名古屋高等教育研究 第 12 号 （2012）

Career Development Skills Training for
PhD Students and Graduates in JapanSAITOH Yoshiko
ᴾ ᴾ ᴾ ᴾ ᴾ ᴾ ＜Abstract＞
This report aims at contributing to the international discussion on
career development training for PhD students and graduates by outlining expectations and current trends in Japanese universities.
The need for more diverse career options for PhDs has been a topic ofdiscussion in recent years both in Japan and abroad. Experts in Japan
have delivered recommendations and reports on the basis of practices
abroad and the Japanese government has issued relevant policies.
There is now a need for universities to offer training programs that willcontribute to PhD career development, either in the form of extracurricular activities or as a part of the regular curriculum.
Several challenges have arisen from the Japanese cases. Thus,
discussion must take place concerning how to formulate these training
programs, how to connect them with existing specialized courses oracademic department programs, how to raise awareness among faculty
members in individual graduate schools, and how to handle organizational issues such as program administration and management of thefaculty in charge.

1ȅGlobal Trends: Background to the Present Report
Reforms in the area of human resource development are currently underway at graduate schools around the world.

However, because graduate

school programs differ in each country, there has been much discussion
around the concept of transferable skills.
Assistant Professor, Center for the Studies of Higher Education, Nagoya
University279This trend was spearheaded by the Joint Statewent of the UK Louncil's
Training Requirements for Research Students, which issued in 2001 (Saitoh &Kobayashi, 2007).

The statement outlined 36 transferable skills that doc-

toral students are expected to develop during their training, and demandedthat universities and other institutions ensure that their postdocs andgraduate students who hired for the Councils-funded projects acquire theseskills. The Joint Skills Statement was used as a point of reference for a revised Code of Practice issued by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher
Education in 2004, which pushed some universities to step up their efforts intransferable skills training.
In the United States, a lack of graduate school policies on the national level
meant that efforts to improve the quality of doctoral education took placethrough grassroots initiatives.
sioning the PhD

One of these programs was the

Re-envi-

project, an effort to take a fresh look at graduate education

throughout the US (Nyquist & Woodford, 2001).

The project fostered dis-cussion on changing the goals of doctoral programs and the ways in which
educational methodology should be altered to support those new goals.

Thenationwide Council of Graduate Schools has also been implementing a varietyof related projects.

Though all of these efforts have focused on the so-called

transferable skills

first put forth in the UK, they are often referred to as

professional developmentin the United States.

Discussions are also moving forward on an international stage as well. In
the European Union, the European Science Foundation published a report
titledResearch careers in Europe: landscape and horizons , which definestransferable skills and provides a list (Sholtz et al., 2009). It is similar incontent to the UK's Joint Skills Statement. One of the working parties inrelation to science, technology and innovation of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conducted an international
comparative survey on transferable skills training in 2011.

The survey also

focused on internships as a way to acquire transferable skills.

The scientificjournal Nature did a special feature on problems facing graduate schools in
its April 21, 2011 issue. The feature discussed current issues like reforming
human resource development and methods while also pointing to the need towork towards developing transferable skills.

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Career Development Skills Training for PhD Students and Graduates in Japan

2ȅJapan Today: An Overview of the Present Report
The need for more diverse career options for PhDs has been a topic ofdiscussion in recent years either in Japan.

Experts have delivered rec-ommendations and reports based on practices in other countries, while thegovernment has issued relevant policies.

There is now a call for universities

to offer training programs that contribute to PhD career development,
whether as extracurricular activities or as part of the regular curriculum.
When that happens, it is likely that development will be based on anawareness of international standards for graduate education and the international market for PhD holders.
This report contributes to the international discussion by outlining expectations and current trends in career development training for PhD students and graduates at Japanese universities.

Below, it outlines a history of

related reports and policies in an effort to clarify the background and events
informing current expectations for PhD career development and associatedtraining programs.

It then provides examples of skills training programs

currently being offered to doctoral students and postdocs by Japanese universities, categorized into three groups: (1) policy-derived extracurricularseminars and the like, (2) university-wide graduate education platforms individually developed by institutions, and (3) efforts on formulating thetraining system.

