In this paper, the possibility that empirical research in the sociology of educa- tion can be related to the policy process is discussed using the process and results of the MEXT-commissioned research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study. One of the references is evidence-based policy making（EBPM）, which has been used in the policy field for the past 20 to 30 years. How- ever, EBPM has already been subject to various criticisms in Europe and the U.S., where it was first discussed. Against the backdrop of such criticisms, discussions have begun to rethink the possibility of using research knowledge more flexibly than EBPM, which emphasizes strict causal relationships. This paper also discusses evidence-informed policy making（EIPM）, which is a more gradual reinterpretation of EBPM.

Specifically, we will present three issues that have been shared among us through the practice and discussion of such policy research:（1）the role of re- searchers in evidence formation,（2）attention to the heterogeneity of treatment effects, and（3）the significance of exploratory evidence collection.

The first concerns the role of researchers in evidence formation. In working with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology（MEXT） on this policy research, we were able to add features to the research that would not have been possible had they worked separately. This points to the importance of the cooperative relationship between administrative officials and researchers.

Second, we discuss the focus on the heterogeneity of treatment effects. Sociology, which emphasizes social context, has a strength in focusing on the heterogeneity of effects across groups rather than on average treatment effects, which are emphasized in statistical causal inference. We present this through the analysis of the survey data on school events and others under the COVID-19 pandemic.

Third, we discuss the significance of exploratory evidence collection. In a sudden situation such as the COVID-19 crisis, it is sometimes more important to understand the actual situation accurately, even if only by groping, than to formulate a hypothesis in advance and make causal inferences. Using the results of a descriptive analysis of student learning and the response of the school board during the school closure, we will show that even an exploratory method can provide effective evidence.

Finally, we will show the potential of EIPM, especially EIPM that incorporates the process of mutual learning among administrators and researchers（“intelligent policy making”）, which can utilize various research findings in policy making, rather than EBPM, which focuses only on strict causal inference.

The focus of this study is on the narratives of educators during the ‘with COV- ID-19 period’ and the aims of the study are to discuss the issues of teacher’s professional capital and the organizational properties of schools.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous discussions have taken place in Japan, giving rise to various educational anxieties. The narratives generated during this process have had a significant impact on the school environment, but they have also been influenced by diverse contextual factors. This aspect is specifically examined in this study and, by analyzing narratives related to COVID-19, the unique aspects of teachers’ work and lives, as well as the challenges they face in Japan, are described.

The analytical findings are threefold. Firstly, the presence of ‘trained incapacity’ within the decisional capital of teachers is revealed. It was suggested in the interviews that teachers often conform to directives from the government and ad- ministration, demonstrating a lack of initiative. Secondly, the issue of latent narrative capital within decisional capital is also explored. This uncovers the potential of ‘narrative capital,’ which utilizes the integrative power of COVID-19 narratives, to contribute to school reform. Lastly, the absence of a latent “child’s perspective” within decisional capital is identified. This absence highlights the need for schools to integrate children into existing frameworks for non-school assistance.

Emphasized in this study are the narrative constraints inherent in school education and the capital issues of the teaching profession, which hinder its ability to undergo meaningful change.

COVID-19 has exerted an enormous impact on immigrants on a global scale. The focus of this study is on second-generation immigrants in Japan and the aim is to elucidate their experience in Japan with COVID-19 from three aspects, namely, work, family, and discrimination. Data were mainly collected through follow-up interviews with 54 second-generation immigrants who previously under- went a survey before COVID-19.（The ethnicity of the 54 respondents is Vietnamese, Cambodian, Chinese, Peruvian, Brazilian, and Filipino.）Semi-structured interviews lasting 1.5–2.5 hours were conducted. Data were analyzed not only to identify the difficulties and conflicts experienced during COVID-19 but also to determine the coping strategies for overcoming these challenges. Additionally, the role of ethnic identity in these strategies was explored.

The findings of this paper are as follows. First, a few serious difficulties or conflicts, such as infection scares or economic crises, were identified among the second-generation immigrants employed in regular jobs. This was due to the positive promotion of teleworking and telecommuting. In contrast, it was confirmed that the effects of COVID-19 include income loss, psychological burden, and infection anxiety among second-generation immigrants engaged in irregular employment and essential work positions. In these cases, the second-generation immigrants were not allowed to work from home even with their increasing fear of infection and were forced to continue a work style that they were unwilling to perform during COVID-19.

Second, COVID-19 also affected first-generation immigrants, corresponding to the parent generation. Especially, first-generation immigrants with limited Japanese language skills were forced to overcome various disadvantages in terms of economy, health, and information. Moreover, they strongly expected their children（i.e., second-generation immigrants）to take care of them. For this reason, a few of the respondents were torn between their own lives and the expectations of their families and experienced extreme difficulties and conflicts in balancing the two during COVID-19.

Third, second-generation immigrants experienced discrimination inside and outside their professional lives, such as being regarded as sources of infection; COVID-19 thus revealed the increased vulnerability of second-generation immigrants. In particular, many second-generation Chinese immigrants expressed concern that they may be discriminated against during COVID-19 due to the Wuhan virus discourse circulating in Japan. Second-generation Chinese immigrants therefore made a rule to not speak in Chinese on the streets to avoid detection of their Chinese roots.

