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The purpose of this paper is to explore ways to cultivate learners who can take part in inquiry, discussion, and action toward realizing an equitable society from the perspective of the SDGs and ESD. After confirming the importance of dealing with the concept of and the issues around equity with consideration of the mutual interdependence among all 17 SDGs, the paper notes that the "inclusive and equitable quality education" mentioned in SDG 4 is assumed to be achieved by the integrated improvement and organization of a variety of aspects, such as educational environment, policy, systems, budget, teachers, and competency development. Next, based on the importance of competency development of all learners through ESD, the paper demonstrates the potentials of objective-referenced assessment for ESD. Finally, the paper proposes a tentative idea on a set of objectives for lessons on equity from the perspective of ESD, as a useful way to develop school-based curricula of quality ESD at each school and to promote effective lessons on equity to prepare learners who can attain the necessary competencies and take part in inquiry, discussion, and action toward realizing an equitable society

In response to the economic pressures of globalisation, the Japanese government has sought to internationalise its universities while at the same time attempting to protect Japan's culture. To achieve its goals, namely the increase in the number of international students and the development of human resources, it has initiated a number of top-down, quantitative policies which promote the Internationalisation of Higher Education (IoHE) through an increase in the provision of English Medium Instruction (EMI) courses. This paper provides a critical analysis of the government's approach and how the policies have been implemented by universities. The paper contends that the government's approach has enabled universities, which do not wish to make substantive changes to their curricula, to peripheralise EMI courses. The consequence of this is that the government's current approach of promoting EMI to internationalise Japanese universities is unlikely to achieve its goals.

Using the contrast between "formal equality" and "equity," this study employs Amartya Sen's concept of capability to illustrate the relational structure of the distributive principle behind Japan's education system and policies, as well as its problems. In addition, it presents a practical principle and measures for implementing an educational system and policies that emphasize equity. The results demonstrate that Japan's educational system and policies emphasize formal equality and distribute goods on the principle of equity only to some children with difficulties. Additionally, a growing demand for both formal equality and equity has emerged in recent years. The reality, however, is a reciprocal relationship where the majority of students are still expected to achieve a high level of functioning, while "diverse learning spaces" are expanded for those children who cannot keep up. This paper explains that to move beyond this situation and realize an educational system and policies that emphasize equity and guarantee capability will be possible by ensuring that the distribution of goods and services for children with difficulties benefits all children. This can be accomplished by adopting the philosophy of "caring educational administration."

This paper reports on teacher research which explored the practicality and potential of World Englishes (WE)-informed pedagogy in the Japanese secondary education context. Based on qualitative data from written reflections and post-unit individual interviews with seven high school students in Japan, this paper presents students' perceptions of the English language, their learning of it, and its use, detailing the impact the instructional unit had on these students. The data showed that the unit enabled the students to critically reflect on ideologies surrounding the English language, heightening their awareness of the multiplicity and complexity of its use and users. In addition, increased desire to learn about different Englishes and improved perceptions toward students' own English were observed. However, the data also revealed an unexpected effect on one student's perception toward English, implying that the instructional unit might have stressed the significance and power of English over other languages. Drawing from these findings, pedagogical implications as well as future directions for English language education are discussed.

Japanese Lesson Study (JLS) is a professional development method, involving teachers collaboratively planning lessons, observing their enactment, then discussing observations of teaching and learning. This paper explores translation of JLS internationally, seeking to understand how and why it is adapted and how an understanding of national culture and implementation paradigms might support translation. We begin by examining evidence on adaptation and challenges of JLS implementation internationally, finding both deviation from the seven components of JLS, and qualitative evidence of perceived challenges to successful implementation. Further we explore two bodies of the literature explaining how and why such adaptations occur. First, implementation science reveals that full fidelity appears not to be amenable to the complexity of education innovations like LS, but that adaptation is fraught with challenges, with no linear pathway. Secondly, Hofstede's and colleagues' dimensions of culture enable us to hypothesise about how Japan's culture might have framed development of JLS, and to predict possible challenges when translated into a host nation. Finally, we hypothesize as to the relationship between adoption of either fidelity or adaptation implementation paradigms, and identified differences between Japan and the host nation's national culture, suggesting avenues for further research which may serve to test hypotheses empirically.

