文部科学省の政策形成過程に関する一考察 : 「アイディア」と「知識」に着目して(教育政治の諸相,I 年報フォーラム)
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概要
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Many Japanese government officials believe that new ideas and knowledge have exerted a great influence on policy making seen in this country from the latter half of the 1990s. Moreover, political scientists in Japan have recently given great attention to the importance of ideas and knowledge in the policymaking process. In this paper I analyze the process of educational policymaking with a special focus on the roles and importance of ideas and knowledge. In 1996 the OECD insisted that the societies of developed countries would become knowledge-based in the future. Knowledge is in fact now of crucial importance for economic growth and prosperity. The government thus came to think of universities as the nucleus of a national system of innovation, pressuring schools to promote children's competencies at a higher level. The idea of a knowledge-based, knowledge-creating society therefore exerted great influence on the policymaking process during the incorporation of National Universities (1996-2003) and revision of the Course of Study (1999-2008). During this process, new ideas and knowledge were influenced by the principles of education (autonomy of the university, specialties concerning curriculum, etc.), the opinions of industry and others, and were clearly designed to protect these principles. My analysis of these trends reached the following conclusions : (1) In the policymaking process, the Ministry of Education must create a persuasive new idea and then cooperate with the various actors concerned in order to reach agreement on the idea, especially when it comes to making compromises that may be needed between different ministries, the Prime Minister's Office, other branches of government, and the public. (2) The idea offered needs to provide a common basis for discussion among actors from different standpoints, for example for those from the educational world, the industrial world, and so on. (3) Reflections needed to produce the idea can be seen as expanding the range of possibilities for the executive branch to appropriately respond to a changing, fluid situation. Potential problems in the future are then pointed out through a discussion of two key points : (1) Hereafter, the Ministry of Education and the researcher should clarify the idea proposed and its intentions. Some researchers have criticized school education reforms based on the idea of a knowledge-based society. (2) The ability of the Ministry of Education to produce new ideas and new knowledge is in fact actually rather weak. New ideas and knowledge can be seen as increasingly important in terms of policymaking. An improvement is now called for in the Ministry's ability to discover and propose new ideas and new knowledge.
- 日本教育行政学会の論文
- 2009-10-16