Faculty/Staff Detail

Ryota Yaginuma, a visiting scholar from Japan, will study character education under the guidance of Thomas Lickona, Childhood/Early Childhood Education Department and Director of Center for the 4th and 5th Rs, through September 2011. Yaginuma is an associate professor at Gifu National University, Graduate School of Education in Japan, and has a Ph.D. in literature from Waseda University in Japan for the study of John Dewey’s pragmatism and educational theory.

Yaginuma has published numerous works, including John Dewey’s Pragmatism and Education (2002); The Problem-Solving Type Moral Teaching (2006); The Study of Moral Education (2007);  Rorty’s Philosophy and Education (2008); The Problem-Solving Type Moral Teaching -Case Study (2009); and Schooling and Moral Education (2010).

The goals of this visiting scholarship study are to write about character education for Japanese teachers and to translate important papers and books regarding character education, in particular, “Smart & Good High Schools,” written by Lickona and Matthew Davidson in 2005. Yaginuma will visit area schools that represent best practices of character education and make a comparative study of American character education and Japanese moral education.