Producing original knowledge is the foundation of scientific progress. Originality is associated with certain skills and practices that can be trained and socialised. This study investigates how inbreeding as a career practice influences the socialisation of originality. An analysis based on a sample of mid-career life scientists in Japan finds…

This paper examined the actual circumstances of the recent teacher shortage in public elementary and junior high schools in X Prefecture. Although teacher shortages had been reported, few previous studies had investigated them empirically. With the cooperation of all five branch offices of the Board of Education, data were collected through three…

This study examines practices relating to four dimensions of leadership development (recruitment and selection, professional learning, autonomy, and evaluation) in Japan. Initial information was drawn from prior literature and websites of the national government (e.g., national legislation, policy documents, and national statistics) and BOEs at…

Purpose: The number of international faculty members in universities is increasing worldwide, and Japan is no exception. However, despite this quantitative expansion, these faculty remain peripheral. Though recent studies have identified various challenges faced by international faculty, they have focused on international faculty's individual…

The main purpose of this study is to find the attributes of corporations that prevent hiring of highly educated female new graduates, who hold bachelor's or master's degrees. Our results show that the percentages of new graduates who majored in the field of humanities and of female employees positively correlate with the percentage of female new…

The purpose of this commentary is to: illustrate the challenges that Japanese advertising education faces; find the possible causes for the difficulties faced; and consider potential solutions to overcome the challenges and prepare students for a fast-paced global workforce.

Based on two national surveys of Japanese faculty members, the purpose of this study is to analyze whether changes had occurred in key aspects of governance arrangements in both national and private universities in Japan from 1992 to 2017. This study focuses on the changing relationships between national universities and the central government and…

In this study, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Finland and Turkey Countries teachers and school administrators were compared in terms of assignment policies. In this research, a holistic multiple state pattern, which is one of the qualitative research types, was used. The reason for using this method has been examined in accordance with the problem…

The primary purpose of the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC®) is to measure the everyday English skills of individuals, who speak a first language other than English, working in an international environment (ETS, 2015a, 2016a; Powers & Powers, 2015). The TOEIC also has six secondary purposes: (1) to verify the current…

Public teachers in Japan are subjected to a compulsory rotation system where the prefectural board of education governs their entire career paths. Past research has written of the macro- and micro-level impacts of rotation systems, including Japanese teacher rotation, but this paper, based on years of working in and observing Japanese schools, is…

This report explores the ways in which human resource (HR) managers use "TOEIC"® scores to inform hiring, promotion, and training decisions in an international workplace. Two data sources were used (a) previously collected test users' testimonials that described managers' use of TOEIC scores to inform HR decisions and (b) test-use…

This paper looks at the importance of mechanisms that give formal recognition to vocational skills acquired through work-based learning and how such mechanisms might be developed. It describes how skill recognition can benefit individuals, employers and society as a whole, and identifies in which contexts skill recognition has the highest…

In Japan in recent years, there has been much discussion of the need for global human resources alongside criticism of Japanese youth as having an "inward-looking" ("uchimuki") orientation. Drawing out the contradictions apparent in a youth apparently reluctant to leave Japan and companies, universities and government seemingly…

Stimulated by studies on South Korean students' early and later-on study abroad and Japanese companies' practice of hiring monolingual college students, the present literature-based discussion advances the knowledge of commonalities and distinctiveness between the two nations that manifest in either a textbook-case or a non-linear relationship…

The shadow education sector plays a centrally important role in the Japanese education system. Advocates of Japanese shadow education institutions, or "juku", claim that the pedagogy employed in these schools leads to superior results compared to teaching methods used in conventional schools. The lack of value-added testing of juku…