The 71st National Conference for Educational Research (NCER) was virtually held from 28th to 30th January 2022. The thematic breakout sessions, which had cancelled last year due to the pandemic, were also held online with a total of 6,000 participants from all over the country.

At the plenary on 28th January, Hideyuki Shimizu, President of Japan Teachers’ Union, addressed his welcome remarks on its behalf as follows:
“Due to the impact of the new coronavirus infection disease for two years, various reports have been made at schools, including students refraining from going to school, shortening of school lunch hours, and reduced school attendance by using online classes together. Children are forced to be more patient, have less learning opportunities and suffer from mental and physical stress and anxiety about the future. Teachers and educational support personnel look after such children, strive to maintain a safe and secure environment such as avoiding crowds, disinfecting among others, and they face various challenges and difficulties including changes in curriculum and school events, student’s employment support and entrance examinations. However, they have eagerly continued their teaching practice to secure quality education for all students. In this unpredictable time, NCER plays a greater role as a place where teachers and educational support personnel from all over the country can meet to share their practice and experiences and discuss challenges to overcome and secure quality education for all children. Let’s deepen our educational practices through discussions in the breakout sessions and connect them to the next year’s activities on educational research.”
He further mentioned “for the children living in the future, the use of ICT is inevitable. Therefore, ICT should be utilized as a means to back up quality education and linked with our educational research and practice which students are centred”. Also, he stressed “in order to secure quality education, it is indispensable for teachers to have time and space for studying teaching materials, preparing for lessons, understanding students’ leaning context and supporting them. Therefore, normalised long working hours should be redressed because it is directly linked with quality education.” His remarks were concluded addressing “it is necessary to fully and early implement class size less than 35 students at elementary school and realise smaller class size at secondary school. Specific measures to improve the number of teachers are required.”

On 29th and 30th January, 24 thematic breakout sessions were organised with a total of 462 reports of teaching practice.