1. Draft School Education Ontology (SEO) Fumiaki Toyoshima

2. Motive for Building SEO Many of my friends are now working at school whether as a teacher or as a staff. Based on what I hear from them, they have some difficulty working there partly because a school is so complex an institution that they often fail to understand what kind of contribution they actually make to their school. SEO would benefit well people who work at school. One of the most useful applications of SEO may be to promote potential and/or novice teachers’ understanding of the school system as one of the teacher training programs before they begin working at school so that they can adapt quickly to their school systems. A school seems to be ontologically theoretically interesting topic in the sense that it contains various kinds of entities.

3. Scope of SEO Focuses mainly on a school which functions as an educational facility whether it is public or private Excludes ‘self-proclaimed’ schools Aims to be independent of school levels (e.g. primary, secondary and tertiary education)

4. Sources Ben Levin, “System-wide improvement in education.” Available online at: http://www.iaoed.org/files/System_wide_improvement_edu cation.pdf http://www.iaoed.org/files/System_wide_improvement_edu cation.pdf Provides a general strategies for improving school education systems Can be useful for finding key terms relating to school education “The OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms.” Available online at: http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/index.htm ‘contains a comprehensive set of definitions of the main data items collected by the Organisation’ Can be useful for seeing some of the definitions of the key terms

5. Tentative Key Terms and their Assumed Categories in BFO School: object aggregate Education: ? [OECD Glossary: Education is defined as organised and sustained communication designed to bring about learning.] Teacher: role Teacher union: object aggregate ‘Support staff?’: role Student: role [OECD Glossary: A student is a person of either sex, not classified as usually economically active, who attends any regular educational institution, public or private, for systematic instruction at any level of education.] Parent: role ‘Parent group?’: object aggregate Test: generically dependent continuant? Curriculum: ? Class: ? Classroom: three-dimensional spatial region? – Teach – Learn – Evaluate