Educational Psychology Research on Teacher Assignment to a Classroom

长期以来，教育心理学忽视了教师的课堂指派和教师的学校调动对教师工作终身发展的影响。大约在20年前，我就注意到美国的教育体制和日本的教育体制在教师分配到课堂和教师转到学校方面的巨大差异。本研究的重点是第一个因素，即教师分配到课堂。我在美国当地一所小学发现，任课老师长期坚守一个年级，比如6年级15年的作业。相比之下，我们的经验告诉我们，在日本的课堂上，老师倾向于与孩子一起升到下一年级至少两年。例如，老师在第一年被分配到二年级，然后在第二年升到三年级。他们没有长期坚持一个等级。这意味着，总的来说，日本教师的职业发展模式本质上是“通才模式”，而与之对应的则是“专才模式”，这种模式通常出现在上文提到的美国课堂中。本研究调查了从二战前到现在不同年龄段的日本教师的课堂分配情况。我们的基础研究结果证实，日本小学教师被认为是一个专家，但实际上她是一个多面手。此外，我们认为教师的多面手性质并没有给他们的终身职业发展带来良好的影响。原因是在小学的一个特定年级，掌握各种课程、教学方法等需要很长时间。

Educational psychologits have ignored for a long time the reason why both teacher assignment to classroom and teacher transfer to school are influencing a life range-development of teaching jobs. It was almost twenty years ago that I had noticed the big differences between the U.S.system and the Japanese system in terms of both teacher assignment to classroom and teacher transfer to school. This research has focused upon the fjrst factor, that is, teacher ssignment to classroom. I found in an American local elementary schoolthat classroom teacher sticks to a paticular grade for a long time, for example, 15 years assignment to 6th grade. In contrast, our experiences tell that in Japanese classroom, teacher tends to move up to next grade with children for at least two years. For example, teachers assigned to 2nd grade in the first year and then moved up to 3 rd grade next year. They did not stick to a certain grade for a long time. That means, in general, that, the carreer development mode of Japanese teacher is ' generalist ' in nature an d its counterpart would be ' specialist mode ', which typically appears in the American classroom mentione d above.This rearch have surveyed various cohort Japanese teachers, starting from just before world-war 2nd to the present in terms of classroom assignment. Our basic research findings confirmed that Japanese elementary school teacher was thought as a specialist, but actually she was generalist in nature. Furthermore, we thought that the teacher's nature as-a generalist did not give good influence to their life-long carrer deve lopment. The reason is that it takes long time to master various kinds of curriculum,teaching-methods and so on in a particular grade of an elementary school.