2008 Volume 75 Issue 4 Pages 368-380
After WWII, teachers' pre-service education in Japan has taken place in a context of conflict between universities and faculties of education with obligatory courses for teachers' licenses (as required for students) and other general universities with optional courses (without any requirements for students). However, the conflict seems to be subsumed by recent trends for teacher education reform in Japan related to neo-liberalism. Then it can be said that a new type of conflict has arisen between the "political order" and the "educational order". From the beginning of the modern public school system in Japan, the teachers' preservice education system has been based on two sub-systems, namely the system fully and directly controlled by "public" government (such as Normal Schools) and the system without strong control (certain "private" institutions). Even before WWII, there existed a system based on the market theory for teachers' licenses such as "Approved Institutes for Non-examined Teacher's Certificate" and many private institutes have voluntarily had optional courses for teachers' licenses according to their own strategies. However, the balance between "public" and "private" changed after WWII, so "public" aspects in teachers' pre-service education have decreased. Therefore, there is apprehension that the "public" school system in Japan cannot be maintained. For example, teachers' licenses for primary school have come to be provided by more and more universities and faculties of human science while almost no universities and faculties of natural science can provide those licenses. Furthermore, no viable solution has been found to resolve this problem. From the other point of view, the phenomenon has occurred despite many partial amendments (without any drastic changes) to the original structure of the post-war teachers' pre-service education system, though many problems have arisen that could not be anticipated from the beginning. Expanded higher education has caused the overproduction of teachers' license holders and the decline in prestige of the licenses themselves. Moreover, the rise of "private" companies as the providers of various educational services has threatened teachers' identities in the "public" school system. At this point, it is necessary to comprehensively re-examine the status of teachers' pre-service education system, with regard to the entire public school system. Thus, educational researchers have to build a certain "grand design" to deal with the phenomena above. And it is crucial to seek a certain solution among various and possible options with careful recognition of the status quo considering the fact that achievements levels of the "East-Asian style" can easily be merchandised and that teachers' license holders in Japanese schools are requested to have many humanistic competencies other than the ability to "teach".
