ESD and well-established in-service teacher training programmes in Japan, the aim of this study is to explore whether ESD teacher training could help…

The need to support those teaching in English-medium instruction (EMI) classrooms is becoming increasingly acknowledged, and faculty professional development (PD) is recognised as an important element of that support. This study, a replication and localisation of an international study by Macaro et al. (2020. "English Medium Instruction in…

This study examines the effectiveness of a simultaneous intervention in kindergarten and home to improve ball skills in children. Two kindergartens in Ibaraki, Japan, were divided into intervention (N = 98, mean age = 5.5 [0.6] years) and control groups (N = 88, mean age = 5.6 [0.6] years). The intervention was for 4 weeks. Parents received emails…

The role of teachers in education is widely acknowledged in educational studies that routinely find that quality of teaching is fundamental to student success. Accordingly, this study set out to examine and describe the professional development of teachers in countries where students perform better in the PISA assessment, namely, Finland, Estonia,…

In 1997, the Industrial Technology Education Association of Taiwan (ITEA-Taiwan) hosted the 1997 International Conference on Technology Education in the Asia-Pacific Region (ICTE) in Taipei. The ICTE constitution was signed and the Association to Association mode was formed at that conference. This mode has provided the technology educators in the…

Education for international understanding in Japan was focused to develop its own national identity as well as to recognize its coexistence through intercultural education. Then, we have investigated the opinions of Japanese school teachers in terms of their recognition of the necessary content to introduce school instruction of intercultural…

This article examines contributions to the ethic and practice of cosmopolitanism by Japanese educators Makiguchi Tsunesaburo, Toda Josei and, most significantly, Ikeda Daisaku. Collectively, they are "the philosophers of the Soka movement" that Rizvi and Choo refer to in their call for a special issue on "Asian…

In this paper, the trends and issues of teacher education research and practices in Japan are clarified from the viewpoint of the digitization of the educational environment. This will be achieved through a review of the literature and policy documents on recent educational practices and teacher education. Firstly, Japanese teacher education and…

The purpose of this paper is to describe the historical development of science teacher education in pre-service and in-service education in Japan with a focus on the systemic changes and teachers' professional learning culture. The characteristics of science teacher education generally are elucidated through an analysis of the system and…

In this article, teacher education reforms in Germany were analysed from a Japanese outsider's viewpoint. To describe the feature of "Germany" is never easy because of its diversity; however, from an outsider's viewpoint, certain unified features can be made clear. The symbol of today's reform is the teacher education standards from…

Japanese lesson study has attracted many international educators who have been impressed by its capacity to foster student learning and sustained professional growth of teachers. This paper reports a study on its cultural orientations that may explain why lesson study works seamlessly in Japan. Hofstede's dimensions of national culture are…

In this paper, we first present a theoretical approach to study mathematics teacher knowledge and the conditions for developing it, which is firmly rooted in a systemic approach to didactic phenomena at large, namely the anthropological theory of the didactic. Then, a case of open lesson is presented and analysed, using this theoretical approach,…

This study was undertaken to examine the influence that a set of Professional Development (PD) initiatives had on faculty use of Moodle, a well-known Course Management System. The context of the study was a private university in Japan that specializes in languages. Specifically, it aimed to identify the way in which the PD initiatives adhered to…

This study explores collaborative online learning experiences of Japanese in-service teachers. Since 2009, Japanese teachers are required to take 30-hour of mandatory professional development seminars every 10 years. It has been four years since the seminars were required and one third of Japanese teachers choose to take those seminars via…

Lesson study developed organically in Japan over a period of 140 years, whereas in Indonesia, lesson study was introduced as a top-down initiative. This research explores beyond general cultural differences by illustrating how the daily concerns of teachers and their social interactions differ in Japan and in the case of an Indonesian school, the…