Search

This paper examines the control system of secondary schools and teachers' survival strategies in the 2000s, a time known as an era of accountability, through an ethnography of a low-ranked high school in the metropolitan area. Student guidance and maintaining school order are important tasks for Japanese teachers. The culture of administration in secondary education has changed over time. In the late 1990s, a "counseling mentality" and "internal understanding" were emphasized in student guidance rather than administering the exterior aspect of students, under the system of "kanri kyoiku", until the 1980s. Earlier papers indicate that there was a process of "consummatorization of schooling." How, then, is order maintained in schools in the 2000s? The main data for this paper were gathered from April 2005 to August 2006. Participatory observation and interviews were carried out to describe the control system under which teachers avoided conflict with students. For example, teachers kept discipline indirectly by recording absence times in five-minute units. The maximum period of absence for receiving credits far the class was made known to students who were considered problematic and who tended to miss class. Some inappropriate behaviors, such as failing to wear the school uniform and eating in class, were also dealt with as absent time. In this way, teachers were able to keep their classes in order and avoid conflicts with students. Teachers often behaved gently and kindly, supporting the students under the assumption of this count system. In this paper, this behavior by teachers is called "Osewa mode," with osewa meaning "caring" in Japanese. The teachers used this strategy to conceal their authority to set rules and to keep order in a way that avoided conflicts with students. They soothed students with gentle behavior and familiar words. They often directed students' attention to the absent time count and advised them to attend classes with a proper attitude. This strategy was transmitted to other teachers through group interactions. The school kept order through a "Control system to avoid conflict with students" and the "Osewa Mode," which is an individual strategy based on that system. On the other hand, this system and strategy fits well into an era of accountability. Teachers often gave notification to parents of the numerical value of the absent time count. This made it easy for teachers to justify their treatment of students to their parents. Teachers' culture differs by regions. Therefore, there are some limits to the usefulness of the descriptions in this paper, as they would differ in different teachers' cultures in rural areas. However, the metropolitan area tends to lead in the areas of accountability, loss of teachers' authority and "consumerization of schooling." Thus, the "Osewa Mode" and "Control system to avoid conflict with students" in this ethnography in the metropolitan area may show important characteristics of teachers' culture in the 2000s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes, in the context of their surroundings, the process through which high school students who came from China in and after the 1970s (Chinese newcomers), rebuild their hopes for the future, which were at one point destroyed by their coming to Japan, and make career choices. Chinese newcomers originally have their own life plans, based on school education and their life experiences in China. Coming to Japan is an interruption of their plans for the future. How do they rebuild a future outlook and pursue a desired career in Japan? It seems that, because newcomer students are at a disadvantage in terms of Japanese language, they are not able to maximize their academic ability, and tend to enter low-level high schools. How does this affect their school life and their academic career? And what kind of support do they need? This paper considers this issue, using the case of Chinese newcomers who were assisted by career counseling activities, at a lower track public commercial high school. The following two points are made clear. First, through their school experiences in China, the Chinese newcomers were imbued with the value that studying should come first and that grades are everything. They had an achievement based future outlook, under which future happiness is seen to depend on good grades and a high academic background. While they wished to go on to university, they were confronted by the anti-school culture in the high school, where studying is not highly valued, and came to feel friction, conflict, and denial. Their desire to go to university declined. In other words, school life in the high school did not offer them a way to achieve what they want in the future. Secondly, university student volunteers helped newcomer students to regain the hopes that they had lost after entering the commercial high school, and encouraged them to go on to university. Student volunteers acted as role models, embodying the pro school culture that Chinese newcomers originally had, and encouraged them to continue to be diligent and to make efforts. Specific information on universities given by teachers is also an important source for making the career choice to go on to university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, disparities in high schools showed an increasing tendency until the end of the 1970s. Since that time, attempts have been made to analyze and reduce these disparities, both in the field of sociology of education and educational reforms. This paper aims to re-examine the challenges in both fields and to elucidate their positive outcomes and limitations, and in addition, to point out a new perspective for future challenges in this area. Academically, the study of disparities began with the application of the concept of "tracking." At the beginning, many types of evils caused by disparities were problematized, and the concept of "tracking" was adopted to document the situation. The concept of "tracking" was compatible with functionalism, which was the main theoretical stream in the sociology of education at that time. The concept of "tracking" was originally used in studies of high schools in the United States to reveal the fact that there were invisible mechanisms for the selection of students in open curriculum systems. However, in Japan, the concept was used to report the fact that there were great differences in the inner processes of schools and subjective aspects of students based on school disparities. In other words, the concept was used to point out the effects of the disparities. As a result, the study of disparities has been developed as the study of "tracking effects." It can be said that studies of the tracking effect could have contributed to investigations of the inner processes of schools and subjective aspects of students. But instead, they took a macro perspective from the studies of school disparities. As a result, disparities were not examined in relation to social structures. Politically, there are two ways to reduce disparities in schools. One is to control the level of achievement of new students in order to prevent the emergence of differences among schools (input control). The other is to control educational activities in the schools to ensure that tracking effects do not take place in each school (through put control). Since the late 1970s, input controls have been carried out through reforms of the entrance examination system of high schools and improvements of the guidance system of junior high schools. However, these controls were too indirect to reduce school disparities. In other words, whether they could reduce the disparities or not depended on their ability to change students' standards for school choice, which were indeed subjective. Through put controls have been carried out as reforms of high schools. High school reforms after the 1980s were generally seen as an attempt to weaken classifications and frames of education. Logically, it seemed that these efforts led to a limitation of tracking effects in each school and to a reduction in school disparities as a whole. However, these attempts were not effective as they lacked a grand design and were done separately for each school. Challenges to the school disparities in both fields mentioned above seems to be homologous. They share the fact that they look at the disparities from a narrow perspective, only in relation to inner processes of each school or the subjective aspect of students. School disparities are social disparities. For example, they involve class differences among the enrolled students, and are related to regional differences. Consequently, in order to reduce school disparities, it is necessary to see them in their social context. The conclusion of this paper, by introducing recent challenges to school disparities, proposes this new perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The school system continues to occupy a central position in the system of social distribution. However, the school is changing from a social screening institution, as it was in the 1970s, to a support institution. Schools now tend to support the decision-making of students based on their own academic achievements and career plans. It is difficult for schools to intervene in students' decision-making in the way they did in the 1970s. However, the relationship between student's school records and their academic and career achievements has not been broken down despite the drastic change in this internal process. In this paper, the authors describe this mechanism in the school by investigating one commercial high school in the Metropolitan area. The authors examine data from the "Student Kartes" of all students in 2002. In these documents, teachers record students' academic achievements and their process of career determing. The authors then analyze how students move between the various channels offered by the school to make academic and career choices, and show some typical patterns. The main conclusions are as follows. First, many students failed to attend group counseling formally provided by the school, and teachers need to give individual support to students. Second, ironically, due to the fact that academic affairs were not highly valued at the commercial high school and that academic competition was not stiff, students with a strong commitment to school tended to have better achievement than those who had a weak commitment. In that sense, the school, as a support institution, also functions as a social screening institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]