Efforts to Institutionalize Active Learning in Japanese Higher Education

Abstract

In 2012, the Central Council for Education (cce) issued a report concerning the introduction of active learning (al) and educational management into higher education. Its main object was to foster students’ ability of active learning (or active study [as]) to enable them not only to fulfill the outcome required by the dp (Diploma Policy) but also to respond to an unpredictable future in a knowledge-based society. In order to enhance students’ al, it is necessary to innovate educational methods, such as High Impact Practice (hip) and Institutional Research (ir), to establish educational management, including dp, cp (curriculum policy), and ap (admission policy), and to promote the Research-Teaching-Service (r-t-s) nexus. Based on the cce’s report, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (mext) started a nationwide program in 2013 to pursue active learning. As a result, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (jsps) selected a project of a four-university collaboration as one of the projects related to the programs in which the author of this paper conducted a national survey with a focus on the institutionalization of academic learning in academia.

Introduction

In 2012, the Japanese Central Council of Education (cce) issued a report calling for the introduction of active learning (al) and educational management in higher education. 1 al means any kind learning where students play an active role in the process of learning. It also means any learning process where students learn to be active people after graduating into a knowledge-based society. The concept of al was developed in the u.s. in the 1980s, although it was thought to have started in 1869 when Harvard College introduced an elective system in the teaching and learning process for undergraduates. The concept was imported into Japan in the 2000s by higher education researchers and by the cce. Educational management is responsible for enhancing teaching and learning process through the three main functions performed by academics (as teachers), students, and curricula.

As a result, the establishment of educational management in favor of promoting students’ active study has become a key issue of higher education reform in Japan. Its main goal is to foster students’ ability of al (or active study, as) to enable them not only to fulfill the outcome required by the dp (diploma policy) but also to respond to an unpredictable future in a knowledge-based society.

According to the author, three activities have to be pursued in this framework.

The first activity is enhancing teaching methods to foster students’ initiative in learning.

• Such teaching methods include so-called ‘High Impact Practice’ (hip).

• Through these methods, teachers can change students from their traditional learning to active learning (study).

• Through these methods, teachers can foster students active learning (study) not only in inside classes but also field studies outside classes.

The second activity is introducing innovative approaches, such as ‘Institutional Research’ [ir] as well as hip, to visualize students’ learning outcomes to fulfill the dp’s requirements.

• dp asks teachers to introduce students to fulfill the outcomes required by dp.

• In the process of visualizing students’ learning outcomes, it is necessary for academics to use ir as well as hip effectively.

The third activity is promoting educational management that favors organized teaching in its compatibility with both curricula and learning.

• Educational management is mainly paying attentions to the usefulness of organizing teaching and learning process in academia by ca.

• ca testifies the usefulness of relationship between dp and cp, thereby reconsidering curricula in their compatibility with both teaching and learning.

figure 5.1

Framework: Possibility of institutionalization of al.

This is expected to be comprised of new perspectives in terms of the dp, ‘curriculum policy’ (cp) and ‘admission policy’ (ap) as well as to promote an effective nexus of research, teaching, and study (r-t-s nexus) in the teaching and learning processes. 2

Based on the cce report, mext started an ‘Education Promotion’ program in an attempt to set respective targets for the universities and colleges in 2013 and to support projects aimed at promoting al. This seems to have encouraged respective activities at universities and colleges nationwide. The author of this paper has conducted a project entitled ‘Construction of Educational Management System for Initiative Learning,’ which was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (jsps). Beginning in 2013, four Japanese universities collaborated in this project. 3 The author of this paper conducted a national survey with the focus on the institutionalization of al in academia.

The Research Project

The Conceptual Framework

Five issues of the conceptual framework of the research project should be illustrated in advance. These issues are important to understand the cce’s concept of al, though they are not necessarily similar to the cce’s concept.

1. Various higher education reforms are pursued in response to developments that can be summarized with the term ‘knowledge based society.’ ‘Active learning’ is strived for in this framework in order to strengthen students’ ability to cope with the challenges of the knowledge society. Students are expected to enhance their abilities in the course of study in their lifecycle, not only during campus life but also in their careers, acting in an uncertain society.

