Tokyo Gakugei University, which is one of the oldest institutes for teacher education in Japan, founded on May, 31, 1949, unifying four normal schools in Tokyo, and being raised to the status of university. From 1949 to 1960, the division of technology and education at this university was of the industry major, represented a part of the vocational education department. It started three four-year major courses in agriculture, commerce, and industry leading to a Bachelor's degree in 1952, with twenty five faculty members. In 1958, the vocation and homemaking, which was a required subject for junior high school students, was legally transformed to the industrial arts and homemaking. .The vocational education department had to be reorganized to educate the new industrial arts teachers for junior high schools. But the process of this reorganization should be based on the politics between agriculture, commerce, and industry divisions, and be very complex. While the name of this department was changed from the vocational education to the industrial arts in 1960, the organizasion was splited into the industrial ars education department and the vocational education department in 1968. The industrial arts education department started the first four-year degree course in industrial arts in 1968, and had two professors, as well as two associate professors, two lectures and two assistants, in 1970, who were the first professors of the division of technology and education, Tokyo Gakugei University. One of the most serious defects of the department's qualities in this stage, respecting the university-based teacher education, was that no faculty member took charge of and devorted himself to the research and teaching activities in the pedagogy of industrial arts, and as a result, the courses in the pedagogy of industrial arts were limited to the minimum requirements for the industrial arts teacher license. It was difficult that the students, who wanted to study the pedagogy of industrial arts as their major, took some advernced courses in it and found a faculty member guiding them about their studies professionally, with his academic background of the industrial arts education. The starting the Master's degree course in technology and education changed these conditions. In the year 1975, the division of technology and education, as the last one, was established more at the Master's Course, Graduate School of Education, although Tokyo Gakugei University got the Master's degree giving power in 1966. In that decade, the industrial arts department's members had to become conscious of their defects and endeavered to strengthen their research activities in the pedagogy of industrial arts, especially. Since 1975, the Bachelor's and the Master's courses at the division of technology and education were consisted of three majors, which were of the technology education, the electric and electronic technology, and the machinery technology. Each major was directed by own professors. Both of the faculty members who were in charge of the technology education major, were the graduates from the doctoral courses at the graduate schools of education. But it seems to have been one of the most important problems for the development of the university-based technology teacher education that we regard the practices of technology education as the objects of pedagogy and make reseaches in them by its own scientific methodology. In this respect, it should be a progress worthy attention that the Doctoral Course at the United Graduate School of Education, Tokyo Gakugei University started in 1996.
View full abstract