3ȅGovernmental Perspectives
3.1ġ Japan’s Policy Process
Japan's government agencies have put together councils comprised ofexperts and have structures for determining policy based on council's advisory reports (Pempel, 1978).

The council that handles graduate educationis the Central Council for Education established through the Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) 1).

However, adifferent MEXT council called the Council of Science and Technology also
handles human resource development for those in science and technology
fields.

281

Historically, Japan's education-related government agencies did not getoverly involved in the details of undergraduate or graduate education 2 ).
Doctoral programs were focused only in discussions about science andtechnology personnel 3).

However, under the concept of New Public Man-

agement, universities had to introduce market principles and the government
began exercising control via financial resource allocation and evaluation
systems.
3.2ġ Japan’s Graduate School System
The structure of Japan's graduate schools is based on the Standards for the
Establishment of Graduate Schools, and features a two-year master's program (or first-stage doctoral program) followed by a three-year doctoral
program (called a second-stage doctoral program if there is a first-stage
doctoral program).

There is no real difference between a master's programand a first-stage doctoral program; both have historically served as an entry
point for training in the world of academia (Ushiogi, 1993) 4).
Generally speaking, a high percentage of master's program graduates infields like engineering and agriculture go on to take jobs in the industrial or
governmental world, while a good portion of those in the sciences or humanities enter master's programs with the idea of continuing on to get adoctorate5).

As a result, career development training for PhDs depends onthe field and can apply to both master's and doctoral programs.
3.3ġ Graduate Educational Reform at Governmental Level )6

In 2005, the Central Council for Education issued a report entitled Shinjidaino Daigakuin Kyoiku; Kokusaitekini Miryokuaru Daigakuin Kyoiku no
Kochikunimukete (Graduate Education for the Next Generation: Building
Graduate Education with International Appeal; hereafter referred to as the
Graduate School Report ). In response to this report, MEXT issued the
Daigakuin Kyoiku Sesaku Shinko Yoko (Guidelines for the Advancement ofGraduate Education Policy; the 2006 Guidelines ) in 2006. These documents essentially established a direction for graduate school reform that
aimed to make graduate education more substantial.

(Here,

substantial

was taken to mean more strictly operated on an hours-based credit system

282

Career Development Skills Training for PhD Students and Graduates in Japan−and in Japan it was often argued that this was tied to making coursework
more extensive.)

They also laid out a set of priority measures for achieving

this goal. Actually, it has been fourteen years since the graduate schools as awhole were addressed in the Council report; Daigakuin no Seibijujitsu ni tuite(Upgrading Graduate Schools) and Daigakuin no Ryuoteki Seibi ni tsuite(Quantitative Restructuring of Graduate Schools) both released in 1991.
The same year that MEXT issued the 2006 Guidelines, Kagakugijutsu

Kankei Jinzaino Career Path Tayouka Sokushin Jigyo (the Career Path Diversification Project for Human Resources in Science and Technology; theCareer Path Project ) was begun as one of the initiatives funded by theSpecial Coordination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology. To carryout the project, the national government consigned organizational support
initiatives designed to enhance the career options available to postdocs andother young scientists.

The project was adopted over the course of two

years (nine institutions adopted it in the 2006 academic year, four in 2007),with implementation periods of three years each.
Then, in 2008, MEXT launched Innovation Soushutsu Wakate Kenkyu-

Jinzai Yosei Jigyo (the Project for the Development of Young Scientists
Driving Innovation; the Innovation Project ), again funded through theSpecial Coordination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology. The aimof this project was to construct systems to develop human resources in theform of young scientists, who form the crux of creative innovation.

It setout to develop people who not only had expertise in narrow academic fields,
but who also had the creative ideas and broad international perspective
demanded by industry and other parts of the real world.

Most of the in-stitutions that had implemented the Career Path Project were adapted again
in the Innovation Project.
Recruitment for the Global Centers of Excellence (GCOE) Program started
in the 2006 academic year.

