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IB Asia Pacific Newsletter

Quarter Three, 2006

Japan and Korea

Congratulations to European School Kobe

European School Kobe is the newest authorized PYP school in Japan and Korea.  Due to leadership and hard work of both Mr. Wolfgang Stoever who is the Head and Alex Inman, PYP Coordinator, European School Kobe received the authorization letter dated 4 June from the Director General.  Many thanks to Gerry Campbell, PYP Coordinator at KIS International School, Thailand who provided valuable expertise and carried out the authorization visit with Kyoko Bernard on 1 and 2 June.

University recognition in South Korea

In order to further university recognition in Korea, Judith Guy, IB Asia-Pacific Regional Director, Nigel Forbes-Harper, IB Asia-Pacific Diploma Programme Associate Manager and Kyoko Bernard visited six major universities in Seoul from 14 to 16 June.  Our appreciation goes to Ms. Myung K. Sung, Korean teacher at Seoul Foreign School who not only made arrangements, but also interpreted and explained the IB at the following universities:

Yonsei University

Sookmyung Women’s University

Sungkyunkwan University

Korea University

Sogang University

Ewha Womans University

Translation of Glossaries into Japanese

Kyoko Bernard organized a translation team and worked from 4 to 6 July in order to produce the glossaries of IB terms in Japanese. A big thanks to Kazuhisa Hara, Japanese teacher at Osaka International School and MYP workshop leader as well as Akiko Taira, Japanese teacher at Yokohama International School and who has been trained to be a PYP workshop leader for the collaboration for three days.  As IB practitioners all three of us are not only well versed in the three IB programmes but also in Japanese education.  We are able to produce the highest quality translation without relying on outside translators. Due to a growing interest in the IB programmes among Japanese educators, there are several national schools (both publicly and privately funded schools) that are governed by Education Act Article 1 that recently submitted the Letter of Intent to implement the IB programme.  Even though there are bilingual teachers who hold the key positions in IB implementation, there is an urgent need to produce IB terms in Japanese.  We are in the final stage of editing the translation and we hope to make the Japanese glossaries available to the IB community shortly.

Professor Hisashi Kawai of National Institute of Educational Policy Research in Japan who has been advisor to the Japan Project since 2002 continues to provide his support to the IB development in Japan.  Professor Kawai visited my IB Japan Office at Tamagawa Research Institiute in July. Professor Kawai and K. Bernard had a very productive meeting again and discussed issues pertaining to further development of the IB programmes in Japan as well as technical matters related to the translation of IB terms into Japanese.

 

Kyoko Bernard, Regional Representative Japan and Korea

Email: japan@ibo.org