教師教育者の専門性開発としてのself-study（セルフスタディ） : その理論的背景と日本における受容と再構成

This paper explores how educators perceive self-study in the context of Japanese teacher education. Self-study research is rooted in teachers’ desire to improve their teaching and contribution to the development of teaching knowledge. As Japanese teacher educators’ interest in self-study has increased in recent years, our research question is: Why do Japanese teacher educators become interested in self-study? To address this question, after reviewing extant literature on self-study, we interviewed six teacher educators with more than 20 years of teaching experience at both university and school level. The findings yielded by coding and analyzing the data using NVivo reveal that:

1. All interviewees were introduced to self-study by their mediators.
2. They are likely to pursue self-study due to personal interests, focusing on their neighboring community only.

Thus, when localizing self-study in Japan, several challenges can be expected, including language barriers, strong sense of individual responsibility to improve teaching, school culture, and social norms preventing people from speaking about themselves in public. Therefore, when implementing self-study in non-English speaking countries, it is essential not to revert to the colonialism by spreading authentic self-study, but rather promote its acceptance and reconstruction in accordance to the context of each region.