As a reformation of the 21st Century COE(21COE) Program, the Global COE placed human resource development at
the forefront, while the 21COE aimed at

cultivating a competitive academic

environment among Japanese universities by giving targeted support to thecreation of world-standard research and education bases (centers of excellence) .

Specifically, GCOE

provides funding support for establishing edu-

283

Table 1. Brief Overview of Governmental Reform on Graduate Education
Year
1988
1991

○Increasing Flexibility Among Graduate Schools○Upgrading Graduate Schools○Quantitative Restructuring of Graduate Schools
1993○Evening Master s and Doctoral Programs
1996◇Science and Technology Basic Plan I (the fist time of describing diverse career
paths of S&T personnel in the governmental documents)
1997○Correspondence Graduate Schools
1999○Improving Selection of Graduate School Applicants
2001□21st Century Centers of Excellence Program
2002○Standards for the Establishment of Law Schools○Developing Sophisticated Professionals at Graduate Schools◇Fostering World Premier Researcher ‒ 1st Report
2003◇Fostering and Securing Research Personnel for Global Competitiveness ‒ 2nd
Reports
2004◇Fostering Human Resources with a Viewpoint of Science, Technology and Society -3rd Report△Fostering and Promotion of Human Resources on Science and Technology
2005○Graduate Education for the Next Generation: Building Graduate Education with
International Appeal◇About the Varying Career Paths of Young Researchers□Attractive Education in Graduate Schools initiative
2006□Guidelines for the Advancement of Graduate Education Policy□Career Path Diversification Project for Human Resources in Science andTechnology
2007□Support Program for Improving Graduate School Education
2009◇To Foster and Promote Personnel Who Leads Knowledge-based Society
2010○Revising the Standards for the Establishment of Graduate Schools
2011○Graduate Education in a Global Society: Getting Graduates from Graduate
Schools to Take an Active Role in Diverse Worldwide Fields□Guidelines for the Advancement of Graduate Education Policy□Leading Graduate Schools Project
Source: Author's original.
Notes: ○ = Reports by Central Council for Education, ◇ =Recommendations by the Council of Science and Technology，△ = Reports by Council for
Science and Technology Policy, □ = Polices and programs by MEXT.

cation and research centers that perform at the apex of global excellence toelevate the international competitiveness of the Japanese universities
designed toand isstrengthen and enhance the education and research functionsof graduate schools, to foster highly creative young researchers who will go
on to become world leaders in their respective fields through experiencing
and practicing research of the highest world standard.
described as a way to

The program isdramatically strengthen the university's function of

educating young researchers capable of playing active international roles inall areas of society, including the industrial world .
In addition to these efforts, MEXT launched the Attractive Education in284

Career Development Skills Training for PhD Students and Graduates in Japan
Graduate Schools Initiative in 2005.

The Initiative sought to provide tar-geted support for ambitious and creative educational efforts at graduate
schools aimed at strengthening universities' ability to develop highly creative
young scientists capable of responding to the new demands posed by modern
society.

Just two years later, in 2007, the Initiative was repackaged as the

Support Program for Improving Graduate School Education.

The goal of the

new program was to promote more substantial graduate school education,and it provided targeted support for outstanding organizational and systematic educational efforts within university master's and doctoral programs
to foster sophisticated human resources that could play active andfar-reaching roles in multiple areas of society.
In 2011, the Central Council for Education issued a report entitled Gurobaruka Shakai no Daigakuinkyoiku; Sekaino Tayou na Bunya de Daigakuin
Shuryosha ga Katsuyaku suru tame ni (Graduate Education in a Global Society: Getting Graduates from Graduate Schools to Take an Active Role in
Diverse Worldwide Fields; hereafter called the New Graduate School Report ). It asserted that sophisticated human resources who could takeleadership in the international community through wide-ranging industrial,academic, and government partnerships were essential, and claimed that theworld demanded leaders with the ability to; drive to the heart of matters bytaking a wide view of situations, with a perspective rooted in broad-basedknowledge containing a high degree of expertise and an international perspective; challenge themselves to identify problems beyond their own areasof expertise, propose a hypothesis, and take a creative approach to solving
them; and put forth a clear vision backed by firm ethical and historicalprinciples and summon the courage to carry it out.

