Japanese Elementary Rika Teachers’ Professional Beliefs and Knowledge of Rika Teaching: How Are They Indigenized?

Abstract

This chapter explores the nature and origin of RIKA (Japanese school science) teachers’ professional knowledge. For this purpose, leading elementary RIKA teachers’ quality discourses on what RIKA should be or what the aims and goals of their RIKA lessons should be are analysed. Certain components of such discourses that are different from those of “authentic science” teaching are identified and classified. Then, the chapter explores why and how such clusters of components have been involved in RIKA teachers’ notions of the ideal of RIKA teaching. There is considerable anecdotal data that RIKA teachers’ professional knowledge is different from that of elementary science teachers in western countries. One central aspect of this is that RIKA teachers need to develop a unique capability to cope with other factors than teaching “science” in their science classrooms, in particular RIKA teachers’ professional knowledge will be “indigenized”. The chapter will consider the specific questions of “What are the differences between the nature of RIKA teachers’ professional knowledge for teaching indigenized science (RIKA in the Japanese context) and that of western science teachers?” “Why and how has ‘indigenization of professional knowledge among science teachers’ been occurring?” “Why and how do teachers develop such indigenized professional knowledge?”