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This paper describes and discusses collaboration between history teachers in England and Japan. The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which history is taught in each country as a part of a general commitment to international collaboration and as a means by which we could explore the connection between history education and global citizenship education.

The teachers created two lessons (one from England and one from Japan) about the Russian revolution. Both lessons were taught in each country. Data were gathered from students and teachers to aid reflections on the nature and outcome of the collaboration.

The collaboration was very positive. Teachers and students were excited to work together and to experience different ways of learning about the past. There were different approaches to the ways in which knowledge was characterized in each country (teachers in England emphasizing contextually based historical interpretations; teachers in Japan emphasizing content and contextual knowledge).

This work contributes to the limited amount of research that is currently available about professional collaboration between high school teachers and students of history in Japan and England. The arguments that are made about the opportunities for international collaboration in the context of different characterizations of pedagogical content knowledge contribute to a relatively unexplored field. The authors contribute to our understandings of the relationship between history education and global citizenship education.

Two-handed automobile steering at low vehicle speeds may lead to reduced steering ability at large steering wheel angles and shoulder injury at high steering wheel rates (SWRs). As a first step toward solving these problems, this study aims, firstly, to design a surface electromyography (sEMG) controlled steering assistance interface that enables hands-free steering wheel rotation and, secondly, to validate the effect of this rotation on path-following accuracy.

A total of 24 drivers used biceps brachii sEMG signals to control the steering assistance interface at a maximized SWR in three driving simulator scenarios: U-turn, 90º turn and 45º turn. For comparison, the scenarios were repeated with a slower SWR and a game steering wheel in place of the steering assistance interface. The path-following accuracy of the steering assistance interface would be validated if it was at least comparable to that of the game steering wheel.

Overall, the steering assistance interface with a maximized SWR was comparable to a game steering wheel. For the U-turn, 90º turn and 45º turn, the sEMG-based human–machine interface (HMI) had median lateral errors of 0.55, 0.3 and 0.2 m, respectively, whereas the game steering wheel, respectively, had median lateral errors of 0.7, 0.4 and 0.3 m. The higher accuracy of the sEMG-based HMI was statistically significant in the case of the U-turn.

Although production automobiles do not use sEMG-based HMIs, and few studies have proposed sEMG controlled steering, the results of the current study warrant further development of a sEMG-based HMI for an actual automobile.