From Earthquake to Empathy: A Comparative Analysis of Trauma-Informed Peace Education in Chinese and Japanese Elementary Schools

• In Event: From Schools to Communities: Integrating Peace Education for Social Cohesion in Diverse Societies

Proposal

Purpose and Rationale
In the aftermath of major disasters, schools are entrusted not only with maintaining educational continuity but also with facilitating the psychosocial recovery of children. Empirical studies conducted after the Wenchuan earthquake indicated elevated levels of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress among Chinese primary school students, underscoring the necessity of sustained mental health support within educational settings (Liu et al., 2011). Similarly, research following the Great East Japan Earthquake revealed prolonged and varied stress reactions among children in Fukushima, reinforcing the importance of structured, school-based interventions (Usami et al., 2014; Lieber, 2017).

In response, China’s Ministry of Education issued the Guidelines for Mental Health Education in Primary and Secondary Schools (2012), integrating mental health education into the national curriculum. Japan, on the other hand, elevated Moral Education (dōtoku) to a special subject status in 2015, with full implementation achieved in 2018 (MEXT, 2018; Bamkin, 2018). This paper contends that post-disaster education transcends mere psychological recovery, serving instead as an emotionally and ethically fraught project aligned with peace education. Its effectiveness hinges on how policies and curricula are translated into pedagogical activities that foster empathy, collaboration, and non-violent conflict resolution.

Research Questions

RQ1: How do official textbooks and teaching materials in Chinese and Japanese elementary education systems transform themes of post-disaster trauma into concrete instructional goals and activities? In what ways do these designs explicitly or implicitly engage with peace education competencies such as empathy, cooperation, and non-violent conflict management?
RQ2: How are the principles of trauma-informed education—as outlined by SAMHSA (2014)—materialized into teachable sequences such as “acknowledgement-dialogue-care-action”? How do these sequences interact with classroom practices centered on collective memory and commemoration?
RQ3: How do differences in the treatment of “empowerment and choice” and “cultural-historical sensitivity” in Chinese and Japanese texts shape the discursive boundaries of peace education and the construction of student subjectivity?

Theoretical Framework
This study is grounded in three theoretical traditions:

Emotional Justice (Zembylas, 2015), which emphasizes the political and ethical implications of addressing difficult emotions in the classroom, and challenges the tendency toward “selective memorialization” that may perpetuate emotional violence.
Ethics of Care (Noddings, 2013), which views peace as relational and foregrounds the importance of responsive and affirming teacher–student interactions.
Trauma-Informed Principles (SAMHSA, 2014), which offer a practical framework centered on safety, trust, peer support, collaboration, empowerment, and cultural sensitivity.
These lenses collectively inform a three-dimensional coding scheme applied to policy documents, curriculum materials, and activity designs, examining how emotional, caring, and trauma-informed actions are articulated in educational texts.

Data and Methods
The study employs a comparative discourse analysis of publicly available educational documents, including:

National policy guidelines and curriculum standards from China and Japan;
Approved textbooks and teacher’s manuals, such as China’s Ethics and the Rule of Law and Japan’s Watashitachi no Dōtoku;
Empirical studies evaluating mental health outcomes and intervention efficacy in post-disaster contexts.
The analytical process consists of three stages:

Macro-analysis of policy and curriculum frameworks to identify core themes and terminology related to trauma, emotion, and peace;
Detailed coding of pedagogical units—including learning objectives, activities, and assessments—against the three theoretical dimensions;
External alignment analysis comparing curriculum designs with empirical findings on children’s psychosocial needs and program effectiveness.

Findings

Common Ground and Divergence in Curricular Approaches: Both educational systems place emphasis on emotional identification, regulation, and social-emotional learning in response to disaster. However, Chinese materials tend to adopt a more standardized and skill-based approach, emphasizing emotional self-management and collective rituals, which supports systematic implementation. Japanese materials, in contrast, are structured around narrative inquiry, dialogic reflection, and community-oriented tasks, facilitating deeper contextual engagement and student agency.
Memorialization and Discursive Openness: Japanese textbooks frequently incorporate multi-perspective narratives, open-ended discussions, and student-defined action commitments, creating a pedagogical flow from remembrance to dialogue to action. Chinese materials prioritize collective and ritualized forms of commemoration, emphasizing order and stability, while exhibiting greater caution toward contentious historical or responsibility-related issues.
Alignment with Empirical Evidence: Findings from child mental health studies indicate that both curricular approaches respond to the prolonged and differentiated needs of children after disasters. Chinese emphasis on uniform skills and rituals supports large-scale implementation, while Japan’s narrative and dialogic approach shows strong alignment with interventions that promote prosocial behavior and community preparedness (Sakurai et al., 2020).

Conclusion
This study proposes a trauma-emotion-peace (TEP) framework to analyze how primary education systems in China and Japan translate post-disaster trauma into pedagogies of peace. Each system embodies a valid yet distinct approach, reflecting divergent institutional philosophies regarding emotional justice, student agency, and historical sensitivity. The Chinese approach emphasizes order, ritual, and scalability, whereas the Japanese approach favors narrative openness, dialogue, and individual meaning-making.

The study contributes to:

A replicable methodology for cross-national curriculum analysis based on emotional and trauma-informed principles;
Theoretical integration of peace education with trauma responsiveness and care ethics;
Practical insights into designing sequential learning experiences that balance commemoration, emotional skill-building, and student voice.
Limitations include the lack of disaggregation by regional, grade-level, and socioeconomic variables. Future research should examine these dimensions more closely. As this study relies exclusively on public documents, no ethical approval was required.

Author

• Yunlu Wang, Georgia State University