著者

榊原 禎宏

出版者

日本教育行政学会

雑誌

日本教育行政学会年報

巻号頁・発行日

vol.38, pp.35-49, 2012

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The purpose of this paper is to analyze school systems from the point of view of the working circumstances for school staff, especially for the teachers. For the improvement of teachers' working conditions, it is necessary to clarify the characteristics of school education in Japan and some alternative choices related also to school administration should be suggested. Concretely they are described, explained, and proposed below. 1. working in school education and the health of the teacher One basic characteristic of the teaching and learning process in school education is that teaching does not correlate directly with learning. We should always acknowledge the difference and sometimes contrary relation between them. In addition to that, although learning activities cannot be observed empirically, yet the teaching staff is asked to somehow demonstrate the educational "effect" of their work. With this background, teachers should be aware that they are apt to develop some irrational belief in their work, and that might in turn cause them health problems, for example from the stress of prolonged overwork. 2. today's school risk that has not been clearly recognized Two points of school risk in Japan should be discussed. One is that the view of school has changed from that of the past several decades. Although outside of school the community, family, work, and life have drastically developed, the basic conditions of school have remained static. On the other hand, because of the lack of laws and regulations for schools, the definition of teacher's work is vague, which often brings long hours of overwork. As one example in Germany, it is total clear that "educational freedom" of each teacher is defined not only in act, but also in regulation in states. It means that each stakeholder in schooling has rights and responsibilities, and legislation has developed to a point that the balance among stakeholders is strained. 3. internal transfer system which regularly reassigns teachers between schools One explicit characteristic of personnel management in Japan is the regular transfer of staff between schools. This is a big burden on teachers and other school staff members. Every some years they must continually reconstruct the relationships between colleagues, the students, the parents, and the other residents of the school district. Besides simple lateral transfers, not a small number of cases arise where the transfer is between different types of schools.4. staffing and working in schools and school management School principals and vice-principals take their posts for only a few years, a much shorter time than that of teachers, on average. It is not easy for them to show school management plans and ideas to their subordinates and colleagues after only few days in the new post. Furthermore, a teacher's work is basically independent and autonomous. That asks teachers to manage their cognition and emotion in a very short time in the class. With this background teachers might make unexpected misjudgments or surfer from the framework that they have built up by themselves. 5. possible school design I propose two points by choice, one of them is to orient highly centralized school system or decentralized, independent management in each school. The other is not only to preach to the teachers, but also to improve the working circumstances objectively. From now on, an experimental attitude and experimental practices in school should be more highly regarded and more strongly promoted for better and effective working.