The report went on tourge PhD programs in the cultural and social science fields as well as those in
the hard sciences, engineering and agriculture to establish organic connections between coursework, guidance on written work, dissertation reviews,
and other aspects of doctoral education.

Programs should integrate theseelements, it said, while developing five essential attributes in students: (1) theability to propose original research content, (2) the ability to design researchmethods, (3) the ability to communicate and deliver information so that they
can appropriately present their papers or perform during oral examinations,285

(4) broad basic-knowledge that extends beyond their own field of research,and (5) an international mindset.
In response to the New Graduate School Report, MEXT revised its
Guidelines for the Advancement of Graduate Education Policy in 2011. In
the same year, the Program for Leading Graduate Schools was launched as acontinuation of the GCOE Program.

The project was designed to moreaccurately target the development of next-generation leaders as proposed in
the New Graduate School Report, and at the time of writing the present
report, was in the process of reviewing application topics.

4ȅIndividual University Initiatives
4.1ġ Outcomes from the Governmental Programmes
A variety of different training programs can be found at the websites
under the Career Path Project.

Even within the seminar format, there were

workshops on business etiquette, advice on preparing application documents,
career seminars led by those who could serve as role models, entrepreneurial
seminars, project management seminars, and so on.

In addition, universities

sponsored short-term internships, individual career counseling, and online
matching services for businesses and PhDs as well as in-person matching
events.
There was less variety in these initiatives once the Innovation Project
began, since the project only covered internships.

Still, many of the

adopting institutions that also had experience with the Career Path Projectcontinued their previous activities.

Yet these efforts less often take theform of university-wide programs and instead tend to be run by specificdepartments such as departments for industry-university partnership outside of the standard curriculum.
4.2ġ The Introduction of Common Graduate Educational Platforms
With the government issuing new concepts for human resource development and educational goals, Japanese universities began searching for
concrete ways to make them a reality.

One fresh approach was the idea ofcommon educational platforms at the academic department or university286

Career Development Skills Training for PhD Students and Graduates in Japanlevel that relieved individual majors from the burden of coping with new
initiatives that were not specific to any one field (Kobayashi, 2010).

The

universities that pioneered the introduction of common educational platforms
at the university level were Kyushu University, Osaka University, and the
University of Tsukuba 7).

While these platforms do not necessarily focus

solely on skill development, they are characterized by a strong emphasis on
related issues.
Kyushu University8): launched its program in the latter half of the 2006 academic year. It was called Shared Foundations in Graduate Education andfunded by the Special Funds for Education and Research of MEXT. The
program is designed to (1) give graduate students a renewed awareness of
how their field of expertise fits into the context of society as a whole, (2) teachshared knowledge that is common to diverse fields and that forms the basisof all social activity, and (3) create a solid foundation that allows students toresolve different problems by applying their expertise in a flexible andfar-reaching manner9).

Within its given budget, Kyushu University assigned

two special-appointment faculty members to the program and operates it
through the Center for Research and Advancement in Higher Education, theorganization that oversees education among all of the university
programs.

s college

When funding was cut off in the 2011 academic year, Kyushu

University set up the Faculty of Arts and Science and is now working on
future development of the program by renovating its administrative system.
The University of Tsukuba10): the University-wide Shared Graduate Education System was developed when one of the academic departments started
looking for the means of reforming graduate education.

A trial run was

conducted in the 2007 academic year, and the program was officiallylaunched the following year with an aim of enriching humanities throughacquiring well-balanced comprehensiveness.

The courses were drawn up

by a committee, while individual academic departments handled the details of
implementation.

Still, the faculty members actually teaching the courses

have added plenty of their personal effort, while the graduate students havetaken many of them voluntarily as they are not necessarily required for287

Table 2. Course groups and sample courses at Kyushu University
Course group: addressing the threeprinciples set forth in the Kyushu
University Education Charter

Sample courses(as of 2009, 64 total courses)

Shared foundations:
supporting expertise

Lecture on Scientific Research
Introduction to Mathematics with High Functionality
Composite World̶Science and Ideas, etc.

