Trends and Effects of Science Educational Practice in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan

Abstract

In Science education in Japan, there has been a great deal of interest and research on what kinds of teaching practices can best develop the qualities and abilities of students. However, it is difficult to compare and examine the findings of these practice studies based on the same scale, and there are few findings of meta-analysis on science education practices. Although educational activities are based on the content set out in the Courses of Study, each municipality implements a variety of its own educational policies (Tanaka, 2020). In this study, meta-analysis was conducted on research articles on Science educational practices in Ibaraki Prefecture. The mean effect size was estimated to be g=0.640 overall, g=0.780 for binary data, and g=0.617 for multilevel data, respectively. These values were similar to, or slightly larger than, the g values found in the survey of Nakamura et al. (2020), which was a meta-analysis for a nationwide scale. The effect size differed significantly depending on the survey used to measure the qualities and abilities, especially when “thinking skills” were measured by descriptive analysis (estimated to be g=1.272). Integrating the effect sizes of educational practices through meta-analysis can provide important insights into which educational practices are most effective in developing students’ qualities and abilities, as well as which practices lead to improvements in teaching methods.