This paper reviews developmental studies on children in infancy, early, and middle childhood. The target studies are journal articles published in The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology, The Japanese Journal of Developmental Psychology, The Japanese Journal of Psychology, and The Japanese Psychological Research from July 2019 to June 2020. This review also addresses trends in poster presentations delivered at The 62nd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Association of Educational Psychology. Due to the large number of studies on children's social involvement, the journal articles are classified into three categories — involvement with parents, with teachers, and with people around the children — and then reviewed. The findings from the articles are highlighted and future directions are discussed.

  This article reviews studies on psychological development during adolescence, adulthood, and old age. The target studies were journal articles published in Japan from July 2019 to June 2020 and online poster presentations at The 62nd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Association of Educational Psychology in September 2020. In this review, studies on adolescence, adulthood, and old age are classified according to educational stage/life stage and topics are classified into five domains: the self, interpersonal relationships, learning, career development, and life. The contents of the studies are then summarized. There were few studies on high school students, but developmental periods, domains, and study methods were diverse and findings on life-span development could be accumulated. Additionally, the necessity and possibility of sharing data based on open science, linking macro and micro levels of time, and communicating science related to developmental views are discussed from the perspectives of bias in research subjects, development of research methods, and understanding of research results. These research efforts contribute to an understanding of an individual's diverse development.

  This paper reviews recent psychological research in the teaching, learning, and cognitive domains from the perspective of research methods, focusing on papers published in The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology in 2019-2020 and the research presentations of The 62nd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Educational Psychology, held in 2020. After analyzing the overall characteristics of the papers presented at The 62nd Annual Meeting on "Teaching, Learning, and Cognition," the research was reviewed in terms of the categories of "quantitative research," "qualitative research," "laboratory/small group experiments," and "quasi-experiments." Finally, research methodological issues found in recent research are described in terms of the questionnaire method, the application of the statistical analysis method, and the use of a one-group pretest-posttest design; then suggestions for future directions are made.

  The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the trends in educational and social psychology and to discuss the contribution of educational and social psychology studies to future practice. The first part of the article reviews the poster presentations on educational and social psychology presented at The 62nd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Association of Educational Psychology, as well as papers on educational and social psychology published in The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology from July 2019 to June 2020. In the second part of the article, the contribution of educational and social psychology studies on "Competencies for a New Era," proposed in the revised School National Curriculum Standard, are discussed in terms of autonomy and social skills. Based on these examinations, the importance of increasing the number of educational and social psychology practices in all subjects and developing an elaborate curriculum based on developmental stages is suggested.

  Trends in personality research in Japan over the past few years are reviewed from two perspectives. First, a comprehensive overview is given of the studies in which the Big Five scales have been used. The territorial and international reach of those studies is identified, and the limitations of their application to the findings are noted. Second, research on personalities such as sensitivities and dark triads, which tend to lead to pathologies and maladjustments, are reviewed and the findings on the positive aspects of these negative traits are discussed. The necessity of personality research for the coexistence of diverse individuals is discussed by examining the various aspects of "light/vulnerable/dark" personalities through these studies.

  This study provides an overview of trends in psychological research on special needs education in Japan. First, the major academic journals of Japan are broadly divided into the two categories "not directly related to disability" and "directly related to disability," and the amount and content of recent disability-related research (January 2017 to September 2020) are analyzed. In addition, a review of literature is conducted on trends in intervention research in persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and strategies are considered for intervention research to contribute to school education in Japan. This paper examines the following four points: the view of evidence-based practice as one of the ways to optimize the environment of things and humans, the significance of incorporating evidence-based practices into the environment, the direction to connect the evidence to the practice of school education, and the area of evidence required for future school education.

  The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of trends in research on school psychology published in Japan from July 2019 to June 2020 and to discuss future prospects for school psychology research. School psychology is a discipline that integrates school education and psychology, but it is necessary to build a foundation for integrating research findings. In this paper, we define school education as a system consisting of mutual provisions of "systematic device"-"local culture"-"individual act," and which dimension of school education each school psychology research focuses on. From this point of view, school psychology research was classified and organized. As a result, it became clear that relatively few studies were published during this period that focus on school education, including the dimension of "institution." Toward integrating school education and psychology, school psychology research requires a research design that keeps the dimension of "institution" in mind.

  Descriptions about planning sample sizes using a test of significance in 29 studies published in The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology from July 2019 to June 2020 were reviewed and compared with those in The Japanese Journal of Psychology, Japanese Psychological Research (JPR) and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP). The percentage of papers describing the statistical basis of sample sizes was the highest by approximately eight times in JPSP (93%) compared to the other three journals (7―15%). The author also examined if the effect sizes and confidence intervals, which are other crucial statistical reforms, were described in the results. Results indicated that all four journals described these more often than sample sizes and that all the papers in JPSP mentioned effect sizes and confidence intervals. On the other hand, 44% of The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology papers mentioned neither effect sizes nor confidence intervals. Finally, the author discusses measures to promote statistical reforms in The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology, especially in relation to sample size planning.

