ABSTRACT
Satoru Umene was a prominent scholar, leading the curriculum reform and Japanese 'core-curriculum' movement from the end of the Second World War. He was often called 'an active scholar of pedagogy' because on the one hand, as one of several progressive scholars, he was engaged with the core-curriculum movement and thoroughly supported teachers who tried to reform the school curriculum. On the other hand, he proposed a theory of curriculum based on his extensive studies of the western history of education in the 1950s. Umene networked with academics and professionals, founding societies to develop a range of studies: the Core-Curriculum Society of Japan; the Japan Society for Historical Studies of Education; and the Japanese Educational Research Association. This chapter describes the life history of Umene, considers his theory of curriculum reform in the core-curriculum movement, elaborates the meaning of new education and pedagogy from the west, and describes his contributions to world pedagogy and to the history of education.
