Primary School in Japan: Self, Individuality and Learning in Elementary Education (review)

Despite worldwide interest in Japanese elementary education among both educational researchers and classroom teachers, there are just a few book-length scholarly treatments of Japanese elementary education. Peter Cave’s Primary School in Japan: Self, Individuality and Learning in Elementary Education is a welcome addition to the bookshelf. In seven chapters, the book takes up themes including groups and individuality; development of “self” through instruction in Japanese language (kokugo); mathematics instruction; gender; school ceremonies (focused mainly on graduation from elementary school); and post-1998 implementation of sōgōteki na gakushu (integrated studies). The book focuses on grade six (the final grade of Japanese elementary education), drawing on fieldwork from two Japanese elementary schools in pseudonymously named “Sakura,” a city of 100,000 in the Kansai region.

Several elements of this book are of particular interest. The chapters on the teaching of kokugo (entitled “Stories of the Self”) and of mathematics (entitled “Mathematical Relationships”) each provide an in-depth account focused on analysis of the curriculum and its enactment by teachers and students in the classroom. The classroom community of inquiry that supports the teaching of kokugo epitomizes, Cave argues, many aspects of neo-Vygotskian theories of learning that emphasize the importance of a community “achieved through teaching and learning practices that focus on open-ended tasks, cast the teacher in the role of constructive facilitator, and encourage children to share and engage with one another’s perspectives” (p. 108).

In the chapter on the teaching of kokugo, Cave examines three poems and a short story in the grade six curriculum, noting that “the predominating discourses were ones that represented individuals and their identities as intrinsically linked to the larger worlds—social and natural—of which they were a part” (p. 88). The teaching of the short story, documented in some detail, follows what Cave documents as a standard procedure for kokugo units:

The class studies a text together, and teachers normally strive to ensure that as part of this process, children have opportunities both to engage with the text individually and also learn from one another’s insights. Study . . . began with a first reading of the entire story together. The children then individually wrote short accounts of their initial thoughts and feelings (kansōbun); what parts of the story impressed them, what puzzled them, and what they would like to explore more deeply. This was a standard practice, used by teachers to learn the concerns of the children and focus their whole-class teaching accordingly.

(p. 97)

Cave portrays relatively light-handed teaching—in which students raise many issues and instruction flows partly in response to their ideas and concerns—and highlights the close interdependence between academic learning and classroom community. A supportive classroom community both enables and is fostered by academic discussions of literature.

Existing books on Japanese elementary education focus on the early elementary grades or on issues of equality, or provide briefer accounts of classroom lessons, and so this volume brings some new data to the understanding of upper-grade elementary education.¹ However, Cave’s account is very much in keeping with observations of the lower elementary grades, including the dual emphasis on building interdependence with classmates and commitment to personal improvement.

The chapter on mathematics teaching is particularly valuable for its detailed description of an entire mathematics unit (on proportional relationships) as it was taught by two different grade six teachers. Existing scholarly accounts present a rich picture of the design of individual Japanese mathematics lessons, noting that lessons generally flow from a problem posed to the whole class, through development and sharing of students’ individual solutions, to whole-class discussion and neriage (kneading or polishing) that compares, connects, and evaluates the merits of various solution methods. ² However, the connection across lessons within a unit has not previously been described in detail.

One central point is how much time is devoted to teaching a single mathematical topic in...