Comparison of Terms and Concepts used in Different Subject Pedagogies and Academic Research Associations in Japan

Since 2022, the Research Promotion Committee of the Japan Consortium for Subject Pedagogy Associations has compared the terminology of various subject pedagogies. This study focuses on three terms: “inquiry”, “criticism” and “understanding.” It compares their actual use of them in each subject of the Japan National Courses of Study as well as in the glossaries published by each subject-pedagogy-related academic association in order to identify similarities and differences between subject areas and clarify each characteristic.

In natural science-oriented subject pedagogy such as science and mathematics, or semi-natural-science-oriented subject pedagogy such as home economics, “inquiry,” “criticism,” and “understanding” were defined as they are in the learning sciences by J. Schwab, R. Ennis, R. J. Marzano, and others. This may be because “inquiry”, “criticism” and “understanding” were associated with scientific thinking in the learning sciences, convenient for natural-science- oriented subject areas.

However, in subject pedagogy in the humanities domain, such as in Japanese language, definitions from critical pedagogy and Geisteswissenschaften (hermeneutics) have influenced the language use and are actively in circulation. In subject pedagogies that straddled the social science and humanities domains, such as social studies, definitions taken from the learning sciences, from critical pedagogy or from the Geisteswissenschaften were used. This is the case because the learning science approach, which links “inquiry,” “criticism,” and “understanding” with scientific thinking, objectivity, and rationality, cannot incorporate the philosophy of some subject pedagogy, such as Japanese language and social studies, or explain the reality of these subject education.