The objective of this research is to verify the validity of peer feedback of Japanese university students when teaching English writing. 50 students and 13 teachers each reviewed a set of three English writing samples by both rating them on a scale from 1 to 5 and giving descriptive feedback. When students rated "Subcategories" (Content, Organization, Vocabulary, Language Use, Mechanics) and "Overall Evaluation", they ranked three samples in the same order as the teachers regardless of their writing ability. However, the absolute rating points of students and teachers were not consistent. As regards the validity of descriptive feedback, a remarkable difference is observed depending on the writing ability of the students. As a result of these findings, suggestions are made with regard to introducing peer feedback in teaching English writing to Japanese university students.

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"Civics" became a secondary school subject before World War II in the first half of the 1930s. It is positioned early in the history of "Social Studies" education. The development of this subject was epochmaking in the history of Japanese civics education. This paper looks at the development of "Civics" with regard to the concurrent development of cognition and citizenship. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the intended purpose of the "Civics" syllabus in relation to cognition and citizenship, and how this purpose was achieved in the development of textbooks. The result of the analysis is as follows: cognitive development is focused on general norm knowledge while citizenship is developed in two ways. One is citizenship in social-life, which means having an active agenda in social life. The other is national citizenship which relates to politics for national development. This study revealed that the development of both cognition and citizenship are predominantly effected by the important role of citizenship in "Civics".

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This study clarifies the roles of individuals and groups in the learning process to develop personality in elementary school home economics education. On the basis of the ideal methods for the learning process in our previous research, a concrete plan is shown for a subject an individual learns within a group. A plan consisting of seven unit-hours was developed in personal problem learning and interactive learning in groups. Through introducing such learning it was analyzed how individual learners can evaluate their own learning and group learning. According to the characteristics of learning, we clarified the different changes of posture for personal learning and the influence of groups.

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The purpose of this paper was to formulate a curriculum aimed at developing reasoning skills based on the Philosophy for Children program, and to propose the utility of such a curriculum. In the program various approaches, such as development of teaching materials, class practice and ability assessment, are investigated. The curriculum is composed of a number of reading texts. Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery, which is one of these textbooks, takes a leading role in the curriculum. In this research we created a Japanese version of this text and the accompanying curriculum, put it into practice in class and investigated reasoning skills. In the class practice, children actively discussed the content of the text, including philosophical elements, by applying reasoning skills. Moreover, in looking at the children's reasoning skills, the increase in scores from pretest to posttest was statistically significant. Our results confirmed that the class had a positive effect on the children's reasoning skills.

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Mutual speech activities in small groups were analyzed by looking at eye-contact and turn-taking in speech acts. As a result, it was revealed that the speakers' line of sight had a strong effect on turn-taking and that children with a lack of eye-contact with others tended to speak less. In accordance with these results, each member in the small groups was encouraged to recognize him or herself as being a listener, and then the children who spoke less learned to maintain eye-contact and gradually increased their amount of speech and backchanneling. This result suggests that we should not pursue speech-defining factors as being intrinsically caused by individuals, but we should see speech as an interactive event and proper instructions should be provided for better communication.

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The Singaporean Government started a process of educational reform in 2000 and a new syllabus has been introduced on a trial basis. In the reform, the implementation of national education, the improvement of information and technology education, extra-curricular activities and moral education are targeted. In this context, secondary school art education has shifted its emphasis as regards educational content and methods from the transmission of traditional culture to the creation of a national culture. The purpose of this article is to analyze actual examples in the new syllabus and textbooks and argue that the current reform has the following features: the emphasis on ideas for the purpose of expression; the emphasis on students' spontaneous learning; the cultural integration of Singaporeans; and the emphasis on visual language. In the conclusion, the article suggests that the function of secondary school art is changing to the development of creativity for the purpose of the creation of a national culture.

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In this paper, the uses of transitive-intransitive verb pairs appearing in the natural speech of learners of Japanese, based on OPI speech data, were analyzed. The findings indicate: 1) There are indications of similarities in the acquisition of transitive and intransitive verbs among English, Chinese and Korean learners of Japanese, that is, errors with transitive and intransitive verbs emerge in the data with upper level rather than intermediate level learners. 2) Various transitive and intransitive verbs are found in the error sentences. 3) Three types of transitive and intransitive verb pairs can be seen to be used by learners. These are: (1) both the transitive and intransitive verbs in the pairs are used; (2) most learners prefer only one verb of the transitive - intransitive pair; (3) learners have a preference for either the transitive or the intransitive verb of the pair, in roughly similar proportions. These results indicate that learners do not always use both transitive and intransitive verbs and may have some universal preference.

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This study tries to clarify teachers' qualities and competencies for instructing camp activities in natural settings. 170 instructors in social education facilities and 567 elementary school teachers participated in the survey conducted for this study. Factor analysis showed the following results: (1) teachers' qualities and competences perceived by the instructors in social education facilities were, "mutual understanding of principles/purposes of the program and skills for instructing a whole group"; "competencies/knowledge in safety control/instruction"; "knowledge of activities in natural settings"; "skills for planning/instructing activities"; "abilities in predicting situations and interpersonal skills"; "interests/motivation in activities"; and "vitality and physical strength". On the other hand, elementary school teachers perceived them as, "abilities of planning/pursuing the activities and instructional abilities"; "knowledge of activities in natural settings"; "interest in/motivation towards activities"; and "vitality and physical strength" (2) The teacher factor of "abilities of planning/pursuing the activities and instructional abilities" included the factors relating to instructions in social education instructions of, "mutual understanding of principles/purposes of the program and skills for instructing a whole group";"competencies/knowledge in safety control/instruction"; and "abilities in predicting situations and interpersonal skills". (3) Based on these factors, it was judged that the qualities and competencies perceived by the social education instructors are more valid.

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