2. al already had played some role in the u.s. in the second half of the nineteenth century when President Charles Eliot introduced an elective system in Harvard College; this was during the turning point of undergraduate education, from its traditional style of stressing teachers’ teaching to its innovative style of stressing students’ learning. It was a transformation of teaching and learning from a mediaeval university style to that of a modern university, which is based on the German model, according to the author of this paper. 4 This primitive stage of al later became an elaborated concept, especially in the 1980s. In the 1980s, Japan adopted it from the u.s. and imported it in the 2000s to the extent that the cce introduced it into its higher education policy. Thus, according to the author’s summary, more than a century had passed in the u.s. before it was imported to Japan. 5

   As the u.s. model of al has been in the u.s. academic culture for more than 30 years (and, broadly speaking, as long as a century) it cannot be expected to transfer smoothly into the Japanese academic culture. This process of transfer and adaptation started only shortly before the cce presented the Qualitative Transformation Report, or ‘Toward Quality Transformation of University Education for Construction of New Future’ in 2012. 6 We can expect that a substantial amount time will be needed to institutionalize this approach and to develop a corresponding culture.

3. The process of enrooting active learning into Japan’s academia is called a process of ‘institutionalization.’ The first stages of institutionalization are currently underway, and many more stages are expected. Respective concepts and methodologies have to be put forward in the process of institutionalization; these concepts are interrelated but follow their own logic. The concepts focus on the transformation of students’ traditional learning to al (or as).

   al has two meanings: ‘active learning’ and ‘active study.’ The former is called al; it is learned activity without any relationship to teaching in a classroom. The latter is called as; it is a learning activity with a relationship to teaching in a classroom. This is the reason why active learning has two meanings. Both learning (学習) and study (学修) are pronounced gakushu in Japanese, but the meaning is quite different due to this reason. In this context, ‘active study’ is thought to be better than ‘active learning’ in English terminology, if al is transformed from simple active learning, or ‘shallow active learning’, to as, or ‘deep active learning.’

   The methodological approaches address the role that hip and ir can play. hip, which affects al by way of educational methodology, consists of various kinds of devices, including group discussion, presentation, internship, service learning, writing, role play, and pbl. ir, which is institutional research of academia, consists of various devices, including curriculum maps, assessment policies, rubrics, portfolios, and benchmarks (placement test, learning commons, sns). They are considered to be familiar to a type of student-support involvement rather than the involvement of management and funding. Among these devices, we intensively discussed rubrics in our survey (as shown in the following part of this study). A rubric is defined as ‘a document that articulates the expectations for an assignment by listing the criteria or what counts, and describing levels of quality from excellent to poor,’ and the practice is widely applied in many universities. 7

4. The concrete process of institutionalizing al is expected to lead from traditional passive learning to al inside and outside of classrooms. This implies changes in the curriculum as well the activities of teachers and students; this is because the teaching and learning processes basically consist of these three factors. A curriculum policy and a curriculum assessment are expected to be developed to the extent that the teachers ought to partly move from traditional teaching to active teaching and the students partly from passive learning to al.

5. In the process of the institutionalization of al, the establishment of curriculum assessment is the most challenging task to realizing the quality assurance of the curriculum policy. The outcome of the dp should be obtained by the students’ learning of individual academic disciplines on the basis of the dp in the teaching and learning processes. Constructing the dp and relevant cp is likely to be fairly easy, while making ca is likely to be fairly difficult. This is because it will be conducted successfully in a condition where the cp responds well to the dp’s requirement through students’ achievements with regard to al. This problem is related to knowledge, advanced knowledge, and academic discipline, especially to academic discipline which is making the basis of academic work consisting of two vehicles of research and teaching in academia. 8

The Intention of the Survey

The research project is from the so-called University Cooperation Promotion Project, which was undertaken in 2014 with the support of mext. 9 The survey, which is the central part of the project, aims to identify problems that all universities and colleges in Japan face at campus-level educational management. The focus will be on the management of educational activities, including the teaching and learning processes, in which curricula, teachers, and students are important components. Educational management is expected to take measures to enhance students’ active learning and eventually improve this domain of educational activities composing of curricula, teachers and students.

Survey Methods

In the framework of the project, a questionnaire was developed; it aimed to be filled out by vice-presidents or their equivalents. The questionnaire consisted of 38 questions; among the questions, two questions were about the concept of al, six questions were about hip, and 24 questions were about curricula.

