The objective of this essay is to present the distinctive features of the topic study by examining its introduction in order to take a new look at the curriculum structure for Home Economics. First,I analyzed the contents and the methods of 20 examples of topic study shown in Home Economics Investigations published in Britain. I chose one of these examples and contrasted its content with that of the high school texts in Japan. Based on this result, I report the actual state of the topic study and distinctive features of texts. Further, I present the cognitive framework of the university students and the features of the curriculum range based on the concrete examples. I also investigated the curriculum range of all topics used in Britain. The above investigation yielded the following features of topic study; 1. Topics that are closely associated with the daily life of the students enable them to construct the positive and flexible learning activities. 2. Learning activities expand the subjects from classroom to outdoor, and to social interests, and elevate the relativity of recognition. There is no limitation that prevents the subjects from the order of recognition. 3. The shortcoming lies in the differences in range and levels of the subjects due to the biases on the part of the learners in fact recognition and attitude toward problems. It is, therefore, necessary to attain higher goals than the ordinary level. Given merits and demerits of topic study, it is important that the development of topics should be integrated with the curriculum construction which maintains the level of study, and secures the systematic recognition.

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There is a growing need to improve teacher's ability and practical leadership. In response to this need, the curriculum aimed at acquiring practical teaching skills has been developed at teacher training colleges. The objective of this study was to examine the availability and significance of micro-teaching lessons in the teacher training college courses that were developed for the students' acquisition of the practical teaching ability. In the classes called, "Teaching method of junior high school home economics education," every student conducted micro-teaching while other students participated in the lesson as junior high school students. After micro-teaching, the student-teacher wrote a "comment report" for all the participants and submitted it to the class director. Although teacher's "voice tone and speaking," "skills of writing on the blackboard," and "expression and atmosphere" were frequently evaluated by other students, "the contents of teaching" were less frequently commented. E-mail comments provided straightforward evaluation but they tended to be rather critical. Thus, students found it difficult to provide constructive E-mail comments that would improve the lesson plans. The class director needs to set appropriate situation to discuss students' teaching plans in order to facilitate the writing of interactive comments.

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The purpose of this research was to analyze the reason why most of the home economics teaching practices with local perspectives didn't reach the level 3 requiring that students analyze their own living issues and become aware of their problems. Case studies compared the level 3 cases with other cases. This study also considered a topic of introducing the local perspectives into the home economics classes. The results were as follows; 1. In level 3 cases, the objectives ware not only to introduce the local materials into the classes but also to make the learners understand the local issues relating to their own livingissues. 2. The level 3 cases developed the classes to make the learners aware of the interactions among "Social needs," "Family life situation," and "Individual (learner's) issues." It is necessary to have the broad and holistic objectives of social, family and individual contexts, in order to construct and develop home economics classes with the local perspective.

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This paper aims to clarify how the youths recognize their life values, and find the relationship between recognition and independence, in order to make suggestions for home economics education, Subjects of this research were twenty students at the age of 20. To examine the developmental process of the youths' life recognition, qualitative data were collected by semi-structured interviews. These data were analyzed by the Modified-Grounded Theory Approach. The following is a summary of our findings; (1) Twenty-six concepts and five categories were created from the data. (2) Three categories; "the discovery of a border between self and others," "the estimation of a social role," and "an accumulation of life recognition" were extracted. (3) Three categories interacted with one another. (4) Three categories were the main factors facilitating the youths' development of life recognition process. (5) When a process of life recognition was developed, the youths became independent as a consumer.

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In this study, we analyzed the questionnaire survey data concerning the home life of children in Japan with purpose to improve the Home Economics Education. We examined the data concerning housework in two categories; the independence and the coexistence. The results are as follows; 1) When we compared the items of independence with those of coexistence, children practiced more in terms of coexistence than independence. When boy's behaviors were compared with those of girls, the latter generally practiced more than the former. 2) By analyzing the relationship between the motivation toward and the practice of independence, we found that the motivation related to food and housing was higher than that of clothing. 3) With respect to the motivation and the practice concerning coexistence, the significant relation ship was found among the items of coexistence with other persons. 4) Father's participation in housework influenced the boys' practice. 5) The type of mother's employment influenced children's practice concerning in dependence. The children whose mothers were employed full-time practiced well. The above analyses inform us that in the future Home Economics Education, it is necessary to adopt the problem solving in order to increase children's motivation, and to create the teaching materials which are based on the differences of various home environments.

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