Ueno Masamichi

Globalization and the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the 21st century have contributed to transforming education and the public sphere defined by the nation state into a transnational dimension of the public sphere that transcends national boundaries. The public sphere of education does not refer to a fixed and pre-determined sphere, but rather to what is generated through the interactive and dialogical relationships among students, teachers, parents, and citizens. It is important to revitalize schools as democratic communities based on the idea of democracy as a way of life as opposed to school policies dominated by the neoliberalism of competition and choice and education standardization. In this essay, I offer seven perspectives on reclaiming teaching and learning and reimagining school education and the public sphere in local, national, and global dimensions.

Developmental Contextualism, as an instance of developmental system theories, represents a new and increasingly influential theoretical perspective on human development. The central idea of Developmental Contextualism lies in that changing, reciprocal relations (or dynamic interactions) between individuals and the multiple contexts within which they live comprise the essential process of human development, and that the goodness-of-fit of between the person and the context can foster the positive development of individual. In contrast with the notion of predetermined epigenesis as reflected in many stage theories of human development, theorists of Developmental Contextualism admit greater plasticity in development and believe that developmental changes are probabilistic in respect to normative outcome due to variations in the timing of biological, psychological, and social factors (or levels) that provide integrative base of ontogenetic progression. The circular effects research—a new research approach—has been proposed by Developmental Contextualism to investigate the circulate functions in development.