The Trends and the Issues of the Connecting Curriculum in Japan

The purpose of this paper is to examine trends of the policies in the Connecting Curriculum Between Kindergarten and Elementary School into the two approaches to aim at the school reform and prevent the First Grade Problems, and to examine the content and the characteristics of the recent educational innovation. In the former issue, the government promote the Connecting Curriculum Between Kindergarten and Elementary School as a national strategy of educational reform based substantially on the concept of “the basis of learning” in early childhood education, and tried to spread to the educational scenes and to construct “collaborative learning.” In the latter issue, Start Curriculum of elementary schools has the problem of replacing the practice of the living environment studies with the adaptation of children to school..