１．There is a hypothesis experiment class in Japan
From now on, I’d like to tell you about a theory of education that can transform science education in the world.
The <Educational Theory> that I’d like to talk about with you is <KASETU-JIKKEN-JYUGYO> in Japanese.
In English, it is called <Hypothesis-Experiment Class>.
From now on, I will refer to <Hypothesis Experiment Class> as HEC.
If you know or have heard of it, please raise your hand. There are about 〇 people.
It seems this is the first time for most of you to hear about this.
The theory of education called <HEC> was first proposed by Japanese Itakura Kiyonobu in 1963.
Unfortunately, Mr. Itakura passed away in 2018.
It has been more than 50 years since it was proposed.
Although it is a wonderful theory, it is not yet common sense in Japan.
The reason why it does not spread is because it contains content that fundamentally changes the content of education.
I think it is because this theory is such an unconventional and wonderful idea that it doesn’t gain in popularity.
I hope that you will be interested in <HEC> after listening to my talk.
By the way, why do I want you to know about <HEC>?
This is because I think that if more children (or adults) take <HEC>, <Class Science> will become known and recognized.
My goal is to spread this <Class science> to the world.
Until <HEC> was born, <Class Science> did not exist in the world.
<Class Science> was created by <HEC>.
Why can <HEC> be called <Class Science>? What is <Class Science>?
And why can <HEC> revolutionize science education around the world?
I’ll talk about it concretely from now on.
２．Encounter with hypothesis experiment class
Before talking about <HEC>, Please listen to my story of how I first encountered HEC.
I became an elementary school teacher in Otsu, Japan in 1981, and I had 6th grade students.
I wanted to teach the children many things and help them become smarter.
I sent out class correspondence letters and held an after-school study session on Saturdays, but the children’s reaction was not what I expected.
On the contrary, it seemed to me that the children found my lessons boring.
I didn’t know how to teach a good class.
I worked very hard to teach my students, but I continued to teach without knowing what kind of class was good.
During that time, I read educational books and attended several study groups, but, unfortunately, I couldn’t find a good way to teach.
My first encounter with <HEC> was unexpected.
Four years after becoming a teacher, I moved to another school and met a Teacher named MS. Nakano.
One day after school, MS. Nakano proposed a problem to several colleagues in the staff room.
The problem was, “I have a broken lens here. Can I use it to collect the light of a fluorescent using it? If I could collect the light, what would it look like?”
I have liked science since I was in elementary school, so I confidently answered, “You won’t be able to collect it with a broken lens. Even if you could collect it, it must be in a circular shape.”
After that, MS. Nakano performed an experiment.
What do you think the results of the experiment were?
(Pauses) Please raise your hand if you think she was able to collect the light.
Please raise your hand if you think she can collect the light and it will be in the shape of a circle.
As a result of the experiment, she was able to collect the light of a fluorescent bulb using a broken lens.
It was exactly the shape of the florescent light bulb itself.
I was surprised at the results.
I was confident, but I got the wrong answer.
I also wondered about this style of education.
This question was one of the problems in the HEC “Light and Insect Glasses”.
This is the moment when I first experienced the hypothesis experiment class.
In May of the following year, I attended a seminar on a hypothesis experiment class called “Invitation to a Fun Class” held at a hotel in Kyoto.
I took a hypothesis experiment class titled “If I could see free electrons.”
While taking the class, I was impressed.
I was impressed by the wonderful content of the class.
It was the first time in my life that a class impressed me.
I was able to see the free electrons with my own eyes.
And I was able to actively learn the <function> of free electrons.
At this time, I was convinced that the hypothesis experiment class was genuine.
After that, I practiced <HEC> in my class at the school I was working for.
I notified the parents of what I taught through school news-letters.
Compared to my own lessons so far, the children welcomed <HEC>.
I practiced it until I retired.
While teaching the lessons, I began to wonder why such a wonderful class was not spreading in Japan.
As for the reason, I thought that it may be because <HEC> is far from the conventional way of teaching.
For example, children evaluate the quality of lessons in the <HEC>.
<The teacher does not evaluate their own lesson. The teacher asks the child for the evaluation. > This is the stance of the hypothesis experiment class.
In addition, in order to give a lesson, you must proceed with the class-book of <HEC> as it is.
Think of a class-book as a workbook or instruction book for advancing a hypothesis-experiment class.
Therefore, there is no room for teachers to think about teaching methods and lesson content.
You should not arrange the lesson content in your own way.
Hypothesis experiment class is different, as many teachers think they have to be creative and ingenious.
Another reason may be that the lesson books are created in a form that is not related to the curriculum guidelines that describe the basic teaching contents of education issued by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan.
The class-book was made with the purpose of reimagining what is important to teach children.
There is a hypothesis experiment class study group, or HEC study group, in Japan.
