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The Case Study Project is a component of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. It was designed to provide in-depth information on education in three nations: Germany, Japan, and the United States. The four research topics which were the focus of the case studies in each of these countries were selected by the U. S. Department of Education in an effort to collect qualitative data which would complement and amplify the quantitative information obtained through the main Third International Mathematics and Science Study. The topics investigated in the Case Study Project were: education standards, dealing with differences in ability, the place of school in adolescents' lives, and the training and working conditions of teachers.
During 1994-95, the study collected information from interviews with students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and education officials, as well as through classroom observations. This report presents findings from the fieldwork completed in Japan. Additional reports present findings from fieldwork in Germany and the United States.
Three cities in geographically different areas of Japan were chosen for study. In all three of the research sites we found similar patterns of instruction, curriculum implementation, parental support of learning, and adolescent engagement in school. Teachers in Kita, Naka, and Minami cities expressed similar beliefs about the role of effort in academic progress. In the early grades, the instruction can be best described as "whole person" education in which individual learning styles are emphasized. This atmosphere changes as students progress into junior high school and exam preparation begins to play a major role in schooling. In all three sites, adolescents appeared to experience similar school transitions, and the curriculum used at any given level — for example, first year students in junior high school — was also very similar across the three sites. In all three sites, adolescents and their parents expressed concerns over upcoming entrance exams and many students enrolled in juku.
Monbusho, Japan's Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, exerts a powerful influence over the entire nation's education system, producing national curriculum guidelines that serve as a national standard. Because of the clearly delineated national curriculum, students and teachers alike know which topics will be covered on national entrance exams and can determine which content questions are or are not appropriate to their students. Elementary school students are not required to pass national or prefectural tests in order to move on to the next level of schooling. Rather, the competition, which is engendered by a strict system of entrance exams and the great need for academic credentials, appears to motivate students in junior and senior high school to perform at high levels. Parents and teachers tended to be critical of the pressures exerted by the entrance exams but were rarely critical of the overall Monbusho guidelines. Despite this emphasis on preparation for the entrance exams, Japanese teachers spent a great deal of time preparing material that was aimed at students who were of lower-than-average academic ability.
Japanese administrators and policy makers involve teachers in the curriculum revision process. Monbusho actively solicits the advice of teachers on its national panels and makes serious attempts to investigate how the curriculum is implemented in the classroom. The curriculum revision process is closely tied to what teachers experience in their classes, and teachers see themselves as curriculum researchers, a role they clearly accept.
Teachers spend a great deal of time researching how to teach. This commitment means that they devote a good deal of their planning time to the organization and sequencing of lessons. Teachers are not under pressure to provide extensive materials outside the curriculum or to create their own curriculum. Rather, they are expected to elaborate on the material provided in the textbooks.
Teachers are expected to adjust the lessons to the level of the class they are teaching and to demonstrate their techniques to other teachers. Moreover, teachers from around the nation appear to share ideas readily . As a result, teacher innovations in methods of teaching and content of courses are widely disseminated via local and regional meetings. Ideal lesson plans are widely circulated and new teachers have access to these plans. Efforts at the local and regional levels are coordinated by school boards and the Monbusho. This coordination is of benefit because:
Teachers are generally required to be at school for at least eight hours a day, and often spend extra hours in planning, meetings with other teachers, advising students, or socializing. The teachers reported that most of their work was done in school, a fact that they felt contributed to the general atmosphere of collegiality. The Japanese teachers and administrators we talked with described their workplaces as close-knit communities of educators who readily shared information and teaching experiences. This strong sense of community appears to affect how teachers view and deal with student disruptions. Teachers were the primary disciplinarians for their homeroom classes, but if the problems are serious, teachers can call on other teachers, the head grade-level teacher, or administrators for support. Few teachers reported feeling worried or apprehensive about student behavior.
At all levels, teachers reported that they saw the purpose of education as guiding students to become more fully developed human beings. Teachers organized and supervised student clubs and helped orchestrate schoolwide events. Particularly at the elementary level, teachers emphasized that their role was to improve the overall education of the child, not just give academic instruction.
