Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 9
Social Participation in the Community
and Geography Education
Hirokazu Takeuchi
Abstract
In this paper, the author considers the viewpoints of geography education
practice and curriculum in the context of social participation within the community.
Specifi cally, the author examines the signifi cance 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 mir-
rors the cognitive development by fi rst teaching about hamlet, town, city, region,
state, nation, and fi nally the world. This approach is one of nested multilayered
regions on different spatial scales and it starts by building on children's direct expe-
rience in their local area.
Keywords
Community • Formation of multilayered regions • Geography curriculum
• Local area • Social participation learning
9.1
Introduction
In recent years, learning through social participation in school education has
attracted public attention.
1
This arose from an item inserted into the Revised Basic
Law on Education of 2006, Section 2, entitled “The Goals of Education,” which
reads: “Together by stressing justice and responsibility, equality of males and
females, respect for oneself and others, and cooperation, to participate as actors in
the formation of society based on public-spiritedness, and to nurture the attitudes
that will contribute to that development.” Subsequently, the School Education Law
was revised in 2007, followed by the Revised National Curriculum Standards
(MEXT
2008a
), which also advocated fostering students' abilities and skills so that
they could participate in public affairs. Among these trends, social participation is
one focus of a geography course in junior high school entitled “Survey of one's
local area”. This course introduces the foundation of geographical perspectives
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.
