Building Infrastructure Through Programming and English Education in Rural Japan

*Mary Frances Agnello, Naoko Araki and Florent Domenach* 

#### **Abstract**

As Japanese Ministry of Education educational mandates for implementation by 2020 press on public school administrators, teachers, students, and communities, the sustainable programming education proposes strategies for addressing English and programming education curricula in the elementary and middle schools. Sustainability resides in retraining of teachers, working with university undergraduates who can be technologically savvy as they network in the rural community, and using existing resources wisely. Over a period of 2 years, the sustainable programming education (SPE) model has emerged based on a community action model with university administration support in the northern rural Japanese prefecture of Akita.

**Keywords:** sustainable, programming, education, professional development, rural infrastructure

#### **1. Introduction**

As Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT) educational mandates for implementation by 2020 pressure public school administrators, teachers, students, and communities, the sustainable programming education (SPE) proposes strategies for addressing English and programming education curricula in the elementary and middle schools. Sustainability resides in retraining of teachers, working with university undergraduates who network as they work in the rural community, and using existing resources wisely. Over a period of 2 years (2017–2019), the (SPE) model has emerged based on a community action model with university administration support in the northern rural Japanese prefecture of Akita. Initially, the project impediments were traced to the over-busy schedule of public school teachers, administrator fears to disrupt the routines of the school week, as well as teacher insecurities with concepts of computer programming and English education. As the ideas for teacher, parent, and student training were disseminated in the community, parents and students became very interested in the potential of students learning English while mastering computer programming, concepts, language, and skills. As teachers understood that they already teach logical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving, they became more relaxed. Finally, administrators realized that university students can provide much needed technical knowledge in the community.

#### **1.1 Purpose**

 Sustainable programming education (SPE) in Akita, in rural northern Japan, will collaboratively develop sustainable pedagogical approaches multigenerationally, particularly regarding instructional technology expertise and integrated studies based on teacher knowledge, skills, and needs. Teachers will disrupt current practices by repositioning themselves with pedagogical and programming strengths through SPE to ensure their compliance with MEXT 2020 mandates.

#### **1.2 Objectives**

The objective of this project and the action research model implemented is to both document and improve the professional educator private sector and public school effort to build information systems through the sustainable programming education (SPE), an initiative that integrates multi-generational English and programming education through teacher professional development. This collaborative model will strengthen professional relationships among individual teachers, as well as train university students to become scientific communicators while engaging parents with a public school and private business sector to contribute to local rural educational and economic strength. Relying on free-use web-based programs, "unplugged activities," private sector technology, and teacher expertise to teach logical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity, as well as providing experiences for Akita International University students to teach peers, professional teachers, and public school students, a sustainable programming education program is being developed.

#### **1.3 Background**

Why SPE? As public school administration face the challenges of depopulation of small towns and the countryside, stagnant economic conditions, and the need to adapt locally, nationally, and internationally to a globalizing world, the MEXT has high expectations for Japanese schools. Further professional pressure on public educators by MEXT 2020 curriculum reform ensues from the need to prepare digital "natives" to become proficient in computer programming. Increasing Japanese students' English language abilities has also been the main focus by MEXT. Rural areas of Japan such as Akita are examples of many communities facing these challenges.

Teachers are the social and educational connection between educational mandates and student learning. Yet, over the years, teachers find themselves at a crossroad of personal language development need. Additionally, their knowledge and skills in IT will be put to the test from 2020. Working with educators to develop professional proficiencies in both English and computer programming through SPE will help address the heavy burden that teachers face during the preparation and the initiation of MEXT 2020 reform. By tapping the talents of university students and training them to work in schools with teachers and public school students in collaboration, a digital and linguistic inequality gap problem will begin to be lessened. Additionally, university students' expertise will be engaged to address the needs of local rural communities.

Through a series of progressive steps, we are providing an ongoing support to school teachers and students in rural areas in northern Japan for the 2020 requirements of the new educational policies in programming and English. This support will help collaboratively developing pedagogical approaches with local communities and teachers that are sustainable, particularly regarding instructional technology (IT) expertise and integrated studies based on their knowledge, skills, and needs.

#### *Building Infrastructure Through Programming and English Education in Rural Japan DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87836*

Through teachers repositioning themselves with confidence in their expertise and revisiting their pedagogical strengths through the SPE project, their art and science of teaching both programming and English will increase.

This collaborative model will strengthen professional relationships among individual teachers, as well as train university students to become scientific communicators. Original in concept, no other projects in Japan have tackled such issues. Anticipated results and effects of two workshops delivered in November 2017 and January 2019 have led to communication networks developing in rural settings where linguistic and technology expertise are in demand.

