At 1954, Professor Yoshihiro SHIMIZU of Tokyo University emphasized that the Educational Population Study could be a major topic in the field of the sociology of education. He was well informed regarding contemporary research trends in French sociology, and was very aware of the importance of the Population Study. Since then,several students in the sociology of education have engaged themselves in the study of educational populations. Governments have compiled statistics on education like student population, number of teachers and educational expenditure. In some countries these statistical data can be traced back to the middle of the 19th century. The first scholar who attempted a systematic analysis of such governmental educational statistics was Friedrich Edding in Germany. In 1957, he published International Trends in Educational Expenditures. In this book he compared trends of educational expenditures in several countries since the middle of the 19th century. From this time-series comparative study he drew the conclusion that countries which had attained a similar level of economic development should have similar sizes of educational systems and similar sizes of investment in education.
In 1961,he presented a keynote paper to the OECD conference on “Economic Growth and the Investment in Education” along with Svennilson and Elvin, pointing out the existence of a strong correlation between the enrolment ratio and per capita GNP of OECD member countries. At the same time, they examined the ratio of educational expenditures to GNP, and they broke down 5 components which determine the ratio of educational expenditure among GNP, like proportion of school age population among total population, enrollment ratio, ratio of average teacher salary against GNP p. c. and per-teacher student ratio. This formulation has made possible international comparison of those educational indicators. Furthermore this formulation has made possible the simulation of educational expenditure allocation. This simulation model is now used by various international cooperation agencies to make clear trade-off relationship between various educational indicators.
Stimulated with these research trends overseas, several Japanese students of educational population has started to analyze the trends of Japanese educational population based on modified models which have been developed in oversea countries. The author, who studied with Friedrich Edding since 1968, forecasted required numbers of high school and educational expenditure necessary for this expansion in 1974. Since then, various research outputs have been produced in the field of educational population studies.
One major task facing this field of study is to extend the research perspective beyond the borders of one country. With globalization, movements of educational populations should no longer be confined within one country’s borders. A second task is to encourage follow-up studies to ensure the quality of research outcomes in the field of educational population studies. Japanese scholars of sociology of education produce a large research output every year. However, most lack connections with the outputs of their colleagues. Outside people are much interested with those research outcomes, but most of the outcomes are not verified objectively by colleagues. Therefore, outside people are skeptical about whether these findings of particular experts are reliable because of the lack of follow-up studies. Recently, there have been strong opinions in factor of “Evidence-based policy.” To put this into reality, we need to vitalize the cross-check studies, follow-up studies on research output done by our colleague researchers in the field of educational population studies.
