The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the circumstances and the problems of raising children in overseas, and their availability of mental health and social resources. Three parents who had lived overseas were individually interviewed, and questioned about the social and emotional problems they had encountered, and mental health and social resources that were available, while overseas. Analyses of the interviews revealed that the primary problems were that they were alone, experienced loss of loved ones, and has limited supportive resources. The need for greater supports and resources for Japanese mothers living overseas is indicated, including those that promote teacher-parent relationships.

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The purpose of this study was to replace the “Practical Childcare Skills Standards (Relationships with Children)” based on practical childcare experience into a standardized questionnaire scale. This Standard scale measures various aspects of nursery teachers’ practical childcare skills by recording their answers to its multiple question items. The participants were 129 university students from the nursery teacher training course who underwent practical nursing training. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted based on the results of their evaluation of each item on the original Standards scale. As a result, 67 items were extracted from 3 factors. Furthermore, in order to confirm the validity and reliability of the scale, reliability analysis and an examination of the criterion-related validity were carried out. The results confirmed that the “Practical Childcare Skills Standards (Relationships with Children)” scale comprised three constituent concepts: “communication skills necessary for childcare practice,” “ability to plan childcare,” and “ability to expand childcare developmentally.” It was suggested that this scale would be effective in measuring the practical childcare skills of nursery teachers through the 67 question items based on these three factors.

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This study investigated how student relationships, students’ perceptions of class atmosphere, and their self-esteem changed with the progression of preparatory practices towards Sports Festival and Music Festival in a junior high school. Student relationships were classified into three categories: (1) improvement of performance, (2) reflection and self-examination, and (3) accepting and modeling others. The class atmosphere was classified into two categories: (1) positive and (2) negative. It was found that students regarded their class as positive when scores for accepting and modeling others were greater than those for reflection and self-examination. They regarded their class as negative when scores were greater for reflection and self-examination than for accepting and modeling. Results also showed that the homeroom teacher closely monitored the students and gave them informative feedback about their practices, but strongly intervened only when the students felt very negative about their preparatory practices. It was also found out that the students’ scores of self-esteem, which were investigated several times by a questionnaire, increased between the beginning and the end of the year.

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