#### **2. Sustainability literature**

Wiek, Withycomb, and Redman conducted an extensive literature review across disciplines in order to identify competencies necessary for solving sustainability problems particularly in urban settings [1]. They found transformational action connections in participatory, deliberative, and adaptive settings identified by many researchers across disciplines [2]. In educational literature, there is an extensive body of problemsolving literature perhaps made most well-known by John Dewey's pragmatism of education through schooling as an integral part of society, rather than separate from it. In his most famous treatise on education, democracy and education [3], he illustrates vividly the need for collaborative problem-solving to be achieved in communities.

 The precepts of sustainability reside in collaborative, problem-solving, and transformative models of education and goal achievement. Many angles of sustainability have been and will continue to be studied—for we know that water will sustain the planet, as will agriculture—yet, we also recognize that we need technological knowledge and the ability to communicate globally in order to solve some of humankind's most pressing issues, including how best to educate the young to become the problem-solvers of tomorrow. Thus, we cannot separate the "hard sciences" from the social and behavioral realm of teaching and learning in order to tap our most precious human resources in the effort to sustain social systems within sustainable environments.

Building from years of sustainability research and curriculum innovation efforts informed by Dewey, the researchers have considered the green built environment [4], water as the key to survival of the planet as a curricular mainstay [5], as well as the use of a participatory action model of research for problem-solving [6–9]. Participatory action research models along with professional development workshops helped educators in Japan in particular when English as a foreign language education was introduced to elementary school curricula for the first time [10–13].

 Another aspect developed by researchers through the years is university students' involvement and training, especially in research development [14] or as links to industry [15–16]. Such academic knowledge building became the backdrop of the current research focused on a participatory action research model, as well as the focus on environmental and social sustainability.

In rapidly expanding fields of sustainability wherein international educational programs have been founded and curricular focus at such institutions of higher learning as Akita International University have been established, the groundswell of emphasis on educating current and future generations to solve sustainability problems warrants the need for the SPE. We see the need for the foundations of a sustainable computer programming education, as well as more and improved English skills in the northern rural prefecture of Akita, Japan, where human resources are dwindling due to rural flight of the young and the paucity of economic alternatives to the once highly successful agricultural economic sector in the area.

The overarching framework posited by [1] provides problem-solving capacity supported by analysis leading to sustainability solutions, anticipation, and preparation for future challenges of sustainability. Addressing the need for more and better English skills in rural Akita, as well as competencies leading to computer science expertise, the teachers, AIU students, and existing IT resources provide a linchpin for future development and growth as described by [1] who articulate five key competencies in sustainability that can be applied in university curriculum in urban settings, although they are also highly relevant to rural university sustainability curriculum as well.

They include systems thinking competence, interpersonal competence, anticipatory competence, strategic competence, and normative competence. Such acumen allows for in-depth understanding of present systems, generating several alternatives for future sustainable visions—both interventionist and non-interventionist in addition to group dynamics fueled by collaborative and cooperative individuals' intent on goal achievement that depends on acquired normative knowledge reliant on concepts of justice, equity, social and ecological integrity, and ethics [1, 4]. Wiek and fellow researchers, as do all researchers cited here, emphasize that sustainability efforts link knowledge to action, depending on the co-construction of knowledge and practical solutions.

#### **3. Methodology**

 The first trial SPE workshop was held in Akita on a Saturday to encourage educator participation in November 2017. A second trial workshop was held in early January 2019 on a Saturday similarly so that regular work and school schedules would not interfere. The local Ministry of Education in the Akita prefecture provided their continuous support for these trials, along with that of Akita International University administration.

Based on the findings from the trials, a participatory action research (problem, actions/solutions, assessment) will be incorporated for planning and implementing the full SPE project beginning in January 2019. The project will engage an action research model combining pre-assessment, intervention preparations, intervention, and ongoing assessment, as well as project evaluation. The objectives of the threepart professional development initiative includes three phases (research, education, and social impact) illustrated in **Figure 1**.

#### **Figure 1.**  *The implementation of sustainable programming education (SPE).*

*Building Infrastructure Through Programming and English Education in Rural Japan DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87836* 

**Figure 2.** 

*Objectives of the sustainable programming education (SPE) effort.* 

**Figure 3.**  *Outcomes of the sustainable programming education (SPE) implementation in Akita, Japan.* 

The training and implementation period will be tailored to school commissioners' and teachers' needs to adapt their views of teaching two required curricular subjects in an integrated manner—English and programming (see **Figure 2**).

 University students will develop and improve their skills to deliver the instruction. In turn, the PI and co-Is, with students, will deliver more workshops in schools of Akita, as well as disseminate the findings of their project work as depicted in **Figure 3**.

