Home > Policy > White Paper, Notice, Announcement > White Paper > EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS IN JAPAN 1971 > CHAPTER 2 (2)

CHAPTER . IMPROVEMENT OF EDUCATIONAL CONTENT AND METHOD

Along with the introduction of educational machines, various attempts to reform traditional uniform teaching and learning organizations are being made. The trend is toward individualizing teaching and learning to meet the wide variety of abilities and aptitudes of students instead of adjusting the level of instruction to the average student, as has traditionally been the case.

The newly revised course of study in lower secondary schools emphasizes the strengthening of education to meet the abilities and aptitudes of students. Especially in mathematics and foreign languages, provisions exist to allow the content to be changed according to the abilities of students. In addition, part of the curriculum content may be omitted in any subject area for slow learners, such cooperative instructional organizations as team teaching and exchange teaching are to be introduced, and appropriate audio-visual materials are to be selected and used.

The new upper secondary school course of study also provides new areas and subjects for the purpose of promoting education to meet different student abilities and aptitudes.

The following are some of the new attempts to improving the organization of instructional and learning now being made in various major countries, especially in the U.S.A.

Team teaching as it exists today was started in the U.S.A. about fifteen years ago. Team teaching enables individual teachers to demonstrate their abilities through the formation of groups. Therefore, it has been developed as a method to meet growing complexity and diversification of educational content. As of 1966,approximately 38% of the elementary and secondary school districts in the U.S.A. were employing this method.

There is also a new system called 'nongraded schools' in which grade lines are eliminated to enable pupils to undergo educational experiences according to the pupils' speed of achievement and thereby to provide instruction to meet the abilities and aptitudes of individual pupils. As of 1966, 23% of all school systems were practicing the nongraded system.

The modular scheduling plan, which uses computers to prepare individual timetables for students according to their differences, with 20 to 30 minutes as the basic teaching unit, is also an example of a flexible method of education to meet the abilities and aptitudes of individual students.

The 'dual progress plan' is a scheme in which teaching areas are divided into two sub-areas, required and elective. For the required subject areas the graded system is employed and for the elective, the nongraded. This plan is being tried in many states such as New York and Florida.

The tendency toward educational innovations is not a monopoly of the U.S.A. Traditional methods of education are being reappraised and new teaching and learning devices are being developed in the European countries, too. Their children have traditionally been sorted into different schools according to their abilities at comparatively early stages of development. But increased reflection on the fact that individual abilities have been insufficiently developed has led to a recent movement toward individualizing instruction.

In Britain, ability grouping called 'streaming', in which pupils in the same grade are divided into "forms" based on their general ability, aptitudes and future career prospects is widely in practice. In recent years, however, new attempts such as the grouping system, in which pupils of two to three age groups are combined into one class, and the formation of small groups called 'family groups', both of which aim at adjusting educational activities to pupils' abilities and interests, are being introduced in some regions.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, ability grouping has also been employed in the upper grades of comprehensive secondary schools. Since about five years ago this has been increasingly used for such main subjects as national language, mathematics and physics.

Along with such changes in the methods of education, school buildings are also being revised. For example, in the U.S.A., the traditional type of rectangular classroom with fixed walls, has increasingly been replaced by large pentagonal or hexagonal classrooms which can be sub-divided by movable walls into rooms of various sizes according to the objectives of the particular educational activity.

In addition to improvements in the methods of education, national policies for developing the abilities of gifted children to the fullest extent possible are being shaped in the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.

In the U.S.A., there has been a growth in cooperative arrangements between colleges and high schools called the 'advanced placement program' designed to enable bright students to take college level courses while still in high school and to give college credits to those who complete them. As a provision for gifted students, the National Merit Scholarship Program was started in 1955, which conducts competitive tests for scholarships thereby giving financial assistance to students who might otherwise be unable to continue their education.

In the U.S.S.R., uniform teaching methods had traditionally been in practice. Since 1960, however, secondary school students talented in such specific subjects as mathematics, physics, chemistry, and foreign languages are enrolled in special schools and provided with a higher level of instruction than in ordinary schools. In the University of Moscow, the University of Leningrad and some other prestigious universities, special schools of particularly high quality are attached, providing college level education to gifted students selected throughout the country by a special procedure called the 'olympiad'.