School education is currently faced with a variety of problems such as school refusal, falling academic standards, and classroom disruption. In order to cope with these contemporary issues, educators need to take a flexible approach which goes beyond subjects and old-fashioned frameworks supported by educational sciences and related fields, and which also suits the current setting of school institutes. For example, one of the serious problems, pupils’ and students’ learning difficulties, should be solved by teachers who possess a variety of knowledge, from the expertise of subject-based teaching skills to the understanding of pupils’ and students’ affective phases regarding interpersonal relations and developmental impairment, or to practical strategies which include class management and dealing with students’ families. At the same time, in order to be truly practical, the teachers’ diverse practical experiences and knowledge need to be not only gathered, but also organized based on the theories of social sciences.

The goal of Science for School Education is to cultivate high-level talented individuals who can grasp many types of problems in education from a scientific standpoint using an interdisciplinary approach and deal with the problems appropriately. In addition, by offering in-service teachers further substantial recurrent education, the school aims to actualize the smooth circulation of the current educational setting and the field of social science.

The major in Science for School Education is composed of two divisions, Division of Education and Human Development, which focuses on educational issues which support individual children’s development, and Division of Educational Management, Curriculum Development and Clinical Practice, which focuses on various educational problems which occur in the current educational setting.

In order to cope with various problems which occur in the school setting where children are supposed to develop naturally, a flexible and interdisciplinary approach is strongly required, which extends beyond the traditional patterns of thought based on social sciences such as pedagogy and psychology.

The goal of the Division of Education and Human Development is to develop talented individuals who will absorb a wide range of knowledge about pupils’ and students’ learning development, the process of physical, cognitive and social development of a range of people from infants to students in puberty, learning support for developmentally disabled children and profound and multiple disabled children, health support for pupils and students and will handle present-day issues.

Contemporary education is faced with various complex problems and these problems have become more serious year by year.

The theories from pedagogical and subject-based research are not sufficient to solve the problems. Research should be based on real educational settings and applied practice should be further required.

The goal of the Division of Educational Management, Curriculum Development and Clinical Practice is to cultivate talented individuals who can research educational issues from clinical and practical points of view, in other words, along with the educational setting and who can see the current issues in education both from a micro point of view and from practical and clinical point of view and intertwine the theories of pedagogy with practical fields in education.