The received wisdom is that the skill of manipulating instruments is one of the main components in laboratory work in science education. However, the skill is difficult for students to acquire, which serious situation influences that they have episodes for forming attitudes and develop the ability of problem-solving and cognitive strategies useful in learning and problem-solving. The situation also influences students' abilities to acquire scientific thinking, judgement, writing, communication and to improve their understanding. A pan scale is one of the instruments that elementary and lower secondary school students have recognized to be difficult to manipulate correctly. The main cause are as follows: 5th grade elementary school students have not acquired the scientific ability to bring the expect range of measurements to converge at the mass of the object on the pan every putting the scale weights on and off another pan. They also have not acquired the skill of judging whether the pan scale balances by simply watching the scale needle swings from side to side. This is because that they do not utilize the number line which they used when they learned addition and subtraction of a decimal in math classes in the 4th grade of elementary school. Former learns the skill of manipulating the pan scales since entering elementary school. The author invents the model material that students can use to rehearse manipulating skills of the pan scales. We obtained the following results in this case study: 5th grade elementary school students make the material and rehearse the skills of manipulating with it. This encourages them to adjust the difference between correct operation and their memories of its symbolic representation, linking the linguistic and imaginable representations required for operating the instrument, hence acquiring the scientific ability and the skill to make judgments. Students thus develop the ability to think scientifically in science classes while utilizing the number line learned in math classes, which concept becomes meaningful in both curricula.

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The purpose of this study is to find out the average and maximum speeds of three sprint distances 40 meters, 60 meters and 100 meters of fifth graders and examine how they feel about each distance by using multiple indicator models. The speed analysis made it clear that average and maximum speeds are significantly different according to the distance. The analysis results with multiple indicator models showed different consciousness factors for each distance: joy of playing sports and feeling of sprinting in the 40-meter sprint, motivation, degree of positive feeling and a sense of achievement in the 60-meter sprint, and a sense of fulfillment and competition in the 100-meter sprint. These feelings are strongly connected with each distance, whereas the sense of burden commonly expressed for all distances showed a weak connection with each distance. The author believes that the characteristics and students' feelings toward each sprint distance should be taken into consideration when sprint is taught in PE.

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This paper discusses the relationship between the educational philosopher Sukeichi Shinohara and the practitioner of the life-centered arithmetic Yoshinori Katori who was a teacher at Seikei Elementary School. Shinohara understood that the function of education was to assist children to rationalize the nature in Kant's philosophy. Katori - who felt a necessity to improve arithmetic education from a daily life-oriented arithmetic to a mathematical idea-oriented one - tried to reconstruct a curriculum for arithmetic education according to Shinohara's philosophical ideas. The arithmetic curriculum was restructured through two teaching/learning activities. One is the organization of daily life from the point of view of mathematical ideas, and the other is the application of mathematical ideas to daily life. Through this new curriculum, Katori had tried to promote children with inquiring minds toward mathematical and daily life tasks.

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The main purpose of this study is to examine the roles or functions that grammatical terms have in English education, from the viewpoints of those directly involved in English learning: learners and teachers. In order to do so, two investigations were conducted on learner and teacher participants at upper secondary schools in Japan. The first investigation consisted of a questionnaire for upper secondary school learners, asking for their impressions of English and their general opinions about grammatical terms. The second investigation consisted of a second questionnaire for upper secondary school teachers, looking at their frequency in the use of grammatical terms in English lessons, their opinions about grammatical terms in general, and questions about views of grammar instruction under the new future course of study. Then, comparisons were made between different questions for the learners and those for the teachers. Furthermore, another comparison of the opinions on grammatical terms in general between the teachers and the learners was made. The result implies 1) that learners' positive or negative impressions of English can affect their recognition of the functions that grammatical terms have, and 2) that there is a difference between the learners and the teachers, and between teachers themselves, in their degree of recognition as to the role of grammatical terms as a reminder for what learners learned before.

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Work sheets for junior high school students on learning through experiencing nature are presented herein. The work sheets are aimed at promoting students' academic achievement, especially the understanding of aquatic plants as well as scientific thinking. Contents of the work sheets are as follows: 1) observation and classification of aquatic plants, and 2) observation of stomata of floating plants. The work sheets were trialed on 109 first grade Japanese students in the Sera region of Hiroshima Prefecture in June 2011. A questionnaire was given to the students before and after the lessons. The results were the following: (1) Students understood that aquatic plants have bodies and functions suited for living underwater or near water, and at the same time, they understood that many kinds of rare aquatic plants inhabit the Sera region. (2) Students enhanced their comparison/classification skills through observing and classifying aquatic plants. (3) After noting the location and number of stomata among floating plants, students understood the connection between observations of the stomata and their habitat. The aims of the work sheets were achieved. In this work sheet, great emphasis was placed on students' activities such as observing objects/phenomena and expressing their findings which are highlighted as its main features. The results above were affected by these special features.

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The purpose of this study is to clarify the present conditions of life skill acquisition and the reasons for acquisition by 5th and 6th graders in elementary school in Okinawa. I carried out questionnaire surveys on 1,036 children from nine public schools. The results are as follows: 1. I performed a factor analysis on 60 question items about their life skill acquisition and made a life skill acquisition standard. From these results, the factors of "interest concern", "the eating habits", "environmental" and "clothes custom" were extracted. 2. Female participants had higher life skill factor scores than male participants. 3. The factors of "eating habits" and "clothes custom" were high among sixth graders when compared with the fifth graders' life skill acquisition score, and "interest concern" and "environment" were high among the fifth graders. 4. The factor of "environmental" was lower than other factors in general. 5. "Yes/No" answers for "Housework Participation of the Father" increased the "interest concern" and "environment" scores, and as for the "Working Presence of Mother" the life skill score was not affected. 6. Students who gave these reasons -"I like home economics", "For family", "For oneself", "For future occupation", "To help each other as a couple", "To teach my child about it" and "I want to be praised" had high life acquisition scores.

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This study will attempt to discover principles that bridge the general pedagogical courses and the subject content course and to identify the ability to think, make decisions and express themselves (idea from students). Furthermore, this study will try to clarify the required skills for fostering the ability.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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