Curriculum Vitaes

Tomomi Usui

  (臼井 智美)

Profile Information

Affiliation
Professor, The United Graduate School of Professional Teacher Education School of Advanced Professional Development in Education, Osaka Kyoiku University
Degree
修士(教育学)(筑波大学)

J-GLOBAL ID
200901025248346893
researchmap Member ID
6000017113

Major Papers

 35
  • USUI,Tomomi
    Memoirs of Osaka Kyoiku University. Educational Science, 71 301-320, Feb, 2023  Peer-reviewedLead author
  • USUI Tomomi
    The bulletin of Japanese curriculum research and developmen, 44(4) 101-107, Mar, 2022  InvitedLead author
  • USUI Tomomi
    Bulletin of the Japan Educational Administration Society, 46 72-88, Sep, 2020  Peer-reviewedLead author
    <p>In this paper, I examined what "justice" is in educational administration that can be seen through the education of foreign children. I also considered why each local government implement the education of foreign children"in that form and contents", and explored the intention of local governments behind the implementation and selection of the education as an expression of"justice".</p><p>Education of foreign children is not provided by national wide law in Japan. So, if see local governments policies we are able to find"justice"of local governments in education of foreign children. Therefore, in the case of"doing", in order to clarify the basis of this, I searched for the information posted on the website of all the prefectures from the following three perspectives - explanation of the basic plan of education promotion and of the general education outline, policies under the jurisdiction of the board of education and under the jurisdiction other than the board of education - to find out if there is a direct reference to the education of foreign children.</p><p>With regard to perspective 1, I found concrete measures were described in 29 prefectures. As for the context of the policy, a total of nine contexts were confirmed, such as promotion of international understanding education, development of a safety net for learning, and multicultural coexistence.</p><p>With regard to perspective 2, I surveyed the development of guidelines and policies for the education of foreign children. As a result, I was able to confirmed the establishment of three types of guidelines: policies of education for foreigners, basic policies of human rights education, and basic policies of bullying prevention. Among them, the local governments that have established guidelines and policies of education for foreigners position the education of foreign children as a response to the problems that emerged in foreigners, that turns out that there is a strong intention to solve social problems, that is, to change the way of society with foreigners, rather than giving back to individuals to meet"special educational needs".</p><p>With regard to perspective 3, it was confirmed that the four groups of policies, which have different backgrounds, referred to the education of foreign children. These are multicultural coexistence measures (securing labor forces), multicultural coexistence measures (promotion of regional internationalization), human rights measures (multicultural coexistence), and global human resource development measures.</p><p>Education of foreign children is more affected by the financial situation of local governments, so regarding where to allocate humans, goods, and money from the limited financial resources, it is necessary to have valid justification. However, I think it is also indispensable to verify how"justice"is fulfilled by reconsidering to realize that education cannot be guaranteed unless some reason as a basis for justification is given itself. By looking at the policies for education of foreign children, it can be seen that the substance of"justice"is involved in not only the distribution of resources but also the creation of social value. The process of implementation needs to be analyzed not only from the perspective of what kind of existing value is used to justify measures for maintaining social order, but also from the perspective of creating new values to justify those measures.</p>
  • 臼井 智美
    日本教育経営学会紀要, 62 117-124, Jul 30, 2020  Lead author
  • USUI Tomomi, CHEN Rui
    Memoirs of Osaka Kyoiku University. Educational Science, 68 53-74, Feb, 2020  Peer-reviewedLead author
    The purpose of this study is to clarify the role that native language supporters can play in order to reduce the embarrassment between pupils and teachers in the education of foreign-rooted students. As a result of the case analysis, the native language supporters had the greatest expectation of role as interpreters and translators, but they extracted three major support that they could support pupils by using their native language. A role that enables communication that has a cultural difference (a role not only to "translate"), a role that enables communication to be aware of the mind (overcoming the state of "not saying anything"), and it is a role to broaden the perspective and thinking of teachers (the role of connecting with different values).
  • Bulletin of United Graduate School of Professional Teacher Education, Kyoto University of Education, (8) 23-36, Mar, 2019  
    type:Departmental Bulletin Paper
  • USUI Tomomi, NAKAHASHI Miho
    Memoirs of Osaka Kyoiku University, 67 39-53, Feb, 2019  Lead author
    The purpose of this study is to consider the teacher education system to realize the quality assurance of education. We focus on the early childhood (EC) educators training system in Singapore. As a result of the Singapore example the following three features have become clear. 1) The quality of the EC educators, the quality of the educational content, and the quality of the educational environment are clearly indicated in the scale so it's easy to imagine the process of improving quality. 2) SPARK actually functions as in-service training. 3) The standard of quality assurance is the criterion of teachers' behavior. In Singapore, the system for ensuring "Quality of education" and "Quality of educators" is linked by SPARK, and it became clear that the process of ensuring quality was visualized by index group.