User KANSEI:
developing humanity along with richscholarship

Philosophy of KANSEI
Physiology of KANSEITheory and Practice of KANSEI Marketing, etc.

Disaster management:
Addressing social problems

Risk Theory for Natural Disaster Prevention
Theories of Groundwater Circulation Systems
Disaster Prevention Geo-technology, etc.

International cooperation and social
development:
Contributing to the global community

Introduction to Social Development 1
Introduction to ODA
Introduction to Human Security, etc.

Source: Author's original, referring Okamoto (2011).
Note: The term KANSEI means sensitivity, sensibility, and intuition, and is used as KANSEI engineering, KANSEI design, etc.

Table 3. Course groups and number of courses at the University of Tsukuba
Course group
Life, environment, and research ethics (building ethics based on
global regulations)
Research management (developing the ability to discover andestablish your own research questions and build your own research methods)
Communication skills (improving your ability to communicate
and deliver information)
Global citizenship (improving the skills needed to make a difference in the global community)
Career management (developing a rich array of skills needed to
impact the industrial world and/or local communities)
Building intellectual foundations (cultivating broad-basedknowledge and culture outside of your own field of research)
Building mind-body foundations (building personal development
skills for a healthy body, warm heart, and sound mind)
Other
Source: Author's original, referring Kobayashi (2011).

graduation.

'08
6

'09
6

'10
6

'11
6

5

5

5

5

8

9

10

12

0

0

0

9

5

5

6

11

10

10

20

17

3

8

8

10

11

̶

̶

̶

The courses are mainly held on weekends or during breakperiods, while some are offered in the form of educational training at outside
institutions such as at the National Museum of Nature and Science, which canbe taken for credit.
Osaka University11): launched its Graduate School Minor Programs in 2008
with the aim of educating students in a broad range of fields in addition to the288Career Development Skills Training for PhD Students and Graduates in Japan
Table 4. Programs at Osaka University
Program

Est.

Numbers and examples of offering programs/courses
3
Cognitive Brain System
Finance and Insurrance
Advanced Nanoscience/Nanotechnology
Interdisciplinaty Research Training

Required credits

Advanced
Sub-major
Program2008

Advanced
Minor
Program2008

31
Basic program for Innovation Leadersdevelopment
Career deign
Techniques and development of language
information processing
Advanced information network specialist
Communication design
Legal interpreting and translation
Development of personnel
Acquired intellectual property law, etc.

8/9/10/11/14 ormore (4 should not
be double countedwith requirement ofMajor)

Advanced
LiberalArts

2011

221 (46 are for UG grade 3 or up)

Free ( Design
program yourself )14 or more (7 should
not be double
counted with requirement of Major)

Source: Author's original, referring Osaka University Website.

curriculum offered by their individual academic departments or majors.
The Graduate School Advanced Minor Program aims at

developing stu-

dents' advanced specialties and a broad education related to their major inaccordance with education goals in order to cultivate an interdisciplinary andpanoramic viewpoint as opposed to a more narrow one from their major .
In the Graduate School Advanced Sub-major Programs, students canlearn

subjects systematically as means to acquiring a wide range of knowledge andflexible thinking . These programs were apparently created under the
powerful leadership of the president of the university at the time, who was aphilosopher.

In terms of earning credits, students who fulfill the require-ments of the program receive a certificate, with most of the programs requiring eight or ten credits in total.
Osaka

One of the unique features of thes programs is that individual courses or completion certificates areoffered by Centers12) as well as traditional academic departments.
Osaka University added the Advanced Education in the Liberal Arts
Intellectual Gymnastics

in 2011.

The Curriculum isdesigned for stu-

dents who have attained a certain level of specialized professional knowledge
and who plan to be entering the real world where broad comprehension and289

abilities are needed in addition to one's specialized professional knowledge .
The curriculum contains both knowledge- based and skill-based courses andarranged around the four keywords: World (designed to assist persons moveout into a world stage), Different fields (integrating different fields), Maturity(creating mature individuals for civil society), Tough (Brightening society
through assisting students become intellectually tough).
4.3ġ Systemization Efforts at Nagoya University
This section describes the development of the training programs targeting
graduate students and postdocs in the Center for the Studies of Higher
Education (CSHE) at Nagoya University, as an example of pursuing systemization in the form of extracurricular seminar activities13).
One of the unique features of CSHE efforts is that they all begin with theconcept of faculty development (FD).

