Abstract:

Along with China's reformation and social transformation while opening its door to the world, modern community education has been on a rapid rise in Shanghai, which has attracted the attention of the academia. This paper reports a case study comparing two urban community schools in nonWestern, postmodern societies, i.e., China's Jing'an Temple Community School in Shanghai, and Japan's Oobiraki Citizen Lifelong Learning Centre in Osaka. Based on the interviews with the learners, instructors, and administrators of the two urban community schools， and with onsite observations, comparisons were made in the areas of their organizational operation, characteristics of their instructional/learning activities, and the resulting social effects. This paper describes the roles of community education in individuals' lifelong socialization and communities' development. It summarizes the ideas and mature practice of social education in Osaka. Finally, it proposes the comparative method to study community education.

Key words: community education/social education, lifelong socialization, Osaka Pattern, comparison across cases