In August 2014, the questionnaire was sent to 744 universities and colleges, which were stratified according to sector (national, local, or private), number of academic staff, and number of students. Responses were received from 244 institutions (44 national, 39 local, and 161 private ones). The response rates by sector were 54%, 16%, and 28%, respectively. Among the responding institutions, 18% were national, 16% local, and 66% private (Table 5.1).

table 5.1

Survey distribution, return, and return rate

Analysis of Results

Staff Views and Activities

It was considered important to explore the extent to which academic and non-academic staff members approve of the concept of al. Table 5.2 shows that most of the staff members (at about one quarter of the institutions) are supporters of the concept of al. This holds true for half of the staff at about half of the institutions and for a minority of staff at about a quarter of the institutions. As 2.3 in this paper clarified, the following tables are based on vice-presidents’ perceptions about staff’s opinions.

table 5.2

Staff’s views for active learning

* p<.05, ** p<.01

Table 5.3 provides an overview of the extent to which al is already practiced. As one might expect, the actual situation still lags behind the staff’s intentions. al is fully implemented conceptually and organizationally at only about 19% of the institutions. More frequently—about 43%—first steps are being taken. About one third aim to start respective activities in the future, and only about 1% do not envisage any such activities. So far, the national institutions have moved further towards the implementation of al than private institutions; the local sector lags behind the other two sectors.

table 5.3

Practices of active learning

* p<.05, ** p<.01

Teaching and Learning Practices

Table 5.4 aims to show the prevailing practices of active teaching and learning. The respondents have been asked on a four-point scale from 1 = ‘completely applicable’ to 4 = ‘not applicable at all’ to rate the extent to which six types of practices are customary. Actually, the research team was interested in the proportion of institutions which respond with scale points 1 and 2 (i.e., report at least a considerable extent of such practices). The six categories are ordered according the magnitude of responses 1 and 2.

A first glance, the results make clear that ‘Transforming students’ learning . . .’ is by far least common (i.e., least considered to be applicable at the institutions surveyed). This holds true for ‘Classroom management’ in favor of al, which is reported for 68% of the institutions.

In addition, activities to increase and secure self-study time before and after classes are only reported as a prevailing practice by 48% of the institutions of higher education—even though it is strongly encouraged by the cce. 10 One might assume that respective student practices are not widespread if they are not encouraged by their teachers.

In a recent study, the daily study time spent outside classes in the u.s. and Japan was compared. The total hours per day were 8.2 hours in the u.s. and 4.6 hours in Japan. 11 For Japan, learning of 4.6 hours per a day is conducted in a classroom with 2.9 hours, in outside classroom with 1.7 hours. This suggests that improvement is needed in Japan. A high quality of al cannot be reached if the overall study time is short and if outside-class study is limited. It is clear that less than half as many hours are spent every day compared to the demand of the national standards required for university and the demand of international standards. About eight hours are expected to be reserved for study every day.

61% of Japanese universities and colleges report that classes are arranged to transfer students from passive learning towards al. A slightly higher proportion of institutions, 68%, report that classroom management emphasizes al through methods of hip and ir, such as group work, discussion, and presentation.

Activities outside classes promoting al are named less frequently. “Experiential learning” is named by 63% of the institutions, and 56% promote learning outside of class, such as service learning and internships.

All these findings suggest that a full transition towards al has not yet been reached. National universities have moved further towards al than private universities; local universities need to pay more attention to these aims.

table 5.4

Active teaching and learning

Methodology Such as hip and ir

As we analyzed in the framework, various methodologies related to hip and ir are likely to be difficult in the process of institutionalization. It is true to say so if we make an analysis of the Table 5.5 dealing with a focus on rubric as one of the typical cases of hip and ir.

table 5.5

Institutionalization of rubric

* p<.05, ** p<.01

We arranged the institutionalization of rubrics by percentage order. Rubrics play an important role in the methodological perspective of promoting al as one of the devices of ir, such as curriculum map, assessment policy, portfolio, and benchmark (placement test, learning commons, sns).

The institutionalization does not exceed 20% in terms of the six alternatives. The worst three are 6, 5, and 2—each with less than 10%.

6. “Both teachers and students are improving classrooms by using rubrics.” (7.5%)

5. “Both teachers and students are conjugating rubrics in all classrooms.” (4.4%)

2. “We are developing general rubrics available all over the campus,” (3.4%)

Categorizing five assessments groups based on respondents’ marks by discriminating mark A (100~90), B (89~80), C (79~70), D (69~60), and E (59~0). There is nothing at all in mark A, B, or C.

For 6, the average response of “Completely applicable” was 0%, and “Considerably applicable” was 3.4% (question six in Table 5.5). Question 5 shows similar results. Rubrics have not been improved almost at all in all the sectors, although they are considered to be necessary in both active teaching and al (or as).

As a result, rubric has not developed to the level of classroom reform; this is in addition to the fact that the application of rubrics has been declining in all the universities and colleges throughout the country. It shows difficulties of choosing the methodology related to hip and ir in the process of al’s institutionalization in academia.

