日本の国際教育協力における大学の役割 : 科学教育を中心として

Recently, there has been an expansion of technical and other educational cooperation in Asia and Africa by JICA. There has also been an increase in the involvement of Japanese colleges and universities through the training of teachers to work in these cooperative projects. It is now time to analyse and clarify the significance of this involvement.

To conduct this analysis, we first need to take a broader perspective. This shows that society is becoming technologically and scientifically dependent for its intellectual and economic health. There is a greater emphasis on information use and people are more mobile. So there is a need for training and education to increase the scientific literacy of the community, to understand these trends. Colleges of education have a major role to play in upgrading scientific literacy, and helping teachers to understand the implications on new technology. There is a need to revise the quality of science education to producing teachers with these skills.

When we consider cooperation, these needs also apply. But in addition, there is a need to develop science curriculum and teachers who understand international perspectives, including the globalisation of the economy, and the particular needs of science curricula in the countries with which Japan is in cooperation.

Again, taking the broader perspective, educational cooperation must be seen as involving three levels. These are: economic, cultural and societal, the educational system, and educational institutes, colleges and schools. Colleges are significant because they have the resources to make educational cooperation operational.

Japanese colleges can do this in several ways. One is for faculties of education to adopt an international focus, to ensure that staff members perform their work with this in mind, and adopt ways of evaluating progress. Another is to begin research programs on international cooperation.

Ways of making this happen must be considered. This includes: supporting the activities of staff with expertise, formation of consortia of colleges, and the setting up of educational committees and educational centres. These would be designed to assist Japanese teachers who are chosen to work in other countries. It will be important to set up database, which allow the work of colleges to be made available to others working in the same field. This could be achieved by a system of coordination across the Colleges involved.