Teacher education has gathered interest globally and nationally among teachers, educators, researchers and policy makers. Madalinska-Michalak, O 'Doherty and Assuno Flores (2018) observe that regional/ national, social, economic, political and historical factors impact upon teacher education and 'it is also impacted by global problems and tendencies' (pp. 567). This paper builds on these debates and examines the effects of global discourses of teacher education in the national contexts of developed and developing countries, for example, Guyana, Japan, South Africa, United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK). This includes consideration of teacher education and training before and during the current global COVID-19 pandemic (UNESCO, 2020). The paper concludes that teacher education continues to be under scrutiny due to global and national expectations, the demand of and how they are positioned in preparing teachers for the 21st century. Notwithstanding, as globalisation becomes more integrated in societies globally teacher education curricula not only has to retain its emphasis on standards, but equally its agility to ensure that the needs of all learners are met.

This paper extracts the characteristics of the view of ability in educational practices during the period of rapid growth in Japan, focusing on the influence of these perceptions on the Ministry of Education's educational policies. The analysis draws on the debate about "vocational aptitude tests" and "observation guidance." Teachers' critical perceptions of "vocational aptitude tests" and "observation guidance" depend on their views of desirable ability. The main findings obtained are as follows. Since the 1990s, attention has been focused on non-cognitive ability; a similar view of ability (expansion of the view of ability) can be seen in educational practices in the 1960s. However, this expansion of the view of ability does not only appear in educational practices. According to the analysis of "ability and aptitude, etc." included in a reference document on observation guidance (presented by MoE, based on the French observation curriculum), an expansion of the view of ability can also be confirmed to be present in educational policy. The view of ability in educational practices may even coincide with that in educational policies.

In Japan, the complexity of the teaching profession has been downplayed in the course of repeated systemic reforms, wherein the profession is increasingly viewed as a technical operation. In response to this trend, the concept of "reflective practitioner" (Schön, D. A.) has been proposed as a counterpoint. While it has influenced the discussion of teacher education reform thereafter, it has also been coopted into what Gert Biesta calls "learnification" of teacher education. This paper outlines the trends and debates of teacher education reform in Japan and discusses ways to avoid the "learnification" of teacher education. This paper speaks directly to Item No. 1 of the 8 challenges put forward by the APJTE editors, which concerns the redefinition of teaching "as a technical operation aimed at the effective production of measurable learning outcomes" and its implications for teacher agency, identity and professionalism. It uses Japan as a case to depict the situation in which the trivialisation of teaching into a technical operation and the de-professionalisation of the teaching profession are proceeding not only through the action of educational policy but also through the interaction with discourses that are intended to criticise it.

This paper examines mechanisms in the Japanese education system that 'bring in' knowledge of practice to the process of policy translation. The paper firstly draws on the enactment of recent curriculum reforms in Japan to define a group of actors -- practitioner advocates -- who utilise their identity as members of the teaching community to mediate and translate policies, from a position outside the school and often outside the municipality. Their collaboration with school administrators and teachers effectuates policy transactions that make sense to teachers, developed in reference to knowledge of practice but legitimised in reference to policy, bending its meanings. Secondly, examining the work of practitioner advocates invites questions that might otherwise go unasked, and provides a fresh perspective on the particularity of the Anglo-American context. It draws attention to the possibility that the Anglo-American structural, institutional or cultural context is peculiarly susceptible to a kind of deliverological managerialism that shuts out experience of practice.

Against the contemporary background of international and national commitments to citizenship education for social justice, this paper examines and compares the subject, aim and extent of social justice in citizenship education behind official rhetorics in Japan and China. It develops a three-dimensional framework of social justice to analyse, through mixed methods of text analysis, a set of selected authoritative documents, including official policies, national curriculum guidelines and government-authorized textbooks. The results reveal discursive divergences and convergences between the Japanese and Chinese cases. Social justice in the Japanese discourse tends to be constructed as recognitive injustice eliminable through identical treatment towards one another by individuals. By contrast, social justice in the Chinese discourse tends to be constructed as distributive justice achievable through differential treatment by the party-state. Common to the two cases is that both pay scant attention to collective actions for and the global bearing of social justice. The paper argues that the two cases similarly stop short of promoting comprehensive, transformative and global social justice education.

