A system that nurtures teachers and provides supports throughout the day and through their careers has helped propel the country to strong marks in international assessments while making teacher tenure a nonissue.
Teachers in Japan earn tenure on their first day of employment — not after two years of experience based on evaluations of teaching performance or student test scores. This is almost too good to be true. If tenure is so easy to attain, how do the Japanese make sure their teachers, especially novice teachers, provide effective instruction? How do they embed accountability among teachers? An equally amazing fact about Japan is the high retention rate of beginning teachers. In 2006, merely 1.35% of first-year teachers in Japan left the profession (Sasaki, Hosaka, & Akashi, 2010) compared to the U.S. where almost half leave teaching sometime during the first five years. Why is there such a difference? Is teaching any easier in Japan than in the United States?
Japanese students have consistently been among the top performers in the world in mathematics, science, and reading on the PISA and TIMSS exams. According to Japanese daily newspaper Mainichi Shimbun (2012), Japanese 4th and 8th graders ranked 5th and 4th in mathematics and science, respectively, in the 2012 TIMSS. Similarly, they ranked 7th in mathematics and 4th in reading and science in the 2012 PISA. Their strong international test performance is indicative of high teacher quality. So what enables Japan to sustain high educational quality while also granting tenure to all teachers on their first day of teaching? We believe the answer lies in two key areas: Teachers go through a thorough screening process before being hired to teach, and they experience ongoing support after they are employed.
Rigorous screening process
Japanese teachers are civil servants hired by local governments. After completing an undergraduate teacher preparation program, teacher candidates must apply for and successfully pass exams given by a board of education in their chosen prefecture, normally during their senior year. (Japan’s 47 prefectures are regions with specific administrative authority, such as education, that are similar to counties in the U.S.) The passing rate of these hiring exams can fluctuate from year to year, school level to school level, subject to subject, and prefecture to prefecture. Passing the exam is quite difficult, sometimes as low as 6%. In 2014, only 14% of junior high school teacher applicants and only one in four elementary school teacher applicants passed their initial exams (MEXT, 2015a). These written exams include topics on teacher education, subject matter, and an essay; an oral interview follows the written portion.
After passing the exams, new teachers can be hired by the local governments and licensed at the prefectural level. They’re assigned to a school in the local jurisdiction and governed by boards of education. As government employees, teachers are granted tenure on their first day of hire. (Strictly speaking, new teachers are under “conditional tenure” to test their fitness for teaching during the first 12 months. In practice, however, 99% of new teachers automatically continue into the next year with only 1% of the new hires not continuing nationally. For example, in 2008, out of the 23,920 new teachers hired in Japan, only 315 (1.3%) didn’t result in permanent tenure (MEXT, 2012). According to the Japanese National Civil Service Law (Kokka Komuinho), teachers can be terminated from their positions only for one of the following reasons: poor work performance; inability to perform due to physical or mental disability; lack of appropriate qualification for the position; or abolition of positions due to restructuring or budget restrictions (Law Data, 2007). Thus, Japanese teachers have legal job protection, which lets them focus on professional growth.
Teacher license renewal system
Job security under the teacher tenure system in Japan has gone through a major change in recent years. Beginning in 2009, all Japanese teachers must renew their teacher licenses every 10 years as a way to improve teacher quality. Teachers who are 35, 45, and 55 years old are the primary target for the renewal system. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) called for a system to meet the social demands “to be professional educators in the future by acquiring the latest knowledge and skills with confidence and pride and by earning the respect and trust of society” (MEXT, 2007, p. 38). Essentially, the change was intended to embed accountability in the teacher licensure system. Despite political opposition, the parliament adopted the new law to deal with teachers with insufficient ability (Tsuchiya, 2009).
Under the new law, teachers must renew their teaching credential by taking more than 30 hours of coursework at any institution or equivalent educational offices approved by MEXT. The curriculum comprises 12 or more hours of contemporary educational issues and 18 or more hours of subject-matter instruction, guidance and counseling, and other educational issues. They mirror most preservice teacher education programs offered at a university. In 2014, 99.6% of teacher licenses were successfully renewed after taking the required renewal courses and exams (MEXT, 2014).
