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This paper tells a story about the design, development and impact of a post-graduate Masters-level module aimed at (1) enabling groups of teachers within schools to develop innovative approaches to teaching and learning on the basis of their own Lesson Studies and (2) creating a school network of excellence for Lesson Study in the area as a context for building a cumulative evidence-base, which focuses on identifying and resolving enduring problems of teaching and learning in schools. The first part of the paper outlines the curriculum for the module and sets the innovative conceptual framework that underpins its design. This framework is innovative because it connects and unifies a number of distinct pedagogical perspectives. It links the methodology of Japanese Lesson Study with Stenhouse's idea of 'the teacher as a researcher' and his 'process model' of curriculum development as an alternative to the globally dominant 'objectives model'. Then in turn, the framework incorporates Marton and Booth's pedagogical theory of 'variation'. The paper argues that linking and fusing Lesson Study methodology with this wider context of pedagogical ideas unambiguously renders teacher research as learning study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the development of the hensachi system in Japanese education from the 1960s when it first appeared as a de facto measure for scholastic achievement. Unlike absolute scoring systems (such as A-level grades) hensachi gave an indication of the probability of getting a place on a particular course at a particular school or university rather than telling applicants where the bar was set in order to have a chance of being offered a place. Private companies quickly saw the opportunity to collate the huge amounts of data needed to obtain accurate hensachi bell curve distributions and began operating practice exams (mogi shiken) in schools across Japan. From the mid-1970s onwards, hensachi increasingly became seen as the source of many educational ‘evils’ in Japan and there were many attempts to ban its use. It was blamed for cramming, examination hell, and a focus on educational scores rather than learning. The system was also being used by teachers and schools to short cut the real examination system. The final section of the paper explores why, despite these concerns, repeated predictions of the demise of hensachi have proved to be premature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial e-learning courseware for English education has been widely used in Japanese universities as an effective tool to assist students in improving their overall English skills. The courseware that is described in this paper is believed to be useful for teachers to assess students’ progress and evaluate their dedication to English study. Despite the fact that various remarkable technical features have been discussed, not much research has been done to investigate student evaluation of courseware. This paper outlines a study carried out to investigate how Japanese undergraduate students rate commercial online courseware for their English study and what the relationship is between their appreciation of courseware and their educational background. The findings suggest that although different students exhibit different preferences there is a close relationship between the benefits of courseware and their previous language-learning experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This cross-case analysis explores national level internationalisation of higher education (IoHE) policies in Singapore and Japan. Through comparison of the state level internationalisation strategies, this paper aims to highlight how each country's unique policy environment impacts their approach to IoHE. The analysis suggests that despite the differing national circumstances and ultimate approaches to internationalisation, both states use it primarily as a means to stay competitive in the twenty-first century global knowledge-based economy. This suggests that while IoHE does build bridges between nations, institutions, and individuals within and between regions, within these cases it is being driven by nationally-centred rationales. While some criticize a competition orientation in IoHE, even with such rationales it may still serve to drive greater collaboration and integration among East Asian higher education systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationalisation is a polyvalent policy discourse, saturated in conceptual and ideological ambiguity. It is an assemblage of commodification, exploitation and opportunity and is a container for multiple aspirations, anxieties, and affordances. It combines modernisation, detraditionalisation, and expansiveness, with knowledge capitalism, linguistic imperialism, and market dominance. There are notable policy shadows and silences, especially relating to the emerging subjectivities, motivations and narratives of internationalised subjects, and experiences that expose the gendered, racialised, epistemic and affective inequalities constituting academic mobility. This paper explores the affective economy and policyscape of internationalisation drawing upon interview data gathered in one private and one national university in Japan with 13 migrant academics. What emerged from our study is that internationalisation policies, processes and practices generate multiple affective engagements. Internationalising oneself can be repressive and generative, with migrant academics finding themselves both vulnerable and animated by their diverse and frequently embodied experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book, The History of the Ouinkai, was published in 1940 as a commemorative project for the 60th anniversary of the Tokyo Higher Normal School for Women (THNSW). The purpose of this article is to illustrate the type of data collected in the surveys and their findings, to explore some of the activities of the association, and to discuss how the Ouinkai alumni association, in collaboration with THNSW, worked with female teachers nationwide. The paper traces some of the multi-norms and multi-roles for female teachers that THNSW promoted and their relation to norms thought to characterise 'ideal' Japanese women. The publication of The History of the Ouinkai was a milestone in Japanese women's education because it demonstrated the Ouinkai's successes in respect of Japanese educational policy for