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Our mission is to produce professional teachers for Japanese public and private elementary schools, junior high schools, high schools, and special education schools. After providing incoming students with solid liberal arts foundation, our curriculum focuses its attention onto students’ departmental majors within the Faculty of Education. The course of study for each departmental major is composed of two basic types of courses: higher-level academic courses specific to each major in order to deepen students’ knowledge of their field; and pedagogical courses — such as educational theory, psychology, teaching methodology, and education for children/adults with special needs — in order to provide students with opportunities to understand human relationships and environments in depth, to theoretically consider education, and to develop practical teaching skills.

As it is crucial for teacher training courses such as ours to provide students with real opportunities to teach, we have a unique and distinctive curriculum in which students, from freshman to senior, actually go to schools as observers and interns. In particular, the teaching internship for third-year students is emphasized in our curriculum. Our third-year students do practical teaching internships at schools affiliated with the Faculty of Education and at other public schools in Gunma Prefecture. These internships widen students’ perspectives on schooling and education. After the internships are completed, students autonomously continue their development as professional teachers, namely by researching and producing an academic thesis in their major.

Our policy is to combine academic courses with authentic practical teaching experiences at schools.

The Graduate School of Education at Gunma University offers two programs:

1) Master of Education
2) Master of Professional Development for Education

Each program aims to produce teachers with more highly advanced professional skills.

The Master of Education program consists of education courses related to primary and secondary school subjects and courses on education for children with special needs. This program aims to produce more specialized experts of school education. We train our graduate students to be knowledgeable and skillful in their specific field, to practice good teaching by adjusting to real classroom situations, and to take on positions of greater responsibility and leadership within their schools.

In the Master of Professional Development for Education program, we offer advanced training for serving teachers with years of experience and for people who have entered directly from their undergraduate studies. This program aims to produce skillful teachers and leaders that can develop and support educational systems that will meet the demands of both individual schools and Japanese society at large. A significant part of our philosophy is that teachers should be able to identify, analyze, and solve problems within schools.