In 2002, cumulative guidance records in elementary and junior high schools were revised along with the new course of study, which was designed to develop a “zest for living” so that students can learn and think by themselves. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the implementation process of educational reform under the influence of social and political dynamics, by studying evaluation behaviors in junior high schools, which are now in a transition period, and to examine its consequences. The main data were gathered through interviews at elementary and junior high schools in Tokyo, from October to November 2002.
The main point of the new records is that students are evaluated based on absolute evaluations instead of traditional relative ones. Before the revision, teachers evaluated their students with relative evaluations, based mainly on examination scores. Under the new system, however, they have to rate the abilities of their students with absolute evaluation from various viewpoints, and to submit a “comprehensive evaluation, ” aimed at “evaluating achievement of students more properly.”
Before discussing whether the new system has enabled “more appropriate evaluations, ” it is necessary to understand the mechanisms preventing the idealistic realization of educational reform in schools and to study their social consequences from various aspects. By investigating the implementation process of the new evaluation system in junior high school, the following conclusions were made:
(1) Students and their parents, who have been sensitive to school recommendations, demand teachers strict procedure for evaluations. In addition, local governments have tended to adopt a policy trend of “school evaluations” which asks schools for more accountability. Those have forced teachers to carry out “evaluations for accountability” to satisfy the gaze of “an unspecified number of the general public.” For this reason, teachers are spending much time scoring students' exam results and daily activities from a variety of points.
(2) The above behavior by teachers holds the risk of pushing the development of action and ability of their students in the classroom in a certain direction. For example, many students tend to adopt a kind of “action standard, ” which is far from the development of understanding in each subject, such as submitting homework just to get higher evaluations, and not for the better understanding of subjects.
(3) The introduction of absolute evaluation has caused differences in evaluation standard among schools, leading to an undermining of the reliability of school recommendations. As a result, “evaluations” in junior high schools have been decoupled with entrance examinations for high schools. Under this circumstance, the social function of schools is also changing.
Lastly, I suggest that this attempt at reading the social and political dynamics in the process of implementing educational reform is an effective and vital measure for heightening reflectivity on the reform.
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