The rationale of curriculum reform has to be transformed step by step into textbooks which can be understood by teachers. This study employed docu-ment-analysis to explore the transformational issues happening along with the development from the original ideas of curriculum, curriculum guideline to textbooks’ writing and review. The main findings were as follows,

1. The Grades 1-9 Curriculum Reform consist of four major ideas, namely, cur-riculum integration, school-based curriculum, ability-based indicator and blank curriculum.
2. The frequent changing of the Minister of Education has obstructed reform.
3. The original ideas of curriculum reform have been successfully transformed, to some extent, into the Grades 1-9 Curriculum Guideline.
4. The Ministry of Education should be more responsible in completing sup-plementary documents for the curriculum guideline.
5. The committee members for the curriculum guideline should work with sub-ject experts and classroom teachers to find a balance between ideas and prac-tice.
6. It is paramount that we face up to the fact that textbooks published by dif-ferent companies are tending to be more similar; and thus the textbook poli-cies need to be slightly adjusted.

　　The main purpose of this study is to judge the correlation among current arts and humanities textbooks, instruction, and competency indicators for Grades 1-9 Curriculum Guideline. The data is collected through questionnaires answered by 13 secondary school art teachers. The conclusion can be summa-rized as follows:
　　Sex, seniority and major of the teachers have a correlation with curriculum alignment. Degree level does not correlate.
　　Time used, reason for use, degree of dependence and importance of in-struction don’t correlate with curriculum alignment. Only textbook version correlates.
　　The author suggests that future studies can align content between standards and assessment, and thoroughly compare various versions of art and humani-ties textbooks, as well as further investigate observation of instruction in classrooms to provide references for revising indicators and editing textbooks.

　　The purpose of this study was to design principle-based teaching materials for accounting and evaluate the learning effects. The participants were 159 freshmen from two colleges of technology. Findings indicate the princi-ple-based teaching materials for accounting gained significantly higher per-formance than the transaction-based teaching materials for accounting, which means the principle-based teaching materials were useful in developing student accounting concepts, as well as analysis and integration skills. For low achieve-ment students, we also found the principle-based teaching materials gained significantly higher performance than the transaction-based teaching materials. This finding was valuable for accounting teachers because improving the performance of low achievement students was a very important issue for them. Based on these findings, the researcher provided further discussion and suggestions for future accounting education and research.

　　In recent times, the Japanese government has faced difficulties in reforming school and social education despite the amendment of the Fundamental Law of Education 2006. With the revision of the main laws of education, the gov-ernment has been transforming the public education system in terms of “edu-cational accountability” by establishing a national test related to national cur-riculum standards. However, in Japan, there has been much less criticism of standard-oriented education than there has been in the U.S. or Europe.
　　Interestingly enough, the educational problems in public schools are almost all found at the upper grades of elementary school and all grades of junior high school with young adolescent students aged 10-15. In the past two dec-ades, Japan has been in the midst of a so-called “Age of the 3rd Educational Reform.” We have been coping with school refusal, bullying, and delinquency, along with lower than expected student scores on OECD/PISA 2003 and 2006, which mostly occur among students of the age range mentioned above.
　　Therefore, in 2008, the government revised the National Course of Study, the national curriculum standards, in order to raise thinking abilities effectively as the core of the “Zest for Living” campaign. Under the new laws concerning public education, the revised curriculum standards stressed compulsory educa-tion, moral education, language activities, mathematics and science education, traditional culture education, experiential activities, and foreign language activi-ties in the elementary curriculum.
　　In addition, mastering basic knowledge and skills, increasing the number of hours of instruction per week, enhancing learning motivation, and establishing learning habits are all emphasized. All of these should help reach the final ob-jective of improving thinking abilities. However, the Central Council for Edu-cation has not discussed our middle level education in any thorough way, though junior high school students are standing at the crossroads of their lives and suffer considerable stress.