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Objective: This study examined the educational gradient of health and mortality between two long-lived populations: Japan and the United States. Method: This analysis is based on the Nihon University Japanese Longitudinal Study of Aging and the Health and Retirement Study to compare educational gradients in multiple aspects of population health—life expectancy with/without disability, functional limitations, or chronic diseases, using prevalence-based Sullivan life tables. Results: Our results show that education coefficients from physical health and mortality models are similar for both Japan and American populations, and older Japanese have better mortality and health profiles. Discussion: Japan’s compulsory national health service system since April 1961 and living arrangements with adult children may play an important role for its superior health profile compared with that of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author comments on the review of the book "Educational Policies in Crisis: Japanese and American Perspectives," by William K. Cummings. It is critically important to note that this understanding of Japanese behavior is being done through Western lenses and meanings. This edited collection of papers gently pushes the reader to think critically about the notion of borrowing historically. As the book so aptly states, the stability of the Japanese curriculum is directly connected to the relative homogeneity of Japanese society. Unlike the multiethnic and multicultural society of the United States, Japan has a very high degree of uniformity, the dynamics of which people know very little about. In contrast, Japan's schools never allow ability grouping. What the teachers do is form mixed-ability groups to coach the slower members. Supposedly to avoid bias, Japanese teachers think of themselves as addressing the average student, and empirical data suggest that they spend the least amount of time with the top students in their classes.

How the relationship between status and divorce shifts over historical time among industrialized countries remains largely unknown. A socioeconomic growth hypothesis posits that a more recent marriage cohort (relative to a previous cohort) in an industrialized country exhibits (1) larger divorce-suppressive effects of husbands' and wives' higher level of education and (2) a shift from a pattern in which only husbands' education substantially influences the couples' likelihood of divorce to a pattern in which both spouses' education influences that likelihood. The author tests the need to modify this hypothesis to reflect the intervening influences of cultural-institutional arrangements using the United States and Japan. The author applies event history regressions to the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Japanese General Social Survey. Results from both countries suggest the needs for modifications and imply that divorce is increasingly tied to socioeconomic inequality in both industrialized countries, but in contrasting ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author argues that there is an ongoing debate among educators concerning the extent to which American educators can learn from East Asian school systems. Some social scientists argue that cultural differences make this impossible. Others argue that there are many ways that Americans can benefit. The author believes that both sides of this debate have a point. He therefore encourages educators to take a middle road. Learning from East Asian education systems is somewhat facilitated because in a number of respects, they were strongly and deliberately modeled after the Western educational rubric. Americans, in particular, were often at the forefront of developing East Asian education systems from the 1870s to the 1950s. However, there are cultural differences that limit the extent to which the United States can transfer various aspects of the East Asian rubrics. Therefore, the author provides guidance on what that middle road might be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article first describes the Japanese professional development practice of lesson study and its articulation within the Japanese educational system. Next, insights gained from an empirical study that explored the feasibility of lesson study in a U.S. setting are discussed. More specifically, challenges to lesson study practice are highlighted, with particular attention paid to the difficulties faced by American teachers in trying to adopt the research focus that is inherent in lesson study. The article concludes with reflections about what the study of lesson study can teach us about efforts to improve teaching, which, like lesson study, center on having teachers examine their practice or that of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author first describes the historical development of teacher education in Japan. He then analyzes selected similarities and differences between past and present Japanese and American teacher preparation practices. Ferguson concludes by describing the efforts of the Japanese to use and modify Western pedagogical concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese and American children's reasons for achievement and good conduct in school were compared. Fifth grade children (184 American and 399 Japanese) were asked the reasons for either their actions or their feelings about adhering to or violating classroom norms. Their open-ended responses were assessed both or the type of reason―external, internal, or emphatic―and for its target-authorities (parents, teacher) versus others, such as peers or self We asked about two aspects of achievement (academic performance and academic procedures) and about two aspects of conduct (social procedures and moral norms). A closed-ended questionnaire, Why I Do Things (an early version of Connell and Ryan's Academic Self Regulatory Style Questionnaire), was also used to assess achievement- relaxed reasons. As expected, Japanese children were less external in both their open-ended reasons for action and their closed-ended responses; on the whole, however, they did not differ from American children where reasons for feelings were at issue. Japanese children also focused on authority figures as targets in their open-ended reasons to a much greater extent than did American children. The difference between countries regarding targets was largest for academic performance norms. The discussion focused on how the findings may reflect stronger identification with adult authority on the part of Japanese children, especially with regard to academic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]