Tag: 2020

  • Upcoming – Overcoming Barriers to Critical Thinking – February 2

    Event Speaker: Jim Smiley
    Fee for non-JALT members: 500 yen
    Contact or Queries: iwatejalt@hotmail.com
    Date and Time: Sunday, February 2, 2020 – 1:30pm to 4:30pm
    Location: Iwate University Student Center A Room G23

    Abstract
    Educators in the Japanese context face significant difficulties in developing critical thinking skills in students. Much of these difficulties are well-known, such as the competition for time resources when students have to spend most of their energies cramming for memorization based high-school and university entrance exams and national qualification exams while in university. This results in students being relatively unprepared for and unknowledgeable about critical thinking. However, two other key aspects that hinder critical thinking skills are relatively unknown: students’ epistemic cognition and their underlying knowledge structure. Epistemic cognition refers to how knowledge itself is understood. For example, if information given by an authority figure is automatically believed to be true, critically analysing that information is seen to be a waste of time by students. Furthermore, in the Japanese educational context, the institutional learning experience of students leads to a belief that most information is either a fact or is an opinion. This fact/opinion knowledge structure also presents significant barriers to developing critical thinking skills.
    In the first section, Smiley will interactively survey these barriers with attendees. While exploring these topics, attendees will develop insights into how their students’ epistemic cognition and knowledge structures may be better understood. This understanding leads to more focussed instruction that targets the problematic bases of critical thinking. The second section comprises a set of demonstrations of concrete examples of critical thinking practices and a workshop in which attendees’ own classroom readings are used as the basis for critical thinking activities. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own classroom readings for use in the session.

    Bio Data
    Jim Smiley is an Associate Professor at Iwate National University. He is the author of *Writing a Graduation Thesis *and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Higher Education with the University of Liverpool, focusing on epistemic cognition and academic reasoning in Japanese undergraduates.

  • Upcoming – Getting Ready for 2020 – Alison Nemoto

    Event Speaker: Alison Nemoto
    Fee for JALT members: free
    Fee for non-JALT members: 1000 yen (500 yen for students)
    Contact or Queries: iwatejalt@hotmail.com

    Date and TIme: Sunday, April 22, 2018 – 1:30pm to 4:30pm
    Location: AIINA in Morioka Rm 813 – View Map

    Abstract:

    This is a period of enormous change in Japanese primary education, as English advances to become a subject for the upper grades and a compulsory activity for the middle grades from 2020. After working on the MEXT committee which developed the materials; “We Can!” and ”Let’s Try!” in this presentation I will share my ideas about how they should be ideally used in the classroom this year and next.  I will also provide feedback on the new curriculum from student teachers who are trying it out in university classes and from children at pilot schools already using the materials.

    Bio:

    B.Ed (Hons), M.A. in TEYL, (Teaching English to Young Learners).

    Alison is from the UK and trained as a primary school teacher, before coming to Japan on the JET programme in 1989. She has over 20 years of experience teaching in kindergartens, primary schools and junior high schools in the coastal area of Fukushima and worked for a year as the only native teacher in the 16 primary schools in Minamisoma City, Fukushima, directly after the earthquake, Tsunami and nuclear disaster of 2011.

    Since 2012, she has been as a Specially Appointed Associate Professor at Miyagi University of Education. She teaches English communication, writing and practical teaching skills to undergraduates who will become primary and secondary school teachers of English. Her areas of research are children’s opinions on reflective learning activities, active learning methods for Japanese primary English classrooms and the effect of storytelling as a gateway to English learning. She is involved in in-service teacher training at the university and works as an adviser in primary English education to numerous public schools the Tohoku area.

    Alison has worked for over ten years with various publishing companies, including Kairyudo and Kumon, on the development of materials for young learners in both public primary and junior high schools, and private language schools. She was appointed as an English curriculum and materials development adviser to the Myanmar Government, helped develop two texbooks and visited Myanmar three times from 2016-2017. She was also appointed as an English curriculum and materials development advisor for MEXT from Dec. 2016 – Dec. 2017, working on the syllabus reform and development of the materials; “Let’s Try!” and “We Can!” to be used from April 2018 until the new English primary school curriculum officially begins in 2020.

    She is programs chair for Sendai JALT and enjoys travelling, art, watching movies and yoga in her spare time.