Introduction to Faculty Staff

Nowadays, notions like globalization or informatization are becoming more and more well-accepted, making people turn their interests to the education of other countries or the so-called’ international standard.’ In Japanese society, it has also become common to view the state of domestic education through the ‘mirror’ of other countries’ situations, as seen with PISA and the move away from “yutori” education, or TALIS, and the reform of teacher’s working system. However, if we think deeply about it, education as a social and cultural activity has existed long before the modern nation-state structure was established. It should be regarded as a continuously transforming phenomenon through constant interactions between regions, ethnicities, and cultures. Comparative and International Education, the field I specialize in, is a discipline that, based on these premises, aims to solve social issues related to education by examining educational phenomena in various countries, ranging from macro-level policies and systems to micro-level practices and experiences.