Exploring Kyōiku: Children’s educational experiences in japanese kindergartens

© 2019, Western Australian Institute for Educational Research Inc. All rights reserved. This study addresses children’s Kyōiku (education) as it is explored by two kindergartens in Japan. It reports how the teachers, parents and children defined and experienced children’s education and draws on the sociocultural concepts to understand their perspectives. Situated in the personal, educational, and sociocultural landscape of the educational environment, the analysis foregrounds a lens to identify the influences on children’s education. The focus on children’s education in this study enables the threads of different perspectives within the fabric of the kindergartens and Japanese contexts to be shared. The findings reveal that theorising about children’s education invites scholarship that takes as axiomatic the complexity and distinctiveness of individual children, their families and the Japanese social and cultural dynamics.