#### **4. Findings: three facets of building sustainability**

#### **4.1 University students**

 Since the focus of computer programming is taught in the university, and the English curriculum is the instructional medium at AIU, the students are well positioned to become experts and teachers. As demonstrated in both the December 2017 and January 2019 teacher workshops, the university students were both necessary and integral to the three-partite program in development. The participating students are personable, know programming techniques, and speak English, and perhaps even more remarkable is that they are collaborative problem-solvers. They were able to ensure that all participants in the simultaneous adult/student and teacher workshops were able to follow and engage in the activities—instructing, demonstrating, redirecting, correcting, and trouble-shooting when they were needed to oversee the unplugged, computer, and robotic activities. Further, they were logistical assets—directing participants where they needed to be, making signs for clarity, and getting the participants from the greater community familiar with the university campus environment. The president of the participating private sector instructional technology company, EK Japan, remarked both in person and in post-workshop email communications how much knowledge that the students have of English, computers, and pedagogy to connect the public school students, teachers, and parents from the community with the desired learning outcomes of each activity. In many ways, the young adults are the foundations of the proposed sustainability effort.

#### **4.2 Public school teachers**

 The teachers in attendance at both the 2017 and 2019 workshops expressed the desire to know more about how to address the students' and teachers' needs in order to be in compliance with the MEXT 2020 curriculum change mandates. They realized after they started participating in the unplugged and computer-based learning sessions that they already do much of what is being repurposed and reframed in the name of computer programming, that is, they already impart logical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving to their students every day in routine teaching. As they began to comprehend how to reframe, redirect, and reestablish their knowledge frameworks, they were able to see that there is not much new to consider as necessary to the preparatory programming that they are responsible to teach. They have much of what they need in their pedagogical repertoire. They just need to master some new vocabulary, reimagine what they do in the various disciplines in the contexts of the programming guidelines, and implement instruction that engages all of their students. If they had doubts about the resources needed to achieve this goal before the workshop, they were assured that they have some resources that can be shared in effective teaching practices that they implement routinely with no cause for panic.

#### **4.3 Resources: using and stretching what we have**

Because many rural schools lack up-to-date hardware and software, administrators and teachers expressed that they felt overly challenged to meet the computer coding curriculum. Yet, as they saw the workshops being implemented, they witnessed the kinds of turn-taking and rotations that they use in the classroom in order to provide interest for the students, in order for all the students to be able to engage in the activities, and in order to have the students take turns in various classroom stations in rotation fashion. Although the computer labs in many of the rural schools date back to the 1980s, there are many ways that an Internet connection can afford the accessibility to the needed resources online. The hourofcode.com, for example, provides many short computer programming lessons building from simple to more complex concepts. Using pencil and paper can also achieve many of the goals of the programming instruction detailed in the MEXT 2020 mandates. Thus sustainability can be achieved by relying on existing resources without expending large sums of money in order to accommodate elaborate computer laboratories. Also, the few existing computers in classrooms will be shared among the students in order to ensure that all students will have opportunities to work hands-on with computer technologies.

#### **5. Major conclusions**

A three-phase educational and professional development effort will address the needs of schools, teachers, and students to fulfill local and national directives of ministries of education. We aim to support teachers to incorporate and upgrade the technology and programming education for curricula in the elementary and junior high schools. This will be achieved by introducing an interdisciplinary approach to programming education with the emphasis on English language education since English is the core language in programming. Such efforts are aimed at building the foundations for information systems to enable future international communications and local prefectural information systems infrastructure. Such knowledge foundations will contribute to rural Japan's participation in robotics and programming, as well as establish curriculum to further technological goals with and for local teachers and their students.

#### **Author details**

Mary Frances Agnello\*, Naoko Araki and Florent Domenach

Faculty of International Liberal Arts, Akita International University, Akita, Japan

\*Address all correspondence to: maryfrancesagnello@aiu.ac.jp

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

### **References**

[1] Wiek A, Withycombe L, Redman CL. Key competencies in sustainability: A reference framework for academic program development. Sustainability Science. 2011;**6**:203-218

[2] Bäckstrand K. Civic science for sustainability: Reframing the role of experts, policy-makers and citizens in environmental governance. Global Environmental Politics. 2003;**3**(4):24-41

[3] Dewey J. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: The Macmillan Company; 1923

[4] Darwish M, Agnello MF. Educating construction engineering students for a sustainable ethical, global practice. In: Latin American and Caribbean Engineering Education Conference Proceedings. Medellin, Columbia; 2011

[5] Doue W, Agnello MF, Morgan Fleming B. Water across the curriculum. In: Correa AC, Agnello MF, Todd R, Peterson R, editors. Proceedings International Center for Arid and Semi-Arid Land Studies Conference. Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech; 2008. pp. 201-205

