日本の教育政策形成過程において教科外活動が語られる文脈の統合化 ―能力観転換と働き方改革のジレンマをめぐって―

This paper aims to present the discourses of extra-curricular activities (ECA) through education policy formation in Japan and contextual factors that were possibly involved. Researches demonstrate the importance of competency-based (CB) education in reforms of school education. Several cases were reported that ECA are considered not only as an optional part at school but also one of the efficient approaches in the practice of CB reforms. In Japan, ECA thrive at school and are widely regarded as the distinctiveness of education of this country. However, there are plenty of policy studies about CB reforms, yet few of those mentioned ECA. Thus, studying in ECA at a policy level is necessary and might provide a springboard in this area. The study qualitatively analyzes the discourses about ECA within the meetings minutes held in the Japanese Central Council for Education (JCCE) of the last 10 years. JCCE is an advisory body for the minister of MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) and has a strong influence in education policy-decision.In other words, its narratives, to some extent, could mirror the formation of education policy-decision. The research collected the meeting minutes since 2012 when High School/University Articulation Reforms (HUAR) started, which adhered to the idea of CB education. The diachronique analysis method was adopted to find out contextual factors and identify the changes and dynamics. The key findings of the paper are as follows: 1) Three diachronous periods could be identified according to the changes of the dominant discourses of ECA. The first stage (2012-2014) is characterized as the promotion of experience activities (EA). At this stage, ECA was considered as part of EA and constructed for initiative encouragement. From 2015 to 2018, JCCE centralized teachers’overloading issues and work system reforms. In this period, ECA was treated as a problem to be solved. Late in 2017, JCCE started to reflect the Japan-style school education. Since then, ECA was narrated as one of the strengths of the education system of Japan and highly valued from overseas. 2) According to the above, two contextual factors, namely,‘changing view of ability’and‘work system reform’, are extracted. They respectively support dominant discourses at the first and the second stage resulted in a pendulum-like attitude of JCCE towards ECA. At the latest stage, however, it could be noticed that both factors were integrated during the practice of CB education principles in the country.