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

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the 2000s, the new national curriculum, dubbed as the ‘yutori curriculum,’ 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.