English Edition
No. 5 July 2011

Evacuation Centers and Teachers
A massive earthquake struck oﬀ the east coast of Japan at
2:46 pm on March 11, 2011. It has come to be known as theGreat Eastern Japan Earthquake, causing immense damage
throughout the Tohoku region, mainly Iwate, Miyagi, andFukushima prefectures. Hundreds of thousands of disastervictims immediately evacuated to nearby schools. Given thisopportunity to consider the quality of teachers who can
overcome a crisis, I interviewed the principals of thoseschools which accepted disaster victims.
[Example in a coastal area]
Ishinomaki Technical High School, which is located in Ishinomaki city on the Paciﬁc coast, was inundated in a one meterhigh ﬂood because of a tsunami generated by theearthquake running up the neighboring Kitakami Canal. The
high school was not originally designated as an evacuation
center. For that reason, no emergency stocks were kept
there, such as food, drinking water, and blankets. Nonetheless, a total of some 800 people, including neighboring
residents, students, and teachers, spent over two days inschool buildings while sharing their own food.
Some teachers rescued residents by immersing themselves chest-deep in water. Teachersʼ ideas were used in relief
activities as follows: carrying evacuating residents to theschool using canoes of the school boat club; taking the headof a neighborhood association on board a canoe and movingaround while conﬁrming the safety of residents who had
evacuated to upper levels of their own homes; sharing andtaking glucose that had been stored in a small plant installedin the Department of Chemical Technology; taking distilledwater used for experiments as drinking water; carrying goods
out of neighboring houses using a high jump mat instead ofa raft; and making a bridge to get across stagnant water byarranging desks when making an evacuation.
Kitakami Canal andIshinomaki TechnicalHigh School: Ishinomaki
Technical High School
was inundated above
the ﬂoor level by atsunami running up thecanal. The pier which
the boat club had used
was also destroyed.

Kenichi Tabata Miyagi University of Education[Example in an inland area]
A junior high school located inland in Sendai city opened anevacuation center for four days from the day of the disaster.
About 100 evacuees stayed in the martial arts gym. Althoughnearby buildings showed relatively little damage, lifelines toutilities and communications services were cut oﬀ andcontinuing aftershocks made people anxious. Those were thechief reasons that residents came to the evacuation center.
The school was designated as an evacuation center.
However, because operating evacuation centers originallycome under the jurisdiction of the city government, twooﬃcers came to the school from the city government. Nonetheless, it was teachers who performed the following operations: serving warm meals by cooking emergency rice stocks;
and securing light using candles made by students in a special
needs class. For the operations, about ten teachers stayedvoluntarily in the teachersʼ room every night.
Here we cited examples of schools that were used as an evacuation center for short-term sheltering. In the event ofemergencies, abilities and skills to make use of school facilities
and equipment that teachers cultivated by the time must be
exercised rapidly. In addition to cultivating these abilities,
future teacher training programs must consider the power ofadministrators who create environments to exercise theabilities and power to engage in longer-term risk management.
A vessel washed up

on the quay of the
Ishinomaki Port by atsunami.

A vacant lot of houses

near the Ishinomaki

Port. Damage varies
greatly from block toblock. (All photos weretaken by the author on
April 21, 2011)

Discussion of Masterʼs Degree Requirements in
Teacher Training Yasuko Muramatsu
President, Tokyo Gakugei University“The Special Committee on the Improvement of Teachersʼ Qualities and Abilities” of the Central Council for
Education (CCE) is evaluating a teacher licensing
system to improve teachersʼ expertise and comprehensive measures through teacher training, appointment,
and in-service training. The Special Committee was set
up in June 2010 and delivered a progress report to the
CCE at the end of January 2011. Although a subsequentdiscussion had been interrupted because of the Great
Eastern Japan Earthquake, it was resumed in May 2011
with the same members as before. The Special Committee is said to plan to submit a certain report by theend of this term of the CCE (Jan. 2013).
As a committee member of a teacher-training
institution participating in the Special Committee, I
introduce discussions in the Special Committee. Whenregarding teaching life comprehensively, the main
issues for consideration are who takes charge toimprove the qualities and abilities, when, where, andusing what systems. A considerable divergence of
opinion was evident between the two sides in theinitial discussions in the Special Committee: theuniversity side, which takes on the responsibility ofteacher training, and the board of education side,which has responsibility for appointments andin-service training. The latter was critical of conventional university education and advanced the strong
opinion that teachersʼ qualities and abilities should be
improved during nearly 40 years of their teachingcareer after the appointment.
The Teachers License Act was revised in 1998 andsubjects related to “school subjects or education
studies” were introduced. Subsequently, universities
became able to reorganize teacher training at universities ﬂexibly for the purpose of enrichment in subjects
related to teacher education. However, recent problems over schools are diversifying and increasing.
Training of teachers who can deal with those problems
and have high expertise in school subjects for four
years at universities has already reached the limit. Even
if trying to acquire the abilities through on-sitepractice, it would be diﬃcult to do so only with shortterm or one-oﬀ training related to new problems.
In the progress report, the Special Committee determined a direction of future discussions beyond theinitial divergence of opinion depending on the standpoint: training for professional teachers requires
master level education. The teacher licensing system
led to a plan to grant a basic teaching license (tentative
name, used hereinafter) to those who completed anundergraduate degree and the general teaching
license (tentative name, used hereinafter) as a qualiﬁcation at the master level.
It is not yet time to clarify our university policy, but

