- 著者
-
川村 光
- 出版者
- 日本教育社会学会
- 雑誌
- 教育社会学研究 (ISSN:03873145)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.85, pp.5-25, 2009-11-30 (Released:2015-06-03)
- 参考文献数
- 25
Under the educational system, teachers are given the authority to control and instruct their pupils. However, this authority began to weaken in the beginning of the 1970s as problems involving education, such as deviant behavior and management-oriented educational practices, were socially questioned. In the 1970s and 1980s, junior high school teachers in particular were called upon to rethink their identities as teachers because they faced crises involving deviant behavior among their students, and found it difficult to teach their subjects.This study examines the teachersʼ culture of authority, based on the life histories of two male junior high school teachers who encountered crises and the collapse of their authority during the 1970s and 1980s. At present, both are school principals. One of the two was born in 1946 and taught physical education to pupils in two schools during the period in question. The other, a science teacher, was born in 1948 and worked at two schools as well.From their life histories, some important findings are drawn.First, both teachers interpreted the crises as positive phenomena. They stated that though crises had a negative influence on them, they also led them to construct a new teacher identity.Second, both believed that teachers should not depend on the authority stemming from the educational system. They tried to gain authority autonomously through communication with their pupils and parents regarding teaching, pastoral care and guidance rather than depending on control over pupils and physical punishment. They believed it was important to construct an image based on authority originating in personal magnetism rather than based on authority related to academic truth and professional knowledge or based on educational system.Caution should be exercised in generalizing these findings as they are based on only two specific life history cases. However, it should be noted that it is possible to gain insights into teachersʼ culture by focusing on the form of their narratives. From this point of view, it is thought that teachersʼ culture is a form of delicate authority and the teachersʼ authority related to personal magnetism is more important than others.Therefore, it is thought that deviant behavior by students as a crisis of school education in the 1970s and 1980s led to a change in the teachersʼ culture from one under which it was more important to keep authority based on the educational system to one where it was more significant to retain authority related to personal magnetism.