Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This book is an up-to-date critical examination of education in Japan by an author of the widely read and comprehensive Education in Contemporary Japan: Diversity and Inequality (1999, Cambridge University Press). In the last two decades Japan has faced slow economic growth, a low birth rate and an aging and increasingly multi-ethnic population. In education we have seen responses to these challenges in national and local educational policies, as well as in school-level practices.
The book discusses these significant developments and raises the following questions: Why have these developments emerged and how will they affect the youth and society as a whole? How have schools been responding to transnationalism and an increasingly multi-ethnic student population? In what ways have the gaps in educational achievement between groups altered, and why? How have these trends affected the existing patterns of diversity and inequality in educational participation and achievement in terms of class, ethnicity and gender?
Going beyond changing educational policies, the book illuminates cumulative adjustments in the daily practice of schooling, as well as how various groups in society make sense of these changes. Written in a highly accessible style, each chapter starts with a story of school-level experience to illustrate how these are affected by, and collectively impact on, the policies and society as a whole.
Synopsis
This book is an up-to-date critical examination of schooling in Japan by an expert in this field. It focuses on developments in the last two decades with a particular interest in social justice. Japan has experienced slow economic growth, changed employment practices, population decline, an aging society, and an increasingly multi-ethnic population resulting from migration. It has faced a call to respond to the rhetoric of globalization and to concerns in childhood poverty in the perceived affluence. In education we have seen developments responding to these challenges in national and local educational policies, as well as in school-level practices.
What are the most significant developments in schooling of the last two decades? Why have these developments emerged, and how will they affect youth and society as a whole? How can we best interpret social justice implications of these developments in terms of both distributive justice and the politics of difference? To what extent have the shifts advanced the interests of disadvantaged groups? The book shows that, compared to three decades ago, the system of education increasingly acknowledges the need to address student diversity of all kinds, and delivers options that are more varied and flexible. But interest in social justice in education has tended to centre on distribution of opportunities (who gets how much schooling), with fewer questions raised about the content of schooling that continues to advantage the already advantaged.
Written in a highly accessible style, and aimed at scholars and students in the fields of comparative education, sociology of education and Japanese studies, the book illuminates changing policies and cumulative adjustments in the daily practice of schooling, as well as how various groups in society make sense of these changes.