Dean / Hisao Takekuma
The history of Department of Education at Kyushu University dates back in 1925 when the Course of Education was established in Faculty of Law and Literature at Kyushu Imperial University. After the reformation of Education System (Gakusei) in postwar period, it was founded as Department of Education, which exists until now. Since then, being distinguished from a course for teaching profession, the department has produced useful persons for public authorities, private companies, and schools through the education of human science, which featured on development and nurture of human. Moreover, many of our graduates enter into institutions of higher education as researchers and into the fields of clinical psychology as experts both inside and outside Japan. We keep renewing this tradition of the Department of Education while recognizing the change of society and integrating new ingenuity and challenge. I would like to introduce some of tour attempts for that.
One of the attempts is an educational research, which corresponds with globalization. What it means is not a human resource development to win through the monistic global competition. Rather, we train people who are familiar with construction of knowledge and symbiosis with an open attitude to respect diverse culture and opinions and who can imagine the future of education and nurture of humans. The Department of Education has set up a group of subjects, which search for education and nurture of humans from international perspectives since its early period. We currently advance the globalization of educational research in terms of knowledge and practice through oversea study program, vigorous acceptance of international students, and international exchange programs.
Furthermore, we enrich seminar courses to learn and experience in the field of education and local community such courses of fieldwork, volunteer, and internship of education. In these courses, students get directly involved in various fields with their own problem consciousness and then acquire the knowledge and attitude to face living reality and people and aim to solve problems cooperatively and creatively, which otherwise would be left out within an armchair knowledge.
Moreover, this field is a place, which requires “deep discernment and empathic attitude towards people” which is an important basis of learning in the Department of Education. That is the place, which expects one’s wide ability to understand people in order to face others who come from diverse social, cultural and physical backgrounds. In the Department of Education, we try to answer it by curriculum of comprehensive education of human science. Not only face-to-face learning in the fields, but we also prepare wide disciplines of humanities and social sciences regarding society, culture, system, mentality, bodies, and behaviors in order to understand humans precisely and unerringly considering the various backgrounds.
Lastly, I would like to mention about small class education, which distinguishes the learning of the Department of Education. In the department, we can see each other. Because the capacity of students is limited to approximately fifty in every grade, the department realizes the careful education and instruction. In addition, it is recognizable that students have strong ties with their classmates, friends in other grades, and professors through an orientation for new students, various off-campus activities, seminars, and practical trainings. Due to the scale of the department, there are rich opportunities to meet people for close relationships. I hope the students, through learning and rich meetings in the Department of Education, to acquire the knowledge and sensibility to conceive consistently the individual lives of surroundings and future society, which supports the development and nurture of humans.