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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 a...

Daisaku Ikeda (b. 1928), Josei Toda (1900–1958), and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871–1944) are Japanese educators, Buddhist activists, and the progenitors of the global Soka movement for peace, culture, and education. As such, their perspectives and practices shape curriculum in multilingual, multicultural, and multiracial contexts around the world. While each has established his own unique ideas and contributions to curriculum, together they share important commitments and perspectives, introduced by Makiguchi and developed successively by Toda and Ikeda, that have had a remarkable impact on human being and becoming. Arguably the most important among these is the principle of value creation, or “sōka,” and its implications for value-creating approaches to education and the actualization of a meaningful, contributive, and genuinely happy life. Makiguchi was an elementary school teacher and principal who introduced his theory of value and value-creating pedagogy in the 1930 work Sōka kyōikugaku taikei, or The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy. Drawing on decades of his own classroom practice, Makiguchi distinguished truth, or facticity, from value, seeking to clarify the psychological processes of cognition and evaluation. While objective truth matters, he argued, it is not in and of itself the source of value or meaning in our lives. Rather, value is derived from the subjective and contingent meaning we create from that truth. Thus, Makiguchi maintained that creating value in terms of beauty, gain, and good—that is, value that serves oneself and others—is the means of cultivating happiness. Toda was a close colleague of Makiguchi and applied value-creating approaches to great success in his Jishu Gakkan, a tutorial school he founded. If Makiguchi introduced and practiced value-creating approaches at an individual level, and Toda applied them institution-wide, then Ikeda, who was Toda’s direct disciple, must be recognized for distilling them into their crystalline essence, expanding this essence globally, and memorializing it as the foundational ethos and namesake of the Soka schools and universities he founded. Moreover, whereas Makiguchi theorized value creation as a pedagogical concept and, with Toda, broadened it to include the realm of Buddhist humanism, Ikeda has continued and expanded upon these, also characterizing value creation as an ontological orientation for all people in all aspects of life, from children to senior citizens and from civil society to professionals and activists in areas ranging from peace, culture, and human rights to biospheric sustainability and social movements. In all this, value creation and value-creating approaches constitute a curriculum of content, context, engagement, agency, hope, and becoming for oneself and others.

The article offers a response to and discussion of the article "Studying Religion and Language Teaching and Learning: Building a Subfield" by Huamei Han in the current issue. The author says that both spirituality in a general sense and specific religions should be addressed in the research agenda Han's article proposes. The author also discusses the close relationship between Buddhism and education in Japanese culture and the how language education in relation to religion can contribute to a response to the challenges that nature faces in the Anthropocene.

This article calls on the field of TESOL to respond to the planet's growing climatic and ecological crisis, conceptualizing climate change beyond just standards-based language and content curriculum. Climate change is also cultural and religious, and thus warrants broader consideration in TESOL. Drawing on theories of value creation and creative coexistence, the author considers climate change socioculturally, epistemologically, and ontologically toward the development of a value-creative eco-ethical consciousness. The author concludes with a critical instrumental case study that used ethnographic and discourse analytic methods to examine the effects of a standards-based climate change unit among adolescent religious refugee English language learners (ELLs) from the former Soviet Union (FSU). Findings suggest these ELLs’ curricular engagement developed their language, literacies, and content knowledge relative to climate science. It also fostered transformed perspectives and value creation toward an eco-ethical consciousness consonant with their cultural religious identity expression. Intersecting multiple subareas of TESOL, including FSU learners, digital literacies, religion and spirituality, and standards-based approaches, the case study findings have potentially broader transferability implications beyond climate change and language learning and instruction.

In this article, the authors introduce and explicate Daisaku Ikeda’s contributions to peace education. Ikeda is a Buddhist leader, peacebuilder, school founder, and prolific author whose six decades of contributions to peace education have had a global impact in practice but have remained unexamined in the extant, particularly Anglophone, literature. Using excerpts and bilingual discourse analysis of the Ikeda corpus, the authors focus on five aspects to trace the past, present, and future of Ikeda’s contributions to peace education: first, they trace the biographical roots of Ikeda’s contributions to his early educational experiences and encounter with Josei Toda (1900–1958). Second, they outline the Nichiren Buddhist philosophy informing Ikeda’s approach to peace education. Third, they explicate in the context of peace and peace education Ikeda’s concept of value-creating, or Soka education (soka kyoiku) relative to value-creating pedagogy (soka kyoikugaku) theorized by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871–1944)...

