Japan Teachers’ Union (JTU) held the 67th National Conference on Educational Research (NCER) on February 2-4, 2018 in Shizuoka.

10.000 teachers and teaching professions gathered and discussed good practice and challenges at schools.

At the plenary, President Izumi mentioned on new national curriculum standards and expressed concerns that teachers might care about evaluation too much when planning lessons. Through NCERs and daily practices, we have pursued ‘learning for children’, ‘academic achievement for life’ and ‘peer-learning among children and people’. He also referred to the JTU campaign ‘labor reform’. The JTU survey found out that teachers work longest comparing with other professions and JTU issued urgent recommendation; labor reform by the government should include teachers, relevant laws should be amended to improve teachers’ workload and others. Izumi insisted that the improvement is necessary to ensure quality education to children.

The participants were divided to 24 workshops; subjects of Japanese language, math, science and others, and educational issues such as human rights education, inclusive education, gender equality and others. The participants prepared reports from daily practices and discussed them at NCER to share success and challenges to work towards quality education.