women as well as the leadership that the Ouinkai provided to female graduate teachers, whom it organised with skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a massive open online course (MOOC) titled "Studying at Japanese Universities" was designed. The purpose of the course was to encourage international students to study in Japan. Accordingly, it is intended to build an online community to afford international students to encourage and support each other and realise their student lives in Japan. This paper outlined how the course was designed and further reported the results of the early outcomes of how the students received the course. The results indicated that the course reaches the target age group while also attracting a diverse audience. It is further been specified that students can communicate with others who have common interests. Furthermore, students share their thoughts and concerns about their plans to study in Japan and receive mutual support from the online community. Those who are interested in producing MOOCs as an educational environment for global outreach should find the results of the study beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on research focusing on a group of adjunct teachers of English employed in Japanese universities. Grounded in interpretive epistemology foregrounding constructionist traditions, this research employed bricolage as way of inquiring into, then representing, these teacher’s experiences utilising multi-perspectival, multi-theoretical and multi-methodological approaches. Employing elements of Turnerian liminality and blending these with Japanese cultural mythology, this paper explores participants’ experience, knowledge and identity. Through interviews and focus groups, participants (n = 43) gave voice to their lived world in Japanese universities locating their ‘place’ as simultaneously inside and outside the boundaries of mainstream Japanese society and universities. As ‘liminal personas’, participants likened themselves to a ‘necessary evil’ in the context of internationalising the curriculum. Thus, their condition is understood to be both ambiguous and paradoxical. The Japanese university is likened togenkan(a common architectural feature in Japanese houses resembling an entrance hall or transitional space between inside and outside worlds) space and employing Japanese mythology, it is argued these teachers share features attributed toTengu(Tenguare goblin-like monsters in Japanese mythology with long noses and bright red faces who traditionally act in mischievous, disruptive ways). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At the close of World War II, Japan’s ouster from Malaya led to the resumption of British control and a new outlook toward political independence. Higher education would play a central role in this complex transition, where the forces of decolonization and nation-building converged with drives toward both interethnic competition and multiethnic cooperation. These tensions stimulated a multiplicity of new rhetorics and new networks for universities and university students. This paper uses the framework of governance to uncover the contrasting rhetorics and networks produced by postwar Singapore’s new universities. By examining their structures and mechanisms of governance, the paper demonstrates how the sudden catapulting of university education to a crucial socio-political position redefined the intersections between education, language, culture, and nation. In doing so, it reveals that these redefinitions forecasted contemporary discourse and mechanisms in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In research on gender and teaching in higher education, the experiences of male teachers as men, and of whiteness in a non-majority-white context have received little attention. As one step towards addressing this gap in the literature, this paper analyses interview accounts of white Western men working as English language teachers in Japanese higher education. The paper demonstrates, first, ways in which disembodied academic identities are constructed by erasing the men's racialised gender and sexuality. Second, it shows how favourable images of white Western male teachers are produced through a series of negative contrasts based on gender and race. Third, it suggests that men's homosocial networks may serve to facilitate male predominance in the Japanese university system. The analysis contributes to current understandings about the construction of white Western masculinities in academic institutions, in international education, and in English language teaching as a globalised industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to identify key challenges facing Japan's higher education since the early 1990s and their impacts on major research themes. In this paper key challenges include those resulting from the decline in the 18-year population, the cultivation of high-quality university graduates, the incorporation of national universities, the diversification of higher education systems, and globalization and internationalization of higher education. The paper concludes by arguing that challenges facing Japan's higher education and research are unquestionable and considerable. Because several challenges are different from that of any other countries, Japan has to find out solutions to tackle them by its own efforts. Furthermore, in response to these challenges, there has seen an evident transformation in a vast majority of higher education research institutes and centers from a purely academic-based research to more practical and operational research. Besides, at a policy level, numerous research themes and agenda have been developed and implemented by the Japanese government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on various sources of official discourse and public commentary pertaining to the recent implementation of two large-scale strategies aimed at internationalising student and academic staff populations within Japanese higher education institutions, this paper will present a number of broad multifaceted perspectives addressing those issues which may hinder the success of the two strategies. Announced in 2008 and 2009 respectively, the '300,000 international students plan' and the 'Global 30' Project aim to enable 30 select universities to attract 300,000 international students to Japan by 2020. The 30 institutions, known as centres for internationalisation will each strive to recruit