Abstract
Since university and college students are more diversified in recent years, more students who show academic difficulty are entering into higher education. For the purpose of constructing campus-wide supporting system for those students, this study examines when and how the faculty members feel difficulty teaching some students. Among 705 faculty members, 217 completed the questionnaire, 57 full-time faculty members, 159 part-time instructors, and 1 unknown. 57.9% of full-time faculty members answered that they have had experienced difficulty teaching some students, which number far exceeds 27.0% of the part-time instructors. Problems concerning “psychiatric symptoms” was the most frequent answer that the full-time faculty members felt difficulty about, followed by “learning skills” and “academic ability.” The full-time faculty members showed higher frequency on having been sought for advise about non-academic problems by students, having worked cooperatively with the student counseling center, and wishing future cooperation with the center, than part-time instructors. The student counseling center was expected not only to give individual counseling to the students, but also to give some advice to teachers how they should treat students on a case-by-case basis. The result shows that the student counseling center is expected to function as a team of psychological specialists. As for the administrative system of the university, more individualized student support system, such as recruiting teaching assistants (TA) or tutors, increasing the number of small classes, and enabling teachers to conduct one by one teacher-student instruction, was awaited.
