Early Childhood Education degree

I may have to relocate to Japan and I really want to continue my education and pursue a career in Early Childhood Education. I would like to teach English to preschool, kindergarten, or elementary schools.

I am really trying to find an English-speaking university in Japan that offers an Early Childhood Education degree. (Completely in English, as I am not even close to being fluent in Japanese) They have the degree at Shizuoka University, but I wasn't able to find on the website if they teach their classes in English or not. Does anyone know?

If I cannot find an English-speaking University that offers this, I was wondering how teaching jobs in Japan would view an online degree in this major? Are you considered less qualified if you have an online degree?

Any help is much appreciated. ‚ ‚肪‚Æ‚¤‚²‚´‚¢‚Ü‚·�B

You will have to directly contact the university to ascertain their teaching methods-it's a public university, thus safe to assume the courses are taught in Japanese.

How to Contact Us
Postal Address
Faculty of Education, Shizuoka University
836 Ohya, Shizuoka City
422-8529 JAPAN
All faculty members share this address.
Phone +81-54-237-1111 (switchboard)
Operators are available from 9am to 5pm (JST; GMT+9:00).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shizuoka_University -
http://www.ed.shizuoka.ac.jp/intro-e/Welcome.html
http://www.ed.shizuoka.ac.jp/intro-e/ed3.html

If you don't have prior Japanese language educations, you may consider these universities in Japan.

http://jguide.stanford.edu/site/universities_in_japan_with_english_ins...
ructions_298.html

I would suggest going and learning the Japanese language, many foreign students do this (who don't want to go to English only universities for whatever reasons (such as not offering the type of degree they want). I've seen some amazing things first hand.

"Online degrees" becareful especially for teaching, more respectful degrees come with actual hands on training, with instructors, classroom simulation, peer review (the whole works).

I know some Japanese. Right now, I am in Elementary Japanese I at my university. I will be taking II next semester. But of course, it is not nearly enough to go to a Japanese-speaking university.

I would love to go there to study Japanese. I believe that you can learn the language best if you are in the actual country. But, due to my situation, I do not have time to learn intensive Japanese first. In my case, I need to get a degree as soon as possible so I can start working.

Thank you for the advice, though!

You may need to change your nick name to 'logical' or 'sensible' since you have planned well ahead about your future - unlike other Japan dreamers. To teach English in Japan BA degree from Japan university carry less weight against U.S. or U.K degree - and Japanese studies you have now is sufficient for a daily survival - I do recommend enrolling at Shizuoka University in preparation for the teaching certificate, and participating in the exchange program offered by Shizuoka U may fit in your schedule.

I'm not sure I understand why you think a university in Japan would be teaching the kind of course you seek in a (to them) foreign language.

Surely applicants will be (primarily) Japanese, hence courses in Japanese?

It seems extremely unlikely that you would find an entire degree course in this subject in English in Japan. Incidentally, a teaching degree is not required for many English teaching jobs here, particularly for teaching children- I used to teach English at a kindergarten here, and my major at university was Spanish.

Online degrees are problematic as sometimes the institutions are not accredited. Also, in this field, it is hard to see how a course taken entirely online could be enough to qualify someone- surely a lot of practice actually interacting with and teaching children would be necessary for the qualification?

I know that the 100% online TESOL courses are not seen as real qualifications by reputable employers.

@ standfordgal -

Are you sure that my level of Japanese would be enough to survive in Japanese-only speaking courses? I don't know many vocabularies for this major.

@ Sira -

What if I got a US online degree from an accredited school? I want to do Early Childhood Education because I am most interested in it and I think it could help me a lot as far as what I want to do with my future.

Thanks again for all feedback!

In your thread you stated you are now taking Japanese class at the university your are attending,.. I written the basic Japanese taught in the U.S. university is sufficient for daily survival in Japan,... not for Japan junior high, high school, nor Japan university.

Regard to online colleges,... I have written on this topic before... whether the school is accredited or not in the U.S. does not mean Japan education board will accept the online degree since ANY organization can claim itself as the accrediting organization - only the online colleges accredited by the U.S. Department of Education, or by the particular State Board of Education, or is affiliated with university that is partnered with Japan university is commonly accepted/known in Japan.

For example - if you take several courses from the online college and those courses are acceptable to your State university, then there is no problem - but if you claim 4 years of online educations from John Doe College,...it may not say Online Degree,... such a unverifiable college degree will be a suspect. Especially if you are seeking a teaching position with the Prefecture Education Board - it may not make any difference with the agencies that contract in providing English instructor.

To be a teacher in Japan is same as in U.S. You must have the required college degree, plus additional trainings, and must pass for teaching credential or certificate approved by the government body.

I am in the same position in that I am looking for a Japanese university offering a BA degree in Early Childhood Education. I am actually a first year student studying in UBC, Vancouver now. I've only found out recently that the way the ECE degree programs are structured, it will limit me to teaching in Canadian schools which I am not planning to since I was looking to teaching in Japan for a couple of years.

There seems to a consensus that an ECE degree should better be pursued in UK or US. Is that with regards to ECE in general? I thought if I wanted to teach in Japan, it would be better if I took an ECE degree in Japan for my graduate studies. Am I wrong?

Michelle, do you speak and read Japanese at a native or near-native level? If not, how could you do graduate studies here? It takes several years of dedicated study just to reach that level of Japanese. If you want to do graduate studies in that field in English, you will need to do it in an English-speaking country.

Here are some colleges I found, you'll have to google them and check each school's website to see if they have what you need:
INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF JAPAN
KANSAI COLLEGE OF BUSINESS & LANGUAGES
Okinawa Christian University
RITSUMEIKAN ASIA PACIFIC UNIVERSITY
SOPHIA UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL DIVISION
TOKYO UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES (TUFS)
TOKYO UNIVERSITY OF PHARMACY AND LIFE SCIENCE
WASEDA UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF COMMERCE
All of these were listed on the GI Bill website as accredited schools in America.
The only thing is that most American colleges here in Japan are very expensive. I did see that Sophia University does an exchange with some American colleges, where you pay your tuition to your college back in America, but study here. Maybe you could set up an exchange if your college is listed there. They also have education undergrad degrees.
You don't necessarily have to have an early childhood education degree, or a teaching certificate to teach english here, (any college degree I think is accepted for the basic english schools)
but you do if you want to teach at a public (or private) Japanese or International school as a permanent teacher.
Also, online degrees are getting much better, but as others said, you need to be careful, and pick one from an accredited college, or you are just wasting your time and money. If you plan to get your teaching credentials post-grad, I'm pretty sure need to do that in the states, and you definitely can't do it online, as part of the credential is actually teaching classes in person.
Some of these colleges above require you to take Japanese classes, as they expect everyone to become bilingual during the course of their education, so that will help you if you plan to live here permanently too.
Good luck!