Infusing Japanese History, Language, and Culture in North Carolina Schools Grant uri icon

abstract

  • East Carolina University's Asian Studies Program proposes a four-week, short-term seminar designed to empower participating K-12 teachers and pre-service teachers from North Carolina with the first-hand knowledge necessary to develop modules for introducing the study of Japanese language, history and culture in the K -12 curriculum. Preparatory sessions held at ECU will be sponsored by the North Carolina Teaching Asia Network, funded by the Freeman Foundation. Via internet postings at an ECU web site, "Education About Japan," these modules will be available to the larger educational community. The seminar will include twelve K-12 teachers and an ECU professor of Japanese history, John Tucker. Curriculum specialists from ECU's School of Education will assist participating teachers, following their return from Japan, in creating grade-appropriate teaching modules. One module will be related to Japanese language, and the other to Japanese history and/or culture. Every effort will be made to include a diverse range of elementary and secondary teachers in the seminar to ensure diverse, vertical integration in the resulting teaching modules. Pre-departure, in-country, and post-return workshops, orientation sessions, field studies, and the resulting teaching modules related to Japanese language, history, and culture will be the subjects of on-going, rigorous evaluations by the K-12 participants, ECU faculty, school administrators, and Japanese coordinators, in order to ensure a program of the highest quality.

date/time interval

  • March 2009 - February 2010