Educational Psychology Research on Teacher Assignment to a Classroom

长期以来，教育心理学家忽视了教师分配到课堂和教师转到学校都影响着教师工作的生活范围--发展的原因。大约在20年前，我注意到美国制度和日本制度在教师分配到课堂和教师转到学校方面都有很大的不同。本研究的重点是第一个因素，即教师到课堂的安排。我在美国当地的一所小学发现，课堂老师很长一段时间都坚持一个特殊的年级，比如15年的作业到6年级。相比之下，我们的经验告诉我们，在日本课堂上，老师往往会在至少两年的时间里和孩子们一起升到下一年级。例如，教师在第一年被分配到二年级，然后在第二年升到三年级。他们在很长一段时间内都没有坚持某个等级。这意味着，总的来说，日本教师的教师发展模式本质上是“多面手”的，而其对应的是“专家模式”，这通常出现在上述美国课堂上。本研究调查了从二战前夕到现在的不同类型的日本教师的课堂任务。我们的基础研究结果证实，日本小学教师被认为是专家，但实际上她本质上是多面手。此外，我们认为教师的多面手性质并没有对他们的终身职业发展产生良好的影响。这是因为，在一个特定的小学年级，掌握各种课程、教学方法等需要很长的时间。

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.