In planning the Preparing Future

Faculty program, the center began to pursue a concept of widening thescope of development out of teaching methods and education, referring the
UK idea of transferrable skills (see Appendix).
Based on these experiences, the center decided to hold extracurricularseminars for graduate students and postdocs in 2010.

The seminars werebased on the UK idea of transferrable skills with the aim of aiding in thedesign of courses to be included in the standard curriculum.

The content

focused on topics currently not offered by other departments at the university, as well as the different information and methods than what was
already available14).
The theme of the 2010 extracurricular program wasand the 2011 theme wascommunication ,research activities and the surrounding climate .

The program covered topics like speaking skills, creating slides and posters,
facilitations, coaching, scientific illustrations, critical thinking, science andtechnology policies, and responsible conduct of research.

The center is

now actively working to co-host the program with academic departments
and the GCOE program and the program for Leading the Graduate Education with the hope of incorporating the trial program into the standard
curriculum in the near future.

290

Career Development Skills Training for PhD Students and Graduates in Japan
Table 5The CSHE Seminars for Postgraduate at Nagoya University in Contrast
with Skills Category by RCUKRCUK Joint Skills Statement

Nagoya courses(A)

Introduction to Critical Thinking: through Cases
in Science, Technology, and Society

Research Skills andTechniques

Research Evaluation: What Researchers must
Know and Better to Know

(B)

Research Environment

Introduction to Responsible Conduct of Research:
to be away from involving in Research Misconducts(C)

Research Management

Guiding your Members to Success: Introduction to
Coaching Method and Skills(D)

Personal Effectiveness# Research Management Seminar for New Faculty by CSHE

(E)

Communication Skills(F)

Networking andTeamworking(G)

Designing your Slides and Posters
Introductory Science Illustration
Public Speaking# Seminars offered by Academic Writing Unit
Get Start Facilitation!
(Group works: cross curriculum)

Career Management# Seminars offered by Office for Career Path
SupportSource: Author's original, referring RCUK (2001) and the CSHE website. Note: # =Related
seminars5ȅFuture Challenges
The biggest challenge we face is formulation and organization of thesystem of training.

It must be said that simply putting together courses

voluntarily offered by individual faculty members will make systemizationdifficult.

In addition, recent research indicates that the training offeredthough existing specialized courses and laboratory works effectively
teaches a variety of skills, making it critical that installing general courses
alone is not the best way.

It is not appropriate to consider the new pro-grams as something separate from the existing curriculum in specialized
fields.
Furthermore, from the perspective of making graduate education more
substantial, it is now essential that this training be considered either aprerequisite or graduation requirement.

This makes it necessary to assign291

concrete value to these programs, whether by allocating them a certain
number of credits in/out of students' total graduation requirements, determining the number of hours per week that graduate students can beaway from their research labs, or figuring out which class periods are mostconvenient for scheduling sessions.
It is also critical for universities as a whole to understand the significanceof these types of training.

It will be difficult to revise the curriculum toincorporate the programs or attract great numbers of participants at
schools where the programs were started due to an influx of projectfunding or given free reign because they were extracurricular activities.
Though getting faculty members at individual graduate schools to understand the significance of the programs is the most important thing, sincefaculty members tend to prioritize research lab activities. However, once
individual faculty members begin to understand these programs, it is sure
to foster an environment where graduate students can easily participate inthem.
Successful offer of training opportunities will take the kind of faculty
understanding mentioned above, and presents the additional problem ofcreating a foundation for their implementation; in other words, administrative organizations and faculty members in charge.
forms, though it may seem that so-called

In terms of plat-

general education

organiza-tions for undergraduates would be an ideal choic0e, it is hard to take aunified approach among universities.