[6] Agnello MF. Making sense of educational issues and reform through generative curricular practices: Preservice teachers move from public understanding to political activism. In: Paper Presented at American Educational Research Association. San Francisco, CA; 2006

[7] Agnello MF. Public understanding to political voice: Action research and generative curricular practices in issues and reform. The Social Studies. 2007;**98**(5):217-222

[8] Agnello MF, Lucey T. Modeling action research: Creating a model. In: Paper Presented at American

Educational Research Association; Chicago, IL. 2007

[9] Agnello MF, Todd R. Modeling action research: Creating a model. In: Correa AC, Agnello MF, Todd R, Peterson R, editors. Proceedings International Center for Arid and Semi-Arid Land Studies Conference. Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech; 2008. pp. 205-206

 [10] Araki N, Senior K. Chapter 7: Making 'work' matter: The praxis of collecting and analysing data. In: Vicars M, Steinberg S, McKenna T, Cacciattolo M, editors. The Praxis of English Language Teaching and Learning (PELT): Beyond the Binaries: Researching Critically in EFL Classrooms. The Netherlands: Sense Publishers; 2015. pp. 115-140

[11] Araki N. We are robot engineers!! Drama pedagogy as the core of an integrated curriculum unit for learning English as a foreign language. Creative Approaches to Research, Special Issue: Crave. 2012;**5**(3):62-74

[12] Araki N. Top-down educational reform in English language curriculum in Japanese primary schools: Its implication and evaluation. Journal of Asian Critical Education. 2012;**1**(1 Fall):70-90

 [13] Araki N. The whole world communicates in English, do you? Educational drama as an alternative approach to teach English language in Japan. In: Foreign Language Teaching and Learning: Current Perspectives and Future Directions. 2nd ed. Boston: De Gruyter Mouton; 2011. pp. 271-288

[14] Domenach F, Rajabi Z. Correspondence-based lattice similarity measure. Archives of Data Science, Series A. 2017;**2**(1):1-15. DOI: 10.5445/ KSP/1000058749/

*Building Infrastructure Through Programming and English Education in Rural Japan DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87836* 

[15] Domenach F, Charmarai P, Savva A, Christou C. Felt—A social feeling app. In: 2015 International Conference on Interactive Mobile Communication Technologies and Learning (IMCL). IEEE; 2015. pp. 163-166

[16] Savva A, Hadjidakis S, Domenach F, Stylianou V. An F1 mobile application. In: 2015 International Conference on Interactive Mobile Communication Technologies and Learning (IMCL). IEEE; 2015. pp. 172-175

**459**

**Chapter 38** 

**Abstract**

opportunities.

**1. Introduction**

Miner's Cities and Rehabilitation

of Industrial Areas: Comparing

With the decrease in production, some of the industrial zones are closed and lose their original function. In the case of Zonguldak, there is a Brownfield problem in city center as a result of the loss of industrial function. Former industrial zones have turned into abandoned areas, and rehabilitation or re-functioning approaches have not yet been implemented. Like Zonguldak, many industrial facilities have lost their original function in Ruhr region. However, rehabilitation and re-functioning of the settlements became the main strategy of transformation of Ruhr. This approach points out not only physical sustainability with adaptive reuse but also social sustainability with new livelihood opportunities. In this study, the transformation which offers new recreational solutions and economic options in Ruhr region will be studied to understand rehabilitation process and reuse potential of the Brownfield areas. General information about study will be given in first section. In second section, as a former Industrial region Ruhr will be introduced in terms of economic, social, and physical conditions. After explaining to transformation approaches in Ruhr in third section, two examples, Ruhr and Zonguldak will be compared according to differences and similarities in fourth section. In conclusion, new transformation strategies of Zonguldak will be suggested for new livelihood

**Keywords:** brownfield rehabilitation, sustainability, adaptive reuse, Ruhr, Zonguldak

Zonguldak is the only city with hard coal production in Turkey that the production cycle is included in the urban life which depends on heavy industry. When the production curve is examined, it is seen that the coal production of the city has decreased over the years and accordingly, the number of mine workers decreased. With the decrease in production, some of the industrial zones are abounded. In addition, with the growth of the city and the increase of the population, the industrial areas in the city centre are moved to the city boarders. It is important that the old industrial zones in Zonguldak need to be transformed into recreational activities and settlements that allow the creation of the city's new economic options. Because it reveals the new economic activity option and responds to the culture, art, and sports activities, which are required by the locals. The future scenario for Zonguldak is variable. There are three different scenarios in the future projection,

Ruhr and Zonguldak Region

*Nazlı Arslan and Funda Kerestecioğlu*

#### **Chapter 38**
