This study seeks to clarify the process of faculty establishment during the foundation period of a liberal arts college (a gakugei university) through an investigation of the teacher screening process conducted by the university chartering committees within Osaka Gakugei University and Fukuoka Gakugei University in fiscal year 1948. From this analysis, the following conclusions were drawn.

  First, liberal arts colleges intended to enable as many teachers as possible from normal schools and youth normal schools to become teachers at liberal arts colleges. Therefore, they created an independent hiring criterion that involved experience in educational administration and breadth of liberal arts the applicants underwent teacher screening by the university chartering committee.

  Second, the screening by the university chartering committee was unexpectedly severe, and thus most teachers were not able to pass the screening. For that reason, the liberal arts colleges could not help but place teachers in a special subject disregarding the new curriculum to some degree before the university chartering committee rescreened them.

  Third, this meant that the liberal arts colleges had to postpone the postwar notion of teacher training through the liberal arts.

  Lastly, the university chartering committee took the view that the teaching methods of teachers in charge of subjects were inferior to those of teachers in charge of teaching special subjects with regard to subject knowledge in natural science courses.

  The purpose of this research is to investigate how teachers' professional expertise develops through in-house lesson study and to evaluate its effectiveness as an education system for those as the “learning profession”. Although many researchers and practitioners emphasize the importance of collegiality for teacher learning, little research has investigated how teachers learn with colleagues through in-house lesson study. In light of this, this research, designed as approximately a two-year long study, focused on one teacher with 23 years of teaching experience and investigated the process of how he developed his professional expertise through in-house lesson study at a local public school in western Japan.

  To analyze the process of teacher learning, a tentative model called the “Collaborative Interconnected Model” was developed based on the Clarke and Hollingsworth Model. By using this new model, the following results were obtained. Through in-house lesson study, those colleagues who observed the target teacher's lesson provided him with much information which he might have overlooked in classroom activities. Moreover, colleagues helped him significantly in his rational analysis of his own teaching practice. The target teacher also deemed it important for him to observe his colleagues' lessons; as an observer, he came to understand some crucial points for reflection on others' teaching practice as well as his own. As a consequence, the target teacher gradually adopted a style of reflection which was similar to that of his colleagues who focused on what actually happened in a classroom and deliberately considered the meaning embedded in the classroom events. This was a sign of his professional growth as the “learning profession”.

  Based on these results, it can be concluded that in-house lesson study has great possibilities as a learning system for developing teacher expertise. This research also suggests the effectiveness of the “Collaborative Interconnected Model” as a tool to analyze the learning process of teachers with colleagues through in-house lesson study.

  This article examines in a teacher training curriculum the effectiveness of a seminar that focuses on the reflections of workplace practice experiences among trainee teachers.

  The curriculum of the Department of Education in Shinshu University requires that second-year students conduct teaching practice in a local public school for one week. After this practice, they must reflect on what they experienced during the teaching practice and discuss their thoughts with colleagues in university lessons.

  The seminar which is based on their reflection encourages the students to realize that their understanding of the causal relations in everyday lessons is limited in scope. In other words, they came to recognize that educational issues are closely related with various other elements. Moreover, they found that they look, think and feel differently from one another, even though they experience the same school experiences.

  Clinical fieldwork courses have been increasingly introduced into preservice teacher education curricula in Japan since the 1990s, as teacher educators consider clinical experience provided by teacher preparation programs to be important for prospective teachers, especially freshmen.

  This article analyzes the goals and challenges of preservice teachers before and during their introductory fieldwork course in accordance with INTASC（Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium）Standards, and also uses the text mining tool “TRUSTIA”. Before starting this course in the spring semester, freshmen in the Faculty of Education write essays on their personal goals and the challenges they want to learn about and experience on the course. Analysis revealed that they focus on “Communication”, “Reflection and Professional Development”, and “Student Learning”, and less on “Assessment” and “Content Knowledge”.

  In the fall semester, they then write essays on their reflections of their fieldwork and state their revised goals and challenges for the fall semester. Analysis revealed that they continue to focus on “Communication”, and “Reflection and Professional Development”, but have now, however, begun to pay attention to “Instructional Strategies”.

  The implications for teacher education program reform include that 1）preservice teachers should be provided with sufficient opportunities to communicate with children, 2）teaching portfolios should facilitate their reflection, and 3）they may need to attend courses on introductory methods and content area at an early stage in their training.

  Most prefectures in Japan currently have an education center to support the professional development of teachers. One such education center where the author of this study works has a system of long-term in-service training for teachers, which can run to six months or a year. The participants set their own research questions, conduct research, and write a report at the end. They adopt a scientific methodology in their studies, establishing a hypothesis and then attempting to verify it. This program is designed based on the technical rationality that scientific theory and technology can apply to educational practice. It is now also recognized that teachers need to develop practical ability as a reflective practitioner, which requires skills of reflection and deliberation.

  In this study, the author improved the curriculum for the prefectural education center by adopting action research methodology, a methodology which has been evaluated as useful for developing teachers' practical ability as a reflective practitioner. How and on what aspects of their studies the participants reflected and then practiced in their curricular activities was examined. Seven participants were interviewed twice during the training period and changes in their reflection and teaching methods were investigated.

  The two main findings were as follows. First, three kinds of characteristics of change in reflection common to some of the participants were found: 1）case thinking, concerning individual students; 2）reconstructive thinking, concerning lesson style; and 3）reconstructive thinking, concerning the viewpoint of students. Second, two kinds of characteristics of deliberation common to some of the participants were identified: 1）interaction with reflection; and 2）compound transformation.

  This study revealed that a curriculum adopting the action research methodology was effective for participants of in-service training for teachers at an education center to reflect and deliberate as reflective practitioners.