学習アドバイザーの学習支援活動に関する考察 : 東京経済大学英語学習アドバイザーにおける取り組みを事例として

Abstract

For a long time it has been a dominant view among university staff in Japan that it is the students' job to search and find effective study methods and to deepen their knowledge and skills in their respective fields. The professors had strongly believed that the most important role of the educators in tertiary education is to strengthen their expertise and impart it to their students. However, in recent years they have gradually realized that their view is too optimistic. They had found out that a great deal of university students in these days are not equipped with strategies to study autonomously and cannot begin to study until teachers give them specific and detailed directions. What makes things even worse is that they have had to deal with students who have pathetic attitudes towards learning. Nowadays it has become a dominant view that only teaching in class is not enough to effectively develop students’ ability to study. These days, it gets more and more emphasized how important it is to support the students’study "out of class". This has been recognized for nearly 50 years in the US and is only now looked into here in Japan. Study advisors, the main theme of this article, have attracted attention as a staff who will play a central role in supporting students' self-study and who will also function as a bridge between students and teaching staff. In this article, the history of study advising in the US and Japan will be briefly reviewed. This will be followed by a discussion about the present situation of the study advising system in Japanese universities, taking the activities in Tokyo Keizai University as an analogy. The purpose of this article is to develop the English study advisor system in Tokyo Keizai University, which will hopefully lead to be promoted and implemented in universities all over Japan.