In this article, the author examines Makiguchi Tsunesaburo's philosophy and practice of human geography (jinsei chirigaku), community studies (kyodoka), and composition instruction based on “value-creating pedagogy” (soka kyoikugaku) for thinking through and responding to two competing trends intersecting language, identity, and education in the contemporary United States—the politicized imagining of America and increasingly ineffective critical approaches to second language education. As the politicized imagining and language policies Makiguchi faced in wartime Japan are echoed, though in substantively different form, in the contemporary United States, the author draws on Makiguchi's own words in these areas to think through and suggest ways contemporary educators can “create value” from the two aforementioned trends intersecting language, identity, and education in the United States.

This special issue of Journal of Language, Identity, and Education focuses on the perspectives of Makiguchi Tsunesaburo (1871–1944), a Japanese schoolteacher, principal, and educational and religio...

This article focuses in two ways on Daisaku Ikeda (b. 1928) and language and culture education. First, the author excerpts Ikeda's translated and lesser-known Japanese speeches to explicate his view of world language learning and cultural exchange as curricular components of a broader educational philosophy for becoming “fully human.” Second, the author presents findings from a critical instrumental case study that used ethnographic and discourse analytic methods to examine how students realize Ikeda's philosophy through their language learning and study abroad experiences.

This article focuses on Daisaku Ikeda's (1928– ) philosophy and practice of intercultural dialogue—what I call ‘value‐creative dialogue’—as a new current in interculturalism and educational philosophy and theory. I use excerpts from Ikeda's writings to consider two aspects of his approach to dialogue. First, I locate his approach philosophically in Buddhism; in the examples of dialogue modeled by Ikeda's mentor, Josei Toda (1900–1958), and by Toda's mentor, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871–1944); and in Makiguchi's theory of value creation (soka) and value‐creating pedagogy. Second, I consider the multiple and value‐creative levels Ikeda's dialogues play. I conclude with implications of value‐creative dialogue in education in general and bilingual‐bicultural education in particular.

This essay review focuses on Daisaku Ikeda (b. 1928) and his curriculum of Soka, or value‐creating, education present in two works: Choose Life: A Dialogue (Toynbee & Ikeda, 1976) and Thoughts on Education for Global Citizenship (Ikeda, 1996b). In reviewing these works, the authors trace the biographical roots of Ikeda’s educational philosophy to his encounter with Josei Toda (1900–1958) and to the overwhelming concerns he has grappled with since childhood about the forces that ravaged his youth and family life; the authors also examine Ikeda’s concept of value‐creating education relative to value‐creating pedagogy theorized by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1981–1988) and suggest that Ikeda’s curriculum of Soka education is comprised of three key principles that also serve as its processes and goals—dialogue, global citizenship, and “human education” in the mentor–disciple relationship. The authors conclude with the implications of Ikeda’s curriculum of Soka education and of the two reviewed works.

This critical instrumental case study examines a transformative world language learning approach to a unit on culture in an introductory Japanese class in a public high school. Couched in recent post-9/11 language “policy” debates, which strikingly lack mention of religion, spirituality, or environmental issues of climate change and sustainability, this study examines how a transformative world language learning approach develops and identifies students' environmentally based spirituality and how students articulate such “ecospirituality” in their emerging, standards-based Japanese writing. Critical analysis of written, interview, and classroom data reveals that a transformative world language learning approach may be effective in bridging traditional written literacies with “ecospiritual literacies” in the world language classroom. It also provides a lens for students' socio-dialogic learning of environment-related vocabulary and their subsequent use of it in their Japanese writing. Finally, this study s...

This article examines Daisaku Ikeda’s (1928–) educational philosophies of human education (ningen kyoiku), human revolution (ningen kakumei), and creative coexistence (kyosei), as well as the mentor and disciple relationship undergirding them and his founding of the international Soka schools. The author considers these philosophies in response to John Dewey’s The Need for a Philosophy of Education and in anticipation of the symposium, “Reuniting Parker, Dewey, Makiguchi and Ikeda: Education for Community and Citizenship across Language and Culture,” to be sponsored by the Francis W. Parker School and the School of Education at DePaul University and to be held on March 26, 2011, at the Francis W. Parker School in Chicago, Illinois.

This article examines Francis W. Parker's (1837–1902) and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi’s (1871–1944) views of harmonious community life as the goal of education through bilingual analysis of Parker’s “My Pedagogic Creed” (1897) and Makiguchi’s On the Significance of Social Aspects that Mr. Parker Says Should be Incorporated into the School Experience (1897), Research on Instruction in the Multiple Grade Classroom (1897), The Practical Application of Social Pedagogy (1901), and Reforms in Geography Instruction from the Perspective of the Economy of Learning (1919), in relation to their major works. This examination reveals that although Makiguchi appropriated the phrase “harmonious community life” from Parker’s “My Pedagogic Creed,” repeated it in Significance of Social Aspects and Social Pedagogy, and reiterated it 33 years later in his most characteristic work, The System of Value‐Creating Pedagogy (1930–34), he subscribed to its ideology before reading Parker. This examination also illustrates that bo...

