The Educational System in Japan: Case Study Findings, June 1998

Chapter 1

Introduction

(Part 1 of 3)

The American fascination with Japanese schools and students dates back over a century. During the late nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries America was clearly regarded as a leader in education in Japan. American influence was evident in a wide

range of schools as Japanese students came to study in the United States, and American teachers were brought to Japan in

order to modernize Japanese education (Beauchamp, 1976; Roden, 1980). For a second time, in the late 1940s and early

1950s, after Japan's defeat in World War II and subsequent occupation by U.S. forces, Americans were called upon to help

Japan rebuild its education system as part of the country's transformation into a democratic state (Tsuchimochi, 1993). In the

postwar period, U.S. reformers emphasized education as the means of preparing the Japanese populace for the freedoms and

responsibilities necessary to sustain a self-governing nation. In both the United States and Japan, U.S. reforms were seen as

essential for Japan's economic recovery and its transformation from an aggressive, nationalistic society to a peaceful,

democratic one. Although some of the reforms put forward by the Americans had been proposed earlier by Japanese

reformers, and some of the United States-initiated reforms failed or were never implemented, the U.S. continued to be

regarded as a model in the area of education (Armstrong, 1976; Wray, 1991; Tsuchimochi, 1993).

Since the late 1970s this relationship has been inverted. Americans are still fascinated with Japanese education, but the

stream of articles and books that have been written since that time no longer portray America as a leader. Taken as a whole,

these writings convey a mixture of admiration, envy, and uneasiness. Widely read books on Japanese schools, such as White's

The Japanese Educational Challenge or Rohlen's Japan's High Schools, contain chapters entitled "Lessons for America." It

appears that many writers and researchers now think that Americans have something to learn from the Japanese when it

comes to schooling. Americans have become more self-conscious about how their schools compare with schools in other

nations. The perceived loss of U.S. standing as an international leader in education has brought increased attention to

Japanese schools in both scholarly journals and in the popular media. Unfortunately, the media's treatment of Japanese

education has tended toward extremes, either excoriating or praising Japanese teachers and schools without carefully

analyzing what actually goes on in the classroom.

Despite the great mass of data on Japanese schools that has been accumulated since the 1970s, our picture of Japanese

education with regard to math and science still remains piecemeal. We lack systematic comparisons of math and science that

contextualize how classroom activities relate to the overall structure of education, teacher training, individual differences, and

the lives of students and their families.

Rationale of the Study

Our aim in this volume is to provide an in-depth look at several policy issues in the context of Japanese schooling as part of

the work of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In the main TIMSS study, math and science

achievement tests and surveys were administered in almost 50 nations around the world. The case studies were designed to

provide in-depth research on how key policy issues facing U.S. educators are dealt with in Germany and Japan as well as to

investigate the cultural and structural context of schooling in each nation.

In each of the three countries the research goal was to conduct an in-depth study of four policy topics: (1) national standards

in education, (2) teachers' lives and professional training, (3) adolescent lives, and (4) conceptions of individual differences.

To understand the details of each country's school system, it was necessary to analyze the structure of the schools (including

the place of individual schools in the wider system), describe classes within schools, and analyze how individuals functioned

within classes and schools.

Methodology

In all three countries, an ethnographic case study method was used to investigate the four topics. An extensive review of the

relevant literature served as background for the formulation of the research topics. Topics and questions were generated and

refined by educators and social scientists from the University of Michigan, review panels affiliated with the Department of

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Education in Washington, D.C., education scholars in Japan, and the field researchers. This approach ensured that the

questions selected were relevant to U.S. policy makers and appropriate to the cultural contexts of Japan.

Training Session

The researchers met for a week-long training session at the University of Michigan prior to the field visits. They received

background information on the study, learned to use the qualitative data analysis software, and met in teams organized both

by topic and country. The interview formats for each topic were outlined, and the researchers from each country responsible

for the topics then met in smaller working groups to discuss how the basic questions would need to be contextualized in the

given culture. In the case of Japan, significant differences in attitudes toward work or social norms meant that the questions

had to be re-phrased or explained to make sense in the Japanese context. For example, Japanese teachers routinely handle all

of the school's administrative tasks. Furthermore, individual ability differences among students are rarely discussed. Because

the interview schedule was designed as an unstructured format, the training sessions helped to assure that the data would be

collected in a consistent and thorough manner with a high degree of consistency across topic and nation.

