Our School of Education was founded in 1949 in conjunction with the inauguration of New System Universities, when it split off from the School of Law and Letters of Kyushu Imperial University to become the independent Kyushu University School of Education. Our School bears the designation of School of Education, but, more than prioritizing teacher training, our school focuses rather on research of the phenomenon of education.

We conceive of education as the reciprocal workings related to the process of human development and self-realization. In other words, education can be thought of as the activity of intentionally relating to an individual so that they may grow and develop as a person belonging to a society, live their life relating to others as a personality, and become capable of, in a more human way, actualizing their self. Consequently, these workings take place in such diverse environs as the family, community, school, corporation, and governmental offices, with objects ranging in age from toddler to elder, and people belonging to a diversity of cultures, not only those of the country of Japan but also people from other nations as well.

The School of Education, centering itself mainly around the two large frameworks of Science of Education and Educational Psychology, proceeds to vigorously conduct research on issues related to education and on issues related to human psychology and behavior.

The School of Education sets its purpose as, “By providing foundational and specialized education on the fields of education and psychology as broad and comprehensive Human Sciences centered on an axis of human development and personality formation, to nurture students to possess deep insight and empathy into the human condition, and simultaneously to enable them to provide creative and effective solutions to the problems relating to education and psychology in a diversity of social domains.”

Specifically, this envisages: 1) specialist researchers concerned with educational research; 2) specialists dealing with personnel development/man-power development in government and municipal agencies, private enterprise, and so on; and 3) specialists in the field of psychology such as psychological counselors conducting counseling or psychological consultation and so on.

And, in order to cultivate talented individuals such as these, the chief objectives of the School consist of enhancing students’ abilities and attitudes to discover as well as resolve the many problems related to the education, development, and psychology of humans in today’s modern society, mastery of the foundational and specialized knowledge and applied skills of the fields of Education and Psychology, and so on.

Incidentally, amongst the various schools at Kyushu University, one characteristic which sets the School of Education apart is that our school is blessed with the lowest student-faculty ratio in the entire university: against a 50 student annual matriculation, a faculty number of 30 allows for meticulous attention to each student.

As the result of receiving their education from our School of Education, graduates distinguish themselves in a diverse number of fields including as university researchers, federal and municipal civil servants, teachers and educational administrators, and in careers in every kind of enterprise.

The research being conducted in our School of Education and the associated Graduate School of Human-Environment Studies has been highly evaluated not only nationally but also amongst various foreign nations.

Consequently, our School of Education has been designated as a national key core faculty.

In the 21^st Century, as value systems and perspectives in every society, economy and culture become increasingly diversified and social systems and structures become increasingly complex, it is all the more necessary that educational research as Comprehensive Human Science be conducted by schools of education, and moreover society expects that such will happen. Our School of Education, in response to these needs and expectations of the times, intends to continue to contribute to the development of such educational research as Comprehensive Human Science.