based on discussions in
the Japan Associationof
Universities
ofEducation, we fundamentally approve of
requiring a masterʼsdegree as a teachingqualiﬁcation. Of course
it is important how wemake use of undergraduate and graduate
programs,
includingpractice teaching eﬀectively, as well as
extending a training period. Another important matter
is how to modify the contents of education along withqualitative enhancement of teacher training at universities.
In Japan, more than 20,000 individuals were newly
appointed as teachers of public elementary, juniorhigh and senior-high schools in 2010. What could be
regarded as a plan for teacher training of this size? The
open system at the undergraduate stage should bemaintained ﬁrmly in order to secure various humanresources, even though program approval must be
more actualized.
However, to obtain the general teaching license, acurriculum that diﬀers from the curriculum for thecurrent advanced class certiﬁcate should be required.
On the assumption that some people proceed directly
to graduate school from university and others enter
graduate school after some years of in-service experience, appropriate accommodations for both groups
must be prepared, even if not all of those who obtain
the basic teaching license would expect to obtain ageneral teaching license. Such accommodations
might include any of the following: enabling students
to obtain a general teaching license from the masterʼs
programs of general universities by imposing a certain
curriculum; and improving the M. Ed. programs andthe masterʼs programs of teacher-training universities.
Considering the fact that many teachers are women, it
is necessary to consider relations between life stages,
such as a time of giving birth, and masterʼs degree
requirements. It should be a system under which
graduate schools of teacher-training universities play acertain role in specialized licenses (tentative name),
which are expected in addition to the general teaching
license.
In any case, the fundamental reform of the teacher
training system is an important issue for general
universities as well. Nonetheless, insuﬃcient attention
seems to have been devoted to it. Publicity and public
discussion will be needed.

Sites Where Teachers Are Nurtured

Rao Congman The Academy for Research in Teacher Education, Northeast Normal University
with close relation to teacher education practices in
NENU. Through this, it improves the standards of teacher
education subjects. Policy studies of teacher education
provide consulting for policy decisions related to education in the central and local governments after fully
perceiving the actual needs of reform and development
in teacher education.

2. Faculty development of teacher educators

The Academy for Research in Teacher Education of
Northeast Normal University is an organization under the
direct control of the Committee for the Development of
Teacher Education of Northeast Normal University(NENU) in China, which was oﬃcially established in
January 2009. The ﬁrst and current Dean of the Academy
is Professor Liu Yichun, Vice-President of NENU. The
Academy mainly addresses the study of teacher education and management of teacher educators. It alsofunctions as an organization to conduct pre-service andin-service teacher education in cooperation with the
Department of Educational Aﬀairs and other colleges of
NENU. The Academy has three institutes: the Institute for
Research on Teacher Education, Institute for Research on
Subject Matter Education, and Institute for Research on
Higher Education. These institutes develop their respective activities centering on comprehensive studies oftheories, policies, and practices of teacher education,
theoretical and practical studies of school subject education, and theoretical and practical studies of faculty
development. The Academy aims “to study teacher
education and serve school education based on higher
education.” For those purposes, the Academy is undertaking eﬀorts to construct an open platform at a highlevel, promoting a high level of studies of teacher education by teacher education researchers within and outside
the University, and providing a high level of services toschool education. Eﬀorts are being made by gaining
support from “The Teacher Education Innovation
Platform Project” with the backing of subject groups forteacher education in the whole university.
The Academy is now mainly developing the following
three projects.

1. Studies of teacher education

With attention devoted to the forefront of teacher
education study, theoretical studies of teacher education
aim to achieve a high level of teacher education study
not only with Chinese characteristics but also withinternational perspectives. Theoretical studies of teacher
education actively provide a theoretical basis and technical guidance to teacher education within the University

Success or failure of teacher education depends onteacher educators. The Academy aims to form a team ofteacher educators who have good knowledge of schoolsites with an adequate size and a rational structure. It aims
to foster leaders of inﬂuential teacher education subjects
in the country to the greatest extent possible. Throughresearch projects, research seminars and training meetings, and exchange activities with school teachers, it
promotes faculty development of teacher educators in
the universities.