If faculty members in each major

start teaching courses open to students from any majors, it is likely tocreate problems not only in terms of funding and compensation, but also interms of evaluation of each faculty members inside and outside the department/university.
Notes1) Until 2000, the University Council existed alongside the Central Council for
Education as part of the former Ministry of Education, but the two werecombined in 2001 when the ministry was reorganized into its current form.
2) For example, Pempel (1978) described the expantion of university entrants asa result of policymaking, while the business sector requested the change of292

Career Development Skills Training for PhD Students and Graduates in Japan
educational goals and contents.
3) For example, Tsukahara, S. & Kobayashi, S (1996).
4) On the other hand, recently introduced institutions such as law schools andgraduate schools of education offer a professional master s degree in contrast
to graduate schools that offer academic training.
programs are beyond the scope of this report.

These professional master s5) See Gakkou Kihon Chousa (Basic Survey on Education) by MEXT.
6) All the reports and policies described in this chapter are shown at the either
websites of the Ministry, the Japan Science Promotion Society, or the Japan
Science and Technology Agency (mostly in Japanese only).
7) Another groundbreaking effort was the Common Graduate Course program
offered by Waseda University s Open College.
8) See Daigakuin Kyotsu Kamoku no Goannai (Kyusyu University Website) andOkamoto et al. (2008, 2010, 2011).
9) Okamoto (2011), who designed the program, indicated three elements of basic
knowledge: philosophy, history, and mathematics.

The raised examples were

(1) economic and business topics, (2) environmental and safety topics, and (3)intellectual property and professional ethics topics. Examples of skills-based
topics were (1) expression: writing reports, high-level expression techniques,presentation and communication techniques, and (2) searching for and processing information.
10 ) See Kobayashi (2011) and !Daigakuin Kyoutsu Kamoku" (University ofTsukuba Website).
11) See Osaka University websites; !Advanced Education in the Liberal Arts -Intellectual Gymnastics" and !Advanced Minor Programs & Sub-major Programs" and Osaka University Kyoiku Jouhoushitsu (2009).
12) Centers such as; Center for the Study of Finance and Insurance, Institute for
NanoScience Design, Global Collaboration Center, Intellectual Property Center,
Center for the Study of Communication-Design, Institute for Higher Education
Research and Practice.
13) See CSHE website and the Annual Reports of Nagoya Consortium for Faculty
and Staff Development (CSHE, 2009, 2010, 2011).
14) CSHE is also moving forward with discipline-specific PhD career sup-port
programs, which are held jointly with individual academic depart-ments.
One of the project aims at diversifying PhD career, departing from puremathematics. As such, it includes career seminars as well as semi-nars onteaching and learning and outreach activities.

The other is on the theme ofcommunicating Japanese literature and culture in English.

293

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Appendix

The Programme for Preparing Future Faculty at Nagoya University
The Programme for Preparing Future Faculty at Nagoya University wasstarted along with the faculty development (FD) movement in Japan,
placing an emphasis on improving teaching skills.

The Center for theStudies of Higher Education, Nagoya University (CSHE) targets FD as oneof its research and development topics, launched the Preparing Future
Faculty programme in 2005.

This program consists of a series of seminars

on teaching methods aimed at teaching assistants and other graduate
students at the university.

The idea for the program came about when

graduate students asked to participate in the lunchtime FD seminars being
held for younger faculty members at the university.

Other considerations

included the limitations in Japan"s teaching assistant program, which only
allows assistants to play a supportive role in classroom activities; in otherwords, they are never put in charge of instructions or allowed to participate
in grading.
In 2007, the center switched to a two-day intensive summer seminarformat in order to incorporate content that addressed an increasing arrayof career paths as well as the need to develop transferable skills.

Thischange was brought about by the idea that faculty needed to develop a
broad range of abilities#including teaching, research, community service,
and university administration#and that these abilities in fact constituted a
set of transferable skills.

