New Perspectives in Science Education

The new curriculum guidelines for Japanese high schools [1] were introduced in the 2022 academic year. One of the goals of these new curriculum guidelines is to enable students to continue learning throughout their lives, and teachers are striving to improve their classes with a view to providing optimal individualized learning and fostering a sense of humanity. On the other hand, looking at Japan's rural areas, the declining birthrate and aging population are accelerating, resulting in a shortage of teachers and fewer opportunities for students to learn in a group setting. Therefore, in this study, we set up a class in a rural area where the birthrate is declining and the population is aging, to provide a place for collaborative learning of science experiments between elementary school students and high school students. This class was tailored to the elementary school students' learning content, with the high school students observing various living creatures under a microscope and instructing the students on how to conduct the experiments．From the students' descriptions, we could see that the elementary school students enjoyed learning, and the high school students were able to use their knowledge and skills proactively. This report describes the practice.

 

Keywords cooperative learning,  proactive attitude,   microscopic observation experiments

 

References [1] Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology ed. (2019). Explanation of the Courses of Study for Senior High Schools.