Abstract
In this paper, the author considers the viewpoints of geography education practice and curriculum in the context of social participation within the community. Specifically, the author examines the significance of social participation learning in geography education. The author proposes that the geography curriculum endeavors to develop children’s identity, which is complex and layered. The instruction mirrors the cognitive development by first teaching about hamlet, town, city, region, state, nation, and finally the world. This approach is one of nested multilayered regions on different spatial scales and it starts by building on children’s direct experience in their local area.
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Notes
- 1.
Children’s social participation can be at all spatial scales, but in this paper the main object for consideration is participation in the local area, which children can do through direct experience.
- 2.
In an earlier paper (Takeuchi 2006), the author defined regional consciousness or awareness as a holistic mental response to children’s local area, which includes aspects of conscious recognition and an emotional or sentimental one.
- 3.
Regarding adoption of a social participation perspective by the education bureaucracy in cases such as the Revised Basic Law on Education, Satō (2002) has indicated problems of “contradiction between self-initiated activity and mobilization in the emphasis on ‘service’ and ‘love of homeland,’ based on nationalistic views of public education and through linking together the school, the family, and the local area” (p. 201). In this paper, while giving due consideration to such problems, the author value the positive aspects of social participation learning that can foster active citizens through direct experience in the local area, and consider the value of such learning in instruction.
- 4.
In the National Curriculum Standards, the term “civic abilities” are used in the goals for the educational discipline. The National Curriculum Standards 1968 edition (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture 1969) is where civic abilities were first clearly spelled out in the general goals. The word citizen “should be understood as including two meanings, that of a citizen who is a member of civil society, and as a citizen who is a member of the nation” (p. 2). This generally supposes that civic abilities are those of individuals who are both local and national citizens. In this paper, to assume social participation in the local area and stress the attributes of the local citizen within “civic abilities”, the author use the term “citizenship”.
- 5.
In this paper, the term “community problems” refers to environmental, development, poverty, income inequality, and human rights problems within the local area (assuming a spatial scale of the school district, where it is possible to directly experience things at the levels of city, town, or rural township).
- 6.
In this book, the Belgrade Charter (1975, p. 3) is introduced, which sets out six conditions for solving environmental problems, namely, concerns, knowledge, attitude, technology, evaluative ability, and participation. The book points out the importance of motivating behavior.
- 7.
Research conducted with the same awareness goals presented in this paper is found in Hihara’s theory of geography learning at multiple scales (Hihara 2005).
- 8.
Because of space limitations, it is not possible to present details of the curriculum. The author hope to present specific proposals in another paper. Related to the proposals for the composition of a geography curriculum based on thematic learning, research findings of the Geography Education Creative Research Association have been made public (Ōno 2009).
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Takeuchi, H. (2015). Social Participation in the Community and Geography Education. In: Ida, Y., Yuda, M., Shimura, T., Ike, S., Ohnishi, K., Oshima, H. (eds) Geography Education in Japan. International Perspectives in Geography, vol 3. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54953-6_9
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