International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
attitudes to respect the creation of self and others in “art”
" Sentences in “technology and home economics” mentioned above
High school:
" Some descriptions in art subjects and information subject in general high schools
" Some descriptions in many subjects in specialized high schools
In addition to the above, the subjects of which the description includes the term “creation” or “devise” are as
follows;
Primary school:
Japanese language, social studies, music, art and handicraft, physical education, living environment
studies, home economics, morality, the period for integrated studies
Secondary school:
Japanese language, social studies, music, art, health and physical education, technology and home
economics, foreign languages, morality, the period for integrated studies, special activities
High school:
Japanese language, geography and history, mathematics, science, art, health and physical education,
home economics, foreign languages, the period for integrated studies, specialized activities, subjects
in specialized high schools
The points of the IP education in Japan can be summarized as follows; 1) To address how to treat copyrighted
works in a simple way in primary school and to address IP in more specifically and more broad way in
secondary school, 2) IP is addressed in many subjects in specialized high schools but few in general high
schools, 3) “creation” and “devise” are addressed in many subjects in all schools. It is desirable that IP is
covered in many subjects on one side but there is a problem that it is unclear how depth IP should be taught in
which subject and whether IP education is given systematically as a whole.
Status of the Research and Lesson Practice on IP in Japan
As mentioned above, IP has come to be addressed in primary and secondary schools in Japan, but the
establishment of the teaching methods is remained. This is due to the fact that few teachers themselves have
received IP education. The Ministry of Education, Patent Office, and their relating organizations provide webs
and materials on IP education. The support projects for the lesson practice using the corresponding text on IP
education started in 2000, and the accumulation of lesson practices has progressed. There are also several
invention contests for primary school students to university students.
Some research groups, including an author’s group, have studied IP education with the support of the
Ministry of Education and the Patent Office. The author’s group proposed a draft curriculum of IP education in
each school level (Matsuoka, 2008). Table 1 illustrates the overview of the whole of them. Its features are as
follows;
1) In consideration with mental development stage, curriculum is divided into 4 phases as follows;
IP literacy incubation phase (age 7 to 10)
IP literacy birth phase (age 11 to 12)
IP literacy growth phase (age 13 to 15)
IP literacy fulfillment phase (age 16 to 18)
2) Two points are set to be learned; creativity being aware of IP, and attitude to respect IP. Sense of ethics
to respect IP is addressed not simply to know IP rights.
In low grades they touch the concept of IP while experiencing the joy of creation, and gradually learn
advanced creative methods and the structure of IP rights in more detail. In Japan there is a model named “IP
creation cycle” that affluent society is realized by repeating the cycle among “creation”, “protection”, and
“utilization”. Imitating the others is, however, sometimes required in learning process. Therefore, the word
“protection” is not familiar with learning process, especially for lower grades. So that instead of “protection”, we
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