Each field researcher was provided with the guidelines developed at the training session and was instructed to probe for

additional explanations and elaboration of answers when the responses seemed unclear or incomplete. In addition to

unstructured interviews, the researchers were expected to conduct observations in classrooms, teachers' meetings,

extracurricular activities, and other events that would provide information relevant to the four topics. The researchers

interviewed parents, teachers, and students at each level, traveling to the school to conduct the interviews. The interviews and

observations were translated, transcribed, and entered into a computer file using HyperQual II, a program for the analysis of

qualitative data (Padilla, 1992). After entering the data, each researcher coded his or her material based on schema first

generated at a group meeting of the Case Study Team at the University of Michigan in 1994. We then began an analysis of

the material, cross referencing quotations from observations of parents, teachers and students, identifying major themes, and

comparing variation across levels of schooling.

During the fieldwork phase, members of the research team in each country were in contact with each other via electronic mail

(e-mail). Each week researchers in the field summarized and reported their major findings. Staff members at the University of

Michigan was also in constant contact with the researchers through e-mail, and team discussions about research strategies and

interpretations of findings greatly aided the research effort.

The directors of the Case Study project, in consultation with the National Center for Education Statistics and Japanese

colleagues, identified three sites for the case study research in Japan. The selection of these sites was not random; the schools

were selected in order to get a sampling of regional variation within each nation as well as to provide a sample of schools

with high, middle, and low levels of academic achievement. In Japan, the primary research site was Naka City on the main

island of Honshu, with secondary sites in the north (Kita City) and south (Minami City). To preserve anonymity of all sites

and persons interviewed, pseudonyms are used throughout the volume. The only major geographic areas not surveyed were

rural regions, although some schools in the secondary sites did border on rural areas. In the primary field site, three schools at

each level (primary, middle, and secondary) were chosen and attention focused on the fourth, eighth and twelfth grades. In

the secondary sites, only one school at each level was selected. In addition to these schools, researchers also visited juku

(cram schools or other after-school courses), prefectural offices, and interviewed officials from the Monbusho (Ministry of

Education, Science and Culture).

The total time that each researcher spent in a given school varied from 2 to nearly 10 days. At some schools, our interviews

were scheduled one after the other: in other schools we would come for an interview, observe a class, and then go home to

transcribe the tapes we had recorded. The shortness of time in each school was balanced by the fact that researchers Kinney,

LeTendre, Shimizu and Trelfa all visited the same schools in Naka City from September 1994 to June 1995. In this way we

were able to gain a sense of the school's yearly cycle of events. In total more than 250 interviews with parents, teachers,

students, school administrators and regional or national-level administrators were conducted. A total of nearly 130

observations of classrooms, school events or meetings were also transcribed and entered into the database.

Gaining Entry

Entry into the schools was mediated by Shigefumi Nagano and Toshio Sawada of the Japanese National Institute of

Educational Research, and three cities were chosen as field sites. Generally, hosts from a local university made the initial

contact for us and set up a meeting with the principal and other senior teachers. In Kita City and Minami City, these

arrangements were conducted by Nagano and Sawada themselves. All of our interview outlines were translated and approved

by the local boards of education prior to the commencement of the research.

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While the staff at some schools did try to arrange our schedules in detail, our observations indicated that the schools were not

managing our visits solely for the purpose of putting on a good show. Such management was reflective of the degree to

which all social interaction is explicitly coordinated in Japanese schools. From the start of the day, teachers in Japan have

very few minutes that they can call their own. Especially for teachers of third-year junior high school and high school

students, preparation for the high school entrance exam means that there is little leeway in adjusting the daily schedule. It is

also important to note that while members of the school staff arranged interviews for us, they did not try to supervise our

interviews with students, teachers, or parents. For the most part we found teachers ready to talk about serious problems and to

express both their satisfactions and dissatisfactions with the school.

Another point which helped us to gain a broader sense of the schooling climate in each site was the fact that Japanese

teachers are routinely rotated to different schools at 5- to 7-year intervals. This meant that when we interviewed 20-year

veterans, they brought with them extensive experience in a range of schools and often referred to the other schools in which

they taught. Some interviewees had taught at more than one level or had been transferred from rural areas. The scope of the

teachers' experiences, combined with the fact that several families had been transferred to the research site from other parts of

Japan, allowed us to gain perspective on a wide range of academic situations.

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[Executive Summary] [Chapter 1 - Introduction (Part 2 of 3)]

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