Makiguchi Tsunesaburo in the Context of Language, Identity and Education (Routledge, 2017), a new book on the educational philosophy and practice of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, was published by Routledge in April 2017. Edited by Institute director, Jason Goulah, and first published as a special issue of Journal of Language, Identity and Education in 2013, this volume includes a new preface and three new chapters.
Michio Okamura, a doctoral student in the Curriculum Studies Program at DePaul University and a K-8 Japanese teacher in Chicago Public Schools, writes one of the newly added chapters. Okamura introduces Makiguchi’s “knowledge cultivation model” (as opposed to knowledge transmission) for the first time in the Anglophone literature and explores the applicability of Makiguchi’s value-creating pedagogy in his own Japanese classroom.
Takao Ito, a professor at Soka University, Japan, writes another newly added chapter. Drawing from Makiguchi’s essays describing his experiences as a new teacher, Ito provides a comprehensive analysis of Makiguchi’s method for teaching composition to elementary students. Through Makiguchi’s composition instruction, Ito discusses the relationship between knowledge and interest.
The book concludes with the third newly added chapter by Andrew Gebert and Jason Goulah, in which they analyze the issues and challenges of translating Makiguchi’s work from Japanese into English. The chapter closes with a translation of Makiguchi’s preface to his later essay, Soka kyoikuho no kagakuteki choshukyoteki jikken shomei (The Scientific and Supra-Religious Empirical Verification of the Methods of Value-Creating Education), which has not yet appeared in English.
The full table of contents of the book is as follows:
- How Should Reading and Composition Be Brought Into [Clearer] Connection? [1898]
Makiguchi Tsunesaburo - The Writing Subject: Makiguchi Tsunesaburo and the Teaching of Composition
Andrew Gebert - Makiguchi Tsunesaburo and Language, Value-Creative Composition Instruction, and the Geography of Identity in Community Studies: A Response to Politicized Imagining and Ineffective Critical Approaches
Jason Goulah - Soka Kyoikugaku Taikei Versus Education for Creative Living: How Makiguchi Tsunesaburo’s Educational Ideas Are Presented in English
Nozomi Inukai - Makiguchian Perspectives in Language Policy and Planning
Kazuma Hatano - East~West Epistemological Convergence of Humanism in Language, Identity, and Education: Confucius~Makiguchi~Dewey
Ming Fang He - Makiguchi Tsunesaburo’s Knowledge Cultivation Model and Its Application to Foreign Language Education
Michio Okamura - The Ability to Write, the Ability to Think: Tsunesaburo Makiguchi’s Composition Teaching Method
Takao Ito - Coda: Translating Makiguchi
Andrew Gebert and Jason Goulah
Institute for Daisaku Ikeda Studies in Education 