The purpose of this study is to clarify the aims of the practice of life education as it was implemented in normal public elementary schools and how this approach to education developed during the early Showa Period, in the years from 1927 to 1929, which can be described as the period when the new education movement was declining and which was followed immediately by the period when the local education movement and the life composition movement flourished. In order to achieve this goal, this study focused on the practice of life education at the Furuichi Jinjo Higher Elementary School in Hyogo Prefecture. This study revealed the following two points by using documents concerning this school. First, in the early Showa Period, based on the Hyogo Prefecture educational policy called “Thorough life education”, the school conducted life education from its own unique perspective: linking children’s studies with their daily lives. From the point of view defined as “considering the lives of children”, it prioritized understanding children’s studies intuitively or concretely and linking them to actions, and was an effort to present concrete and practical contents for the general educational policies of the prefecture. This study also shows how life education in this school was developed based on practical experience obtained through the guidance of Heiji Oikawa in the Taisho Period (1912 to 1926), specifically prioritizing the practice of having children give presentations.

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For the purpose of training critical thinking attitudes of elementary school children in social studies, this study carried out an educational practice and its evaluation. In the current classroom of primary schools, issues about which learners have difficulties in thinking reasonably based on information and writing their opinions clearly are pointed out. Therefore, “The Four Area Thinking Sheet”, a thinking tool for derivation of multi-faceted conclusions, was invented and incorporated into practice. As a result, learners could have much more multi-faceted perspectives and show significant improvement in their critical thinking attitudes.

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The purpose of this paper is to grasp a structure of critical thinking in students in manufacturing activity, and to examine the relevance of the other factors. This study carried out a survey in 3rd grade junior high school students, and then the data were analyzed by factor analysis. As a result, the following factors related to critical thinking in manufacturing activity were found: (1) “Consideration of multilateral ideas” factor – an attitude to consider the plans and ideas by taking advantage of a variety of information multilaterally. (2) “Determine the status of the work” factor – an attitude to monitor the situation of self-work through interaction with other students and teachers. (3) “Optimization of working methods” factor – an attitude to consider the work method suitable for the working environment multilaterally. (4) “Evaluation of processing accuracy” factor – an attitude to objectively evaluate accuracy of the work based on the information, such as drawing and actual dimensions. Results of multi-regression analysis showed that “Inquiring mind” and “Emphasis of evidence” of students’ critical thinking attitudes in daily life factors were important for critical thinking in manufacturing activity.

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The purpose of this paper is to consider the contents of instruction and its educational methods for understanding the concept of independence in probability education. In spite of the concept of independence becoming more important in present probability education, its difficulty of understanding has been pointed out for a long time by previous studies, and is still unsolved. Therefore, this study focused on the curriculum which might be an effective way to examine causations of the unsolved issue mentioned above. In this study, firstly, “the discrepancy between the concept of independence and intuition” and “the confusion of the concept of independence with mutually exclusive events” were examined as to causes of why students have difficulty understanding the concept of independence. Secondly, “emphasis on the understanding of the concept of randomness” and “distinction among mutually exclusive events, independent trials and independent events” were derived as the point of view that improves the above causes. Finally, this study pointed out that the current curriculum has some problems from the above point of view, and “teaching of probability by experiment in the higher classes at elementary school” and “introduction of independent events in mathematics A” were proposed on the vision of revising the curriculum and the level of formation of the student’s concept of probability. Furthermore, “setting up the proposition” and “illustrative representation by Karnaugh map” were proposed as the teaching methods of independent events in this paper.

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This study examined how a teaching method based on building process of theory cultivates humanities and gives a particular cognition method of particle discipline. A scientific theory can be perceived as an observable individual phenomenon holistically, however, it can be difficult to be proved directly. For this reason, it is built through following points. The probability of a theory is increased by doing a hypotheticodeductive experiment, rejecting alternative theories, and the theory having not been disproved. The teaching method based on this building process of theory was practiced for elementary school students (5th grade) on study of the dissolution of substances. The results indicated that this teaching method achieved the purpose of study.

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The purpose of this paper is to clarify acquiring number sense and future number sense through current mathematics education. In order to achieve this purpose, we analyzed previous studies in terms of number sense. Two points emerged from previous studies of number sense: (1) We used “Sukankaku” as a translation of number sense mainly, but previous studies mixed up sense with intuition. (2) Many researchers focused on number sense in terms of mathematical contents of numbers and computations. However, it is hard to say that it has enough discussion from current social changes. Therefore, we used “Sutyokkan” as a translation of number sense in this paper. This study suggested a model of interconnection between number sense and number logic which is based on the problem posing model (Fukuda, 2016) and Jung’s type model (Yoshikawa, 2011). Finally, we clarified necessities of acquiring logical thinking by acquiring number sense and acquiring number sense by acquiring logical thinking.

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This study empirically examines the designs of lessons about “expression by using □” as a part of research which aim to bridge between arithmetic and algebra based on the “early algebra” approach. The purposes of this study are to analyze the change of students’ recognition of □, expression, and the mutual relationships between operations, and to identify and characterize algebraic reasoning that appears in the lessons. Findings of this study revealed that our attempt to introduce □ as a general number helped the students use □ in the classroom naturally. In addition, the students’ recognition of □, expression, and the mutual relationships between operations tended to be improved interactively. Furthermore, this result suggests that such improvement is closely related to the algebraic reasoning.

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This paper aims to examine changes in students’ attitudes towards nutrition through education. Twentyseven senior high school students developed lesson plans with the title “food education for five minutes during school lunch time” for reading and communication activities of home economics class. The lessons were designed for elementary school children. The students answered a pre and post questionnaire, the activity was carried out in order to assess any changes in their own attitudes towards nutrition. The subjects were 12 in an experimental group and 15 in a control group. The results of the questionnaire were analyzed utilizing a t-test and a two-way factorial analysis of variance was performed. The study analyzed how their attitudes towards were changed through Modified Grounded Theory Approach (M-GTA). 　　 There were two key results: 　1) The post -test score on average of the experimental groups was higher than the pre-test average. 　2) By analyzing the students’ personal descriptions, they showed meaningful improvement of their attitudes towards nutrition with a three-step process.

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