著者

中西 啓喜

出版者

桃山学院大学総合研究所

雑誌

桃山学院大学社会学論集 = ST.ANDREW'S UNIVERSITY SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW (ISSN:02876647)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.55, no.2, pp.117-136, 2022-02-23

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Class size reduction is a hot topic in policy.Since2021,elementaryschools will gradually be phased in to35students per class for all grades.However,most sociological studies examining the effects of class sizehave been set on students,such as the correction of academicachievement gaps.It is not only students who are affected by thereduction in class size,but teachers as well.In particular,it would bemeaningful to examine whether the reduction in class size has a positiveeffect on the busyness of teachers,which has become a social issue inrecent years.Therefore,I will empirically clarify the question “Does classsize reduction reduce teacher work hours? “by analyzing elementary schoolteacher data from TALIS2018.In this paper,I used decision tree analysis as the analysis method.Byusing decision tree analysis,it is possible to extract non-trivial informationfrom the data.The analysis of constructing hypotheses from previousstudies and testing them is often prone to manipulation,but it is expectedthat decision tree analysis can present findings that have not been obtainedbefore.Furthermore,decision tree analysis can be read like a flowchart,making it easy to interpret the results.Therefore,even non-experts caneasily interpret the results of the analysis,and the knowledge can beeasily shared between experts and non-experts.The following two findings were obtained from the analysis.(1)Thesmaller the class size,the shorter the working hours of the teachers.(2)There is no statistical relationship between teachers’working hours andthe number of children with low Socio-economic status in their classrooms.Japanese schools do not have as many students with economicallydifficulties,students with limited native language skills,or immigrant andrefugee students as their European counterparts.Nevertheless,if theworking hours of Japanese teachers are the longest in the world,it is aproblem of work culture.Solving “child poverty” is a very importantsocial problem,however perhaps even if this problem is solved,thebusyness of teachers will not go away.A fundamental reconfiguration ofthe work culture of teachers is needed.