Purpose: Given the increased emphasis on embedding the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) in the curriculum, research, engagement activities and operations of higher education institutions, this comparative study aims to replicate an earlier international study of Turnaround Leadership for Sustainability in Higher Education (TLSHE) in the unique context of Malaysia and Japan. This paper also presents a case for closer focus on developing Education for Sustainability (EfS) leaders in institutions of higher learning. Design/methodology/approach: This study is a quantitative comparative research. The authors collected data for EfS-related variables from lecturers affiliated with Malaysian and Japanese public and private universities. Building on the data and results from the TLSHE study, this study made a series of within- and between-sample descriptive comparisons from different angles and levels. To generalize the findings, this study used gender and experience outside higher education as control variables and compared the academics from the Malaysian and the Japanese institutions through the path modeling framework. Findings: The comparisons showed that except for two domains, namely, contextual factors influencing EfS leadership and the EfS leadership development approaches, the means of all other domains based on the data collected from the Malaysian sample were the highest, followed by means from the international TLSHE sample, and finally the means from the Japanese sample. This study also observed that transparency, engagement with EfS initiatives at different levels, passion for teaching and learning, and creative and lateral thinking were among the top indicators. The inferential tests revealed significant differences between the academics from Japan and Malaysia as well. Practical implications: The findings of the analyses can be used to ensure that the selection and development of EfS leaders (in this case, lecturers who may be formal or informal EfS leaders), not just at the central but at the local level in the distinctive context of Japan and Malaysia, focus on what counts and the good ideas embodied in the 17 UN SDGs are actually put into practice. This study has also highlighted the policy implications with respect to the gender and the previous work experience of lecturers outside higher education sector in more detail. Originality/value: This study compares the perceptions of two samples of academics from Asian countries with the perceptions of the international TLSHE sampled EfS leaders in terms of EfS leadership-related issues and therefore, increases the awareness of academic community in this regard. It also highlights the role of lecturers (e.g. professors) as intellectual academic leaders in achieving SDGs. Moreover, this study shows that lecturers' gender and previous work experience outside higher education should be considered when developing and implementing policies on EfS leadership.

Taking the UK and Japan as contrasting national case studies, this article supplements existing research into student migration by consolidating a regulatory perspective with individual narrative accounts. Reported here are the results of a mixed-methods two-phase study. Phase 1 is a concerted trajectory analysis of student migration policy in the UK and Japan from 2004 to 2018, while phase 2 draws on biographical-narrative interviews with 26 student-migrants. The paper reveals tangible effects of the receptivity, stability, and transparency of regulatory frameworks in student-migrants' trajectories, while also demonstrating that seemingly receptive regulatory environments do not necessarily equate to smooth and risk-free post-study transitions.

In this paper, "Teaching Expertise in Three Countries" project is used as an example to show the significance and contribution of international comparative research and to think about the possible implications for policy in early childhood education. The project studied the development of expertise in preschool teaching in Japan, China, and the United States by employing 'video-cued multivocal ethnography' to explore how teaching expertise is defined in each of these countries and what processes help teachers acquire advanced teaching skills. This project has shown similarities and culturally specific notions, in what the participants have to say about characteristics of less and more experienced teachers. These research findings raise issues and challenges in early childhood education that resonate with the situation not only in the three countries but also possibly in other countries, such as problematizing the role of remembering and reflection in professional practice and the value of experience.

International comparative ethnographic studies of ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) are difficult to conduct but worth the effort. Comparative studies featuring thick description and polysemic interpretations can challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, expand the menu of the possible, expose the provincialism of national approaches, and illuminate the global circulation of ECEC practices and ideas. Based on reflections on four major comparative international studies I have led, in this paper I describe effective strategies for conducting comparative ethnographic research in ECEC settings, explicate the rationale for doing so, and provide examples of how this approach can impact research, practice, and policy. Issues I address include the rationale for selecting countries for comparison, the formation of a research team, and distributing interpretive voice and power.

This paper aims to show the complex overlapping and interaction with exogenous influences in the processes of national policymaking by analysing a case of policy borrowing in Japan. Specifically, it explores the political circumstances under which the Council of Europe Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) was introduced to foreign language education policy at the national government level in Japan. The results suggest that the CEFR was borrowed selectively as a practical solution to achieve prolonged educational and political agendas promoted by multiple actors such as academics, the Ministry of Education (MEXT), and a group of politicians and business associations. This study moreover shows that the CEFR borrowing occurred under manifold interplays between multiple global education trends and domestic needs for Japanese citizens to acquire a practical communicative command of English to strengthen their international economic competitiveness.