  • USUI Tomomi, TERUYA Shota
    Memoirs of Osaka Kyoiku University, 66 1-18, Feb, 2018  Lead author
    This article analyzed the case of district support for ELL students in Colorado State for the purpose of considering the way to build a collaboration between regional educational administration office and school for supporting the foreign students with multitiered educational challenges in Japan. The case district, we presented it as A district in this article, have introduced Interventionist team since 2008 and it enabled the district offer early identification and adequate support to the individual student's multitiered educational challenges. In this case study, we clarified that district office excised strong leadership in evaluative framework of supporting students and professional development through hiring process of interventionists or building a collaboration between interventionists and teachers in the school. We also clarified these efforts were supported the advanced expertise and experienced of district office staffs.
  • USUI Tomomi
    The Annual Bulletin of the Japanese Society for the Study on Teacher Education, 25 90-100, Sep, 2016  Peer-reviewedLead author
    <p>  In this study, I develop and examine the effect of a teacher training program that aims to understand the cultural background of international schoolchildren who are non-native Japanese speakers. The program also trains teachers to teach other school subjects using the Japanese language.</p><p>  The objectives of this program are as follows. First, to develop teacher's skills in applying CALP(Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency)in the classroom that is necessary for learning each subject in school. Second, to improve international schoolchildren's academic performance. Third, encouraging the instruction of international schoolchildren not only by individual teachers but also through the whole school environment.</p><p>  In order to develop the program I performed classroom trials and made observations of in-school training in a number of sample schools.</p><p>  The program is composed of lectures and practices. The lectures aim to assist the teachers in acquiring the following skills. First, becoming aware of on which point they should pay attention when they teach subjects to international schoolchildren. Second, by discerning the difference between BICS(Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills)and CALP, and recognizing the different processes of language acquisition. Third, to understand ways of instruction that improve schoolchildren's CALP through teaching school subjects. And for practice, I provided exercises like making teaching plans and performing the experimental lessons.</p><p>  By examining this program, I confirmed the effects that I expected when I designed the program. At the same time, I determined that this program provided the same effects with various schools and cultural backgrounds of international schoolchildren. Therefore, it can be concluded that this program is effective in developing teacher's skills for the instruction of international schoolchildren.</p>
  • USUI Tomomi
    Journal of JASEA, 58 2-12, Jun, 2016  Peer-reviewedLead author
  • Usui Tomomi, Sato Hiroshi, Kurama Yumi, Suematsu Hiroki, Teruya Shota
    Bulletin of school administration, 41 33-47, Apr, 2016  Peer-reviewedLead authorCorresponding author
  • USUI Tomomi
    Bulletin of the Japan Educational Administration Society, 41 92-108, Oct, 2015  Peer-reviewedLead author
    <p>The purpose of this study is to clarify the role of the school board in expanding education for foreign children in Japanese public schools.</p><p>The education policies related to foreign children in Japan, mainly serve the purpose of supporting children's entry to elementary schools or junior high schools and for teaching Japanese as a second language. On the other hand, at the national level, the concrete education policies that immigrant nations adopt do not exist in Japan, for example policies on second language education, improving students' achievement, and the way to guarantee rights on ethnic education for foreign children under the compulsory education system which educates the nation.</p><p>Therefore I focused on the role of the local school board to examine the possibility of guaranteeing or improving the academic achievement of foreign children especially in learning Japanese as a second language. As an example, I chose the policy adopted by the school board in Matsusaka City, Mie Prefecture. To analyze the characteristics of these policies, I quoted the analysis framework of international investigation that OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) investigated from the viewpoint of emigrant education policy analysis, that is "OECD Reviews of Migrant Education, Closing the Gap for Immigrant Students: Policies, Practice and Performance".</p><p>As a result of the analysis, I found that the role of the school board in Matsusaka City in expansion of education for foreign children is to bring about" the spread" and "the guarantee of the quality". "The spread" was carried out from two directions, namely, the spread of the practice for many schools and the common understanding between teachers or the people concerned. "The guarantee of the quality" was carried out from two directions, namely, the guarantee of the quality of educational practices and the professional teaching skill of teachers.</p><p>As a result of example analysis of Matsusaka City, what became clear was that it may guarantee "an opportunity to access the fundamental education" for foreign children, if it is supported by statutory grounds at a national level, but it cannot necessarily guarantee "the quality of education" for foreign children. The reason is because what kind of education and teaching systems are necessary differ according to the residence situation of the foreigner (for example, whether they are living concentratedly or dottedly, whether they are permanent residents or not, and whether they are multilingual). Therefore I concluded that the role of local school boards especially at a city level that can achieve "the spread of and the guarantee of the quality of" education for foreign children is to make policies based on the residence situation of the foreigner.</p>
