In this paper, the thematic trends in poster presentations for early and middle childhood are first overviewed in the Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Japanese Association of Educational Psychology. Next, an overview of papers on issues of children's social skills and caregivers' involvements is given, which were the topics often addressed in the poster presentations. In particular, the target articles published in The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology during the three-year period from July 2016 to June 2019, as well as in The Japanese Journal of Psychology, The Japanese Journal of Development Psychology, and other papers published in international academic journals during the one-year period from July 2018 to June 2019, are reviewed.

  This article reviews studies on psychological development during adolescence and beyond. The target studies are journal articles published in Japan from July 2018 to June 2019, and poster presentations delivered at The 61st Annual Meeting of the Japanese Association of Educational Psychology. In the review, studies on adolescence are classified from the viewpoint of the stage of schools and main topics, and their contents are summarized. As a result, it is revealed that many of the studies delivered at the meeting were biased towards research about college students. Additionally, these studies also contained issues related to sampling methods, sample size, and the generalization of their research findings. As an alternative, it is suggested that the background, context, and characteristics of the participants and location of their colleges be carefully described.

  This paper reviews research on teaching and learning published in The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology, and research presented at the 61st annual meeting of The Japanese Association of Educational Psychology held at Nihon University. It is comprised of three parts. The first part introduces research published in The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology, and the second part introduces research presented at the 61st annual meeting. The third part describes how educational psychology can contribute to research on inquiry-based learning.

  The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of recent research trends in educational and social psychology, as well as to develop the perspective that educational and social psychology should make social contributions. In the first half of the paper, poster presentations on educational and social psychology presented at the 61st Annual Meeting of the Japanese Association of Educational Psychology, and papers in educational and social psychology published in The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology from July 2018 to June 2019, are reviewed. In the latter half of the paper, studies on applied field research in educational and social psychology published in The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology from July 2016 to June 2019 are reviewed. Based on the findings of these reviews, future issues in conducting applied field research in educational and social psychology are discussed in terms of multifaceted analysis and measurement, the accumulation of knowledge, and publication biases.

  This study aims to review longitudinal research on personality traits and identity process, and suggests further developments in personality research. To accomplish these aims, the author first confirms the conceptual validity among self, identity, and personality traits based on the three standard identity theory proposed by McAdams & Zapata-Gietl (2014). Second, the author reviews longitudinal research on personality traits, and discusses how personality trait changes are explained by the social investment principle and changes in self-concept clarity, volition, and sense of adjustments. Third, the author reviews identity process research and discusses the longitudinal relationships between identity processes and psychosocial problems and the specific characteristics of identity processes in Japan. Fourth, the author reviews longitudinal research in mutual development between personality traits and identity processes and discusses how directions of association between personality traits and identity processes are different depending on developmental stages. Fifth, the author proposes the "personal investment principle" which explains the development of personality traits in adolescence. Finally, the author discusses future perspectives and challenges in personality research.

  This article reviews current studies of clinical psychology published from June 2018 to June 2019 (including a part of 2017). First, we discuss the importance of Japanese clinical psychologists sharing common opinions on mental health, because "authorized clinical psychologists" were the first to be certified on a national level in 2018. Next, we provide an overview of the main trends and issues of the symposium and conference presentations from The 61st Annual Meeting of the Japanese Association of Educational Psychology, and also review the contents and points of value of 65 articles from seven main psychological journals representative of the five main clinical practice fields. The selected criteria included having helpful contents to maintain and increase mental health and meriting social recognition. Finally, three points of view are discussed as being necessary to understand when seeking mental health: acquisition and acceptance, good interaction of a unit and groups, and security for mental, physical and self-direction.

  In this paper, papers related to special support education published in The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology during the past five years are reviewed. Recent research themes in the journal were categorized into: (1) assessment, (2) investigation of psychological processes on educational difficulties, (3) counseling, and (4) implementation and verification of intervention programs. Psychological research treats disability as an internal stable characteristic of individuals with high explanatory power to understand the problem, suggesting that it is an individual model of disability based on empirical psychology. It is pointed out that such a view of disability is related to psychological models and research methods. Disabilities are embedded in psychological situations and environments, and not found in a specific individual. There is a need in future studies on inclusive education and psychology to face the challenges of learning theory by focusing on the situation and place, the third person approach of researchers, and the discrimination of researchers themselves.

  The purpose of this article is to review trends and issues in studies on school psychology published between July 2018 and June 2019 from the perspective of help-seeking. To enhance the "quality of school life" through the psycho-educational service, it is necessary to consider it with help-seeking. This article thus focuses on primary psycho-educational services such as preventive or developmental interventions, and help-seeking focused counseling. The results show that the past year witnessed more studies about psychological, social, and academic aspects than studies about aspects of carrier and physical health. In the studies on primary psycho-educational services, there are various programs which could meet the diverse needs of children. However, there were few studies on help-seeking. The article concludes by pointing out the importance of considering help-seeking in conducting primary, secondary and tertiary psycho-educational services.