The extinction of languages is part of the larger picture of worldwide near total ecosystem collapse. (Nettle and Romaine, 2000: viiii) Referencing the French existentialist philosopher Gabriel Mar...

This article considers the philosophies of unknown Japanese educator Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871–1944) and his Russian contemporary Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) as an Asian-Pacific pedagogical foundation for addressing the fierce urgency of human-induced environmental destruction and global climate shock. Specifically, the author compares Makiguchi's philosophy of geography with Bakhtin's views of chronotope, the other, and architectonics as a means of fostering ecological selfhood. The comparison raises awareness of Makiguchian philosophy, which the author argues anticipated, strengthens, and expands Bakhtin's discussed ideas in an educational context, while it simultaneously recasts Bakhtin's well-established ideas in light of environmental education. The author concludes by contextualizing these convergences in current pedagogical needs vis-a-vis the changing environmental and political nature of the world and multiliteracies education.

This qualitative case study examines post-immigration reformed identity struggles among high school students from the former Soviet Union (FSU). Specifically, Belarusian, Kazakh, and Russian students in one U.S. public school district recognized and internalized “Russian” and inferior identities given to them by their U.S. teachers and peers, while simultaneously articulating internally viewed identities of superiority over immigrants from different FSU countries and secular superiority over the religious. Data from FSU immigrants, content teachers, and an administrator were analyzed using critical discourse analysis and sociocultural theory. General recommendations to educators, teachers, and administrators are provided.

The following is a dialogue among Monte Joffee and the co-editors of this special issue of Educational Studies. Joffee has been an active leader in the small school and charter school movements in ...

We are excited to guest edit this special issue of Educational Studies dedicated to the life and work of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871–1944), a Japanese teacher, school principal, educational philoso...

This article examines the applicability of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi's (1871–1944) educational ideas in what Denzin and Lincoln (2005) call the “fractured future,” a time marked by human, environmental, and climatic destabilization, and a time in which the social sciences “are normative disciplines always already embedded in issues of value …” (13). Specifically, this article presents a case study of a transformative learning approach to secondary-level introductory foreign language learning that contextualizes the human, environmental, and climatic condition in Makiguchi's idea of human geography (jinsei chirigaku), applies his concept of community studies (kyodoka kenkyu) to curriculum, and uses his value-creating pedagogy (soka kyoiku) as a theoretical framework for analyzing students' learning and development. Findings suggest that such applications resulted in students' empowerment and creation of the values of beauty, gain, and good, but that more curricular emphasis is, perhaps, necessary with regard t...

In this critical instrumental case study, the author examines an application of O'Sullivan's transformative learning theory to foreign language (FL) education. Specifically, he examines such application within the context of national FL standards for culture in secondary-level Japanese FL learning. Findings suggest that transformative learning is possible in the discipline of FL and among adolescents. Findings also suggest that discussions about transformative learning topics in relation to Japanese pop culture media resulted in increased student awareness of the transformative learning themes of cosmology and ecospiritual selfhood that can lead to a deep cultural and planetary literacy of peace.

