A 2016 OECD report on the state of education in Japan makes for interesting reading. Although not specific to English language education, the findings have implications on the shape of various English language programs that schools design and implement in their (and the government's) desire to improve the effectiveness of English language teaching and learning at primary and secondary schools nationwide...
According to a recent article, many Japanese universities are fast approaching a time where there will not be enough local students to keep their doors open. The next couple of years, then, are crucial in determining how many of Japan's nearly 800 universities will survive the well-reported changing demographic...
In Japan, a kid friendly version of Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War' has been a huge success for those parents looking to give their children, aged 6 and up, the educational edge...
Japan’s teachers are overworked. They toil away at school from early morning until late at night, and many go in on weekends too, preventing them from getting a proper rest before Monday comes round again...
As teachers, we need to embrace our slime mold heritage. We need to seek more and more opportunities to feed our discoveries back into the network, and seek more and more opportunities to draw upon that network.
O-sensei was lovely. She played the piano exquisitely. Her activities ran like clockwork, and when speaking to the room, she was warm and radiated intelligence in a way that reassured us that she knew what she was doing. My son, Dana, had drawn a picture of our family that was posted on the wall. Strangely, Dana’s picture did not look like a cloud of truck exhaust fumes.
ask …
a) Do I know the needs? What am I doing to determine the needs?
b) What decisions have I made so far, am I making now, and do I need to make in order to connect this lesson with those needs?"
