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Paper short abstract

This paper reports on the implementation of Digital Transformation at five municipal boards of education in Japan and considers its implications for the future of education and education policymaking.

Paper long abstract

Japan’s ambitious national policy for Digital Transformation (DX) is driven at the Cabinet level and is attracting immense public funds. Yet in education, policy is rarely implemented in local schools as intended. In short, the Ministry of Education, each local government, school teachers and other actors mediate how policies are enacted (Ball et al 2012). Jenny Ozga (2000: 113) calls for the study of ’other moments in the process of policy and policy enactment that go on in and around schools’ which are usually ‘marginalized or go unrecognized’ between ‘different groups who may lie outside of the formal machinery of official policy making'. This paper reports on the implementation of DX at five municipal boards of education in Japan and considers its implications for the future of education and education policymaking.

The national government based its vision for Digital Transformation on its ‘Society 5.0’ response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution zeitgeist. Policies for DX in education are not initiated by the Ministry of Education, but are ‘driven through it’ (see Bamkin 2024). The GIGA School initiative installed high-speed wifi in all schools and provided each student with a tablet; and local governments can now enter into partnerships with private providers and guest teachers. But what is really changing at the local level?

To answer this question, we undertook interviews with civil servants at the national level and, more importantly, with board of education officials and principals in five municipalities. The results shed light on infrastructural, administrative, and pedagogic changes; the changing role of teachers; and possible changes in the conceptualisation of what ‘learning’ means. These results shed light on changing power dynamics in the sphere of education in Japan.