Although they experienced several difficulties and conflicts during COVID-19, the second-generation immigrants identified their ethnicity as a strength for coping. In particular, by mobilizing language, information, and domestic and transnational network resources, they exercised coping strategies to overcome these challenges. This indicates that further research on the experiences of second- generation immigrants in Japan, as well as a multifaceted analysis of mobilized resources, is necessary.

How did the unscheduled school closures caused by COVID-19 affect children’s academic performance? The loss of skills that would have been acquired by schooling due to unscheduled school closures is called “learning loss.” In this paper, the effect of unscheduled school closures on academic achievement was analyzed using data from Japan’s “National Assessment of Academic Ability” collected in 2021.

Previous studies in Japan have pointed out the relationship among school socio-economic status（SES）, length of unscheduled school closure, and academic achievement, in which schools with a lower school SES tend to have lower aca- demic achievement. However, the findings are limited to school-based analyses.

The findings obtained by analyzing three-level hierarchical data on students, schools, and prefectures are as follows. First, the effect of temporary school vacations on academic achievement was observed for 6th grade students, but not for 9th grade students. Second, an analysis of the cross-level interaction effect be- tween the duration of unscheduled school closures（school-level factor）and student SES（student-level factor）for 6th grade students and generally observed an interaction effect between high and low SES for children with temporary absences of 60 days or more.

The fact that learning loss was more pronounced for students in lower grades and with a lower SES was consistent with previous overseas studies.

The aim of this study is to examine what teachers realized as a result of the cancellation and reduction of school events during the COVID-19 pandemic by means of a case study of an Upper Secondary Specialized Training School （Y School）. Specifically clarified is how teachers perceived differences in students’ experiences and behavior from those of past students due to the cancellation or downsizing of school events. The significance of the school events that teachers were reaffirming, the unexpected gains that teachers newly discovered during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the potential for future development of the school events are discussed based on the findings.

Teachers at Y School have been making a variety of efforts to ensure that students acquire rich experiences during school events. There are two research implications in treating this school as a case study. First, it is possible to show how schools where teachers are actively involved in school activities were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, based on the teachers’ reaffirmation of the significance of school events, the future development potential of school events can be examined.

This study interviewed three teachers working at Y School. They were all veteran teachers who had worked at Y School for more than 15 years. The interviews were conducted between September 2020 and July 2022.

The interviews revealed that teachers perceived that the cancellation or reduction of school events caused the students to lose or lack a variety of experiences, which resulted in the students not developing as well as in previous years. It was suggested that teachers reaffirmed the significance of school events as important opportunities to promote the multifaceted growth of their students through experience. On the other hand, as an unexpected outcome, teachers found that students showed initiative in preparing for school events and in building relationships among themselves, despite their loss or lack of various experiences. From these findings, we can identify new ways in school events that support the multifaceted experience and growth of students while combining planned guidance by teachers and trust in the independence and initiative of students.

How colleges and universities in the United States were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic is examined in this paper. At higher education institutions, diverse people meet, interact, and create new values. The impact of the pandemic on higher education was extremely severe. On the other hand, distance education became more widespread as a means of overcoming the difficulties caused by the spread of the epidemic, opening up new possibilities for higher education. Interestingly, there were significant differences among countries regarding which phenomena occurred and to what extent. Why did these differences arise? Behind such differences are the university and higher education system characteristics that have existed in each country and region for a long time.

Of any industrialized nation, the spread of the infectious disease had the most devastating and multifaceted impact on United States colleges and universities. The pandemic impacted American higher education to the extent that could be described as a historical turning point. College enrollment declined, and community colleges, in particular, lost many new students. International travel was restricted, and the number of international students dropped dramatically. Campus- es were closed, and auxiliary services such as residence halls were shut down. College sports and other events also had to be suspended. These combined phenomena contributed to the financial damage suffered by many colleges and universities. Although the large-scale closures of universities did not occur as initially anticipated, some small colleges were forced to close or merge with other institutions. In addition, the unstable social climate meant that the United States was said to have experienced different pandemics in different regions. In some areas, political conflicts broke out within universities over wearing masks and vaccinations and even provoked conflicts over academic freedom.

American universities have seized diverse opportunities to create markets within and outside the higher education system. By skillfully combining those markets, they have expanded their resources to generate value through high-quality education, research, and services. As the pandemic cut off social contact between humans, the functions of this series of markets swung simultaneously in an unfavorable direction. This paper hypothesizes that this is the most significant factor in the unparalleled damage caused by the pandemic.

The characteristics of each country’s higher education system become trans- parent by looking at the differences in the impact of the COVID-19 disaster on each country. In the United States, applicants can choose when to enroll in college, contributing to the decline in enrollment. In Japan, by contrast, the decline in student enrollment did not occur. The reason is that the stability of the admission market is supported by social conditions that lock in applicants’ choices. The most significant change brought about by the pandemic in Japan is the spread of online education. However, in contrast with the situation in the United States, where the same social crisis environment exists, a different and more fundamental challenge for Japan’s higher education system is revealed.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the process of organizing legitimate pedagogic practices for agricultural experience learning in elementary schools.

