Staff Training

At Kansai International Academy, Kobe Campus, teachers and staff from ELC and kindergarten through secondary school participated in training sessions during the summer vacation. These sessions were designed to deepen their understanding of child development, curriculum, and school safety.

In this newsletter, we will introduce the content from the summer staff training, focusing on "Children’s Cognitive Development" and "High-Quality Teaching and Learning Practices." 

Children’s Cognitive Development

We welcomed a licensed psychologist and our school counselor, to learn about children’s cognitive development. 

We revisited Piaget's “Four Stages of Cognitive Development" and discussed the importance of tailoring instructions and tasks to each child’s developmental stage. We learned that our G1 students (aged 6–7) exhibit significant individual differences in their developmental stages compared to other age groups. As a result, these students require specific accommodations when given instructions and tasks. The training provided a valuable opportunity for teachers to discuss how to integrate these insights into their future instruction. 

High-Quality Teaching and Learning Practices

High-quality education at KIA is defined as an education that “exists within a supportive, safe, and respectful bilingual learning environment that enhances students’ well-being and their academic, social, and personal skills while instilling a sense of global citizenship.”

The training allowed us to see how high quality education is implemented in teaching and learning across different grade levels.

At the G6 table, there was a spirited discussion related to the “Peace” unit of inquiry taught in the previous term. The focus of the discussion was on the concept of a “sense of global citizenship.”  The G6 class, co-taught by a Japanese and an American homeroom teacher, discussed how they could create a peaceful world by understanding history while respecting each country's perspective when learning about the Pacific War. Through this learning experience, we delved into the essence of “global citizenship” and reviewed the tenets and methods of high-quality education.