between 3000 and 8000 international students from across the globe. However, since the late 19th century Japanese attempts at the importation of ethnolinguistic diversity into the education system have been greeted with accusations of insincerity and the masking of a predominantly self-serving nationalistic agenda. The current paper will also seek to assess whether the self-serving nationalistic argument is still valid in relation to contemporary internationalisation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the fundamental changes which are currently taking place in Japanese higher education. These changes are seeing the development of what has been dubbed the 'third generation' of Japanese universities which can no longer rely on student fees and government support to survive and need to find other ways to generate income. The paper shows how the different responses of Japanese universities to these new challenges is leading to an increasingly diversified higher education sector with major implications for the future of teaching, research and administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to identify common patterns in central authorities' steering of universities and the institutional power in neo-liberal higher education regimes. The paper examines the regulatory mechanisms of England and Japan through Foucault's idea of 'governmentality' and utilises the concept of autonomy to identify the state-university nexus and institutional behaviour. The paper argues that the similar application of technologies of arts in England and Japan - such as financial incentives and output quality management - has not brought about the same effect across the two countries in institutional behaviour and culture. In the case of England, the decline of traditional university autonomy - which isolated the university sector from external pressure - and increasing external influence in the value system are the case, while in Japan, the shift is rather internal within an institution, changing from department to institutional autonomy, which is compatible with the concept of accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we shed light on the dynamic nature of 'diversity' in higher education from the perspectives of four Japanese women graduate students seeking possibilities through different ways of knowing. Using an autoethnographical methodology embedded in a dialogue format of zadankai, we examine the stereotypes of Japanese women that are activated both inside and outside of academic institutions. Stereotyping propagates racist, patriarchal and heterosexist norms. The examination of the mechanisms in which stereotyping silences Japanese women reveals the micro and macro politics of identity. Our collective dialogue demonstrates the processes in which silenced Japanese women graduate students reclaim their holistic agencies to peel the layers of superficial notions of diversity and address the creative and flexible nature of 'difference' and 'diversity' in knowledge production. We hope this paper will encourage minority groups amongst students, educators, and administrators to engage in various ways of knowing and address the issues of 'diversity' in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The uniquely Japanese institution of the tanki daigaku (two-year university) known as 'junior college' in English was seen as Japan's answer to increasing participation in higher education. Initially established on a provisional basis in 1950, becoming permanent in 1965, they were the higher education institution (HEI) of choice of almost 500,000 students a year at their peak in 1995. Demographic changes after 1992 brought about a buyers' market for higher education with institutions in aggressive competition for students, a battle in which the tanki daigaku seems destined to be defeated. This paper examines the options available to junior colleges in crisis and in so doing identifies a number of features of a virtually universal system of higher education which raise issues for other advanced societies grappling with massification and commodification in their own higher education systems. The paper reviews the literature in this area, as well as drawing on a year of participant observation as an associate professor from 2000-2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An overseas field learning itinerary can be a powerful pedagogical tool for both directing student attention and complicating preexisting spatial narratives. However, one must beware of using the itinerary to replace one narrative with another. This paper examines the itinerary negotiation for a 15-day overseas field module conducted three consecutive years. It uses the concepts of fan pilgrimage and dark tourism to explain the inclusion of two destinations and introduces a student-led research project that produced nuanced understandings of Japan’s rural geographies. Evidence comes from reflective field diaries, oral debrief sessions, written assignments, and an anonymous post-module survey. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The interpretation and implementation of ideas about the internationalisation of curricula (IoC) are complicated and multi-faceted. The complex and diverse perspectives on IoC reflect two concepts: ‘internationalisation’ and ‘curriculum’. These concepts embody contrasting perspectives on issues, including the competition-type and cooperation-type approaches to internationalisation, as well as the product and process curriculum models. These two approaches or models tend to go hand in hand while in a state of tension. The aim of this paper is to promote a detailed understanding of IoC through forming a conceptual framework for IoC. This framework proposes four patterns of IoC by linking the two approaches and the two models, and is examined using case studies of two types of Japanese universities. Finally, two assumptions are made for future research and development in the practice of IoC beyond Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I will discuss how to enhance Japanese teacher education. After sketching teacher education from the mid-1940s to the 1960s, I sum up the main topics people discussed through each decade of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. Illustrating some of the current topics of teacher education in the first decade of the new century, I discuss what they would create by way of introducing a new type of Graduate School into the teacher