The paper will analyse the implementation of the “OECD-Tohoku School” (OTS) project. This project was launched following the triple catastrophe (earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster) hitting the Tohoku region of Japan in March 2011. Local educational authorities, schools and community leaders were contacted in the three prefectures of the affected region and they were invited to select pupils and local adult leaders to participate in a project with the goal of demonstrating the attractiveness of the Tohoku region and show the progress of the recovery process during a major event in 2014 in Paris. An idea behind the initiative was that by participating in this ambitious program, based on collaborative, project‐based pedagogy pupils will acquire advanced leadership skills and their engagement to promote recovery in the region will be strengthened. The specific post-catastrophe situation will be connected to the general context of educational and social change in Japan (Schoppa, 1991; Yoneyama, 1999; Hood, 2001; Muta, 2006; Bjork, 2009; Sugimoto, 2010; Suzuki – Yuko, 2013).

The paper aims at analysing the outcomes of the OTS project as an emerging model of educational innovation born in an extraordinary context (“Tohoku change model”). The paper presents the OTS project as an interesting case of educational change and public sector innovation implemented in the education sector in Japan. The paper will connect the specific case to the general theory of educational change and education policy or educational programme implementation (Thomas, 1994; McLaughlin, 1990; Fullan– Pomfret, 1997; Hargreaves, 2003; Altrichter, 2005; Sahlberg, 2005; van den Akker, et al., 2005; Blasé – Björk, 2010; OECD, 2010; Würzburg, 2010; Chan, 2012).

Its intention is to show that the OTS project is not only a new, original model of educational innovation but it is also a remarkable experiment to generate change processes in educational systems which are often characterised as immobile, overregulated and resisting to change, and where the majority of key institutional actors seems to be characterized by high level risk aversion and strong attachment to the stability of existing structures. It argues that the OTS initiative might lead to a new pattern of effective change management in centralised and relatively inflexible educational systems and might, therefore, attract the attention of those who wish to improve the performance of such systems in any country.

The central question of the research behind the paper is how much the OTS project has influenced regular school practice and, particularly, what its potential is to have such an influence. The OTS project operated rather isolated from the regular practice of schools: this was been basically an out-of-school activity which involved directly only a few students and typically only one teacher from participating schools. Schools were not formally connected with the project and the engagement of their pupils and teachers was often seen as their “private affair”. In our interviews with students and teachers directly participating in the project, as well as in our interviews with the principals of schools involved in the project we tried to explore how much the OTS project, operating in a relative isolation from the regular life of schools, could influence regular teaching and learning practices. This was also the main focus of our data collection on the small sample of teachers involved and not involved in the project.

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