  This paper reviews the birth, growth, and future issue in learning sciences, an ever-growing discipline of human learning research. The first part summarizes its birth and growth from the early 1990s to 2010s as capturing the complexity and diversity of both student learning and teachers' visions and assessments of that learning. The middle part illustrates how the learning sciences has adapted to such complexity and diversity by introducing a transition of its methodology from a packaging approach of design-based research to a vision-presenting approach of design-based research or design-based implementation research. The final part identifies a future issue of how to create a new academic area of sciences of practice that empowers every practitioner to build hypotheses of how children learn, test them in her or his practice, and deepen the understanding of the complexity and diversity.

  As various school crises, such as bullying and disasters, occur increasingly, resilience has become a key word in support at all stages in the prevention and recovery phases of school crises. This paper focuses on developing sustainable child resilience in Japanese schools during school crises. The paper is organized as follows: (1)the concept of school crisis and resilience is explained; (2)the findings of resilience research with Japanese children are summarized, and then the need for longitudinal research is described; (3)this is followed by a summary of the issues related to the development of resilience in Japanese schools by looking at resilience-building programs and the efforts being made in school education activities in the "prevention phase" and the "recovery phase" before and after a school crisis, respectively. Additionally, the following are examined: (4)based on the knowledge of curriculum, classroom management, and teacher involvement, and (5) to develop resilience in schools, the interaction between programs and school education activities is important, especially in developing resilience in schools. Therefore, we suggest this approach.

  In recent years, the problem of "child poverty" has become a big issue in Japan. However, none of the papers that the Japanese Association of Educational Psychology has published has dealt with this problem, so it would be fair to say that our Association has not directly addressed this problem. On the other hand, other research disciplines and academic societies, including those in other areas of psychology, have started discussing this problem, and some intervention practices have been implemented both privately and publicly. The current article reviews the findings of child poverty from other areas and describes an educational approach that the authors have conducted for years by collaborating with a nonprofit organization supporting children in families receiving welfare support. This practice utilizes the idea of "cognitive counseling" to cultivate the development of students' learning skills and beliefs for self-regulated learning, and it is based on psychological perspectives. Interview results show that, although no significant changes have been produced, there are important, notable changes that have occurred through this practice. By analyzing this practice qualitatively, the paper examines why the psychological views and the idea of "cognitive counseling" are perceived as challenging to use in learning support against child poverty. It proposes how to encourage staff who support children in poverty to utilize psychological perspectives in their practices.

  This paper discusses issues related to the contribution of statistical synthesis of research findings, such as meta-analysis and synthesizing a number of existing meta-analysis results by means of the same procedure as meta-analysis (i.e., super-synthesis), which could play a dual role of disciplined inquiry for education in understanding the chosen phenomenon and conceptualizing theories, and providing information wanted by decision-makers. We describe the brief history that Japanese educational psychologists have accepted meta-analysis and its recent research trends, and indicate the significance that the statistical synthesis of research findings could have. Specifically, it has affected attitudes to drawing conclusions from the accumulated literature through considering primary research as an individual sample. It is also pointed out that the widespread adoption of statistical research synthesis might have led both researchers and decision-makers to an overly simplistic view, which focuses only on the effect size and has encouraged the rough use of research findings, with the background of a growing debate on promoting evidence-based education. We then discuss the following: The statistical synthesis of research findings makes reasonable contributions to understanding phenomena and establishing theories. However, meta-analysis based on individual data is required to draw causal inferences, and in order to do so, it will be necessary to promote open science. Also, there will be some potential risks that statistical research synthesis can narrow classroom practitioners' choices, and therefore weaken their autonomy, because it can be considered as the high-level of evidence and its results tend to be presented in terms of simple indices such as mean effect size. Throughout this discussion, the following conclusions are drawn. For understanding phenomena and establishing theories, the statistical synthesis of research findings can be an effective methodology to improve the external validity of the existing research literature, and evaluate the relevance or validity of psychological constructs. Thereby, it is supposed to improve the accuracy and certainty of theories of educational psychology. These findings can provide information on "what works" and clear guiding principles that decision-makers demand. The issues pointed out in this discussion call into question the impact of educational psychological research findings on areas outside of their discipline, as well as some problems related to the statistical research synthesis. Finally, we argue that in order to promote both roles of disciplined inquiry for education with statistical research syntheses, educational psychologists and experts from other fields should be conscious of the need for communicating warranted findings with each other.