Program

Today, visitors to Hiroshima enjoy pleasant strolls along the city’s riverside and through lush green parks, oblivious to the tragic events of 78 years ago. However, the contrast between the city’s modern skyscrapers and the ruins at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, commonly known as the Genbaku (Atomic Bomb) Dome, and designated as a World Heritage Site, is striking enough to make one wonder why Hiroshima is called the City of Peace. The monument embodies the plea that the atrocity of nuclear war and the series of conflicts that led to it should never be repeated. Those who survived the atomic bombing and its aftermath and who lived through the reconstruction of Hiroshima wish to pass on the wisdom that the key to preventing humanity’s self-destruction lies in education, which empowers us to think critically and constructively.
In the aftermath of the bombing, Hiroshima suffered natural disasters, the collapse of social institutions, extreme poverty, disease, violent crime and social unrest. Although various innovative measures were implemented to mediate the growing challenges, it was the people in the midst of the crisis who led the recovery efforts themselves. Through this process, both the survivors and their city underwent profound transformations encompassing material and personal aspects of their self-identity, aided by discourses of resilience and regeneration.
This paper utilises recent empirical evidence and draws upon the analytical framework of memory studies to uncover how the survivors sustained themselves in the aftermath of the atomic bombing and the crucial role education played in the ongoing reconstruction of their society and the regeneration of lives. The paper will cover the important implications of these insights for current and future generations.

On March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake with a magnitude of 9 struck eastern Japan. This was the fourth largest earthquake in the world since 1900, when seismic observations started, and the largest in Japan. I was in Sendai of Miyagi Prefecture, the largest city in the Tohoku region, when the earthquake struck. Immediately after the earthquake, lifelines such as electricity, water, and gas were cut off, which drastically changed our daily life to live in an abnormal situation. Naturally, schooling was also suspended from that day onward. The damage to buildings was more extensive, and the campus where I was working at the time suffered billions of yen in damage, making it impossible for us to teach classes. More serious than the major earthquake, however, was the damage caused by the tsunami. Although Japan had prepared for tsunami damage and taken countermeasures, the tsunami was much larger than expected, measuring 10 to 15 meters in height, hitting the coastal areas, engulfing towns, and washing away buildings and people. The total number of dead and missing was approximately 20,000. I was stunned to see the wasteland after the sea water receded. Even more serious was the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in Fukushima Prefecture, located in the southern part of Miyagi Prefecture. The tsunami engulfed the nuclear facilities, causing the uranium cooling system to lose control and spread radioactivity. As a result, residents of Fukushima Prefecture were forced to leave their hometowns and begin living in new locations. This is an overview of the Great East Japan Earthquake. My report will give an overview of the disaster, especially in the Tohoku region, and then present the disaster situation in terms of education and the key points of what kind of reconstruction has been attempted. I will report on the characteristics and challenges of the respective efforts to not only restore the daily life of schools, but also to make the most of the disaster experience.

Children were the biggest victims of the COVID 19. Children were deprived of their human right to learn due to prolonged school closures and restrictions on learning, and the learning loss caused them to lose a considerable amount of lifetime wage and hope for present and future well-being. On the other hand, the pandemic has accelerated the pace of the fourth industrial revolution, widening the gap between rich and poor and the exploding education market, which has put public education at risk. In addition, the Russian military invasion to Ukraine has also created the threat of nuclear war and global economic stagnation.
In response to multi-layered crisis described above, how can public education defend democratic education and promote innovation in learning for children who will be the protagonists in this new stage of society? In this presentation, I would like to compare the responses to the pandemic in Japan and other Asian countries, and explore some characteristic features of further innovation in learning and the structure of the dilemma facing teachers.
I will refer to another issue. What leadership role should educational leaders play in school reforms that promote educational resilience and sustainability? Following issues are discussed here, (1) the priority of sharing a vision in reform, for constructing learning and caring community, (2) the two strategies of disruptive innovation and sustainable innovation, and (3) the significance of democratic autonomy and professional learning community in public schools.

Kanako N. Kusanagi is a Lecturer, Graduate School of Education and Human Development, Nagoya University, Japan. Her research interest is how to support teachers’ professional learning centered on student learning in Japan and abroad. Her expertise is the sociological analysis of foreign transfer in Japanese education models such as Lesson Study and Tokkatsu. She has been working in Indonesia since 2004 to support community development and educational projects. In addition, she has been leading several ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) projects. Her publications include Lesson Study as Pedagogic Transfer: A Sociological Analysis (Springer Nature, 2022) and the Japanese Educational Model of Holistic Education: TOKKATSU (co-authored, World Scientific, 2019).

Taiji Hotta is a Professor at Center for the Study of International Cooperation at Hiroshima University. He obtained Ph.D at University of Illinois. He specialises in comparative education, the study of educational development, educational exchanges, and the development of higher education. His recent research has targeted the alighted credit transfer system in Asian higher education.

Fazal Rizvi is an Emeritus Professor of Global Studies in Education at the University of Melbourne, as well as at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has written extensively on issues of identity and culture in transnational contexts, globalization and education policy, internationalization of higher education, and Australia-Asia relations. A sequel to his widely acclaimed book, Globalizing Education Policy (Routledge 2010) has recently been published under the title, Reimagining Globalization and Education (Routledge 2022). He is an editor-in-chief of the 4th edition of International Encyclopedia of Education (Elsevier 2022). Fazal is currently researching educational reform in Bhutan. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences, a past Editor of the journal, Discourse: Studies in Cultural Politics of Education, and a past President of the Australian Association of Research in Education.

Maren Elfert is Senior Lecturer in International Education at King’s College London. Her areas of research are global governance of education and the influence of international organizations on educational ideas and policies. She is blog editor of NORRAG, submissions editor of the International Review of Education, and member of the editorial board of Comparative Education.

Nishara Fernando is Professor in Sociology attached to the Department of Sociology, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. He was the former Head of Department of Sociology and Director Social Policy Analysis and Research Centre (SPARC) University of Colombo. Over the 23 years of service, he has contributed as a principal investigator and a country lead, in several international sociological and multi-disciplinary research and capacity development projects on disaster management, building resilience among vulnerable groups, pandemic preparedness, community empowerment, displacement and relocation, funded by UKGCRF, ERASMUS +, Swiss National Science Foundation etc. He has been widely published in international hi indexed journals, edited book chapters and monographs on youth and education, disaster management, displacement, and relocation.

Audrey Bryan is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the School of Human Development at Dublin City University’s Institute of Education. She specialises in the sociology of education, the sociology of childhood and (critical) global citizenship education. Her most recent research critically explores the increasing focus on “brainhood”, neuroscience and social-emotional learning in education. A related aspect of her current research is the figure of the “21st Century Child” in global educational policy and its effects on educational programming, curricula, teacher-student and parent-teacher relationships.

Edward Vickers is UNESCO Chair in Education for Peace, Social Justice and Global Citizenship at Kyushu University, and President of the Comparative Education Society of Asia. He researches the history and politics of education in contemporary Asia, especially in Chinese societies (the PRC, Hong Kong and Taiwan). He also researches the politics of conflict-related heritage in East Asia. His books include Education and Society in Post-Mao China (2017; with Zeng Xiaodong), Constructing Modern Asian Citizenship (2015; with Krishna Kumar), and Remembering Asia’s World War Two (2019; with Mark Frost and Daniel Schumacher). He co-chaired a working group on ‘Context’ for the UNESCO report Reimagining Education (2022), coordinated by the UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute in New Delhi.