3. Establishment of “the Northeast China Experimental Zone for Innovations in Teacher Education”
In December 2007, NENU concluded agreements with
Jilin Province Education Department, Liaoning Province
Education Department, and Heilongjiang Province Education Department for the joint establishment of “theNortheast China Experimental Zone for Innovations in
Teacher Education” in three provinces of Northeast China.
“The Northeast China Experimental Zone for Innovationsin Teacher Education” functions not only to secure timeand quality of practice teaching by student teachers sentfrom NENU. It also functions to promote teacher professional development and school improvement in theexperimental zones and faculty development of teacher
educators and improvement of educational researchstandards in NENU. That is to say, goals for “the Northeast
China Experimental Zone for Innovations in Teacher
Education” are the integration of pre-service andin-service teacher education, of educational research andeducational practice, of teachersʼ development andstudentsʼ development, and the integration of education(teacher education), research (educational research), andservice to society (service to schools). Currently, NENU isinnovating teacher education in over 100 schools in 23
counties (cities) in northeast China based on “the partnership between normal universities (U), local governments(G), and schools (S)”. Tasks for the Academy for Researchin Teacher Education include promoting the establishment of “the Northeast China Experimental Zone forInnovations in Teacher Education” and making it fully
functional. “The Northeast China Experimental Zone forInnovations in Teacher Education” of NENU is now
increasingly attracting attention throughout China.

The Academyʼs website
htt p :/ / ar te .ne nu .e d u .cn

The Center has invited international visiting professors to
conduct research exchanges related to the latest trend ofteacher education in foreign countries. It has been an important opportunity to consider problems in teacher educationin Japan and in Tokyo Gakugei University seen from abroad.
To date, we have invited Professor Don Gyuqui and Professor
Rao Congman from Northeast Normal University (NENU) of
China. With the help of the two professors, we were able tolearn outlines and examples of teacher training and in-service
training systems and challenges in higher education institutions and universities in China.
As another article in this issue contributed by Professor Raoshows, NENU is moving forward with a dynamic idea to unify
practice and research at a high level by teaming up with
universities, boards of education, and schools. NENU is also
accumulating teacher education-like researches related tothe development of teacher abilities at the undergraduate
stage, the masterʼs (professional) stage, and the leaderʼs stage
and their standards. These activities are present-day
challenges for Tokyo Gakugei University in Japan as well. The
meaning of research consultation with mutual visits is
becoming increasingly signiﬁcant. In other words, it has
become a common recognition to conduct speciﬁc andindividual studies in accordance with more speciﬁc themes

and domains, not to end it with merely information exchange
and research exchange between the two universities. It might
be regarded as an expectation for the second stage of joint
research.
Based on such a background, we have exchanged views on
themes, research organizations, and schedules of a project
research since last year. The research theme was determined
as “The Joint Research on Systems of Teacher Training and Inservice Training in Knowledge-based Society and Their
Contents and Methods”. It has sub-themes: “Development ofa teacher training program and model for practical ability
formation” and “Development of a program and model tosupport the professional development of teachers”. Morespeciﬁcally, we have the following vision: organizing aworking group in both universities; placing milestones of the
3-year research project at the research consultation meetings
with mutual visits; and holding a Japan‒China international
research symposium on teacher education in 2013. Bothuniversities and both countries will be able to learn from eachother through teacher education-like researches in accordance with concrete examples which extend the commonality
and individuality of teacher education in the eastern Asian
region. (Hatsuo Mitsuishi)

To establish a professional graduate school, it is necessary to have a certain ratio of teachers who possess“practical experience” and “high practical ability” in aparticular ﬁeld. In the Graduate School of Professional
Teacher Education started in 2008, the ratio is stipulated
as “over 40%”, and teachers with more than 20 years ofpractical career are regarded as desirable. In many cases,
based on an agreement between the university and aboard of education, individuals with a long career at an
educational site (mainly administrative work) takeresponsibility for practical teacher training programs in

the graduate school in cooperation with scholar faculty
staﬀs. Since before the establishment of the graduate
school, there have been quite a few individuals withgreat careers at educational sites in university teachers
who have coordinated practice teaching at the undergraduate stage. “Practitioner educators” are a collective
term which includes those teachers.
The presence of practitioner educators generates
positive eﬀects when practically advancing teacher
training programs. However, from the standpoint ofcriticizing schools, some have pointed out that “bringing
people from troubled school sites does nothing but
reproduce the problems on an enlarged scale.” Attention
will be devoted to changes in the future. (Yasuyuki Iwata)Staﬀ of Curriculum Center for Teachers
Director

SAKAI, Toshiki(Professor, History Education and Korean Education)

Center Researchers[Division of Curriculum Research and Development]
MITSUISHI, Hatsuo (Professor, Curriculum Studies)
KANEKO, Mariko(Associate Professor, Educational Sociology)[Division of Teacher Preparation Research and Development]
IWATA, Yasuyuki(Associate Professor, Historical Studies of Teacher Education)
UESUGI, Yoshimi(Associate Professor, Media Education)[Division of Research and Development for In-Service Teachers]
MAEHARA, Kenji(Associate Professor, Educational Administration)

The CCT is produced by the Curriculum Center for Teachers,
Tokyo Gakugei University.
Editor: Yoshimi Uesugi
Designer: Tsukasa Aoyama and Xiaohui Zhang(Aoyama Lab., Calligraphy and Arts, Tokyo Gakugei University)
Curriculum Center for Teachers, Tokyo Gakugei University
4-1-1 Nukui-kitamachi Koganei, Tokyo 184-8501 Japan
Tel: 81-42-329-7776

Fax: 81-42-329-7786

E-mail: currict@u-gakugei.ac.jp

Website: http://www.u-gakugei.ac.jp/~currict/english/index.html