Connecting Humanity and Pedagogy in Value-Creating Education: Translating Daisaku Ikeda’s Philosophy into Practice

This chapter employs a theme-based approach to code educational issues identified in Ikeda’s dialogues with international scholars. It explores what roles educators play and what value they can potentially create through value-creating education (VCE). Specifically, the chapter discusses how VCE can be used to maximise the national standards for teacher education programmes in the United States (i.e., the InTASC standards) across four categories: the learner and learning, content knowledge, instructional practice and professional responsibility. Lastly, the chapter provides two examples of how VCE can be applied in K-12 and higher education with the aim of providing international educators with a clearer idea of what concrete steps they can take to develop students’ potential. The backwards design process and experiential education are utilised to showcase how Ikeda’s philosophy of VCE can prospectively be put into practice. The author hopes that these examples will help educators and researchers see the practicability of connecting humanity with their teaching practices and develop a newfound respect for the need for humanistic education and VCE.