The HEC Study Group has about 1000 members.
Assuming that the total number of teachers in Japan is about one million, I think that the number of teachers practicing this every day is quite small.
Mr. Itakura thought that one day hypothesis experiment lessons would spread in Japan, but I don’t think it will spread more than it has.
So I decided to introduce it overseas.
I decided to spread the hypothesis experiment class in a foreign country and then import it back into Japan.
I thought that if I taught a hypothesis experiment class at a foreign school, maybe the class teacher or the principal would immediately approve of it.
３．Hypothesis experiment class abroad
At that time, I was a teacher, so I only had free time during summer vacation.
Moreover, I thought that the only country where I could teach with my limited English ability was in Australia.
After a short time, some of my colleagues and I were able to give short one hour lessons at some schools in Australia.
A teacher I met there said to me, “You are crazy. You should take a break during the summer vacation.”
While teaching at an Elementary School in Adelaide, I met Ms. Colette.
She was an apprentice at that school.
So I asked her, “If you become a teacher at an elementary school, I would like you to let me teach science using <HEC> at that school.”
This is because I wanted to carry out all the lessons in the <HEC> class-book titled “Objects and their Weight”.
After a few years, I was finally able to teach at an Elementary School in Perth.
Ms. Rico（Pseudonym） worked as a Japanese language teacher at the school.
She introduced me to Ms. Kei（Pseudonym） , who was a homeroom teacher for a 5th grade class.
Ms. Kei was a bright and friendly woman.
She kindly agreed to let me teach science in her class.
That year, 2014, is a year that I will never forget.
I received 6 classes from her, so I was able to teach ＜HEC＞ “Objects and their Weight”.
The feedback from the children at that time was unforgettable for me.
At the airport on my way back to Japan, I read the impressions of the children and remember getting lost in the memory of how amazing the HEC class was.
(Shown as Figure 1)Feedback about2014.8.21
This is the feedback that Thomas (Pseudonym) wrote.
- I found these lessons very enjoyable! These lessons were very interesting. I found out a lot more about weight than I already knew. It seemed like at first that“Oh we’re doing weight so what? I already know that stuff”, but then when we started it was so interesting and I found a lot out! Thomas Ａ
He thought, “I’ve learned about weight and already know it, so why are we learning this?”
However, he wrote that he learned a lot in my class.
It’s a shame because he doesn’t say what he learned, but he’s learned a lot more, even though he’s learned about weight once.
Moreover, he had a lot of fun learning.
Although A is written after his name, you can see that Thomas chose “I enjoyed this class very much”.
This means that <HEC> is a more beneficial class for children than traditional lessons.
Children get tired of learning when the class is low.
What kind of impression did you have after reading the feedback from other children?
Do you think they are only saying nice things about my class because a new teacher was visiting from Japan?
This isn’t the case.
That’s because it’s very similar to the feedback from Japanese children.
In Australia, children’s evaluations were almost the same as in Japan.
I was happy and immediately showed this result to the principal.
I was wondering if the principal would say, “It’s a wonderful class,” but unfortunately it wasn’t the reaction I expected.
I was disappointed because the reaction was similar to that of general Japanese teachers.
I thought that one time alone would not be enough to gain teachers` trust and spread this lesson style around the world.
Therefore, I decided to give another lesson in the United States.
It happened that a friend of my school colleague was a teacher at an elementary school in Michigan.
I had the opportunity to contact the teacher and this lead to me teaching at an elementary school in Michigan, USA.
I was able to teach the “Objects and their Weight” class to the 5th and 3rd grades.
At that Elementary School, they teach in two languages, English and Japanese.
So, I decided to teach in Japanese.
There were some children in the class who were not very good at Japanese, so it was quite difficult for me to proceed with the lessons that I thought should be easy to understand.
At the end, I asked for feedback on the lesson.
(The impression of the 5th grade is shown on Figure 2)omit
(The impression of the 3rd grade is shown on Figure 3)omit
The <Enjoyment> of HEC is shown here for all three elementary schools in Australia and the United States.
In <HEC>, it is a rule to listen to the <Degree of enjoyment> of the class.
The success or failure of a lesson is judged by asking the students.
This is the degree of enjoyment in my class in the 5th grade at an Elementary school in Michigan.
There were a total of 12 students who had a lot of enjoyment or had enjoyment, and no one thought it was boring.
This is the degree of enjoyment in my class in 3rd grade at an Elementary school.
22 students in total said it was a lot of fun or fun, 3 people couldn’t say either, and no one said it was boring.
This is the degree of enjoyment for my class in the 5th grade of an Elementary School in Perth.
There were a total of 24 students who had a lot of enjoyment or enjoyment, and no one said it was boring.
If I had more time, I would have loved to introduce the feedback of each student, but unfortunately I will omit it this time.
