A Study On The Features Of School-based In-service Teacher Education In Japan And Their Influencing Factors

School-based in-service teacher education,conforming to teachers'learning styles as adults and being close to educational practice,is a significant route of in-service teachers'professional growth.In the end of 20^th century,Japanese in-service teacher education began to be universally noticed and recognized.How it has been developing for over 100 years without institutional guarantee?and how it handles the tension between teachers'demand of individual development and the that of collective development?All the experiences and lessons about it are worth studying.This study sorts out four dimensions--purpose,organization,content and methods--of Japanese school-based in-service teacher education in different stages,and accordingly analyzes the tensions in each dimension with the aim to clarify the major features of this model of education.Horizontally,the study clarifies the factors influencing Japanese school-based in-service teacher education from the angles of administrative system,social and cultural norms,teacher team construction and basic education curriculum,in hope of offering valuable inspiration for Chinese school-based in-service teacher education.Japanese school-based in-service teacher education has experienced four stages.The“germination stage”was from the Meiji period to World War II when teachers strengthened their individual ability by reeducation and communication workshop.The“Natural Growth Stage”was from World War II to the middle of 1960s when the government struggled to deal with the problem that a great number of teachers are without certificates of qualification.The“System-establishment Stage”was from the end of 1960s to the end of 1980s when the significant parts of school-based in-service teacher education were being explored under the help of educational administration.In around 1990,the educational reform was impacted by the neoliberal idea.At that time,the school-based in-service teacher education took the function of changing schools and enhancing regional educational power,thus the“Function-expansion Stage”came.The main features of school-based in-service teacher education in Japan could be summarized as:?1?on the dimension of objective,the aspect of promoting teacher development was embodied in the course of pursuing school reform and development;?2?on the dimension of organization,the primary mechanism of management are informal management and self-control;?3?on the dimension of content,the emphasis was placed on the construction of teachers'practice-based theory,both at the individual level and at the level of community;?4?on the dimension of methodology,technology-orientation and interpretation-orientation are integrated.The influential factors of school-based in-service teacher education in Japan include:?1?under the notion of community in Japanese society,school-based in-service teacher education has become an cultural activity;?2?the administration alternating between formal and informal management in Japan facilitated the internalization of school-based in-service teacher education as school norms;?3?the quality aspect and quantity aspect of Japanese teachers are always at the state of unbalance;and school-based in-service teacher education plays an important role in building school teacher team as an component part of the whole teacher education system;?4?national education curriculum management in Japan gradually proceeded forward while swinging between“slack management”and“tight management”,which enable school either to adapt to curriculum changes or to gain easy space to advance school-based in-service teacher education.Therefore,the successfully existing of school-based in-service teacher education in Japan as a non-systematic training model can be attributed to the cultural basis of“community society”and“craft spirit”;teachers'comfortable internal psychological environment and the stability of work are external conditions;the inheritance and innovation of practice knowledge are professional insurance;and the feeling of richness and happiness deriving from reforms is teachers'motivation power source.