First-year teacher induction
Although first-year teachers in Japan earn tenure on the first day of work, they are expected to regularly take part in structured and unstructured professional development opportunities. For example, first-year teachers must complete 10 hours per week of onsite training or about 300 hours a year, facilitated by assigned mentor teachers. They also must complete 25 days of off-site training, held at education centers, and outdoor and volunteer facilities, in their first year (Ozaki & Nunomura, 2013). The content includes basic education, classroom management, subject instruction, moral education, special activity, integrated study, student guidance, and career guidance. On-site induction is mainly conducted through a base-school method (kyotenko-hoshiki) in which a mentor teacher (a current or retired teacher with 10 or more years of teaching experience and leadership ability) mentors four new teachers in a school district. In addition, each school site identifies an on-site mentor teacher who plays a coordinator role to work with the mentor teachers from the school district. In 2013, more than 70% of elementary and junior high school teachers in Japan received first-year teacher induction based on this model (MEXT, 2015b). The effectiveness of this method, however, still remains largely unknown; a small-scale survey of past participants showed mixed results.
While these mandated programs provide some professional development opportunities, they are distant, intermittent, and often decontextualized from the specific needs of each teacher and school. How do beginning teachers make sense of their daily issues in teaching? How are they molded professionally? The unusually high retention rate of first-year teachers in Japan suggests that a robust on-site support system known as shokuin shitsu, or teachers’ room, sustains novice teachers with little prior teaching experience. We’ll show how the teachers’ room operates by looking at Mirai Junior High School in Osaka, Japan.
Nurturing beginning teachers
Compared with the U.S. teacher preparation programs that normally require at least one semester of student teaching, Japan’s novice teachers are hired after only four short weeks of formal student teaching. This works because new teachers have access to the teachers’ room at each school. Beginning on their first day, teachers in their first through sixth year at Mirai Junior High School are mentored and nurtured by more experienced colleagues through formal and informal meetings and conversations. For many years to come, the teachers’ room becomes a secure home base where beginning teachers are guided on their path to become more independent professionals (Ahn, 2014).
In Japan, teaching is considered a collective endeavor rather than an individual act. As such, teachers regularly collaborate on practice in this shared space of shokuin shitsu. Japanese teachers travel from classroom to classroom while students remain in the same classroom. Unlike U.S. teachers’ lounges, whose primary function is for rest, the Japanese teachers’ room is designed for work. All teachers have assigned desks, often aggregated by grade-level islands and overseen by administrators who have desks in the front of the room. Throughout the day, teachers go in and out of the teachers’ room between teaching, homeroom, supervising clubs, and other responsibilities. In the teachers’ room, teachers at different stages in their careers interact with one another, debriefing and communicating about student successes and challenges, behavior, absences, and tardies to colleagues and administrators. Teachers seek advice from veteran colleagues and administrators, plan lessons, grade assignments, and call parents. In-depth meetings and conversations usually occur in this room after students leave school at 6 p.m. At this time, many teachers have personal conversations as tension wanes.
If tenure is so easy to attain, how do the Japanese make sure teachers, especially novice teachers, provide effective instruction?
When beginning teachers face challenges dealing with student misbehavior, academic disengagement, and conflicts with parents, they are able to make sense of these issues in the safe environment of shokuin shitsu. Assistant principal Hiroshi Obuchi (a pseudonym), who oversees the teachers’ room in Mirai, said his main responsibility is to create a positive atmosphere in this room so teachers feel comfortable and motivated. He said his role is to keep new teachers motivated as they deal with various teaching challenges. Difficult challenges can result in undesirable consequences such as depression and absences.
For example, a fight erupted shortly before the winter break when a 9th-grade male student punched Takeshi Nakamura (a pseudonym), a sixth-year physical education teacher who is in charge of student discipline. The student reacted to Nakamura’s instruction to put his own shoes in the locker. The incident that initially involved the two eventually became a whole-school affair involving a large group of 9th graders. Startled by the screaming and banging, more than half of the school staff came to break up the fight, which took several hours to settle down. After the event, Nakamura visited the teachers’ room, shaken by the event. He was surrounded and comforted by the assistant principal, principal, and other teachers around the stove. They knew the student’s adverse family situation well and discussed possible reasons that led to his violent behavior. The leadership team later devised an intervention plan to contact the student’s uncle who was deemed most effective in dealing with the problem. Early the next morning, as Nakamura greeted students at the school gate before school, he seemed refreshed and no longer despondent. When interviewed afterward, he passionately shared the critical role the teachers’ room plays in his professional life, where he consulted and received help from colleagues on numerous occasions, including the fighting incident. He said he cannot imagine not having the shokuin shitsu as a place where teachers can communicate about students and solve issues together.