You can see that these three classes were enjoying the “Objects and their Weight” class.
It depends on the idea that “classes should be fun”, but I will not explain in detail this time because I do not have time.
On the last day of my classes, I had the opportunity to talk about <HEC> in front of the teachers of an Elementary School in Michigan and the principal.
After I finished talking, I didn’t get the reaction I expected again.
I think that <HEC> is wonderful and I could create class science, but it is hard to get approval.
Even so, why was I, who is not so good at English, able to teach at two foreign elementary schools to 3rd and 5th graders?
That is because the hypothesis experiment class uses the <HEC Class-book>.
With this <HEC Class-book>, any enthusiastic teacher can teach <HEC>.
If you do the <HEC>, you can get the same expected results anytime and anywhere.
That’s right, Mr. Itakura succeeded in creating <Class Science>.
From now on, I think that as HEC gradually gains in popularity, it will be approved by educators all over the world.
<HEC> is about the proposition that it can be <Class Science>.
After <HEC> becomes more accepted, <Class Science> should also be accepted.
Mr. Itakura learned from history the laws and concepts that scientists have discovered over time.
He studied in detail how scientists discovered things, what perspectives they had and what they thought.
He succeeded in transforming the research results into classes and bringing them into the world of education.
Here is the <Class-book> of “Objects and their Weight”.
I taught according to this Class-book.
Even I, who can’t speak English very well, was able to proceed thanks to this <Class-book>.
In other words, no matter which teacher teaches, if you have this <Class-book>, you can proceed with the lesson with confidence.
What’s more, you get great feedback from children and students.
Until now, ordinary general lessons that are not <HEC> have not been science.
This is because the results of the lessons often differed greatly depending on the teacher and the content of the lesson.
However, this <Class-book> has made it possible to unify the teaching methods of various teachers.
４．Significance of changing people’s perceptions
Now I would like to talk about human recognition.
The process of “trusting science” and the process of “discovering the truth for yourself” are the same.
When there is no credible science yet, we will also set the standard of “how to make science by ourselves”.
So what is the process of “trusting science”?
If you have a specific problem, make your own judgment or hypothesis about it and compare it with your classmates’ judgment.
Then experiment to see which idea is correct.
When we solve some related problems, we start to develop a hypothesis such as <The weight does not seem to change even if the shape of the object changes>.
The child will experience a process similar to the process of law discovered by scientists through a series of problems.
If your hypothesis is different from the experimental results while solving the problem, you will have to change your ideas.
We confirm the correct way of thinking through experimentation.
The recognition process can be shown in the following diagram. (Indicated by PowerPoint)
By solving a series of problems, you will be able to think like Galileo, for example.
In other words, by doing <HEC>, children can learn to trust science.
The decisively important thing is to make predictions yourself and know the experimental results after performing experiments yourself.
In addition, discussions are held in the “Hypothesis Experiment Class”.
Whatever a student’s opinion, the final decision will be made through experimentation.
Therefore, children will learn to value various opinions.
They will notice the goodness of each person’s thoughts and the wonderfulness of others.
If <HEC> are held at all schools around the world, humanism will spread and it should contribute to world peace.
This is because by taking the <HEC>, you will be able to acquire <Hypothesis Experiment Recognition> in no time at all.
Again, the crucial thing for humans is to make predictions and discover the results through experimentation.
This means that students can learn the truth with their own power.
This is <Hypothesis Experimental Recognition>. And, step by step, I firmly believe that world peace will be realized when <Class Science> is recognized.
5.History is created by many ordinary people
<HEC> is currently not well known, but I hope that it will gradually become known and practiced by people all over the world.
I would like to thank everyone involved for this opportunity.
I would also like to thank all of you who are gathered here today.
It seems that it will take some time before the <HEC> spreads around the world.
Technology will continue to develop in the future.
No matter how much technology develops, human beings are not born with the ability to think of scientific theories and concepts.
In particular, everyone must learn basic scientific theories and concepts from scratch.
We won’t understand that basic scientific theories and concepts are better than our gut feeling until we learn first-hand by comparing our intuitions and theories.
I think it is inevitable that the role of <HEC> will increase in the future.
In the distant future, I hope every school in every country will practice <HEC>.
This is because the <HEC> can solve the problems of current education, so it has to be done.
I would like to continue my activities as long as my time allows so that the time it takes for the <HEC> to spread will be reduced.
For those who want to experience the <HEC> once, I would like to provide an opportunity to experience the class again.
I did not explain in detail about <Hypothesis-Experimental Recognition>, but I think that <Hypothesis-Experimental Recognition> can be understood by experiencing <HE C>.
<HEC> will help to foster a democratic society and spread the idea of humanism.
And, with the spread of <Hypothetical Experimental Recognition>, <World Peace> may be realized someday.
Thank you for reading.