Effectiveness of the University of the Air of Japan

The University of the Air of Japan (UAJ) was founded with the idea of creating a university that is open to everybody in the country. In order to realize this objective, the university will expand its operation so it can provide education nationwide. However, the nationwide expansion will require many resources to be created and maintained. It is necessary to assess the effects of the education of UAJ to justify the expansion of its operation.This study aims at quantitative evaluation of the monetary and nonmonetary effects of the education offered by UAJ. In order to find the educational effects, questionnaires were sent to the UAJ graduates, and the responses were analyzed. Monetary effects were expressed by human capital value calculated with the data on the annual earnings of the graduates. When the UAJ graduates were compared with general workers that have the same educational background as that of the UAJ graduates before the enrollment, the graduates of UAJ have more human capital value than the general workers. However, the human capital value of the UAJ graduates who had not received a college degree before the enrollment is smaller than that of the graduates of conventional universities. In respect of nonmonetary effects, the UAJ is most likely to have impacts that are different from those of conventional universities because of the varied characteristics of the UAJ students. Therefore, we set the categories of the students' expectations from the gathered data, and attempt to determine if the university is meeting the needs of the students. As a result, it was made clear that UAJ education does meet students' expectations of cultivation and convenient study conditions, but does not satisfy their expectations of occupational advancement.     

Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense: Deweyan Growth in an Age of Nihilism

In the context of contemporary nihilistic tendencies in democracy and education, Dewey's pragmatism must respond to the criticism that it lacks a tragic sense. By highlighting the Emersonian perfectionist dimension latent in the concept of growth, this paper attempts to reveal a sense of the tragic in Dewey's work—his humble recognition of the double nature of democracy as both attained and unattained. It is precisely the lack of this sense of the tragic that characterises contemporary nihilism. In resistance to this, Deweyan growth points to a perfectionist education committed to the re–awakening of intensity of impulse.     

Assessing the effectiveness of a hybrid-flipped model of learning on fluid mechanics instruction: overall course performance,homework, and far- and near-transfer of learning

To examine the impact of a hybrid-flipped model utilising active learning techniques, the researchers inverted one section of an undergraduate fluid mechanics course, reduced seat time, and engaged in active learning sessions in the classroom. We compared this model to the traditional section on four performance measures. We employed a propensity score method entailing a two-stage regression analysis that considered eight covariates to address the potential bias of treatment selection. First, we estimated the probability score based on the eight covariates, and second, we used the inverse of the probability score as a regression weight on the performance of learners who did not select into the hybrid course. Results suggest that enrolment in the hybrid-flipped section had a marginally significant negative impact on the total course score and a significant negative impact on homework performance, possibly because of poor video usage by the hybrid-flipped learners. Suggested considerations are also discussed.     

Form and sound similarity effects in kanji recognition

Four experiments are reported here to address the question of whether figurative and phonological processing based on sub-word components (radicals) interact in the recognition of Japanese kanji characters. A delayed matching task was used in which two briefly exposed source characters (e.g., ), each made up by two radicals, were followed by a probe character (e.g., ) which in critical conditions was different from the source characters. The task of the subject was to decide whether the probe was one of the two source characters. When a probe was figuratively similar to the source display, the homophonic relatedness between source and probe characters elicited more false responses to the probe. However, no homophony effect was found when the probe was dissimilar to the source display. Further, the false alarm rates in the homophone condition with figurative similarity was shown to be sensitive to proportion of homophonous trials in negative sets. The results suggest that phonological information of both whole character and of components was automatically activated despite experimental tasks in which subjects were given little incentive to execute phonetic processing. It is concluded that the interaction of figurative and phonological processing is due to mutual activation of the whole character and its radical(s) in the process of word identification in kanji. The results are considered within an interactive-activation framework with fore- and background activation device in multilevels.     

A study of the partnership between schools and universities to improve science and mathematics education in Indonesia

This paper examines what kinds of impacts a school–university partnership has on schoolteachers and university faculty members, and what types of challenges and tasks exist. The results show the following: (1) joint lesson planning, observation, and reflection, called piloting activities (PA) have succeeded in improving teaching methodologies; (2) faculty members and teachers generally regarded the students under PA as being more participative; (3) it is necessary to ensure linkages between materials and students, as well as between students; and (4) PA resulted in the development of collegiality within schools and between faculty members and teachers.     

