Right turn in Japan's third great education reform: A critical, globalization approach to the studies of Japanese education
General Material Designation
[Thesis]
Subsequent Statement of Responsibility
;supervisor Apple, Michael W.
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
The University of Wisconsin - Madison: United States -- Wisconsin
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
: 2007
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item
351 pages
DISSERTATION (THESIS) NOTE
Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree
Ph.D.
Body granting the degree
, The University of Wisconsin - Madison: United States -- Wisconsin
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
The study examines the so called "third great education reform," the series of changes in Japanese education since the 1980s which culminated in the 2006 conservative revision of the democratic Fundamental Law of Education. Placing Japanese education reform over the past thirty years within the larger social, economic, and political transformations of postwar Japanese society and within the global restructuring of the state, economy, education, this dissertation demonstrates how the conservatives have successfully achieved the cultural and institutional reconstitution of public education, a radical break from the postwar democratic and egalitarian accord. Taking a critical (critical modernist), globalization approach to the studies of Japanese education and focusing on "critical historical incidents," the study denaturalizes the commonsense narrative of "crisis and reform" during the third great education reform. After unpacking the common sense interpretation of the reforms, the study explores contradictory spaces for progressive counteractions within the current conservative dominance. Furthermore, the dissertation has a larger theoretical agenda, as well. It identifies and challenges three dominant trends that set limits on the studies of Japanese education both in and outside Japan: (1) the disconnection of the discussion of Japanese education from the global structural changes in the state, economy, and education; (2) the evacuation of ideology from educational studies in Japan; and (3) an Orientalist binary paradigm in comparative studies of Japanese and Anglo-American education.