Changes and Characteristics of the Research on Japanese History Education - Focused on Doctoral Thesis -

This paper is aimed at elucidating the changes and characteristics of Japanese history education research based on postwar Japanese doctoral thesis. The research on Japanese history education, in this paper, was divided into three periods; the Searching period (before the 1970s), the Growth period (1970s-1990s), and the Development period (after the 2000s). And the research trends, contents, and characteristics were analyzed by period. The results of the analysis are summarized as follows.First, the Searching period refers to the time when the firstgeneration of researchers initiated research on historical education and sought its directions. The Growth period marks the era when the second-generation researchers pioneered new study areas and established research methodologies. The Development period represents the time when the subsequent generations expanded research subjects and further advanced research methodologies.Second, the research on the searching period includes international comparative studies of history textbooks and studies on development and transformation of historical consciousness. These studies were not individual efforts but collaborative research conducted at the level of universities or academic societies, reflecting an intention to establish the research subjects and methods of history education studies.Third, the research on the growth period includes historical research, study on the development of history education content, and research on the analysis of lesson practice. Historical research includes studies on the history of establishment of social studies in Japan and the United States, analysis on the establishment of history studies and curriculum theory in Germany, analysis on the process of establishment and contents of social studies history textbooks for Japanese middle schools, and analysis on the process of change in history education in Korea. The common feature of research on the development historical education content is that it presents a consistent logic of goals, content, and methods based on learning principles and perspectives such as theoretical criticism learning, open interpretation learning, and social history teaching, and analyzes cases or writes teaching manuals. The study on analysis of lesson practice mainly focuses on History Educationalist Conference of Japan.Fourth, the research on the development period can be categorized into historical research, theoretical research, learning theory research, curriculum development and content organization research, lesson analysis and development research, and case studies using qualitative research methods.The main topics of historical research are study on history textbooks and historical education theory and learning theory. Both theoretical and learning theory researches make an attempt to derive and categorize learning principles by analyzing foreign historical education reform theories and learning ones. Most researches on curriculum development and content organization also analyze foreign cases to clarify its theories and methods. The study on lesson analysis and development is focusing on middle school history lesson and multicultural history one. Case study utilizing qualitative research methods, which first emerged in the 2020s, aimed to develop and implement mentoring programs to support teacher professionalism, and to clarify the criteria for determining historical significance.During this period, research methodologies became more diverse and advanced, alongside the expansion of research areas and subjects. There are also researches that develop the methodology established by second-generation researchers to present a historical learning theory with consistency in its goals contents and methods, then categorize the theory and evaluate the characteristics and superiority of each type, or that develop consistent educational content and lesson models based on the theory, and suggest learning assessment and lesson evaluation method. New techniques like action research are being utilized, and new method of qualitative analysis are being introduced.