Recently there has been a marked heightening of the social need for policy studies. The field of educational policy studies is no exception to this trend, but the output of such studies to date has not matched the demand. There have been a considerable number of studies both in the area of basic studies, including historical analyses, comparative surveys and typological studies, and in the area of specific studies, focusing particularly on school levels, educational functions and educational problems. However, as a result of their bias toward zero-sum approaches set in a political or ideological context, such studies have usually contributed little to policy-making. In order to meet the demands of society, educational policy studies must become more practical and more objective as well as devoting more energy to the following two research tasks. One of these is concerned with normative research and the other with research into the policy-making process. The former refers to the basis of government intervention and to criteria for assessing programs, including the goals, mechanisms and effects of policies, while the latter refers to analyses of policy-makers or of the policy formation or implementation process.

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This monograph is an attempt to look at the problems of educational policy research in a changing age. Focusing particularly on the policy boom set against a context of rapid domestic and external change in the appearance of the state, it sets out to present, explain and examine research themes concerned with the concept of "civic educational policy".

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Taking as the object of its study the regime set up in 1955 and overthrown in 1993, this paper aims to analyze and consider in theoretical terms what kind of educational policies this regine produced, what kind of educational system it formed and what kind of influences and effects it has had on the education of Japan. Since the mid-1950s, educational policies, particularly policies concerned with educational administration and educational content, have been defined by the structural characteristics of the 1955 regime, formed when the Liberal Democratic Party assumed power against a background of cold war structures and severe global conflict with two great political forces radically opposed to each other in terms of ideology and basic policies. Under the influence of this regime, decision-making in the area of important educational policies frequently led to confrontations between the LDP and the Ministry of Education on the one hand and the Social Democratic Party and the Japan Teachers Union on the other. The educational policies that were formed in this atmosphere of severe conflict in terms of decision-making and implementation derived from three major motivational factors, namely the maintenance of the ruling conservative regime, the activation of nationalism and economic growth. The policies were of two types, control-oriented policies and meritocracy-oriented policies. The former have brought about the centralization of educational administration and encouraged uniformity in education, while the latter have promoted diversity in the education system and strengthened the selective function of school education. Discussions on the privatization of education which accompanied structural changes in the 1955 regime and influenced the policy proposals of the National Council on Educational Reform ("Rinkyoshin"), established in 1984, suggest a policy agenda for education in Japan, where market mechanisms are dominant.

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In this paper, the author sets out to clarify the problems arising from the University Council's reports concerning the current status and future of Japanese universities and graduate schools as well as points of dispute concerned with the so-called deregulation of University Chartering Standards revised by the Ministry of Education in 1991. The contents of the paper are as follows: 1. The concept of a university in the reports of the University Council. 2. The problem of liberalization and deregulation in the new University Chartering Standards. 3. The problems in the introduction of a system of self-checking and self-evaluation by universities. The author points out that as a result of the implementation of the new Chartering Standards the boundary in terms of the curriculum as between senior high school and university has become unclear. In the course of this process, the autonomy of Japanese universities has also become unsettled as a result of the University Council's reports. In conclusion, the author gives a warning that the introduction of self-evaluation has a tendency to lead to a system of teacher appraisal and to bring about a situation in which university autonomy becomes a mere shell.

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The National Council on Educational Reform suggested that Japan had already attained the level of developed and highly industrialized countries such as European countries and the United States, and would henceforth be required to contribute to the peace and prosperity of mankind and to the solution of global problems. It followed that mutual understanding among different cultures had become a necessary and indispensable part of Japanese education. In order to bring about the realization of education for an international society, the National Council proposed a number of themes, namely "Japanese in world society", the international contribution of education and educational institutions open to the world. "Japanese in world society" denotes the ideal image of Japanese who understand the traditional culture of Japan and at the same time appreciate the values of different kinds of cultures throughout the world. The development of economic links with overseas countries has increased the opportunities for international contact both for residents of Japan and for people living overseas, while at the same time raising the possibility of cultural friction caused by contact with people with different cultural backgrounds. Hence there is a need for Japan to make greater contributions in educational and cultural fields with the aim of avoiding misunderstandings and conflicts. In addition, as well as acceptance by educational institutions of children and adults with different cultural backgrounds, Japanese education itself must become more internationally oriented and multicultural in its recognition of the existence of different cultures. With the advent of the 1990s, the Japanese Government has promoted educational reforms aimed at internationalization following the recommendations of the National Council on Educational Reform. The government policies are aimed at finding a positive solution to the fundamental problems which have been criticized in the past. For example, the revised Courses of Study emphasize international understanding and international communication, the government has established a "Plan to accept 100,000 foreign students by the 21st century" and in the first half of the period has made significant progress, and Japanese children who have returned to Japan after periods of living overseas are being used as "resource persons" to help in education for international understanding in schools. However, in recent years, the fundamental character of educational reforms aimed at responding to internationalization has become colored by response to political and economic changes, and one can see an emphasis on Japan's "great power" status and the emergence of a new nationalism. It is precisely because Japan has become a "great power" in global terms that international contributions are being demanded of Japan. Nationalism is considered to be a necessary condition for cosmopolitanism. It is felt that those Japanese who do not appreciate the significance of Japanese traditions and culture, 'Hinomaru' (the Japanese flag) and 'Kimigayo' (the Japanese national anthem) will not be able to respect the national flag, the national anthem or the culture of other countries. These policies show that education in the new context of internationalization has made a clean sweep of all the influences of educational reforms introduced after World War II. It should also be noted that a situation has been created where it is difficult to point out contradictions between the educational intentions of the government and those of individual citizens. Indeed, the government is trying to elicit the cooperation of individual citizens through the formation of national movements.

