著者

江原 武一 Ehara Takekazu 京都大学 Kyoto 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.56-69, 1988-10-03

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This paper seeks to trace the teacher education system since the Meiji era in Japan and clarify the characteristics and pressing problems of present-day teacher education in Japanese higher education. Teacher edutation for elementary school teachers at the higher education level began in 1943, when "The Law for Normal Schools and Higher Normal Schools Amendment" was enacted. It was, however, only implemented after the Second World War under the newly legislated education laws. The idea of teacher education in the postwar period consists of the following three princibles : "teacher education at the university", "the open system of teacher education" and "an emphasis on in-service teacher training". The first principle means that, as a rule, all candidates for the teaching profession are trained in four-year (new-system) universities. The second means that students, both at teachers' colleges and at other general higher educational institutions could obtain teacher's licences, if they obtain the required basic qualifications and credits. The final principle has been emphasized especially after the 1970s. The first two principles have been steadily realized in the Japanese teacher education system in the past forty years. Among full-time teachers at the upper secondary level and below, the proportion of university graduates in 1983 stood at 79.4% in senior high schools, 74.5% in junior high schools, 58.0% in elementary schools, and 9.1% in kindergartens. 78.3% of teachers in kindergartens graduated from junior colleges. We also see that the proportion of non-teachers' college graduates among the full-time teaching staff who entered into those schools in 1987 was 57.3% (four-year non-teachers' college graduates 27.8%, junior college graduates 29.5%). At the same time, however, some pressing problems have arisen. They are (1) the relative degradation in social status of the teaching profession among modern occupations, (2) the difficulty of keeping the balance of supply and demand, (3) the failure to establish a systematic teacher education curriculum in higher education, and (4) related problems such as lower standards of programs compared to those of other professional education. What is needed now for teacher education reform is the development of an educational theory which synthesizes both pre-service and in-service teacher training processes in a broader perspective, making it possible to reconstitute the roles and functions of higher education in teacher education.