Knowledge and Understanding of Social Studies in Elementary Education

A national assessment of academic ability was implemented in Japan in 2007, and governmental assessments of learning are steadily filtering into the educational community. Thus far, Japanese language and mathematics are the central subjects targeted in the national assessment of academic ability. At the local level, 19 out of 47 prefectural boards of education conducted learning assessments of social studies at elementary schools in the 2012 academic year. However, introducing social studies into the national assessment is currently under review. This paper examined the outcome of the previous survey (the "Nationwide Comprehensive Survey of Academic Ability") with a focus on pupils' knowledge and understanding of social phenomena. The National Institute of Educational Policy Research implemented the "Nationwide Comprehensive Survey of Academic Ability" in the academic years 1994 and 2001, under the same government guidelines for education. Pupils' knowledge and understanding of social phenomena significantly declined in 2001 compared with 1994. In this paper, we compared the social studies textbooks that were used in the academic years 1994 and 2001. The decline in pupil achievement from 1994 to 2001 is considered to be related to changes in the descriptions of social phenomena in the textbooks