Further professional training for elementary and secondary school teachers in Japan

The article focusses on the system of further vocational education for Japanese teachers which is to the greater part based on a network of cooperation among colleagues. It is shown in what way the Japanese conception of teaching as a craft determines the professional career of teachers in the field of primary and secondary schooling. In Japan, the highly developed form of further education accompanying the professional practice has led to a professional culture in which knowledge relating to pedagogical action is continuously submitted to a process of reformulation and change. This dynamism has to be balanced against the disadvantageous fact that further professional education for teachers is only possible within the framework of the existing culture of instruction and draws not enough on either the universities or educational research on teaching.