education institutions, which raises the question whether Graduate Schools heighten teachers’ professionalism or not. In conclusion, I propose an ideal network for promoting teaching expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes the implementation and evaluation of a year-long reading while listening (RWL) program run for university first-year students at a private university in Japan. The program was developed to give students practice in listening to a large volume of spoken English – a practice that the majority of Japanese students lack. The students in the program (N = 230) practiced RWL and took progress tests using a Moodle module that also kept records of their progress (MoodleReader). The program was evaluated in two ways: by measuring student gains in reading rate, vocabulary recognition, and general English proficiency, as measured by the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), and by investigating student attitudes toward the program itself and the MoodleReader through the use of a 24-item questionnaire. Results of the evaluation showed RWL had a significant effect on reading rate and vocabulary recognition, but not for general English proficiency. Questionnaire results uncovered negative attitudes toward the RWL program and the MoodleReader, and that these attitudes affected the amount of work students completed in the program. The findings suggest that user interface and ease of use are the key factors to consider when implementing such a program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of countries with public higher education systems have implemented privatisation policies. In Japan, the national government introduced the National University Corporation Act (NUCA) in 2004 and changed the legal status of national universities from that of government-owned public institutions to independent administrative agencies. Its objective was to incorporate them, giving their presidents discretionary power and encouraging financial independence and autonomous administration. Applying McNay’s models of university governance, this paper tracks three stages of university governance longitudinally from 1886, when Japan’s modern higher education system was established, to reveal the historical roots of problems that the NUCA is meant to address. In addition, the effects of the NUCA over the first 6-year period (2004–2009) are examined based on data analysis. Its criteria for analysis are developments in the direction of financial, administrative and intellectual independence, accompanied by increased levels of transparency and public accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses several papers published within the issue including one on the challenges for higher education in Japan of global neoliberalism, another regarding the issues surrounding Chinese higher education and a paper on the relationship between neoliberal globalisation and New Zealand universities.

This paper compares Japan's university and non-university curriculums for the certified care worker license, and discusses the possibility that the universities' focus on social work education for care workers may result in improving the quality of the workforce and thus the quality of life of older persons in Japan. The demand for professional care workers in Japan is increasing along with demographic changes. In Japan, approximately one-third of direct care workers are nationally licensed as certified care workers (Kaigo-Fukushi-Shi); the rest are unlicensed or are licensed as home helper level 1 or level 2, which licenses are not nationally certified. Most training facilities for certified care workers offer two-year programs, which is the minimum duration of study required by the national Regulations for Designated Training Facilities for Certified Social Workers and Certified Care Workers. Recently, however, an increasing number of universities have begun providing a four-year education for certified care workers. We surveyed 20 four-year universities to compare their curriculums, especially in the area of social work education, with the curriculums of two-year care worker training programs. The universities provided twice as many hours of social work education as did the two-year training courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

e-Learning has entered the mainstream in higher education and many institutions are implementing technology-mediated learning at some level. This paper outlines the case of a course taught jointly in 2010 over three months by two graduate programmes in management at the University of Tsukuba in Japan and the Grenoble Ecole de Management in France through a video-conferencing system and other information and communications technology tools. The authors used a blended learning approach aimed at increasing collaboration among instructors and students remotely located. The results of a questionnaire survey of students conducted during the course provide practical recommendations for developing and managing a hybrid course balancing the positive aspects of e-learning with the benefits of face-to-face instruction, while suiting the participants’ cultural learning preferences. Particular insights include selecting a relevant blended learning course topic, addressing student diversity and distinct learning motives, and bringing ‘tangible diversity’ through the exchange of faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any moves towards substantive equality in education must negotiate the contradictions between equality and efficiency. Equality of education comes about through both the widening of opportunity and the maintenance of educational quality, but in the context of limited resources, educational policy rarely serves both ends simultaneously. Regardless of imperatives involved in making particular policy choices, if the resulting outcomes are either too visible or the system is deemed to be too rigid, social inequality emerges as an intractable, highly salient issue. The critical questions for research thus become: How do various approaches to negotiating this central tension differ? How does the choice of strategies produce different results across different education systems? To explore these questions, this paper examines the function and outcomes of educational differentiation in Japan, both at the secondary and tertiary levels, in relation to social inequality. Given that Japan entered an era of 'universal' access to higher education ahead of other