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Educational Sciences

What Makes Us Human?
Comprehensive Human Science Exploring Fundamental Themes

What makes us human? Educational sciences tackle this question.

Understanding human development involves combining the results and methods of almost every field of science rather than studying from the perspective of a single narrow academic discipline.

Students in the Educational Sciences program take a theoretical and practical approach using comprehensive human science to examine the ultimate mysteries of humanity—such as the formation of our own characters and the process of development—employing a diverse range of research methods.

Students will evolve from recipients of existing knowledge who only acquire and accumulate knowledge to producers of creative knowledge who apply their own perspectives and theories.

This program is aimed at giving students the basic and applied skills necessary to transform themselves through higher education and use these strengths in educational and other social regions.

Objective: Refine Practical Intelligence in Five Areas

The goal of this program is to foster the insights necessary to discover problems, the methodology and skills necessary to accurately observe and analyze phenomena, and the practical intelligence needed to form conclusions and practical solutions.

The Educational Sciences program consists of five different areas, which include basic science related to human development and practical science focused on the resolution of problems related to human development. Each area has full-time faculty members.

Basic science: educational philosophy, history, and sociology of education
Practical science: educational methodology and educational development studies

Students explore a wide range of disciplines related to human development, which will create job opportunities in the world of research as well as in many other occupations. Approximately 20 percent of program graduates continue on to graduate school, another 20 percent enter teaching, and 60 percent find work in the civil service, media, or general corporations.

Features: Learn in the field  and lead the way to individuality

The courses shared across the department (taken during the first year) present an invitation to the world of educational research. Strengthen your interest and polish your sense of human development. Specialized lectures start mainly with introductory courses in the first year, during which students learn the basics of educational sciences and discover approaches that match their own interests. In seminars that begin from the second year, students deepen their approaches. These small-class seminars, which are taken on students’ own initiatives, offer students an opportunity to discover their own individuality.

The action research program designed for first- and second-year students involve observing a wide range of life-span development at schools, educational facilities and other locations. This helps expand the student’s perspective on human development. The graduation thesis is a monument to the results of four years of research conducted during the student’s academic career.

Students taking this program can obtain a teaching license for elementary, middle and high schools.

Sociology

Doubt, and See. Analyze to Solve Problems.
Comprehensive Research on Society and Human Actions

Sociology is a discipline that researches the social aspects of human actions and awareness, the social structure and function of organizations and societies, and social change. 

Courses in Sociology examine topics such as the individual personalities embedded in society, interrelationships between people, the cultures born from these interrelationships, social systems, and the mechanisms of society as a whole. 

Specific areas of research include discovering self-identity and family, mass media, styles of communication, ethnicity, environment, corporations, occupations, consumption, delinquency and crime, leisure, hierarchies and classes, youth culture, schools, social welfare, regional development, cities, and the sociology of law. 

The primary subjects examined are found in areas such as current events and the latest societal phenomena. As students formulate and prove theories, they cultivate new perspectives for viewing society. 

Objective: Clarify Reality through Theories

Students learn the two basic concepts of theory and proof, and acquire the ability to think in terms of social science and analytical methods. They use these skills to analyze concrete societal phenomena that occur in areas such as communications, media, social welfare, the elderly, the environment, gender, and family. This program also seeks to foster an awareness of issues in human society, thereby enabling students to autonomously and proactively work on resolving various problems by analyzing backgrounds and causes. 

Graduates apply this specialized knowledge to jobs in the media, civil service, nonprofit organizations, domestic and international research agencies, the human resource and public relations departments of general corporations, and corporations in the IT industry. Many go on to attain more specialized knowledge in graduate school, with some even taking the podium themselves as university professors or passionately applying themselves to research of their own. 

Features: Methodologies and Seminars That Emphasize Related Sciences

This program offers diverse courses that touch upon many different research areas. Compulsory courses include the Introduction to Sociology lecture—which offers a concise and informative outline of sociology—as well as Research Methods in Sociology, which teaches students the overall process of conducting social research. Students acquire the basics of sociology and cultural anthropology through a wide range of courses in related fields such as educational sociology, geography, and life science. Adjunct instructors also come in from off-campus. 

Students learn various types of research methods, including theoretical study with a focus on literature, fieldwork into regional society, metrical studies that apply computing power, and others. The significance of qualitative and quantitative sociological research methods is acknowledged because these methods are effective means that accurately explain the realities of societies in corporations, municipalities, communities, and so on. 

Priority is given to the creation of graduate theses as culminations of the lively debates in seminars, based on knowledge students absorbed during lectures.

Child Studies

Researching the Processes and Structures That Generate Humanity, Society and Culture through Theories, Practices and Dialog in the Interdisciplinary Field of Children

The Child Studies program begins with an inquiry about society, culture and human existence in the interdisciplinary field of children, based on a realization of the standards of adults, which are dominated by unspoken assumptions.
 

This program considers a new relationship between adults and children: what and how changes occur by applying the standards of child studies to education, corporations, the civil service, the world of academic research, and local communities. 

Objective: Inquiring about the Processes and Structures of Generating Humanity, Society and Culture from Children

Our world is comprised of a diverse range of people. Children are one element of that diversity. They are born into this world and then grow up while having a variety of experiences. Although the world has constructed systems that raise, support and educate children, we now find ourselves facing one new challenge after another. 

Students in the Child Studies program consider a wide range of problems affecting children. When grappling with such issues, though, are we often swayed by the challenges confronting us? Although it may seem like an indirect path to follow, to take on the problems facing children without being distracted by the problems we ourselves face requires us to acquire a wide range of knowledge and experiences. This program explores what it means to be human based on a consideration of the challenges children face, as well as the social and cultural structures that exist. 

Features: Diverse Learning through Theory, Implementation and Dialog

Students in the Child Studies program learn about the basics of their specialty through theories regarding children, childcare and childhood education viewed from various multifaceted perspectives on a wide range of specialized areas. By relativizing and comprehending childhood—which is a period of life we have all passed through—we can expand our field of view through children to include humanity, society and culture as well. Students also participate in fieldwork and internships in the on-campus facilities (such as Izumi Day Nursery, Ochanomizu University Certified Center for Early Childhood Education and Care, and the Affiliated Kindergarten) and others to gain practical knowledge of children and their environments. 

Dialog is the key aspect of these studies, which can be deepened through repeated discussions between students, teachers, children, childcare practitioners and the student-herself, among others. Starting from seminars in the second half of the second year, students will come to appreciate academic dialog and deepen their concern for their own problems, culminating in the writing of their graduation theses after four years. 

This program also offers training courses for kindergarten teachers.