The Annual Report of Educational Psychology in Japan

The purpose of e-Learning is to realize a new learning environment by combining the following 3 features of information and communication technologies: 1) learner's learning activities through learners' interaction, 2) supports for learning, using calculation and inference functions of computers, and 3) presentation of multimedia contents as learning resources. Furthermore, in order to realize this, it is necessary to develop systems and interfaces that realize or enhance the functions. Actually, various systems have been developed. The present paper reviews some theories and practice of advanced e-learning.

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Social changes and university reform in Japan have been challenging the traditional approach of university and college counselors. They are increasingly being called on to serve not only individual students, but also the campus as a whole. In the present article, I propose a community approach model for university and college counseling service. Counselors in search of this approach, with pragmatism and flexibility, will expand their roles and contribute to preventive intervention within the larger university community and to the development of university counseling professional communities. I touch upon the actual research and discussion pursued over the past several years in keeping with this model orientation, while identifying and discussing challenges that university and college counseling services and counselors are facing, including an identity problem for counselors, evaluation of counseling services, and the role of the professional counseling community as an advocate.

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Children with high functioning pervasive developmental disorder are said to have no problems in basic communication. They do, however, have difficulties in pragmatics, evidenced by their making statements considered by other people to be strange, and they find it difficult to participate in peer conversations at school. I believe that this is because these children, unlike their peers without communication difficulties, do not read between the lines of others' communications and do not understand the context. Communication and social skill support for children with high functioning autism seems to be effective, in addition to communication support in their interactions with their peers without disabilities. The published literature has no reports of systematic support of communication by children with high functioning autism in Japan through interaction with their peer group. The present article reports group support activities in communication and social skills, based on INREAL(INter Reactive Learning and communication), for 10 children (5th to 7th graders) with high functioning pervasive developmental disorders. The process of their learning to communicate their feelings and to adjust their emotions to reflect the presumed feelings of their communication partners was analyzed.

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An important contemporary issue is the development of interpersonal relations in the classroom. Teachers in Japan should help their students learn to be members of their group. Recently, students have lost the opportunity to learn social rules, because they no longer play with their peers in groups. Rather, they have relationships with a few peers only, and in such a small group, no experience with conflict. School events may be useful in order to help junior high school students develop their interpersonal relations. In the present paper, this assumption was examined in the context of a few cases. The results showed that the following might be important:(1) teachers should intervene in the communication among students in order to promote self-organization systems in the classroom; and (2) teachers should help students become conscious of cooperating within their peer group.

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