Search

This study examines on the role and meaning of academic societies as a “place” for connecting researchers and practitioners. We picked up two academic societies related to social studies education and from the changes in the way they handle their research frameworks. Throughout examining the previous literatures related to these two societies, there are two major findings. The first is that research frameworks could provide the standards for deciding good/bad research. Some frameworks can establish common standards for researchers and practitioners, while others could be designed to clarify the different roles of researchers andpractitioners. Secondly, there are research frameworks serve as indicators for organizing existing research works. This can be an administrative and intuitive framework, or it can be a topical or thematic framework in the context of academic trends.

This study proposes the Japanese history lesson aiming for promoting deeper understanding diversity because the previous studies in relation to historical inquiry in Japan did not mention about connection with diversity. After conducting the lessons, we found that students mentioned the differences of people’s value between past and present based on the social structure and notions. At the end of study we suggested the reform of history education have more possibilities to develop democratic citizenship.

This study proposes the Japanese history lesson plan integrating active historical inquiry by student themselves. Historical inquiry has been regarded as an important strategy to history education fostering democratic citizenship. However, the previous studies in Japan did not seem to clarify the characteristics of historical inquiry and how to apply in the classroom because most of them focused only on the motivation of students. We established the three principles to develop the lesson plan; 1） Procedural concepts are shown to the students explicitly; 2） Various resources is necessary for making diverse historical resources; 3）various activities for promoting active learning by students should be prepared. After conducting the lessons, we found that students actively engaged the class and develop their own historical interpretation. At the end of study, we proposed the future possibilities for bigger reform of history curriculum.

The purpose of this study is to develop digital contents that support inquiry based learning and to propose application examples of “local community studies” conducted in Japanese primary social studies education. For this reason, we set up a development project team by researchers and university students majoring in social studies education and developed digital contents over a year. In this project, we formulated five “design principles” for development. The contents were envisioned in consideration of the format, cooperation with social studies textbooks and supplementary readers for community studies, correspondence with the course of study, and the fairness of the areas handled. Finally, the digital contents which name is “NONTA’s Classroom” was developed and 10 keywords were released on the website. Along with the release, in cooperation with Higashi-Hiroshima City Library, we invited local elementary school students to use the digital contents and learn and verified the application and improvement of digital content. As a result of this research, 1)we conceived the design and concrete contents and structure of digital content that supports inquiry based learning and developed it. Also, 2)we specified an example of how to apply and confirmed its effectiveness.