Research Center for Teacher Collaboration in Next Generation School Organization

The purpose of this center is to show how teachers can collaborate in the future school organization and to identify methods related to the realization of such collaboration. In a society undergoing significant changes, teachers are expected to have an educational vision as experts in learning, to exercise leadership within the school, and to create educational practices (OECD 2016). In recent years, they are expected to realize long-term and cross-curricular educational practices, especially inquiry. It is necessary not only to individually devise lessons as in the past, but also to collaboratively develop and implement curricula in organizations, and to make continuous improvements In the past, pedagogical research has focused on a "moving mosaic" (Hargreaves 1994) of collaboration based on teachers' expertise, and in Japan this has been realized through collegiality based on informal relationships among teachers. However, as informal interactions among teachers have become more difficult due to the increasing number of busy and younger teachers, and the scope of collegiality has shrunk (Yamazaki 2012), it has become more difficult to achieve this goal. Under these circumstances, however, we have yet to see a clear direction in pedagogical research regarding the nature of collaboration. While educational content is determined by the curriculum guidelines, it has not always been mainstream today for teachers to collaboratively develop curricula and promote their implementation.
Therefore, this center aims to clarify how school organizations should collaborate in the future by using concepts from business administration (e.g., innovation, leadership, conflict management, etc.), and to develop human resource development and organizational development programs to realize such collaboration, in order to realize collaboration in the next generation of school organizations. We also aim to realize collaboration in school organizations by developing human resource development and organizational development programs to realize such collaboration.