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Paper short abstract:

Japan’s 2017-18 school curriculum revision aims to promote ‘agentive and dialogic deep learning’. This paper examines its context, major features, and translation into textbooks, and asks whether the trajectory of recent curriculum reform develops neoliberal subjects or active democratic citizens.

Paper long abstract:

Since the late 1980s, school curriculum reform in Japan has sought to promote agency among students and encourage them to think and learn for themselves. The primary rationale offered by policymakers has been the increasing need for such qualities in the face of rapid social and economic change and an unpredictable future. The latest curriculum revision (2017-18) continues this trajectory, under the banner of ‘agentive and dialogic deep learning’, and with a focus on subject teaching in high schools, which until now had been much less affected than compulsory education by reform. This paper examines the major features of the 2017-18 curriculum revision, which include a substantial reshaping of the curriculum of academic subjects to explicitly stress ‘thinking, judging, and expressive abilities’ (shikōryoku, handanryoku, hyōgenryoku). The paper especially focuses on the subjects of Japanese (kokugo) and History at high school, where compulsory courses have been significantly restructured with a view to achieving the aims of the new curriculum. It includes discussion of how the curriculum changes have been translated into textbooks. The paper argues that the latest curriculum reform has the potential to significantly change high school teaching, but that obstacles remain, notably in the relative immobility of university entrance examinations for more prestigious universities. The paper also considers to what extent the trajectory of curriculum reform in Japan should be understood as an attempt to develop economic subjects fitted to an era of neoliberal governance, or alternatively, as developing citizens who can play an active part in solving problems within the socio-political framework of liberal democracy.