高橋 哲

Dr. Satoshi Takahashi is an Associate Professor of Education Policy and Law at the School of Human Sciences at Osaka University, Japan. He earned his Ph.D. in Educational Political Science at Tohoku University. His research is on the right to comprehensive educational opportunities for all kids and adequate working conditions of school teachers to respond to those children's rights.  

Dr. Takahashi is also a 2016-17 Grantee of the Fulbright Program Scholarship and a current JSPS Scientist for Joint International Research at the Teachers College of Columbia University. 

His Dissertation, titled Teacher Unions and the Labor Law Reforms in the U.S.: Interactions between Teaching Professionalism and the Fundamental Labor Rights, was published in 2011 and the book received the Best Research Award from the Japan Society of Education Administration in 2012. His second book, Are They Labors or Professions?: Legal Theory for Adequate Working Conditions for School Teachers has received broad attention from educators and parents in describing the problem of huge working hours for public school teachers without compensation. Facing the problem of teacher shortages due to their detrimental working conditions, his research has focused on the law framework for school teachers and the restrictions of public school funding in Japan. Since policymakers have been unwilling to reform the law due to financial restrictions, his research theme extended to education policy-making through the courts. He embarked on litigation in Japan, based on the issues of overtime work of school teachers without pay, as a way to direct the government to spend adequate funding on public education. Approaching the issues of governmental financial restrictions, he modeled the school finance litigation in the U.S., initiated by Michael A. Rebell, a professor of education law and practice at Columbia University, to improve the school finance systems and education policy in each state.  

He also recently embarked on an international research project with Dr. Daniel E. Ferguson, an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University, to inquire about a “first graders problem” in Japan from the international perspectives of early childhood education policy and the curriculum structure. While the issue of the “first graders gap” has been regarded as a problem of children who were not prepared in kindergarten or nursery school to enter elementary schools, they found that the problem was caused by a curriculum gap and inappropriate education policy framework of elementary schools. Their research findings will be presented at the 2024 AERA Annual Conference in Philadelphia.