Project-based learning in post-WWII Japanese school curriculum: an analysis via curriculum orientations.

In the 2000s, the new national curriculum, dubbed as the ‘yutoricurriculum,’ introduced a new subject for project-based learning ‘Integrated Study’ as its prominent feature. Comparing curriculum orientations in project-based learning in three historical periods after the WWII including Integrated Study, this paper aims to offer a genealogy of postwar Japanese school curriculum primarily based on a critical reading of the national curriculum guidelines on project-based learning, which is emblematic of the extending power of postwar Japan's curriculum authorities. Although Integrated Study was purportedly child-centered and put emphasis on each child's personal relevance and each school's autonomy, the finding of this study shows that Integrated Study in the yutori curriculum was rather a technology that disciplined schools, teachers, and classroom processes to shape children into morally good and cognitively flexible Japanese nationals. Despite its rhetoric of child-centeredness and personal relevance, the introduction of Integrated Study as part of the yutori curriculum was ultimately part of the state's move to gain further control over schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]