Session Information
16 SES 06 A, ICT and Curriculum Support
Paper Session
Contribution
1. Research question and objective
How do we design media education environment and curriculum at school in Japan? This question has been one of the biggest concerns among teachers and researchers, with the aim of developing human resources needed to the information society. As a result of a long-period debate, new school curriculum has started around 2002. However, wide-scale survey conducted by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), targeting more than 1600 school children in 2009, showed that knowledge about media literacy and skills about using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are less well understood among school children, although eight years have passed since new curriculum has started. On the contrary, the survey brought to light the new problems involved in mobile phone addiction and low awareness of protection of personal information.
The objective of this research is to clarify present conditions and problems in media education in Japan and to consider new way of carrying out media education in school curriculum, by comparing “Japan model” with “Finland model”, especially on the aspect of use of ICT among school children and school curriculum.
2. Theoretical framework
This research is conducted by the comparative method. In Japan, as a response to a rapid progress of information society, “Information Studies” became compulsory subject in upper secondary school from 2003. As preliminary steps for upper secondary school, students learn “Information and Computer” as a part of learning content in a school subject “Industrial Arts and Homemaking” in lower secondary school, entry-level media literacy in a school subject "Integrated Study" in primary school. In this way, Japanese educational policy carries out media education in school subjects. Media education has now carried out in a systematic manner from primary school to university.
On the other hand, Finnish schools carry out media education in a different manner. There's no school subject like "Information Studies", but instead students use ICT in their daily school lives. Students use ICT anytime as a tool in different school subjects, depends on teacher's lesson scheme. In this way, media education in Finnish schools put emphasis on "daily use of ICT" and "ICT as a tool".
It's not necessarily appropriate to suggest that which is better way to conduct media education at school, but a certain survey showed an insightful result. A study (Fujii, 2007) of 1144 youths in Japan and Nordic countries aged 12 to 16 found that Japanese pupils study longer in a day, but have lower computer skills and knowledge than students in Nordic countries. And one of the most interesting points is that the longer hours students use computers, the more information literacy they have.
3. Conclusion
The result does not necessarily have to do with the school curriculum, but indicates that it is not satisfied only by conducting media education in subjects. More cross-curricular and daily use of ICT is required for the sake of booting information literacy among children in Japan.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
FUJII Yoshihisa, Development of a Scale to Evaluate the Information Literacy Level of Young People : Comparison of Junior High School Students in Japan and Northern Europe [in Japanese], Japan journal of educational technology, 30(4), pp.387-395, 2007. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Result of survey about children’s mobile phone use, 2008 http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/21/02/1246177.htm (in Japanese) NII Scholary and Academic Information Navigator http://ci.nii.ac.jp/
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