Moral Education in Japan: The Disjoint Between Research on Policy and Research on Practice

Moral education has the explicit aim of contributing to the character formation of Japanese citizens through school education. For this reason, policy intentions for moral education, as communicated by official documents such as curricula and textbooks and by political discourse, hold great significance. Document-based studies on policy intent have expanded in recent years. In particular, there has been sustained interest in the potential of moral education for statist indoctrination and, often incompatibly, its potential for cultivating a modern democratic society. Less developed, however, is research that directly addresses how moral education is implemented in schools and classrooms. This research on practice is important to understand what moral education is and the extent to which policy intentions are realised. Moreover, practice-based research undertaken during times of reform can provide a window into understanding the role of the school in shaping how moral education changes and the enactment of school reform more generally. Ultimately, this knowledge is important to understand the actual effect of moral education and the manifest relationship between individual, school and the state.