The Reality of Online Education by the Busiest Japanese Teachers in Public Primary and Junior High Schools under COVID19 in Japan

Abstract

The COVID19 pandemic began to assault the Japanese archipelago in January, 2020. In educational fields, school lessons were suspended to prevent the spread of the Corona virus infection under a state of emergency, declared by the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, in the Spring of 2020. Initially, schools had to change face to face lessons to assignments, or self-study by the students. Teachers gave lesson handouts for the students from February to March, in 2020. The Japanese government hoped public schools would make good use of computers to support good educational outcomes. This paper aims at reporting on the current educational situation for Information Communication Technology (ICT) under the Corona virus pandemic, for metropolitan Tokyo in Japan, from the January of 2020 to August 2021. This paper discusses how much the busiest teachers in the world utilize ICT for lessons in one of the world’s most developed countries, Japan, despite Japanese teachers already working the longest hours per week of any country.