This chapter considers how to foster new approaches to learning and ensure quality in Japanese universities by analysing a case of quality assurance in a pre-service teacher education program in a Japanese university. Taking as an example university students’ learning in a teacher education program combined with an experimental educational project, this chapter proposes a new model of pre-service teacher education in the face of globalised processes and knowledge economies. Drawing on the framework of the cultural-historical activity theory, new forms of teacher education are exposed as facilitating university students’ expansive learning to collaboratively construct new concepts and implement them in practice. By developing coursework connected with practical experimentation to bridge the gap between theory and practice, the new model ensures the quality of teachers as researchers who investigate how people learn and develop, and research the meaning of life alongside children.