Published twenty years ago, the original Preschool in Three Cultures was a landmark in the study of education: a profoundly enlightening exploration of the different ways preschoolers are taught in China, Japan, and the United States. Here, lead author Joseph Tobin—along with new collaborators Yeh Hsueh and Mayumi Karasawa—revisits his original research to discover how two decades of globalization and sweeping social transformation have affected the way these three cultures educate and care for their youngest pupils. Putting their subjects’ responses into historical perspective, Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa analyze the pressures put on schools to evolve and to stay the same, discuss how the teachers adapt to these demands, and examine the patterns and processes of continuity and change in each country. Featuring nearly one hundred stills from the videotapes, Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited artfully and insightfully illustrates the surprising, illuminating, and at times entertaining experiences of four-year-olds—and their teachers—on both sides of the Pacific.

Compares preschool education in the three countries, discusses how child care reflects social change and considers the issues of freedom, creativity, and discipline

Kindergarten kissing games...four-year-olds playing doctor...a teacher holding a crying child on his lap as he comforts her. Interactions like these—spontaneous and pleasurable—are no longer encouraged in American early childhood classrooms, and in some cases they are forbidden. The quality of the lives of our children and their teachers is thereby diminished, contend the contributors to this timely book. In response to much-publicized incidents of child abuse by caretakers, a "moral panic" has swept over early childhood education. In this book, experienced teachers of young children and teacher education experts issue a plea for sanity, for restoring a sense of balance to preschool, nursery school, and kindergarten classrooms. The contributors to this book explore how caretakers of preschool children and other adults have overreacted to fears about child abuse. Drawing on feminist, queer, and poststructural theories, the authors argue for the restoration of pleasure as a goal of early childhood education.

Colonel Sanders, Elvis, Mickey Mouse, and Jack Daniels have been enthusiastically embraced by Japanese consumers in recent decades. But rather than simply imitate or borrow from the West, the Japanese reinterpret and transform Western products and practices to suit their culture. This entertaining and enlightening book shows how in the process of domesticating foreign goods and customs, the Japanese have created a culture in which once-exotic practices (such as ballroom dancing) have become familiar, and once- familiar practices (such as public bathing) have become exotic. Written by scholars from anthropology, sociology, and the humanities, the book ranges from analyses of Tokyo Disneyland and the Japanese passion for the Argentinean tango to discussions of Japanese haute couture and the search for an authentic nouvelle cuisine japonaise. These topics are approached from a variety of perspectives, with explorations of the interrelations of culture, ideology, and national identity and analyses of the roles that gender, class, generational, and regional differences play in the patterning of Japanese consumption. The result is a fascinating look at a dynamic society that is at once like and unlike our own.

When we look beyond lesson planning and curricula—those explicit facets that comprise so much of our discussion about education—we remember that teaching is an inherently social activity, shaped by a rich array of implicit habits, comportments, and ways of communicating. This is as true in the United States as it is in Japan, where Akiko Hayashi and Joseph Tobin have long studied early education from a cross-cultural perspective. Taking readers inside the classrooms of Japanese preschools, Teaching Embodied explores the everyday, implicit behaviors that form a crucially important—but grossly understudied—aspect of educational practice. Akiko Hayashi and Joseph Tobin embed themselves in the classrooms of three different teachers at three different schools to examine how teachers act, think, and talk. Drawing on extended interviews, their own real-time observations, and hours of video footage, they focus on how teachers embody their lessons: how they use their hands to gesture, comfort, or discipline; how they direct their posture, gaze, or physical location to indicate degrees of attention; and how they use the tone of their voice to communicate empathy, frustration, disapproval, or enthusiasm. Comparing teachers across schools and over time, they offer an illuminating analysis of the gestures that comprise a total body language, something that, while hardly ever explicitly discussed, the teachers all share to a remarkable degree. Showcasing the tremendous importance of—and dearth of attention to—this body language, they offer a powerful new inroad into educational study and practice, a deeper understanding of how teaching actually works, no matter what culture or country it is being practiced in.

Initially developed in Japan by Nintendo as a computer game, Pokémon swept the globe in the late 1990s. Based on a narrative in which a group of children capture, train, and do battle with over a hundred imaginary creatures, Pokémon quickly diversified into an array of popular products including comic books, a TV show, movies, trading cards, stickers, toys, and clothing. Pokémon eventually became the top grossing children's product of all time. Yet the phenomenon fizzled as quickly as it had ignited. By 2002, the Pokémon craze was mostly over. Pikachu’s Global Adventure describes the spectacular, complex, and unpredictable rise and fall of Pokémon in countries around the world. In analyzing the popularity of Pokémon, this innovative volume addresses core debates about the globalization of popular culture and about children’s consumption of mass-produced culture. Topics explored include the origins of Pokémon in Japan’s valorization of cuteness and traditions of insect collecting and anime; the efforts of Japanese producers and American marketers to localize it for foreign markets by muting its sex, violence, moral ambiguity, and general feeling of Japaneseness; debates about children’s vulnerability versus agency as consumers; and the contentious question of Pokémon’s educational value and place in school. The contributors include teachers as well as scholars from the fields of anthropology, media studies, sociology, and education. Tracking the reception of Pokémon in Japan, the United States, Great Britain, France, and Israel, they emphasize its significance as the first Japanese cultural product to enjoy substantial worldwide success and challenge western dominance in the global production and circulation of cultural goods. Contributors. Anne Allison, Linda-Renée Bloch, Helen Bromley, Gilles Brougere, David Buckingham, Koichi Iwabuchi, Hirofumi Katsuno, Dafna Lemish, Jeffrey Maret, Julian Sefton-Green, Joseph Tobin, Samuel Tobin, Rebekah Willet, Christine Yano

In a society where everyone is supposed to go to college, the problems facing high school graduates who do not continue their education are often forgotten. Many cannot find jobs, and those who do are often stuck in low-wage, dead-end positions. Meanwhile employers complain that high school graduates lack the necessary skills for today's workplace. Beyond College for All focuses on this crisis in the American labor market. Around the world, author James E. Rosenbaum finds, employers view high school graduates as valuable workers. Why not here? Rosenbaum reports on new studies of the interaction between employers and high schools in the United States. He concludes that each fails to communicate its needs to the other, leading to a predictable array of problems for young people in the years after graduation. High schools caught up in the college-for-all myth, provide little job advice or preparation, leading students to make unrealistic plans and hampering both students who do not go to college and those who start college but do not finish. Employers say they care about academic skills, but then do not consider grades when deciding whom to hire. Faced with few incentives to achieve, many students lapse into precisely the kinds of habits employers deplore, doing as little as possible in high school and developing poor attitudes. Rosenbaum contrasts the situation in the United States with that of two other industrialized nations-Japan and Germany-which have formal systems for aiding young people who are looking for employment. Virtually all Japanese high school graduates obtain work, and in Germany, eighteen-year-olds routinely hold responsible jobs. While the American system lacks such formal linkages, Rosenbaum uncovers an encouraging hidden system that helps many high school graduates find work. He shows that some American teachers, particularly vocational teachers, create informal networks with employers to guide students into the labor market. Enterprising employers have figures out how to use these networks to meet their labor needs, while students themselves can take steps to increase their ability to land desirable jobs. Beyond College for All suggests new policies based on such practices. Rosenbaum presents a compelling case that the problems faced by American high school graduates and employers can be solved if young people, employers, and high schools build upon existing informal networks to create formal paths for students to enter the world of work. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology