Social and Cultural Anthropology EE exemplar B · May 2013

this cover and their final version of the extended essay to or are not 's choice of topic flowed directly from her experience as an expatriate Japanese student studying in Germany for several years, and finding it difficult to reintegrate into a Japanese school upon her retum. She then went on wonder why a general approach to education instituted in recent years in Japan (the yutori system), which she recognized as having features in common with the system she had been used to in Germany, failed in Japan while succeeding in Germany. This led her to examine the structural factors in each nation which might be responsible for making the educational approach work­ or fail-- for the society. reports wishing she had carried out interviews, but she was unable to travel either to Japan or Germany during her period of research. Finding relevant resources was also a problem for her, and it was late in her research that she encountered a comparative case in the anthropological literature which threw light on the major structural features which figure in her analysis. The high point in her learning experience according to was her finding that Japanese parents seem to be significantly less satisfied with their jobs than German parents (which influences their occupational preferences for their children), and that on broad measures of academic achievement, Asian students are not as successful as they are generally thought to be. All in all, never flagged in moving forward with her research, frequently came to me with questions during the research and writing process, and coHseientiouslv met all deadlines. must