Call for Proposals: JUSTEC 2016
The 28th annual seminar of the Japan-U.S. Teacher Education Consortium (JUSTEC) will be held November 4-7, 2016, at Japan’s Ehime University. Conference organizers invite proposals for paper and poster presentations by May 15 under the theme “Collaborative Teacher Education With Local Communities.”
This year’s theme is conceptualized this way:
When we look at trends in formal education, the centralized administrative approach prevails more and more in both the United States and Japan. Such an approach has been pointed out by a number of reports to often produce detachment of teachers’ practices from local conditions and needs. On the other hand, when we look into region-oriented alternative approaches, we can still discover a considerable number of successful cases with alternative methods. JUSTEC 2016 sets a conference theme, “Collaborative Teacher Education with Local Communities,” to explore regionally developed teacher education practices, created with local schools and related parties.
The call for proposals cites four areas of particular interest:
- Collaborative Teacher Education With Local Communities — Proposals in this primary area will share innovative collaborations between teacher educators and local communities to support teacher development, mutual understanding, and increases in educational achievement.
- How Can Teachers Be Supported to Engage a Diverse Range of Learners? — Proposals in this area will explore challenges teachers face supporting diverse learners in classrooms and approaches used by teacher educators and/or school personnel to develop preservice teacher capacity in this area.
- Ongoing Professional Development: Models and Practices — In what ways are teachers supported in their own professional growth—both to improve practice and to support retention of a quality workforce? How do specific models and practices, as well as cross-cultural comparisons or studies, add to our knowledge?
- How Does National Policy Affect Teacher Quality? — Proposals in this area will consider the ways in which national policy and policy initiatives shape teacher learning for either preservice or in-service growth. Topics might involve national curriculum initiatives, nationalized certification efforts, and/or national assessments.
This annual JUSTEC seminar continues a decades-long tradition, initiated by AACTE in the 1980s, of Japanese and U.S. teacher educators convening to promote understanding of and collaborative research into education issues of interest in both Japan and the United States. Generally alternating the conference site between the two lead countries, the event enjoys support from the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo and from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. The conference typically includes a site visit to a local school, seminar presentations, networking events, a local tour, and more.
Registration for the event is expected to open June 15. For specific proposal requirements, download the official JUSTEC 2016 Call for Proposals (PDF). For program details, download the JUSTEC 2016 flyer (PDF).
Tags: AACTE partner organizations, events, global issues