Obuchi, who later became Mirai’s principal, said the principal advises teachers to reconsider teaching or voluntarily move to a less challenging school if they continue to struggle in teaching even after being supported by shokuin shitsu during their first several years. The board of education makes the final decision regarding the beginning teachers’ next path.
Obuchi said he had visited the home of a first-year teacher who stopped coming to work due to severe stress from dealing with rambunctious students. Although his colleagues visited him multiple times, the teacher was still hesitant to return to work. The principal then visited the teacher and his parents to seriously explore whether the young teacher should continue in the profession. After many conversations with colleagues and administrators through ups and downs, this teacher decided to come back to work and persist in teaching.
In the supportive environment of shokuin shitsu, mistakes are a given and forgiven, as beginning teachers make sense of their questions and concerns about teaching.
Experienced teachers and administrators understand and expect the learning curve of beginning teachers. In the supportive environment of shokuin shitsu, mistakes are a given and forgiven, as beginning teachers make sense of questions and concerns about teaching. As this first-year teacher’s case shows, during a critical juncture, the active involvement and support of colleagues and the administrator contributed to his decision to remain in the profession. Because of their perspective that teaching is a collective endeavor, a single teacher’s absence or lack of participation is taken with care and seriousness. The grade-level island in the teachers’ room, led by the grade-level leader, is the base for such support. That is augmented by layers of a support system consisting of a homeroom partner, subject-area teachers, club advisers, and others. Surrounded by such a robust support system on a daily basis, novice teachers are accepted as they are without fear of being judged or evaluated in their continuum of professional growth.
A process-oriented approach
While the topic of teacher tenure has generated much interest and heated discussions in the U.S., educators in Japan do not share the same interest or even grasp the concept. This puzzling phenomenon makes sense once we understand their cultural practice in which teachers receive tenure automatically without going through a stressful process to obtain tenure. This does not mean that Japanese teachers work less or take their work lightly. The tenure system is built with the understanding that teachers are in the profession for the long term, despite weaknesses they might possess and mistakes they might make. This is possible because Japanese teachers believe teaching is a collective undertaking, rather than an individual one. Novice teachers are not left alone but are nurtured and supported every day in the teachers’ room by more experienced colleagues and administrators. Accountability is embedded within the collaborative space of shokuin shitsu, where teachers are accountable for each other’s actions through homeroom responsibilities, as well as subject and grade-level collaborations with their colleagues. As Toru Kanda (a pseudonym), a former principal at Mirai, said, “Japan supports even those teachers who seem helpless. We don’t get rid of teachers by looking at their weaknesses but work with these weaknesses so that even these weak teachers can become good teachers.” Based on 20 years of experience as an educator, Kanda confidently said that even these weak teachers grow to be better teachers in a few years.
Japan’s teachers’ room is a unique cultural approach to improving teacher quality. It emancipates teachers from potential isolation (Hargreaves & Dawe, 1990) and brings about collaboration that binds colleagues together for a common goal. This growth model values process — unlike the U.S. performance model, which values product — and contributes to sustaining beginning teachers at a high rate in Japanese schools and makes tenure possible on Day One.
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Citation: Ahn, R, Asanuma, S., & Mori, H. (2016). Japan’s teachers earn tenure on Day One. Phi Delta Kappan, 97 (6), 27-31.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Hisayoshi Mori
HISAYOSHI MORI is an associate professor of education in the Graduate School of Literature and Human Sciences at Osaka City University, Osaka, Japan.
Ruth Ahn
RUTH AHN is a professor of education in the College of Education and Integrative Studies at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, Calif., and the executive editor of International Journal of Teacher Leadership.
Shigeru Asanuma
SHIGERU ASANUMA is a professor of psychology at Rissho University, Tokyo, Japan.
