Abstract
This research is a longitudinal, ethnographic study that focuses on mealtimes with one boy from 9 to 78 months of age in a day-care center in Japan. It looks at routine interactions between a child, his nursery teachers, and the environment, which is a shared and mutually available communicative space between participants in collaboration. The aim of this study is to clarify how the meal as a learning problem is “solved,” especially with young children whom the teacher cannot instruct verbally, and how the environment in which this takes place affects the process and is used in collaboration. The first part, a diachronic illustration of the child’s environment, in which all materials are organized as a total system to constrain his action, demonstrates the dynamic relation between his actions, the nursery teachers’ actions, and the environment. The second part presents the findings of a microanalysis of the interaction between a nursery teacher and the boy at 15 months, which is a critical transitional time from other-assisted to self-organized eating. It shows the close interdependence between the child’s environment and the teacher’s way of caring for him. The teachers generally used environmental modifications to assist his eating and to channel his actions toward their preferences. This study has demonstrated that children can learn much through an intentional arrangement of an artificial environment.
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Notes
There are two types of care institutions for preschool-aged children in Japan (neither is compulsory): kindergartens, for children ages three to five, and day cares, for children from under one to five. The first type is administered by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Day-care centers, the other type, are administered by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Most children attend either kindergarten or day care.
The Basic Program for Shokuiku Promotion summarizes the aim of the Shokuiku Basic Act as follows: “Above all else, shoku (food/diet/eating) is important for children to cultivate rich humanity (i.e., develop into well-rounded and compassionate individuals), and to acquire the knowledge and means to live healthy lives. The Shokuiku Basic Act formally makes shokuiku the foundation for living, and positions it as the base of intellectual (chiiku), moral (tokuiku) and physical (taiiku) education.” (Office of Shokuiku Promotion Cabinet Office 2010, p. 47).
A day-care center is required by law to maintain an exclusive kitchen facility for sanitary and nutritional reasons. A kindergarten, in contrast, does not need to do so. Children at day care eat the same foods from common dishes.
Sometimes in his baby chair period, Saburo sat on the teacher’s knees while eating. The teacher used this approach especially when bottle-feeding him. This arrangement restricted his position more than a baby chair would have.
The Japanese kanji word shoku, which refers to “eating,” is composed of two kanji parts: “human” and “well.” Thus, it is said that “eating” makes a human being well. Many preschool practitioners insist as their educational slogan that a child needs “well-playing, well-eating, and well-sleeping.”
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the boy with his family and the teachers that I investigated for supporting my research. I also thank the editors, Dr. Anne-Nelly Perret Clermont, Dr. Michalis Kontopodis and anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and Dr. Janet Georgeson for her reliable proofreading. Funding information: This work was supported by JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) Grant Number 16500501, 185006619.
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Dr Hiroaki Ishiguro. Department of Education, College of Arts, Rikkyo University, 3-34-1 Nishi-Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku, Tokyo, 171-8501 Japan. E-mail: ishiguro@rikkyo.ac.jp; Web site: http://english.rikkyo.ac.jp/
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Dr. Hiroaki Ishiguro has been a professor in the Department of Education at Rikkyo University. He published five books and wrote more than 50 papers in Japanese. He concerns mainly in theoretical consideration on learning and development from sociohistorical approach, and he takes a field research with video equipment for microanalysis of the interactions. The researches relate to nursery caring activities, language development, play activity, classroom discourse, schooling, and disability studies, and recently, he is interested in literacy learning and performances under multicultural and multilingual situation.
Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:
Ishiguro, H. (2010). Speech genres used during lunchtime conversations of young children. In Junefelt, K. & Nordin, P. (Eds.), Proceedings from the Second International Interdisciplinary Conference on Perspectives and Limits of Dialogism in Mikhail Bakhtin, Stockholm University, Sweden, June 3–5, 2009, 55–59.
Ishiguro, H. (2000). The stimulus-means as interpretative actions. The collected papers for the 3rd conference of sociocultural research. CD edition
Ishiguro, H. (1998). On the relation between new voices and old voices: what does a newcomer appropriate? Bulletin of Miyagi University of Education, 32, 307–318.
Ishiguro, H. (1997). On Japanese equalitarianism. New educational values 7, Institute of Pedagogical Innovations. 165–176. ( In Russian & English).
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Ishiguro, H. How a young child learns how to take part in mealtimes in a Japanese day-care center: a longitudinal case study. Eur J Psychol Educ 31, 13–27 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-014-0222-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-014-0222-9