  In this article, research related to educational measurement, evaluation, and research methods is reviewed. A majority of the articles were published from July 2018 through June 2019. In this paper, the relationship between the focus of these studies and the key concepts of improvement for developing a large-scale testing system, such as the university entrance examination, are illustrated. Recently the reformation of the Japanese university entrance examination system was forced to suspend. Thus, the findings of this article should be taken into account when discussing the new system for the university entrance examination from the viewpoint of psychological scale construction, methodological study of psychometrics, and feasibility of the test system, as well as the enhancement of the study environment of psychometrics and analytical methods.

  To clarify research trends of school psychology in the world, a literature review of the journal of the International School Psychological Association during the last three years was conducted. Sixty-four papers were extracted, and the regional trends, research method trends, and research theme trends were clarified. The results showed certain trends in school psychology: (1) research in school psychology is spreading to countries and regions where there has been little research, (2) studies focusing on "culture" have an increasing presence, (3) various kinds of interventions corresponding to each stage of psychoeducational services are seen, and (4) the role of the psychologist is strongly influenced by the educational situation and culture of the country. Finally, the significance of conducting international comparative studies and the role of educational psychology are briefly mentioned.

  Arts is the enterprise that only humans, among many kinds of animals, conduct. Therefore, studies to understand artistic processes and to support art learning could provide insights about the essential nature of human activities such as creativity, artistic expression, imagination, inspiration, communication with symbols, and flexible learning. This paper reviews psychological studies on artistic processes, such as artistic creation and art appreciation, including art learning, which were mainly published during the past ten years. There is a substantial number of psychological studies stemming from the cognitive approach that focus on the mechanism of artistic creation conducted in Japan. There has especially been an accumulation of studies on the development of ideas and skills, as well as mastery as an artist. Being stimulated by the development of neuroscience research, psychological studies on art appreciation are becoming popular in recent years. On the other hand, although there are various types of art learning programs conducted in schools and museums, the number of psychological studies focusing on art learning and art education is still limited. Future research that closely connects the findings from psychological studies of artistic processes with studies of art programs that aim at fruitful art learning and inspiration is needed.

  Sports activities are perceived from the viewpoint of three types of involvement: "doing," "watching/understanding," and "supporting." Moreover, the developmental stage of people involved in sports activities are divided into three life stages: pre-childhood, adolescence, and post-adulthood. Studies on motivation for sports activities published between 2009 and 2019 are organized based on positive aspects such as participating/continuing and negative aspects such as leaving, in the nine (3×3) quadrants described above. A review of previous studies confirmed that theory-based studies mainly used the self-determination theory or achievement goal theory, and this tendency has continued since the 1980s. The following issues are discussed as future research topics: (1) administering social projects using accumulated findings, (2) shifting from cross-sectional/retroactive research to research using prospective designs, and (3) focusing on a "new choice" other than participating/continuing or leaving when faced with unachievable tasks.

  In August 2019, the standards for establishing graduate schools were revised. All universities which hold doctoral courses should have training programs in university teaching for graduate students or provide such information to them. Training in university teaching for graduate students is called pre-FD. The TA system is also clearly defined as a training opportunity to teach. However, pre-FD is in the process of spreading and trial and error continues at each university. In this paper, for the purpose of contributing to the meaningful dissemination and establishment of pre-FD in the future, we first provide an overview of its background, and then touch on the TA system with its features. Furthermore, regarding the university professor preparation program, we review its characteristics and issues. Finally, based on the review, future challenges and research issues are presented.

  The curriculum guidelines to be implemented from fiscal 2020 aim at "proactive, interactive, and deep learning." Explanatory practices of teachers and/or among students are expected to achieve this goal. "Explaining" are language activities consisting of both explainers' describing an issue and recipients' becoming plain. However, in some classes, the explainers describe an issue one-sidedly, so the recipients themselves fail to understand it. And, in other classes, there are misunderstandings about characteristics and structures of "explanations as language activities," which is a serious problem. Alternatively, people sometimes wrongly think that presenting explanations only could lead to deep learning. Explanatory activities include difficult problems in epistemology that are relevant to "making it plain" to the recipients. In this respect, it is useful to examine the contributions made by educational psychology because explanatory practices to achieve deep learning in students are developed based on the findings of educational psychology. This article reviews how researchers have managed difficult tasks related to the original meaning of "explanation" and discusses the contributions made to explanatory practices by educational psychology. The main issues are as follows: (1) are explainers (teachers and/or students) able to recognize insufficient comprehension of the recipients; (2) are explainers able to improve the recipients' insufficient comprehension; and (3) have explanatory skills been developed for recognizing and improving the insufficient comprehension of recipients?