This study investigates how the roles and functions of schools and teachers have been reorganized and transformed by the current radical educational reform in a changing society, from a comparative, sociological perspective, and conducted the following three major works.
1. Comparative and sociological research on recent educational reforms and policies in the countries like Japan, UK and USA : In many developed countries including Japan, UK and USA, radical education reforms have taken place for the purposes of educational quality enhancement, excellence seeking, administrative efficiency and transparency in education, and so forth. Some dangers are involved in these reform movements, such as the danger of restructuring education by "the logic of the strength" that is tied up with neo-liberal and market-oriented ideologies ; the dangers of neglecting the comprehensiveness, collaborative nature and professional expertise of teachers and teaching and of the trivialization of teacher's role ; the danger of newly emerging management and control style by testing and audit culture ; and the danger of undermining and deteriorating the trust toward and confidence of teachers and the legitimacy of teacher roles.
2. Analysis of the questionnaire survey on teachers' life and work conducted in Japan, China and UK : Survey items cover teacher's daily life ; teacher-student relationship ; collegial relations among teachers ; teachers' views of students, education and teaching profession ; parents' expectations to schools and teachers ; activities and their composition of teachers' work ; school management ; teaching practices and efforts to develop teaching capacity ; and so forth. The following aspects and themes are investigated, such as the structure of teacher's work and autonomy ; forms, conditions and culture of collegiality, collaboration, cooperation and community of teachers ; the structure of professional expertise and confidence of teachers ; changes of educational environments and their associated intensification of teaching job ; and modes of teaching practices and teachers' habitus. It revealed that the level of collegiality and collaboration is higher among Japanese teachers than among Chinese or British teachers and that its level and modes are linked with and embedded in institutional and organizational arrangements of Japanese schools and educational apparatuses.
3. International Conference on Teaching and Teacher Education in the 21^<st> Century was hosted at International Christian University in December 2003. Major findings of the above-mentioned two researches were presented at various conferences held both inside and outside Japan, and published as articles for academic journals, as book chapters and as two research reports.