Institutionalization of Educational Management

To explore the modes of management potentially in favor of al, the universities and colleges were asked to provide information regarding 24 items, rating their activities on a scale from 1 = ‘Always’ to 4 = ‘Never.’ Summarizing the responses of 1 and 2, we note that:

• 90% or more affirmative responses were given to five items (these items are called item group A in the subsequent text).

• 80-89% was given to 6 items (B).

• 70-79% was given to one item (C).

• 60-69% was given to five items (D).

• Less than 60% was given to seven items (E).

As Table 5.6 in Appendix shows, almost all the universities and colleges surveyed report that they have systems of evaluation and quality assurance. They also indicate that they consider the president’s leadership important for promoting campus-wide management of educational matters (see the items 22, 15, 1, 2, and 20 in Group A).

The fact that the importance of the university leadership is underscored might be influenced by the fact that the questionnaire was sent to vice presidents. Yet, expectations to presidential leadership seem to have grown in Japan and worldwide from a ‘knowledge community’ towards a ‘knowledge enterprise’ or, as McNay has pointed out, in the process of the transformation of university governance from a ‘collegium’ to a ‘bureaucracy’ and from a ‘corporation’ to an ‘enterprise.’ 12 In Japan, for example, the process towards a top-down type of administration and management has accelerated since 2014, when education laws were revised. 13

In regard to mechanisms of evaluation and quality assurance, students’ evaluations of teaching is named most frequently. This reflects the fact that this has been called for by mext for some time; it is a new challenge now to draw conclusions regarding the encouragement of active teaching. In regard to the evaluation and quality assurance of curricula, however, the items in the questionnaire could be interpreted as indicating a start of these activities related to the evaluation and quality assurance of curricula rather than a consolidated implementation. Altogether, the responses to the various items suggest that respondents do not underscore quality assurance most strongly in terms of respective mechanisms and committees; rather, they are viewed in terms of efforts for substantial improvement.

Various mechanisms of the coordination of study programs are named by 80% or more of respondents (see the items 16, 21, 9, 14, 23, and 19 in Group B), such as accreditation, a consistent credit system, career education, and a campus-wide curricular coordination. In addition, the role of students’ opinions and decentral initiatives for active learned are named just as often.

There were 70% or more affirmative responses for one item, which was that a committee is seen as instrumental for the improvement management of educational matters.

60% or somewhat more of the respondents underscored the role of mostly operational issues (the items 11, 3, 10, 6 and 17 in Group D). Issues addressed in this were setting limits for annual credits, assessing according to grade point average, regulating time linked to learning in class, and fostering learning outside classes.

Finally, items 13, 12, 24, 7, 4, 5, and 8 were least frequently named affirmatively. They were comprised of a wide range of issues. It might be worth mentioning that both learning portfolios and teaching portfolios do not seem to play any substantial role.

Altogether, the responses suggest that many formal steps have been undertaken to support students’ al. Some operational support is widespread, and mechanisms of evaluation have become customary. However, further improvements seem to be needed. In this framework, it is interesting to note that support for ‘students’ studying outside classrooms’ was not among the most frequently named activities. In addition, teaching portfolios and learning portfolios are by no means widespread.

Concluding Remarks

The national survey analyzing the extent of managerial and other support for al shows, first, that such concepts are more widely appreciated than actually implemented. The practical mechanisms for the support of al are often in a stage of ‘take-off’ or have not reached such a stage. Obviously, further improvement is desirable.

Second, the information available suggests that students in Japan should spend more time on studying. In the context of al, we might argue that more learning outside of classes has to be called for.

Third, al at universities and colleges in Japan might gain importance if it can count on more support by academics and if various supportive mechanisms are improved and consolidated. For example, it is true to say that academics are belatedly thinking about al’s importance in promoting higher education reform, although they are hardly practicing the methodology of how to transform their passive teaching to active teaching in order to transform students’ passive learning to al. If we pay attention to hip and ir, which are thought to be the core methodologies of enhancing al practice as well as active teaching practice, the present situation seems to be an ideal situation regarding all academia’s intentional commitment to hip and ir.

In addition to this fact, the development and application of rubrics have almost not been promoted at all so that the individual institution has not promoted their own practices to the level of classroom reform in terms of passive learning to al. This situation needs to be improved, since hip and ir are considered to be the most essential methodologies for realizing al’s institutionalization.

Fourth, various curricular mechanisms have been fostered to promote al. This comprises setting attainment goals for undergraduate education and setting up a so-called “diploma policy”. However, a corresponding assessment policy and the respective change of evaluation follow as slowly as a snail. Obviously, al can spread further if respective curricular and administrative measures are improved.