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Description: Our general objective is to enhance social studies teachers' understanding of the United States so that they can effectively teach "America" in classroom situations. This objective is based on the assumption that it is quite important in education as well in view of the current U.S.-Japan relationship. More specifically, on the basis of the increase of those teachers' knowledge of America, we aim at developing teaching materials―textbooks, lesson plans, audio-visual materials, etc.―for social studies which contribute to deepening the understanding of America in the field of social studies education at junior high/high schools in Japan. The program will include, first of all, geographic education. In the first year, focusing on the East Coast, we would like to investigate cities and urban life including history, culture, transportation, food, clothing, shelter, etc., and to develop teaching materials for these topics. We will move to the Midwest and the West Coast in the following years. Little attention has so far been paid to the study of cities, but recently from the viewpoint of environmental education the use of environment has become more and more important in terms of the creation and control of urban build-environment. In the U.S., the dynamic renaissance movement of geographic education took off in 1984. Geography educators in Japan need to pay careful attention to the progress of geographic education in the U.S. schools.
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