{"title":"The Japanese Hands-Off Approach to Curriculum Guidelines for Early Childhood Education as a Form of Cultural Practice","authors":"A. Hayashi","doi":"10.1037/e679492011-001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/e679492011-001","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and \u0000Technology (MEXT) approach to curriculum policy in early childhood education. The \u0000Kindergarten Curriculum Guideline contains few directives or practical suggestions for \u0000teachers. The abstractness and indirectness of the MEXT approach to establishing curricular \u0000guidelines stands in stark contrast to the much more explicit and directive curriculum \u0000guidelines for early childhood education found in China, the US, many other countries. In this \u0000paper I suggest that the Japanese hands-off approach reflects a combination of structural \u0000features of Japanese early childhood education and implicit cultural beliefs and practices.","PeriodicalId":37367,"journal":{"name":"Asia-Pacific Journal of Research in Early Childhood Education","volume":"2014 1","pages":"107-123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82717024","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}