Development of the New Idea About Textbooks for Pupils in
Inclusive Education Settings in Japan
Sanagi,T., Narukawa,Y., Ohta,M., Kitajima,Y., Miyadera,C.
Chiba University (Japan)
sanagi@faculty.chiba-u.jp
Abstract
The authorized textbooks are used in all primary and secondary schools in Japan. The ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) authorized the textbooks about
every ten years, though minor revised textbook issued almost every year, since the national
curriculum revised. This system has especially contributed to keeping the appropriate level of
compulsory education constant in Japan. In the case of children with disabilities, there are also
the textbooks published by MEXT directly. All special schools can choose the authorized
textbooks or MEXT published textbooks. These two kind of textbook must have contents under
the National Curriculum. The National Curriculum in Japan is strictly to be referred in all schools.
There are also suitable version for special schools. Among them, special school for children with
mental retardation have many special feature.
In the idea of inclusive education, it is required to include diversity of children's special
educational needs into the curriculum. However, since present textbook system has not designed
on the latest philosophy of inclusive education, new theory for developing both authorized and
direct published textbooks is required.
In this study, preliminary research was carried out for the developing suitable textbook for
inclusive education.
First, we analyzed the present textbooks in Japan. As a result, some points were clarified that
textbook should be improved to provide for inclusive education settings. Second, an investigation
with questionnaire about the usage of textbooks for inclusive education was conducted. About
100 teachers were joined that research.
The following results were indicated;
There were tendency that teachers wanted to have information on what should be presented for
each pupil with special educational needs in mainstream classroom and advice on group work
settings when their diversity on pupils' ability is very large.