欧米における教師のライフヒストリー研究の諸系譜と動向

抄録

  This article aims to review recent papers concerning “life history” research into teachers' experiences, an emergent field of educational research during the 1980s.

  Three issues are considered. First, I considered the reasons why at the beginning of the 1980s some researchers began to focus their attention on teachers' biographies. The emergence was driven by drastic shifts in educational research, such as the shift away from researchers' interest in formal curriculum to an interest in the teaching process, and a shift away from taking a historical approach to studying teachers to adopting a “life history” approach.

  Second, I classified the contents and methodologies of the life history approach. In this paper, I abstract four methodological streams ― the sociological approach, “life cycle” research, the autobiographical approach, and the feminine approach. The sociological approach is rooted in the “New” Sociology of Education that flourished in England and America (the Chicago School) in the 1920s. Life cycle research is derived from lifelong developmental psychology and psycho-history. The autobiographical approach focuses on growth of a teacher's professional knowledge. And the feminine approach refers to the dilemmas female teachers face.

  The last segment involves the topics the life history researchers examine. This paper establishes three concepts: vocational socialization, teachers' career stages, and professional identity. For example, Knowles inquired into the relation of teachers' biographies and pre-socialization, Casey studied women teachers' “burn-out,” Huberman and Sykes subjectively examined teachers' career stages, and Butt focused on the processes of teachers' identity formulation, etc.

  Finally, I established three orientations and possibilities for the life history approach: studying teachers' worlds and their subjective growth processes; reconstructing the history of education from the viewpoint of teachers' life histories; and verifying the professional culture of teachers including the complexity and diversity of teachers' mental worlds.