The aims of “Introduction to the Teaching Profession (A & B)” are to help students consider a possibility to become teachers and determine to continue the teacher education program, and further understand the roles and responsibilities of schools and teachers, and the rights and career development system allowed for teachers in fulfilling their duties.
The main topics of “Introduction to the Teaching Profession A” are as follows. These are necessary for understanding the present state of Japanese teachers as professionals in the modern society.
- Teachers in the Japanese law system.
- Social demands to teachers and teachers’ consciousness reported in public statements and statistical data
- Historical changes and future perspectives about qualifications and abilities required of teachers
- Roles of the teacher education program in the formal teacher’s professional development system
Students are required to achieve the following objectives:
1) To memorize important laws that define teaching professions and understand their essentials systematically.
2) To be able to explain appropriate/inappropriate acts as teachers in typical events which frequently take place at school and reasons for them based on the objective 1)
3) To memorize reliable information resources useful to understand social needs for schools and teachers, and adopt an attitude to consider changes required of themselves based on data collected periodically
4) To be able to explain objectives of the teacher education program based on the formal teacher’s professional development system
Roles, Responsibilities, Rights, Required qualifications and abilities, Teacher’s professional development
✔ Specialist skills | Intercultural skills | Communication skills | Critical thinking skills | Practical and/or problem-solving skills |
Students are required to perform lesson. Students are required to perform exercises to collect, understand, and summarize their own opinions based on important concepts and terms learned in class.
Course schedule | Required learning | |
---|---|---|
Class 1 | Introduction and outlines of the courses (A & B) | After each class, students are required to collect, understand, and summarize information about example problems based on knowledge learned in the class. |
Class 2 | Roles and responsibilities of schools and teachers (1) – Pedagogical view | See above |
Class 3 | Roles and responsibilities of schools and teachers (2) – Schools in the formal education system (Schools in Japanese laws) | See above |
Class 4 | Teacher’s professions and teacher’s license (1) - Teacher’s professions and activities/tasks in a school | See above |
Class 5 | Historical changes of teacher’s roles | See above |
Class 6 | Teacher’s professions and teacher’s license (3) - Recent issues of teachers as professionals | See above |
Class 7 | Teacher promotion and license system (1) - Trends and present states of teacher license system | See above |
Class 8 | Teacher promotion and license system (2) - Qualifications and abilities required to teachers, and teacher’s license renewal system | See above |
・Hiroshi Takahashi, Kenichi Kaneda (Eds.) Essentials of Modern Educational Systems (2nd edition), Gakubunsya, 2009 (In Japanese)
・Materials and references useful for further studies will be published on the OCW system. (In Japanese)
40 % of achievement score is assigned to evaluation of exercises of every classes and the end-term test
60 % of achievement score is assigned to evaluation of quality the final report posted on the OCW system
・Only student who wants to take teacher’s license and may become teacher can attend the course.
・Students are required to attend the guidance meeting of the teacher promotion program held on first week of the every first quarter.