The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the years of teaching experience and the characteristics of elementary school math teachers’ PCK. Participants of this study were elementary school math teachers, graduate school students, and college students. They were interviewed while watching a video clip of a math class in progress. The major findings were as follows. The beginners tended to focus on the superficial task of teaching, while mid-career teachers tried to understand the intent of the teacher in connection with the remarks of the children. These more experienced teachers reacted to the video as if they were teaching in the classroom suggesting that they constructed a dynamic situation model, which allowed them to speak out before and after the classroom task.

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Recently, the promotion of inclusive education has been a pressing issue; however, there has been little progress in the reform of mainstream education, despite this being an important step toward achieving inclusive education. Considering such problems, focusing on Japanese language education, a subject in the mainstream Japanese curriculum, the present study examines inclusive Japanese language classrooms for various learners and seeks to promote learning of both students with special needs and students without them in an elementary school Japanese language classroom. As a result, the following were identified as necessary requirements in order to implement inclusive Japanese language classrooms: (1) enhancement of language activities while the teacher set effective learning objectives for the unit; (2) comprehensive evaluation of students’ learning in accordance with learning objectives (value and skill objectives) and activity objectives; (3) establishment of skill objectives to utilize students’ experiences as key learning and the teacher’s support to link students’ experiences with learning; and (4) cooperative learning in which students with special educational consideration and those without it show their various “understanding” and “abilities.”

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The purpose of this study is to develop health education lessons in order to foster health information literacy among junior high school students, and to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of these lessons on them. Students who were enrolled at a junior high school attached to a national university received a lesson about health information in the first semester of 1st grade and another lesson in the second semester of 2nd grade. In both lessons, a health information assessment sheet developed by the authors was administered. The effectiveness of the lessons was assessed by a critical thinking ability scale on health information before and after each lesson. Though the average of their scale scores increased after the 1st lesson, the average score fell before the 2nd lesson. The average score after the 2nd lesson increased again, and it was the highest during the period. The follow-up lesson was effective for promoting and maintaining students’ health information literacy even if the interval between two lessons was over one year.

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The purpose of this study is to clarify the vocabulary which should be taught during junior high school in Japanese language education. It is important to teach vocabulary related to each subject in Japanese language education; however, this study doesn’t say that the vocabulary to be taught is not a technical term of each subject. I define the vocabulary which should be taught as follows: It is the vocabulary required for each subject, not being used daily, required in society in general. For selecting vocabulary, I created the “junior high school textbook corpus” first and then the “junior high school study vocabulary table” based on the corpus, and chose the vocabulary items. I used an index of feature degrees and of vocabulary levels. Furthermore, for some words, I showed examples from textbooks. Moreover, I described the necessity for instruction in Japanese language education. Therefore, this study concludes that it is important to select the vocabulary which should be taught in junior high school by corpus. The vocabulary which is used with many subjects and technical terms should be learned; moreover, the vocabulary effective for Japanese language acquisition should be learned by students.

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Information Studies faces numerous challenges, such as untaught compulsory subjects and teacher recruitment．To solve these issues, it is critical to identify the unique qualities and abilities that are expected to be acquired as the subject’s objectives through its knowledge and through learning the necessary skills, besides the development of generic ability. This paper, calling such qualities and abilities ‘information perspectives and thinking’, aims to propose their definitions, frameworks and central concepts. By considering the perspectives that form the background of the Science Council of Japan proposed ‘new academic system’ and the thought behind the UK’s revisions to ICT education, we tentatively propose a trial plan concerning the qualities and capabilities that Information Education should nurture. We defined ‘perspectives and thinking to understand various phenomena in the context of information’ as ‘information perspectives and thinking’. The qualities and capabilities that comprise ‘information perspectives and thinking’ are proposed as 10 central concepts. These concepts can be organized into the two fields of ‘epistemological science’ and‘ designing science’ suggested by the Science Council of Japan．

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The purpose of this research is to make it clear that “recognition of the significance in science learning” has various influences on “motivation” by catching motivation from self-determination. First, a questionnaire of recognition and motivation of the significance in science learning was considered and created. Second, an investigation was conducted by means of these questionnaires targeted at junior high school students, and it was made clear by covariance structural analysis about what kind of influence recognition of the significance in science learning is having on motivation based on the survey results. The results: (1) showed that when the learners think that the significance in science learning is “scientific ability” it has a positive influence on “intrinsic motivation” “identified regulation” and it has a negative influence on “external motivation,” (2) showed that when the learners think that it is “understanding of science and immediate nature or understanding of science and daily life” it has a positive influence on “intrinsic motivation,” and “identified regulation”.

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Children must make decisions about how to wear clothes depending on the environmental conditions for sustainable clothing life. Damage from UV radiation should be minimized. Therefore, this study developed educational content for Home Economics classes in which the children were required to develop a sun protection scheme using clothing. It was intended that children explore the following questions: (1) Why do we need a sun protection scheme? (2) How should clothing be used for it? Transmission of UV radiation through clothing was examined in the environmental conditions such as season, weather, and location. Measurements using UV labels were examined for their potential in a sun protection scheme. The main results are as follows: (1) Clothing is extremely useful for sun protection. The amount of UV rays transmitted is affected by a fabric’s density, thickness, and hue (brightness). (2) In the sample fabric and clothing, considering the above-mentioned characteristics, the transmission of UV rays was higher in clear weather and outdoors. In spring, the amount of UV rays and its transmission is high. However, we did not observe a significant difference due to season (ANOVA, p<0.05). Although UV protection has been actively conducted only in summer, protection is necessary also in winter and spring. (3) As a qualitative method to examine the transmission of UV rays through clothing, the use of ultra-sensitive UV labels (UV indicators) was effective. We expect that sustainable clothing life will enable students to use the knowledge that they acquire.

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We conducted two surveys in our research. One was for the 9th to 11th graders (N=307), and the other was for 10th & 11th graders (N=503). The aims of both surveys were as follows: 　　 (1) To determine under the influence of what kind of factors, and in which year at school, do college bound students decide when to take an arts or science course. (2) To discover which unit and/or field of junior high school science is problematic for those undertaking arts to learn. Our main findings were that more students make a course choice in the period between the 9th and 10th grades, and the degree to which they succeed in subjects affects their future course choices of either arts or science. In particular, both students’ learning and understanding of Mathematics and Science at the junior high school stage seemed to be significant in their course choices. In comparing the two courses that students made their course choices of either arts or science, we additionally found that most of the students who took arts decided their future course later. Furthermore, it became clear that the discrepancy in the bias between the favorite subject and the weaker subject was striking; especially among the students who took science. Finally, it became obvious that those students who favor arts have several problems in understanding basic science rationales and concepts such as the concrete calculation of ratios and the existence of invisible phenomena.

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