high-income countries, it presents an ideal case to reflect on policy choices currently being considered or implemented elsewhere. Through cross-sectional analyses of three cohorts of Japanese graduates, it reveals that social equality in accessing elite secondary and higher education institutions deteriorates as privatisation of education advances. It concludes that hierarchical structure of secondary and higher education institutions, when coupled with policies advancing privatisation and universalisation, result in negative or inconsequential effects on social equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of a global knowledge-based economy has given rise to drastic changes in both higher education and employment. On one hand, governments in advanced societies have launched policies to expand higher education to compete internationally in educating and attracting highly skilled workers. At the same time, both global economic competition and governmental policies to cut labour costs and increase labour mobility have led to a workforce increasingly polarised between groups of high- and low-skilled workers, the latter face increasing, often intense, job insecurity. These changes, in turn, combine to produce a serious problem of inflation of education credentials. By focusing on social inequality and access to university in Japan specifically, it becomes possible to not only describe this inflation, but also gain insights into the mechanisms behind a clear acceleration in the pace of this phenomenon in recent decades. How has credential inflation unfolded as higher education has expanded to, now, enjoy a degree of 'universality'? How is this credential inflation related to the far-reaching 'privatisation' policies that catalysed that expansion? How are changes and divergences in the values of university degrees linked with changes in influences of individuals' familial background? How do these values determine distributions into various strata of employment? By analysing nationally sampled, longitudinal survey data of Japanese youth, this paper seeks to answer these interwoven questions empirically, by focusing on recent developments in Japan, a national case where the relevant issues emerge in stark relief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Global 30 Project, a new Japanese Government initiative that aims to upgrade a number of existing universities to form a select hub of elite universities for receiving and educating international students, has come in for considerable criticism. Using the dual concepts of kokusaika (internationalisation) and gurōbaruka (globalisation), this paper highlights the contradictory goals in a policy that combines a nationalistic 'closing in' with a cosmopolitan 'opening up'. The problems apparent in Japan's most recent attempt to reform higher education are argued to be the latest manifestation of a historical push and pull that can be traced back to the sakoku (closed-country) policy of isolation operated during the Edo period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will focus on the neo-liberal 'reforms' of Japanese higher education that have taken the form of incorporating national universities, and are now entering a decisive stage one year afterwards. I will also describe the devastation that has resulted from university incorporation. From these descriptions, I will demonstrate how the incorporation of national universities is a typical example of neo-liberal control in present day Japan. Moreover, we will then be able clearly to see the current situation of the weakening of Japanese intellectuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares and evaluates teacher induction in Canada and Japan, following an overview of each educational system and an assessment of higher education in each region. Based on the author's personal teaching experience and research, suggestions for educational reforms are made to enhance the role of teachers. Teachers need opportunities to learn from one another and to benefit from the accumulated wisdom of generations of skilled practitioners. Moreover, teachers need time for collaboration, planning and reflection. Canada's strengths lie in well-developed pre-service teaching programmes. However, graduates are left to 'sink or swim' in their critical first year of teaching. In contrast, Japan's comprehensive yearlong internship offers an effective apprenticeship induction model with an emphasis on assistance rather than assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a trend toward international collaboration among quality assurance agencies (QAAs) and the internationalisation of higher education in Japan. This paper is examines how Japan University Accreditation Association (JUAA) can establish a network in the region as it promised to do in the Tokyo Declaration. However, it is very hard for JUAA, a private agency without support from the government, to take the initiative to establish the network based on the agreement of governments such as the Bologna Declaration. In the Asia-Pacific region, JUAA can contribute to networking in a different way by acting as a hub agency and by contributing to developing a common evaluation process and tools instead of common evaluation items and indicators. However, JUAA must not become the only hub agency. Collaboration of some hub agencies will lead to a network among QAAs of many countries in the Asia-Pacific region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the trends in the use of ICTs in Japanese higher education institutions. The author takes a unique perspective as Director of the National Institute of Interactive Multimedia (NIME). As an institute for collaborative use of information technology by national universities, NIME focuses on research and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the present situations and issues arising during the introduction of an accreditation system in Japan that includes a bit of the conventional assurance system and its problems, the fundamental policy and criteria of the accreditation system, in particular, educational outcomes criteria. The issues discussed are: (1) grouping of engineering fields and establishing the programme criteria; (2) finance; (3) educational reform; (4) setting educational objectives and evaluation; (5) threshold criteria; and (6) relations with the National Institution for Academic Degrees with regard to university evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]