Like previous researchers, we found that Japanese educators and parents place great emphasis on early foundations for learning. Elementary classrooms offer many surprising contrasts to later years of schooling. We visited schools that favored individual enrichment work through non-academic subjects as well as math and science lessons that emphasized thinking and discovery. Arts, music, and physical education play a large role in the general curriculum. Students spend a significant amount of time planning, preparing, and participating in yearly school-wide events that have no direct bearing on academic achievement.
The word "studying" has a much broader set of meanings in the Japanese context than in the United States context. Studying, as one mother put it, is a life-long task: one studies how to be a wife, mother, a co-worker, and perhaps even a retiree. Creating a positive attitude toward study in the early years, adults reasoned, was crucial to further academic and social success. Teachers and parents linked many of Japan's major student problems, such as dislike of math and science, lack of creativity, school refusal, and bullying with early failures in the child's education. If children become excited in learning about their world, Japanese educators reason, they will continue to pursue their studies in later years. Students will then become motivated learners in a general sense.
From the earliest grades on, Japanese children are taught to work in small groups (han) as well as to participate as classmates, grade members, and members of the whole school. These multiple layers of group affiliations appear to create a strong sense of identification with the school. The individual student is recognized less for his or her personal accomplishments than for the contributions he or she made to the group, class, grade, or school.
Japanese educators also focus on the interests of average and below-average children. Teachers place little emphasis on innate ability, and most elementary teachers go out of their way to de-emphasize ability in favor of interest and effort. The term "ability differences" (noryokusa) is generally avoided and "difference in mastery levels" (shujukudo) is preferred. This preference reflects the fact that Japanese adults are deeply uneasy about dividing children based on ability. One reason given by teachers for not using ability grouping was that it would hurt students emotionally to the extent that they would lose their motivation to study. Japanese teachers believe that a child's motivation is central to success and that all children are capable of mastering the curriculum with proper encouragement.
Japanese educators generally see ability differences arising as the result of differences in upbringing, in family background. Teachers do not consider that abilities are innate but rather acquired through individual effort. Except for students with clearly recognizable disabilities, teachers see all students as capable of succeeding in school. Individual effort was most often mentioned as the source of achievement and high ability.
Individuals who display a "strong mind" or who have strong motivation are considered to be the students who will excel in math, science, and a range of other areas. What most frequently differentiates these individuals from their peers is the kind of primary family relationships they have and the consequent effects these early relationships have as the child develops. Students who are not well socialized "run out of oil" before other students do. As a result, they fall farther behind and become less engaged in school.
Motivation is viewed as a characteristic that teachers can actively cultivate by encouraging a child to study what he or she likes, thereby deepening the sense of excitement and mastery the child has. Once that attachment to school and the classroom activities is made, the interest in learning or studying will be firmly rooted in the child's mind or psyche.
Special programs for the gifted or programs that allow individual children to develop at different rates are almost unknown in Japanese public elementary and junior high schools. Juku, however, provide similar opportunities outside of school. There is no grade retention and no skipping of grades. However, virtually all Japanese elementary and junior high schools have special classrooms, often given fetching names like "green mountain," where students with severe disabilities are taught separately from the rest of the school. The curriculum for these classes is less difficult than that taught in mainstream classes, and students rarely interact with their mainstream counterparts. While the basic Japanese ideal is for inclusion, there are clear limits to this inclusion. During the compulsory years of schooling, only students with severe disabilities are kept outside the mainstream. However, upon entrance to high school, all students are streamed into different high school courses based largely on entrance exam scores.
The competitive atmosphere around the high school entrance exams is linked to the fact that once students are tracked into a given high school, they will have great difficulty changing their general academic trajectory. As evidenced by the very different curriculum and attitudes of the students at Meiji and Naka Vocational, the outlines of students' future academic and economic prospects are largely pre-determined by the high school they enter.
