著者

今津 孝次郎 Imazu Kojiro 名古屋大学 Nagoya University

出版者

東洋館

雑誌

教育社会学研究 = The journal of educational sociology (ISSN:03873145)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.43, pp.5-17, 1988-10-03

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This paper consists of two parts. The first part describes how the situation of teachers in Japan has changed from 1970's to 1980's. The second part points out what kinds of problems we have concerning the study of teachers. Firstly, the changing situation of teachers can be described from the following points of view: (1) educational expansion which was brought about by a high rate ecomomic growth; (2) pathological phenomena in education such as vandalism, bullying and delinquency which have been criticized by public opinion; (3) governmental educational policies which intend to improve the quality of teachers; (4) a political teacher union, though its menbership rate has been declining, which is against those educational policies; and (5) arguments with regard to teacher role and teacher evaluation. The changing situation demands us reconsider the concept of professionalism in teaching. Secondly, considering that teachers are facing the turning point, we can point out two major problems of the study of teachers. They are as follows: (1) The basic feature of the teaching profession is characterized by "marginality." It comes from a nature of teacher role, that is, the inconsistency between professional and bureaucratic-employee roles on the one hand, and the role of the stranger in the community on the other hand. This marginality is supposed to cause the role conflicts and the loneliness of teachers. (2) Teachers are learners because they have to acquire much more knowledge and skills, and change their attitude toward a new role in a world of rapid change. There are two phases in teacher education. They are pre-service training and in-service training and the latter is more important for teachers as life-long learners.