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The reports of the National Council on Educational Reform emphasized the importance of "individualization" as a fundamental principle of educational reform. Identifying how this principle of "individualization" has been given concrete form in respect of policies concerned with the educational system and educational content is a task of very great significance for educational policy research. This paper sets out to clarify the distinctive characteristics of the new curriculum reform policies following the Council's reports. The reforms brought about by the National Council's recommendations have encouraged the early selection of pupils by ability. This policy of acceleration of early selection has highlighted a trend toward selection at the age of 12 instead of 15. The result of this is that, since the Council's reports, the curriculum of the six years of elementary education has come to assume the function the selection stage. This paper focuses on the following five points: 1. the impact of early selection policies on the curriculum; 2. moves toward diversification of the junior high school curriculum; 3. the thoroughgoing diversification of the school system and curriculum at senior high school level-especially as a result of the establishment of a "new type of senior high school" and reforms in the entrance examination system; 4. the reorganization of subjects in the lower grades of school; 5. the trend toward strengthening of moral education.

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This paper sets out to analyze "four latent norms" in Japanese society, namely (1) the enterprise norm of productivity or efficiency, (2) the labor norm of the worker, (3) the consumption norm of everyday life, and (4) the Japanese cultural norm. These four norms represent a barrier to the further development of lifelong integrated learning policies and hence, four difficult problems that have to be tackled if such policies are to be developed. Accordingly, public policy, defined in terms of liflong integrated learning policies, has to identify, in constructing a policy framework, concrete solutions to the problems of the four norms. Furthermore, in order to overcome the problem of the four norms in the private sphere in Japan, an unavoidable task facing the new policy is to construct a new cultural policy with a public character.

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In the early years of the Meiji era there was no legal concept of parental rights. It was considered that the responsibility for children's education should be borne by the head of the household. The Meiji Civil Code of 1898 was the first legal provision in Japan to specify the rights and duties of parents. According to the commonly accepted theories concerning family law, under the Civil Code the patriarchal and feudalistic family system was taken as the norm, and the rights of parents were limited and controlled by those of the head of the household. However, if we look at the legislative process under the Meiji Civil Code, we find that the assertion that heads of households had significant rights concerning education must be rejected. Instead, there is very considerable support for the view that education must be left to parents since it is they who have a "natural" love for their children. At the same time, the right of parents to educate their children was more frequently thought of as a duty than as a right, a duty moreover not to the state but to the children. In the modern family, parents are thought of as having parental rights and duties with the protection of their children's interests in mind, and in this sense one can say that the rights of parents under the Civil Code were based on the concept of the modern family with its roots in ties of love and affection rather than on any feudalistic concept. Children have come to be seen as having to obey their parents in order to protect the interests of the parents. However, the Civil Code put parents under an obligation to protect their children's rights, because children were seen as immature and lacking full capability. The code also incorporated into the legal system for the first time a role for the state in supervising the conduct of parents. The modern understanding of parental rights as being in the interests of children implied systematization in the public interest of the role of the state in supervising parents.

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This paper examines the reform of the initial teacher education system in England and Wales since the late 1980s. There has been a transfer to school-based initial teacher education, in which the student spends at least a substantial time in schools. In addition to traditional routes into the profession, two new school-based scheme, the Licensed Teacher Scheme and the Articled Teacher Scheme, began in 1990. In order to illuminate the background of the transfer to school-based initial teacher education, the paper analyses the New Right philosophies that have influenced the Conservative government's policy in education, and its criticism of traditional initial teacher education. In the subsequent discussion, the historical context of the changes is described in terms of the involvement of the universities in the education of teachers. Within a century, initial teacher education had developed in conjunction with the universities and attained the status of an all-graduate teaching profession. However, the intimation of the reversal of government policy came with the publication of the James Report in 1972. From that time on, the initial teacher education system became more school-based. School-based teacher education is believed to be able to result in improved teaching quality and to constitute a partial solution to the teacher supply crisis. However, it is impossible to ignore the fact that there are some important political reasons for changes in relation to the control of initial teacher education. The shift of initial teacher education from a university-based to a school-based system made it easy for the central government to control initial teacher education. The system of control has also been strengthened by the changes in other educational practices, such as open enrolment, opting out and the local management of schools. The impact of these changers on teaching is significant in terms of the professional autonomy of teachers. The significance of the universities and schools in initial teacher education depends on how teaching itself is understood and on how the professional competence of teachers is defined.

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