Lesson study for learning community (LSLC): conceptualising teachers’ practices within a social justice perspective

Under neo-liberal policies in many countries, there has been an extensive trend of educational reform which intensifies competition. Such educational reform is underpinned by direct government control, seen in centre to periphery forms of policy administration and implementation with strong emphasis on managerialism and test-oriented accountability models. There are critical views and opinions about such neo-liberal reforms, but a need still exists to discuss ways forward to protect the equality and right of teachers and student learners in schooling. This essay accordingly aims to discuss how the lesson study for learning community (LSLC) approach of school reform from Japan might signal a practical shift in emphasis away from competitive models of schooling fostered by school reform movements. The aim of this study is to discuss the philosophical underpinnings of LSLC, with particular emphasis on its social justice nature, particularly in reference to criticisms against neo-liberal reform agendas.     

Evolution From Collaborative Learning to Symbiotic E-learning： Creation of New E-learning Environment for Knowledge Society

For people who live in the knowledge society which have rapidly been changing, learning in the widest sense becomes indispensable in all phases of working, living and playing. The construction of an environment, to meet the demands of people who need to acquire new knowledge and skills as the need arises, and enlighten each other regularly, is becoming very important. Thus, we hope to make the best use of the advantages of a rich e-learning environment which aims at ＂anytime, anywhere and anybody＂ learning, because participants in lifelong learning for the knowledge society demand to learn at the right place and right time, and with learning content, they can select themselves. However, in a general e-learning environment so far, because the situation is usual in which the instructor is absent and has the asynchronous access without an immediate communication with others, the participants tend to be solitude and it is difficult to maintain the learning motivation. Therefore, the creation of a new e-learning environment becomes extremely important in which various participants can learn and enlighten each other through an occasional and helpful interaction among them in appropriate learning communities in the network environment. In this paper, we present 5 points as basic requirements for the construction of an e-learning environment which can satisfy the various learning demands of the knowledge society, and discuss how to realize them. The key point here is the extension of the usual ＂strong＂ collaborative learning to effective ＂weak collaborative learning＂. In addition, the evolution of ＂symbiotic learning＂ for the knowledge society, that is, the necessity of ＂symbiotic e-learning environment based on occasional collaborative relationship＂ and its effective realization are discussed.     

The Origin of Representational Drawing: A Comparison of Human Children and Chimpanzees

To examine the evolutional origin of representational drawing, two experiments directly compared the drawing behavior of human children and chimpanzees. The first experiment observed free drawing after model presentation, using imitation task. From longitudinal observation of humans (N = 32, 11–31 months), the developmental process of drawing until the emergence of shape imitation was clarified. Adult chimpanzees showed the ability to trace a model, which was difficult for humans who had just started imitation. The second experiment, free drawing on incomplete facial stimuli, revealed the remarkable difference between two species. Humans (N = 57, 6–38 months) tend to complete the missing parts even with immature motor control, whereas chimpanzees never completed the missing parts and instead marked the existing parts or traced the outlines. Cognitive characteristics may affect the emergence of representational drawings.     

Contribution of Executive Functions to Learning Sequential Actions in Young Children

This study examined whether executive functions impact how flexibly children represent task context in performing repeated sequential actions. Japanese children in Experiments 1 (N = 52; 3–6 years) and 2 (N = 50, 4–6 years) performed sequential actions repeatedly; one group received reminders. Experiment 1 indicated that reminders promote flexible changes in contextual representations. Experiment 2 observed such effects in younger children and showed executive functions were associated with the flexible representation of task context. Reminders did not perfectly compensate for the role of executive functions but wiped out individual differences in executive functions that contribute to children’s acquisition of routines. Therefore, setting goals before context-dependent actions is necessary, but not sufficient, to modulate contextual representations in routines.     

Challenging common sense: Cases of school reform for learning community under an international cooperation project in Bac Giang Province, Vietnam

This paper aims to discuss the challenges in the process of building a learning community in Vietnamese primary schools. Five lessons emerge from the cases. First, changing teachers’ beliefs is time-consuming. Second, because of the reluctance of teachers to change, large-scale delivery of the educational project should be critically revisited with regard to its effectiveness. Third, learning community requires the building of trust among actors, including external resource persons. Fourth, external resource persons should continue learning sincerely to gain teachers’ trust. Fifth, the concept of sustainability should be revisited as something that is never-ending and that cannot reach perfection.