  • Usui Tomomi
    Bulletin of school administration, 40 11-19, Apr, 2015  Lead author
  • 臼井 智美
    日本教育経営学会紀要, 54 129-136, Jun, 2012  Lead author
  • Usui Tomomi
    Bulletin of school administration, 37 43-56, Apr, 2012  Peer-reviewedLead author
  • USUI Tomomi, SUEMATSU Hiroki
    60(1) 33-48, Sep 30, 2011  Lead authorCorresponding author
    The purpose of this study is to develop the teacher training program on curriculum management (CM) and to test its effectiveness. The role of curriculum manager has been regarded important in the CM that is the center of school autonomy. However, the attempts to clarify the role and to develop the training program for them have not been enough. The teachers are faced with the lacks of practical frame of reference in the process of CM and their role development as curriculum manager. The research attempts should lead the CM practice. Therefore, this study develops the program and tests the effectiveness based of the reactions of trainees. The following points are set as a research issues. (1) the extraction of the degree of teachers' understanding of CM, (2) the clarification of the knowledge and ability to be mastered on CM, (3) the development of effective program to master those knowledge and ability.The essential contents to train curriculum manager are as follows; (1) the connection between school improvement and CM, (2) the relationship between "course of study" and CM, (3) the difference between "course of study" and curriculum, (4) the method to find and analyze the issues of trainees' own school.As a result of analysis of the trainees' reactions, the developed program is effective to foster their understanding of curriculum and the self-relevancy of school improvement. Furthermore, the program provides them with the view to regard CM as organizational activity and the opportunity for them to think about their own role in CM.
  • Usui Tomomi
    Bulletin of school administration, 36 22-30, Apr, 2011  Lead author
  • USUI Tomomi
    Memoirs of Osaka Kyoiku University Ser. 4 Education, pshychology, special support education and physical education, 59(2) 73-91, Feb 28, 2011  Lead author
    The purpose of this study is to clarify contents of teachers' abilities needed for teaching foreign pupils, and to clarify processes to cultivate these abilities. The abilities which are needed for teaching foreign pupils are little different from which needed for teaching Japanese pupils, that consist of three parts. The fundamental abilities are "abilities required as teachers generally", for example abilities for course instruction, psychological care, class management, and student guidance. "New knowledge and skills" needed for Japanese language education, multicultural tolerance, foreign language understanding. And "abilities for information-gathering and network to other persons". The time required to get these abilities depends on two main facts, the career of homeroom teacher and the environment supports teachers.
  • Usui Tomomi
    Bulletin of school administration, 35 51-72, Apr, 2010  Peer-reviewedLead author
  • Tomomi Usui
    CRIE review of international education, (4) 17-34, Mar, 2007  Peer-reviewedLead author
  • USUI Tomomi
    Tsukuba journal of educational studies, (1) 73-88, Mar, 2003  Peer-reviewedLead author
  • USUI Tomomi
    Journal of JASEA, 43 105-118, Jun, 2001  Peer-reviewedLead author
    This paper examines the leader behavior of a principal as a sense-maker to construct cooperative system among teachers in a school. It has been a research question about co-operation how the rational attainment of organizational goals could be coordinated with the members' satisfaction. So this paper describes one model of cooperative system among teachers in which the autonomy of teachers' decision-making, as an index about teachers' satisfaction, can be compatible with the organizational integration as an index about cohesion to attain organizational goals. The leader behavior of a principal to make such system is also explained in this paper. This paper uses Weick's theory of sensemaking to clear such research questions. Weick explains organization in terms of information process. Sensemaking is regarded as the most primary stage to process information. This is because sensemaking precedes interpretation, and interpretation constrains decisionmaking. Weick defines sensemaking as follows. "Sensemaking is about negotiation and construction of a mutually shared agreement of what causal linkages and outcome preferences constitute a confusing event". In terms of sensemaking, information process in a school is regarded as a process to reduce uncertainty or ambiguity with nonroutine information. A principal needs to make senses to reduce such uncertainty in the information process. The autonomy of teachers' decision-making is regarded as the situation that teachers are able to interpret senses made by a principal. The organizational integration is regarded as the situation that the sense is shared among teachers. This paper regarded one cooperative system among teachers as follows. That is teachers are integrated by sharing senses and have autonomies to decide their behaviors being able to keep various values to interpret senses. Then, a principal needs to play his or her role as a sense-maker whose sensemaking limits teachers' decision premises as a result so that such a cooperative system can be realized.

Major Books and Other Publications

 8

Research Projects

 12