The center thus revised the concept from pre-liminary faculty development to providing graduate students with part oftheir career education, and thus moved away from the Teaching Workshop! title.
The programme"s initial role as an extracurricular offering came to an
end as it was incorporated into the standard curriculum in the 2010 academic year as the Research into Higher Education I: Preparing Future
Faculty Course offered by the Graduate School of Education and Human
Development, and further, when the Tamagawa University Press publishedthe Preparing Future Faculty Course textbook by faculty members of
CSHE in March 2010.

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The book represented a clear departure from

Career Development Skills Training for PhD Students and Graduates in Japanprevious Japanese publications describing the characteristics of university
faculty, moving instead to an emphasis on the skills and knowledge requiredof university faculty members.

Still, the content focused primarily onteaching duties#first, because several books had already been published on
becoming a researcher, and second, because it was intended to be a required textbook for the Graduate School of Education and Human Development course.
Ap. Table 1.

2005
2006
Objective: Support graduate
students looking to become
university professors in acquiring teaching skills
Sessions:
Introduction
to course
planning,
introduction to
university
teaching,
theories ofuniversity
student
learning anddevelopment

Sessions:
Practical tips
on introducing
a lesson,getting
students toparticipate inclass, learning
styles andgoals among
today’s
university
students, creating asyllabus that
motivates
students tolearn

PFF programme 2005-2009

2007
2008
2009
Objective: Provide information on the realities of auniversity faculty position, critical topics and methods,
career considerations and the like to graduate students andpostdocs looking to become university faculty members as
a way of aiding them in their future career and academic
plans
Sessions:
Sessions: Trends
Sessions:
The university
in higher
The university
faculty member
education policy,
faculty member
position, course
today’s university position, today’splanning, teamstudents, ethics
university
in research,
students, teaching work in university education,
career issues,
fundamentals,
various institucreating a
information
tions of higher
syllabus, teaching technology in the
education,
fundamentals,
classroom,
grading
becoming a better research management, outmethods,
speaker, opening
reach consideraconducting
doors in yourtions, keys tolessons
career, ethics foruniversity faculty, teaching in Engbecoming a better lish, the lifecycle
writer, teaching in of university faculty, conducting
English, conductlessons
ing lessons
60 min. each
45–80 min. differ 40–80 min. differ
Intensive 2-day programme

40 min. each60 min. each
3 days2 days(lunch time)(lunch time)
Source: Author s original, referring the CSHE website.

297

Ap. Table 2.

Contents of Preparing Future Faculty Course

Chapter 1: The university faculty member position
Chapter 2: Course planning
Chapter 3: Teaching fundamentals
Chapter 4: Assessing educational outcomes
Chapter 5: Making students better writers
Chapter 6: Helping build students careers
Chapter 7: Teamwork in university education
Chapter 8: Research management
Chapter 9: Community service
Chapter 10: University faculty and internationalization
Chapter 11: Ethics among university faculty
Chapter 12: Institutions of higher education
Chapter 13: The life path of a university faculty member
Chapter 14: First steps

Source: Natsume et al. (2010).

298

博士のキャリア展開のためのスキルトレーニング−日本の動向−齋

ᴾᴾᴾᴾᴾᴾ藤芳子!" #$"

本稿では、国際的な議論の場に資するために、日本の大学における博士のキャリア展開に資するトレーニングについての期待と現状を整理した。
近年、日本でも諸外国と同様に博士のキャリアパス多様化の必要性が議論されるようになった。専門家からは海外の事例を踏まえた提言や答申が出され、行政による施策も講じられている。大学には、博士のキャリア展開に資するようなトレーニングを正課または課外で提供することが期待されている状況にある。
一方、大学においては、博士のキャリア展開に資するようなトレー
ニングの実践と研究はまだ緒についたばかりである。政策誘導による課外トレーニングが実施されているほか、機関独自に発展させた大学
院共通教育の事例や、体系性を追求した正課外教育の取り組みが見られる。
今後の課題としては、トレーニング体系をどのようにつくるか、既存の専門科目や研究室教育との関係をいかに作るか、各研究科の教員に意義を理解してもらえるか、トレーニングの運営組織や授業担当者をどうするか、といった点が浮かび上がった。

名古屋大学高等教育研究センター・助教

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