Issues of Educational Articulation Between High School and University: A Comparative Analysis between the USA and Japan

Abstract

Universities and colleges in Japan have experienced sweeping and sudden changes during these 10 years. Many factors are related to the change: universalization of higher education (HE), obligatory accreditation system, and so on. For example, “quality assurance” has rushed us into the reform of curriculum, program, and pedagogy. Many universities and colleges have now put stress on teaching and learning rather than research. Actually, many Japanese universities have introduced first-year experience program (FYE) to allow students to adjust smoothly to college life. This phenomenon accelerated after the late 1990s for the following reasons. First, Japan has moved from the “massification” to the “postmassification” stage. The purposes of this chapter are to discuss arguments of articulation issues in the postmassification era and then to examine real images of Japanese freshmen based on the Japanese Freshman Survey (JFS) conducted in 2008 for more than 19,000 students. Secondly, after analyzing the comparative study of first-year education between American and Japanese universities, this chapter will show the difference of articulation issues between two countries and examine the future direction of Japanese educational articulation. In conclusion, it is recommended to develop the concept of K16 framework based on the goal of learning outcome and pedagogy.