In the high-ranking academic tracks, students follow a course of study and extra-curricular involvement that is very similar to the one they experienced in junior high school: they spend significant portions of their time outside of school preparing for classes, practicing in clubs, and attending juku. Students in the more highly ranked academic high schools noted that they engaged in competition with their classmates to see who can do best on the practice exams and other tests. In the low-ranked academic schools or in vocational schools like Naka Tech, students exhibit little interest in school work except when it is directly linked to immediate work goals. Students and teachers in these schools reported that students would study hard to prepare for a certification exam, but not for a test in math class. In these schools, student life is much more centered around work, and students often take part-time jobs outside of school.
Despite the hierarchical tracking that occurs at the high school level, we found little evidence of school resentment. Even the dropouts appear to be attracted to their old schools and behaved in ways directed toward gaining recognition from the school. A factor in making school meaningful to Japanese adolescents is that school is their major social arena. The school plays a significant and positive role in the peer culture of most Japanese adolescents. The students we interviewed rarely saw the school as imposing on onerous regime of study. Rather they pointed to the entrance exams as producing the pressure and stress they experienced. While several students did complain that school rules on dress and deportment were too strict, they rarely expressed resentment toward their teachers.
The respondents pointed out problems such as bullying, dropouts, and a general increase in the number of students who dislike math and science. However, neither students nor adults linked these problems to the teachers or the schools per se. They generally blamed these problems on the exam system, the competitive nature of society, and what they perceived to be the increase in divorce and disruption of family life. The vast majority of students spent more time at school in any given week than the teachers required. Rather than seeing school as in imposition, most students saw it as resource in their attempts to succeed in future academic competition and as a place to expand and deepen their social network.
Parents also voiced similar respect for schools and teachers, but were critical of the exams and academic competition. Japanese parents give to their children a wide range of support when it comes to academic matters. Despite the narrow quarters that many Japanese families occupy, Japanese families generally provide a study desk for children from elementary school on. Most of the families in this study also provided a separate room once the child reached junior high school. Almost all of the families in the study were providing their children with some form of outside school support or were paying for them to enroll in special clubs or pursue their hobbies.
Japanese families also are willing to allow adolescents to study in lieu of doing house work or other household duties. Few adolescents had any specific chores around the house. Most students came home, ate dinner with one or both parents, and then studied or relaxed. Japanese parents (and grandparents) are willing to provide their children with money for clothes, compact discs, and video rentals. Many parents felt that studying must be balanced by adequate recreation. They are willing to give students money to buy these recreations, and they felt it was important to make sure that their children had a chance to relax while engaged in preparing for the entrance exams. However, unsupervised recreation time was limited for most adolescents. The major activities that students engaged in were shopping or going to movies. Many adolescents were content to simply spend time at home or at a friend's home, watching videos or listening to music.
One significant aspect of family-school relations is the declining involvement of parents as the child progresses through the education system noted by parents, teachers, and students alike. While most parents make great efforts to participate in elementary school events, participation at the junior high school and high school levels seems to wane. However, parents still appear ready to support their children through investment in extra-school activities, and many families spend great sums to enroll students in juku. It appears that as children pass into adolescence, parents expect the school to take more responsibility for organizing activities for students, and teachers to take an active role in guiding and advising.
Our respondents (parents, teachers, students, and education officials) supported a uniform approach to providing a nurturing education at the elementary level, a more intensive academic and extra-curricular program in junior high, and a highly differentiated program at the high school level. In the early years of education, the curriculum is geared to the average student, and serious academic competition does not affect most students until the second or third year of junior high school. The major academic issues raised by teachers, parents, and students centered around the role that entrance exams play in Japanese schooling. Many of our respondents felt that this system has created too much pressure on students and teachers alike. Public schooling, some said, was becoming more about getting into a good college than about getting a good education.
Although the Monbusho has advocated more consideration of the individual in education and mandated a decrease in the number of days in the school week, the results up to now have only served to heighten the pressures that teachers and students feel, not relieve them. Severe competition on the entrance exams for admission to elite schools continues to create educational overheating. The juku which play such a large role in the overall academic picture, are outside of the Monbusho's control. The juku at once support the schools yet were often cited by respondents as the fuel that causes educational overheating.
[Chapter 1 - Introduction (Part 1 of 3)]