In the 21st century, when the universalization of higher education demands diversified students to be more involved in study and rather than in learning, the ideal of scholarship is expected to transform toward both teaching orientation and study orientation, with a focus on the teaching and study process in the classrooms with a result of being a…

The dominant role of Kyoju-kai (the professoriate) in university governance in Japan is now facing a critical examination as part of university reforms in response to global competition. What are the determinants of the characteristics of participation in university governance by individual faculty members? In what way does the organizational…

The discourse that an educated workforce is essential for a prosperous and sustainable economy in a knowledge-based society has invited heightened policy interest in higher education. In effect, many industrialized countries are approaching, or have already reached universal access, with the majority of their age cohorts enrolling in higher…

The primary goal of this paper is to examine what makes Chinese college students dissatisfied with entrance opportunities for higher education. Based on the author's survey data, we test two parameters which could be a potential cause of this dissatisfaction: 1) distributive inequality, which emphasizes the individual's dissatisfaction…

The rapid development of higher education in the postwar period has given rise to various problems, and higher education studies in Japan have developed in response to them. What have been the major issues, and how did academic research respond to them, in postwar Japan? This article delineates an outline of higher education studies in general,…

This study is the first attempt to analyze the articles in several journals, in order to disclose the development of academic educational studies in Japan. In this paper, my examination was not limited to one journal, but covered six education journals listed below and all their issues until 2005. I chose, from a methodological viewpoint, four…

With the decreasing college-aged population and the transforming policy environment in Japan, private universities are confronted with management crises, such as bankruptcy, mergers, etc. As the second largest source of funding, government subsidies for private universities is considered to have contributed to enhancing educational conditions and…

Higher education systems are now in a global state of flux. Japan is no exception. The most persuasive framework for analyzing the basic structure and direction of change is the structural-historical theory of the American sociologist Martin Trow. This is a generalization of his "elite to mass to universal" based on first American and then…

One of the original goals of women's studies programs in the United States has consisted in empowering women to enable them to take control of their own lives. In order to achieve that goal, feminist scholars have developed a new pedagogy aimed at empowering students through the creation of equal relations between faculty and students, as well as…

Traditionally school teachers have been considered as lacking knowledge of their own. They were regarded as consumers of knowledge created by university researchers outside their practice. With the increasing call for teachers to assume a role as researcher in recent China, more and more research has been conducted into the knowledge of school…

This paper examines an alternative view of teacher education that enables teachers to redefine their image and mission in the changing society of Japan. This vision is inspired by and draws upon the educational and philosophical thoughts of nineteenth-century American writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and contemporary…