Autonomy and Self-government in Indigenous territories in the diverse America

Between 2001 and 2006, Junichiro Koizumi was the Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party. During his tenure, Koizumi introduced several neo-liberalist policies, including market theory principles, as a means of reforming a range of public services, including those of public education. Prior to the introduction of these policies, there was a limit to the number of universities that could provide pre-service programmes for primary school teachers, with programmes provided on a supply and demand service. However, following Koizumi’s policies of deregulation, any type of university was able to provide pre-service teacher education programmes for prospective primary school teachers. Of course, there will be those that view this deregulation as a means of achieving healthy competition, but it is also worth considering the ulterior motives for academic institutions that began offering these programmes following the deregulation. For one thing, those who had provided such programmes prior to 2001 had done so for a number of years and generally had the requisite amount of experience and expertise, while the ‘new’ programme providers had not necessarily demonstrated their capability and suitability for doing so. Indeed, prior to deregulation, there were approximately 100 providers of pre-service programmes for primary school teachers, but now there are over 200. From here, we might ask whether this increased competition has had the undesired effect of diluting the quality of the services provided and, if this is the case, what effect this has had on the quality of teachers that go through the programmes. Professor Yasuyuki Iwata is based within the Research Centre for Education in the Next Generation at Tokyo Gakugei University in Japan, and is investigating how neo-liberalist educational policies have affected the qualities and competencies of prospective teachers in Japan.