学校現場における教育社会学者の臨床的役割の可能性を探る

ニューカマーを支援する学校文化変革の試みを手がかりとして

抄録

This paper attempts to outline and discuss the role of the educational sociologist, by re-examining the author's own ethnographic study on newcomer children in Japanese public schools. It also tries to understand the process of “clinical” studies, focusing on the relationship between the field and the academic realm ofeducational sociology.
The “field” is primarily a research object for the researcher. However, ethnographic studies in general assume that the text needs to be checked by theinformants on the field. The informants, i. e. the field members, have become the “audience” of the research in this process.
For the researcher, obtaining an audience on the field may indicate that theresearch is soon to end. However, for the audiences, it is the time to begin newpractice. At this stage, the researcher needs to make the difficult decision ofwhether to leave the field or not. In this case, the author chose to remain in thefield and took the role of “reburying” the research results as an educationalsociologist. As a consequence of this entire process, the study contributed tochanging practice in the field, and newcomer children have come to be supportedas “having special needs.”
As practice in the field begins to change, the researcher comes to feel thatthe real end of the research is arriving. For the second time, the researcher facesthe question of whether to leave the field or not. In this case, the author shiftedher focus to the relationship between newcomer children and school achievement, which has been a pending issue in the field.
This research led to the author's taking on the new role of offering researchresults as a resource for practice, and consequently to feel the need to researchthe problem as an educational sociologist. In other words, there is a need tointroduce to the field the research results that have been accumulated in therealm of educational sociology.
From her experiences obtained from the ethnographic study, the authorconcludes that the significance of “clinical” studies is to address a differentaspect of the issue. Field members and educational sociologists need to collaborateto make the best use of research findings for that purpose.