This instrumental case study examines how adolescent high-intermediate Japanese language learners enrolled in a one-month credited abroad program used digital video as a mediational tool for (1) learning foreign language, content, and technology skills, (2) cultivating critical multiliteracies and transformative learning regarding geopolitics and the environment, and (3) augmenting their portfolios (Gee, 2004a). Framed in sociocultural and transformative learning theories, this study also suggests that digital video production engaged students extensively in language-based tasks and cultivated collaboration and creativity. Implications suggest future research applying digital video to various languages, levels, and contexts, particularly those in traditional schools and curricula. Key words: digital video, new literacies, study abroad, teacher research, transformative second/foreign language learning Language: Japanese Introduction While Blake (1998) argued that multimedia technology offers new possibilities for foreign language learning, Parks, Huot, Hamers, and Lemonnier (2003) noted, "it is now equally incumbent on instructors to help students become proficient in [its] use" (p. 28). Friedman (2005) concurred, arguing that the global shift to a digital media culture, coupled with technological know-how developing in India, China, and Russia (among others), is leveling or "flattening" the world in terms of occupations, technology, and economics, and has implications for U.S. education and adolescents' competitiveness and job preparedness. Friedman (2005, 2006) further argued that in addition to digital technological skills, U.S. adolescents in today's fast-changing world also need to develop content knowledge in science, sustainability, and environmental education as a means of economic, social, and geostrategic security. Friedmaris arguments are applicable to foreign language as national standards (National Standards, 1999) include developing technology and interdisciplinary content knowledge in addition to learning language and culture. Development of critical inquiry and critical literacy, however, are also included as goals in national standards (National Standards, 1999). Beach and Bruce (2004) argued that cultivation of critical literacy should engage students part and parcel with technology applications, technology skill development, and language learning. Alvermann (2004b) agreed, noting that "new" literacies-like those in digital media-"reflect the socioculturel, economic, and political struggles that come with reading the world, not just the word-in effect, they are the literacies that adolescents need presently as citizens of a fast-changing world. . . ." (p. viii). As necessary as it may be for language learning to encompass digital technology, content, and critical multiliteracies, Gee (2004c) lamented that such learning occurs only beyond the margins of traditional school contexts and curricula. Gee further commented that the information age is pushing students to build diversified portfolios of experience and learning that prepare them to "shape-shift" in response to rapidly changing national and international-"flattening" (Friedman, 2005)-trends, such as those from factory-based to those based on information technology (Gee, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c). Necessarily operating extracurricularly, shape-shifting portfolio students diversify portfolios by choosing what they believe are the right sort of summer camps and travel that include a wide variety of interactional, aesthetic, and technological skills and earn them honors or awards in preparation for admission into elite educational institutions and for professional success later in life (Gee, 2004a, 2004c). Regardless of location, research has been done in each of the abovementioned areas independently and in partial combination (e.g., Alford, 2001; Alvermann, 2004a; Blake, 1998; Carrier, 2005; deHaan, 2005; Duff, 2001; Gee, 2004c; Goodman, 2003; Jeon-Ellis, Debski, & Wigglesworth, 2005; Kasper, 2002; Kern & Schultz, 2005; Kohl, Dressier, & Hoback, 2001; Kubota, 2003; Morgan, 2004; Norton & Vanderheyden, 2004; Parks et al. …

This chapter examines in-service teachers’ transformed perspectives and practices for educating emergent bilinguals resulting from graduate study in a bilingual education graduate program in Chicago. This examination is contextualized in consideration of emergent bilinguals relative to the changing face of P-12 classrooms and gaps in teacher education. Findings from autoethnographic and discourse analytic inquiry suggest that teacher preparation in bilingual education (1) prepared and empowered in-service teachers to meet the academic, social, and cultural-linguistic needs of emergent bilinguals in their classrooms and (2) fostered a conscious inner transformation in in-service teachers that resulted in new ways and purposes of interacting with emergent bilingual students, their families, and colleagues. Findings also suggest that although there is institutional progress in meeting emergent bilinguals’ needs, it is incremental and insufficient. There are three major deficiencies: (1) new and increased teacher education standards lack the required specialized coursework in the education of emergent bilinguals; (2) teacher preparation of emergent bilinguals is inadequate; and (3) teacher preparation programs resist requiring specialized coursework in teaching emergent bilinguals.

This article introduces a cosmological perspective of teaching second/foreign languages for promoting ecological interconnectedness and spirituality to counter material and monetary interests that cause environmental destruction and militarism. The arguments are couched in cross- and deep cultural learning and are based on the concept of transformative learning, which has not been discussed in the field of language education. Influenced by critical pedagogy and critical applied linguistics, transformative second/foreign language learning broadens critical language and critical applied linguistics to address geopolitical and environmental strife. This article also provides recommendations for educators and researchers.

This chapter presents the concepts of creative coexistence and value-creation pedagogy as foundational components of transformative online education for liberation and social self-actualization required in the 21st century. The author couches this discussion in recent socio-political (mis)uses of new media in Iran and China and presents examples in practice by pre- and in-service teachers and adolescent second and foreign language learners in the United States.

This chapter focuses on transformative learning and digital literacies/online education in the context of second and foreign language teacher preparation. Building upon research begun in Village Voices, Global Visions: Digital Video as a Transformative Foreign Language Learning Tool (Goulah, 2007b), this chapter describes a graduate bilingual-bicultural education seminar coupling transformative learning theory and digital literacies for pre- and in-service teachers in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. The author examines how transformative learning and digital literacies/online education can be applied to language education and considers specific theory-to-practice means for teachers of culturally and linguistically diverse students to conceptualize, critique and resist planetary trends and meet the needs of English language learners across the curriculum through digital literacies.