アメリカにおける民主主義的な学校を実現する地方学区事務局の役割

─校長指導職の職務変容と専門職基準に着目して─

抄録

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the role of the district central office in creating democratic schools by analyzing the transformation of the duties and the contents of professional standards for principal supervisors in the United States. In this paper, the word democratic school is used for referring to a school which is supported and defends the concept of American democracy. Recently, American democracy has been facing critical situations and the spread of disconnection has posed new challenges to the public schools. In such situation, how can a district central office create democratic schools?

This paper addressed the following three issues. First, I confirmed the meaning of American democracy and reviewed the latest topics on the crisis situations concerned with it, especially by focusing the movement after the 2010s. Second, I reviewed the meaning and contents of the concept of instructional leadership and clarified how the relationship between the principal and principal supervisor was being built to achieve the shared idea of improving and enhancing the quality of the teaching and learning that students would have taken. Third, I discussed the issues to create democratic schools in the United States by analyzing how the contents related to cultural diversity which is one of the important components of American democracy would have been understood and valued in the duties and the professional standards for principal supervisors.

This paper clarified the following three points as results of the analysis. First, since the 2010s, the whole of society and the public education system in the United States have lost the flexibility and tolerance with diversity, particularly cultural diversity. It is a challenge to American democracy which is a fundamental value and principle in the United States, so it is an important issue on teaching and learning in a school and educational administration how to overcome such critical situations. Second, while the role of the district central office as a lever for whole district improvement had been paid attention to, the expectation on the principal supervisor who has a role to supervise the principal (s) has been raised. The keys of their supervision are adapting a job-embedded approach and making Community of Practice (CoP) of principals. Third, there is a coherent idea through the entire system. The idea of the importance of exercising instructional leadership is shared by each professional standards for teachers, principals and principal supervisors. This will make it possible to develop initiatives throughout the system with unity.

However, as a result of the analysis, it is suggested that the current professional standards would be inadequate in terms of responding the situational change surrounding American democracy. In order to overcome disconnection and create democratic schools, it would be a challenge for the public education system in the United States to respond to the diversity with various backgrounds, which is not limited of the minorities.