| Research Abstract |
This Study aimed to examine main featues of recent education reforms and their validity and effectiveness and to investigate the types and conditions of successful policies for enhancing the quality of schooling and teaching from a comparative perspective. Some of the major findings are as follows:
(1) The third wave of education reform since 1980s has been featured by its value orientation that emphasizes the importance of quality enhancement of schooling and teaching and of the accountability of educational administration, school management and teaching practices, while does not pay much attention to the real needs and changes of school children and their life-world as well as to teacjers' dedication and efforts for improving teaching and caring of children. As a result, schools and teachers have been forced to cope with various radical reform measures and policies, instead of coping with the real needs of children and the changing society. This is especially the case in Japan.
(2) How
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ever, at least in Japan there have been a growing tendency that the collaboration among teachers, parents and local people, and the staffs of local education board expands and contributes to make shools lively and to improve its quality. In this process, it is obsearved that the success of schooling tends to depend on the development of school culture as a learning community, the well functioning of professional learning community of teachers, the collaborative culture among teachers, parents and local peiople who care the school and iths studnents, and the eachers' dedication and susstatinable efforts for improving their teaching practices. In addition, these factors tend to be developed and successfully sustained by various schemes or systems that initiate and maintain the participation of and collaboration among parents, local people and teachers.
(3) It is obsearved that leadership and collaboration are critically important in school management and teaching and caring children, or school settings. In this respect, schools in Japan are generally well organized and functioning as the system and culture of the combination of so-called "distributed leadership" and "collaborative leadership," or "distributed and collaborative leadership." It is also characterized as "professional learning community" that promotes organizational learning. These features of schools in Japan are partically developed and maintained by the practices of "lesson study," the policy scheme of "Resaerch and Development Schools," and the arrangement of centered staff-room and the scheme of allocating various roles of school management to all teachers, the last one of which contrivutes to develop the distributed and collaborative leadership.
(4) There are some peculiar differences or opposite orientations between Asian countries and Western developed countries such as UK and USA, one of which is the growing emphasis of new, child-centered and exploratory approaches to teaching and curriculum-design in Asian countries, whereas the expansion of giving many common tests and measuring the success of teaching and learning by those test results in western developed countries. Less
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