Nowadays, universities in Japan are forced to re-examine their attitudes about studies and education drastically, because the establishment standards for universities are being revised.

  The aim of this thesis is to consider, in the movement to reform university education, what the teacher education curriculum in universities ought to be: what kind of abilities should teachers have in the next century, and what kind of curriculum can equip teachers with those abilities?

  This thesis consists of six chapters:

  1. The point at issue

  2. Response to the fundamental problem of universities

  3. Teachers' abilities in times of change

  4. The relationship between teacher education and liberal education

  5. The view of the organization of the teacher education curriculum

  6. Conclusion - a proposal for the teacher education curriculum

  The purpose of this study is to clarify the characteristics of the university teachers' views on teaching and to discuss them from a point of view of what professional growth as a teacher should be. A survey of 20 items about views on teaching was carried out, and the subjects were asked to express their opinions both idealistically and practically. The subjects were 72 teachers of the Faculty of Education in Yamanashi University. We mainly analyzed the discrepancy between the idealistic and practical opinions and compared the magnitude of discrepancy between: (1) the teachers of large and small classes and (2) the teachers of different subjects. We found several interesting results and discussed their implications from the standpoint of “teacher education in universities.”

  Today, it is urgent that Japanese teachers take up individual studies to cultivate their teaching skills and acquire the broader knowledge and culture only achievable through life-long self-study.

  Is there then any historical experience in Japan that has encouraged teachers to take up self-study? One could be the Government Examination for the Secondary Teachers' License conducted by the Ministry of Education in postwar Japan. Large numbers of young people tried to take the examination and the successful candidates occupied important positions as the leading teachers at schools in post- and pre-war Japan. The test was not merely an experiment but an effective system for checking the teachers' levels.

  In this report, the authors aim to clarify the functions of the examination through interviews and questionnaires completed by 42 successful exam candidates in the subjects of education, ethics and civics. Through the survey, the authors make it clear that this examination offered powerful motivation to young teachers in primary and other schools to begin life-long self-study. At the same time, the authors point out that the test played a great role in establishing the paradigm of pedagogy in modern Japan.

  Several educational scientists participated in making specialized questionnaires and interviewing candidates for many years. Thus, they have gained prestige as the representative scholars in the field of teacher education and the academic world.

  The authors point out another topic, namely, for many candidates including the successful ones the examination was a chance to develop their academic competence rather than to promote themselves to the secondary teachers' level.

  The authors will introduce their forthcoming project. It is to analyze the specialized pedagogical questions given in the examination and to observe the formation process of a paradigm in the educational science in modern Japan.

  Today, a problem requiring attention is the lack of children's direct experiences and knowledge gained through everyday life, the education of only words without real images. Turning to teachers, particularly for the young generation, may have drawbacks because some of these teachers do not have adequate experience to lead children and many of them may not understand the significance of a child's direct experiences for developing the child's ability to think. Therefore, it is said that making plans for children's learning by way of their own experiences is not easy in primary education.

  Under these circumstances, the curriculum must be considered in education programs of universities, which train students to be teachers. More opportunities should be made for the students to have various experiences and to study the importance of such a learning style.

  The purpose of this paper is to introduce and analyze the practice of the Educational Seminar for freshmen used in recent years at the Hokkaido University of Education in Kushiro. The experiences offered to students consist of various subjects to lead students in the understanding of the educational effort and also to develop their scientific and social abilities. The main contents are, as follows:

  I. A confirmation of the problem

  II. The guiding principle of the seminar at the university

  III. The contents and structure of the curriculum

  IV. An analysis of the significance of “experience” for students who are just beginning to study education

  V. Considerations and conclusion

  In this article, I will discuss our unique program for undergraduate students in the School of Education, Nagoya University.

  This introductory program is not a lecture or a seminar but an experiential practicum of research on school education. The significance is that students can see school life directly and objectively as it is, which means they can observe like researchers as neither pupils nor student teachers.

  Our purpose for the program is to experience an ethnographic research activity and to know different types of school education from Japanese typical school education. In this sense, this program is very new and valuable for obtaining comprehensive and experiential data on the complex activity in school organizations.

  The students say they appreciate and enjoy this participant observation activity and group discussion, as well as their knowledge of various types of school education. We feel certain that experiential learning during undergraduate study will be accepted by most students.

  This document records the process of cooperative learning in groups within “mass-production” lectures, which was carried out through teaching methods centering on the production of video materials. The main purposes of the present practices are to make a developmental model of a cooperative learning system for group-work, to make an instructional model of teaching materials analysis, and to enhance the literacy of students.

  Cooperative learning procedures are designed to engage students actively in the learning process through inquiry and discussion in small groups.

  The group-work is carefully organized and structured so as to promote the participation and learning of all group members in a cooperatively shared understanding.

  Cooperative learning is more than just tossing students into a classroom and telling them to talk together.

  The following attributes are common to all methods of cooperative learning.

  ・A task and learning activity suitable for group-work

  ・Student-to-student interaction in small groups

  ・Teacher-to-students (small groups) interaction in mass-production lectures