While a declining trend can be seen in the agricultural industry in Japan, engaging in agricultural experience learning in elementary schools is increasing. There are many elementary school teachers who find educational value in agriculture and place emphasis on agricultural experience learning. However, the logic behind the educational value of agriculture and rural areas cannot be fully explained by macro discourses, which could be, for instance, changes in social conditions such as the structure of employment or trends in educational policy, given the low demand for farming and the fact that agricultural experience learning is not compulsory in the educational curriculum.

By introducing B. Bernstein’s（1990）perspective of pedagogic discourse, this paper attempts to depict legitimization in the process of organizing educational practices as a reorganization of discourse “transmission and acquisition” into a social context, which cannot be fully explained by the analysis of macro dominant discourses alone.

Previous educational discourse studies have analyzed the justification of education from a constructionist perspective. On the other hand, the granting of authority in the process of organizing pedagogic practices has been overlooked. To clarify this issue, this study focused on the pedagogic discourse and examined the process by which agricultural knowledge is delocated and relocated in schooling based on data from interviews and fieldwork with teachers and farmers. The findings of this study are as follows. Firstly, the moral norm in agricultural experience learning（Regulative Discourse）was to reconstruct the relationship between children’s lives and agriculture in terms of reconstructing children’s social perceptions. It was considered more important to change children’s perception of life than to help them acquire specialized agricultural knowledge and skills.

Based on this Regulative Discourse, specific teaching methods（Instructional Discourse）were created. The Instructional Discourse consisted of 1）handmade, 2）emphasis on agricultural continuity, and 3）farm work, not the acquisition of agricultural skills or play. Under the Regulative Discourse that distinguished it from modern mechanical farming, occasional events, agricultural skill acquisition, and play, experiential agricultural learning was organized as an educational practice that was given its own legitimacy in school education.

The findings of this paper can be said to have the following implications for previous research.

Firstly, while the existing previous studies on agricultural experience learning have been self-evident regarding the educational value of agriculture and rural areas, the process of organizing agricultural experience learning as a legitimate educational practice, based on the context in which it is implemented, is pointed out in this paper.

Secondly, in examining the reorganization of the “transmission and acquisition” of discourse into a social context, which is one of the issues in the study of educational discourse, this paper presents a perspective that focuses on the process of organizing pedagogic practices. By focusing on the reorganization of the “trans- mission and acquisition” of discourse into a social context, it became clear that practices are distinguished from other practices, but have their own meaning, which is adapted to the school context.

The aim of this study is to reexamine the decentralization trend of university students, the policy goal expected to be gained from tightening the enrollment capacity management of private universities, by tracing chronological changes in respective universities’ replenishment rate of student quotas.

The policy attempts to place severe limits on overcapacity at large universities （often located in metropolitan areas） and the expectation is that the excess capacity cut off from large-scale universities can be passed to universities in adjacent areas. Previous studies based on prefectural-level data claim that the policy appeared to achieve the objective of decentralization to a certain degree. Considering the various regional differences among or within prefectures, however, it could be assumed that several unclarified trends exist between the three major metropolitan areas and other areas. Time-series data analysis based on institutional-level data is applied in this study to identify those potential trends. In particular, by tracing changes in respective universities’ replenishment rate of student quotas before and after the policy implementation, we explore the regional trends associated with the locations and characteristics of universities. By mixing institutional-level data with typological traits of universities, such as size and distance from urban areas, it is expected that more nuanced trends that did not emerge from prefectural-level data will be found.

The analysis presents four implications. First, the policy apparently gave some relief to low-competitive and small universities in urban areas. Second, the policy functioned as a capacity restraint on medium and large-sized universities in non- metropolitan areas. Third, in non-metropolitan areas, the more universities locate in remote areas within the region, the more the replenishment rate of student quotas shows a consistent decline. Finally, in non-metropolitan areas, the benefit of excess demand caused by capacity restraint is greater at universities that lo- cate closer to metropolitan areas.

From the analysis above, it is considered that benefits generated by the policy for tightening the capacity management of private universities are limited to universities located either in metropolitan areas or their adjacent areas. That is to say, the policy’s success observed in previous studies was not the type of “decentralization” that improved the replenishment rate of student quotas in rural areas, but instead could be interpreted as having caused an “expansion of urban areas.”

Implications drawn from this study will contribute to providing further discussion of the “repressive” stance against private universities in recent higher education policy. Seen in the context of population decline, including the 18-year-old cohort, capacity restraint alone has limited effects on decentralization, as the study indicates. When considering a policy to eliminate regional disparities, more encouraging policies, not simply repressive ones, seem necessary, such as urging prospective students to choose regional universities that are remote from urban areas but offer attractive education. For that purpose, research on the macro phenomenon of student enrollment behavior would be productive for policy making and that is a subject for future analysis.