Abstract
The purpose of this study is to identify issues related to the structure of teachers' selection, and find the means to improve the state of affairs from the standpoints of both practice and theory in educational administration. Three presenters suggested several controversial points as follows: Nowadays, teachers are expected to play a variety of roles, most of which are heavy work loads for them. Also, criticism in which teachers are not able to meet the expectations of the citizens is becoming widely accepted. Thus, one of the urgent issue for educational administration to tackle is to improve the structure of teachers' selection, as well as enrichment of teacher education and training. Recently, some efforts have been made for the improvement. For instance, a board of education started taking a representative of local parents as one of the interviewers for the selection; several boards of education are referring to candidates' essays, curricula vitae and experiences in part-time teaching as important documents for the selection. Thus, boards of education attempt to assess candidates from the new criteria such as characters and personalities, as well as traditional means of evaluation, that is, paper test/examination. Moreover, in examination for teachers' selection, some prefectures pose questions that deal with locally unique matters rather than questions of general knowledge on pedagogy. However, the mechanism of selection for teachers is generally not clear. In the light of 'rights to know', accountability for the population and 'better teacher education', boards of education bear responsibility of informing the public of the contents of examination, reasons for selection results, etc. Only a few boards of education started releasing information on criteria for the selection, but not all. Because of the decreasing number of students, schools face many problems. Therefore teacher education is expected to train candidates so that can deal with these problems, to improve the levels of teacher education/training, and to decrease the number of teacher training courses. It is an important issue for universities to produce excellent student for teachers. However, it is often pointed in the interview for candidates in selection that it is difficult for them to find in the meaning in studying at universities because the contents they have leant there are useless for the examination. Therefore, it seems necessary for universities to join the process of teacher's selection as well. A plenary session followed the presentation summarized above by all the participants. Issues identified in the plenary session are: 1. Boards of education should understand the essential meaning of decentralization ; 2. Boards of education should indicate clearly criteria of selection to universities/candidates ; 3. It is difficult to justify the reasons by which boards of education are not allowed to release the information on contents of examination; 4. It is important to enrich educational studies and teacher pre-service education so that they can indicate appropriate criteria for the selection; and 5. It is necessary to organize a consultative forum in which universities and boards of education discuss the selection together.
