The purpose of the present study was to examine the development of the concept of promise in contemporary elementary schoolchildren, in order to identify the kind of situations in which promises are kept and not kept. Data from contemporary schoolchildren were compared with data obtained 22 years ago. Children in the 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades completed a questionnaire that asked whether the children would or would not keep promises in 28 situations. The situations presented included 4 promise scenes with different degrees of restraint in each, and 7 situations in which children would disagree about keeping their promises. Analysis of the scores on each item revealed 9 component variables, which corresponded to 5 social and cognitive factors. Contemporary schoolchildren were shown to have a developmental tendency to keep their promises with restraint, and to decrease their tendency to orient toward adults. This finding was the same as that of 22 years ago. Tendencies in contemporary children that were different from the previous assessment were: (1) a reduction in canceling promises when pressured by an adult,(2) cancellation of promises in a situation in which another person's feelings were involved, and (3), in 6th graders, a reduction in promise cancellation in order to do one's duty in a group. These results were discussed, relating to the dilution of social rule consciousness that has been pointed out recently.

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In prior research (Kudo, 2003), although about 50% of the university students explicitly taught a rule about seed plants could not derive any general information from the rule, Kudo (2003) did not explain why the students could not do this. In the present study, we hypothesized that learners' notion that a rule they have been taught may have some exceptions prevents them from deriving general information from the text. In 2 studies, university students (N=44 and 60 respectively) were explicitly taught a rule about seed plants, using the example of tulips, as in Kudo's (2003) study (Study 1), or rape blossoms (Study 2). In both studies, about 70% of the participants said that they thought that the rule might have some exceptions, and so they could not apply the rule to new instances. In Study 3 (N=75), in order to encourage learners to overcome their notion about exceptions and apply the rule to new instances, we placed the participants in an imaginary betting situation, and asked them whether or not a new instance had a property predicted by the rule they had been taught. More learners in the betting condition than in the standard condition answered on the basis of the rule. After participating in the imaginary betting situation, the learners could also apply the rule to new instances in the standard test situation.

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Two types of teaching methods for rectifying learners' misconceptions have been proposed. They vary in whether counter evidence is or is not utilized. However, because both methods have weak points, we propose, in the present study, a “unified method,” that is, a new method that unifies the 2 previous methods. With the unified method, learners are first presented a problem that they could not solve correctly because of some misconception they then are presented another similar problem that they can solve correctly. On the basis of that correct response, they are led to find the correct rule for solving the problem, and are also encouraged to apply the rule to a series of similar problems. The present study compares the effectiveness of the unified method and the 2 previous methods for rectifying learners' misconceptions. Undergraduates (N=76), most of whom had the misconception that vacuums draw substances into them, were allocated to 1 of 3 groups. The unified method had better results than the 2 other methods in the following respects: (1) it rectified the learners' misconceptions most effectively,(2) it made the learners aware that their previous knowledge (i.e., their misconception) had been replaced by a correct idea, and (3) it aroused their interest.

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The Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology decided to place school counselors in every public junior high school starting in 2001. It is important to investigate how the counselors could fit into the school community, in order to be able to advise school counselors on how to have an effective role. The present paper focuses on open school counseling rooms, one of the ways that school counselors support schools. On the basis of fieldwork conducted at one junior high school, the present paper examines the structure and meaning of school counseling rooms/open rooms for students. Data were gathered from questionnaires (Study 1), observations (Study 2), and interviews (Study 3) in order to investigate the functional structure of counseling rooms from the students' perspective. The results suggest that, for the students, counseling rooms function as an open space separate from the school, and a private space within the school. Based on hypotheses developed from the results, 11 functional categories were combined to form a “double space” model. Open rooms can help students solve their problems by functioning as a space that fills the void between individual counseling and everyday life.

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The purpose of the present study was to investigate the developmental transformation of narcissism in adolescents within a theoretical framework of 2 types of narcissism. In Study 1, using data from 309 university freshmen, a questionnaire was developed to measure 2 types of narcissism. In Study 2, 1,114 adolescents (455 junior high school students, 448 high school students, and 211 undergraduates 18-21 years old) answered the questionnaire. The narcissism displayed by these students was classified into 4 subgroups: oblivious narcissism, hypervigilant narcissism, compound narcissism, and low narcissism (nonnarcissistic group). The occurrence rate of each subgroup of narcissism in each school year was then compared. In general, the rates rose from junior high school, peaking at around the third year of high school. From the relation of the narcissism questionnaire scores to General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) scores, it appeared that there existed a significant difference in the level of adjustment among the subgroups in the present study.

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In the present study, we investigated moderator effects of meta-cognition in relation to motivational beliefs, learning strategies, and academic achievement in math. Participants were 543 junior high school students. The indices of motivational beliefs were expectancy of success and task values, and the learning strategies were memorizing-repeat strategy and understanding-oriented strategy. Academic achievement was measured by the results on the first-term examination. Participants were categorized according to meta-cognition as low, middle, or high. Measurement equation modeling was conducted to test the hypothesis. Some differences were found between the low and high meta-cognition groups in the relation between motivational beliefs and the understanding-oriented strategy, and in the relation between the learning strategies and academic achievement. In the middle meta-cognition group, the relationships were weaker than in the other two groups. It was inferred that meta-cognition has quadratic effects for these relationships.

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The purpose of the present study was to develop a multi-dimensional self-rating scale that would enable the measurement of the level of life skills, including social skills, in college students. Life skills were defined as any learned behavior and the internal workings of the mind necessary for effective living. The items were developed based on items and descriptions from previous studies on life skills and social skills. The questionnaire, which was comprised of 42 items selected from an examination of content validity and from a preliminary study, was completed by 729 college students. Exploratory factor analysis showed that the scale had 8 sub-scales, which were classified into 2 general skills: skills used mainly in personal situations (planning, knowledge summarization, self-esteem, and positive thinking), and skills used generally in interpersonal situations (intimacy, leadership, empathy, and interpersonal manner). We named the scale the Daily Life Skills Scale: College Student Form. Some fit indices indicated that the scale fit the data well, and its subscale and total scale scores were moderately reliable and valid.

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The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of sense of authenticity, global self-esteem, and contingent self-esteem on intentional self-development (autonomy, self-cultivating motivation, and self-improvement motivation). University students (N=220) answered a questionnaire. Using back-translation, a Japanese version of the Contingent Self-Esteem Scale was developed. The results of a scale analysis on the Contingent Self-Esteem Scale indicated that its reliability and validity were satisfactory. The results of a multivariate multiple regression analysis were as follows: sense of authenticity increased all kinds of intentional self-development; contingent self-esteem decreased autonomy and increased self-improvement motivation, whereas global self-esteem had no effect on intentional self-development. These results suggest the importance of a conceptualization regarding self-esteem that takes into account sense of authenticity and contingent self-esteem.

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The purpose of the present study was to investigate students' wish to be absent from school and factors related to the unwillingness to attend school among junior high school students in China. A questionnaire was completed by 1,230 junior high school students (grades 7-9), including 630 males and 593 females (plus 13 of unidentified gender) in Shanghai, Beijing, Xinxiang, and Lanzhou, People's Republic of China. The major results were as follows: More than half the students wanted to be absent from school, although none of them had officially been reported as non-attending. Adjustment to teachers was reported to be a more important determinant than adjustment to peers in inhibiting the students' unwillingness to attend school.

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The objective of the present case study of a female high school student who had had an eating disorder and had not attended school on a regular basis was to examine the impact of team support and counseling by teachers in a school counseling system. The student finally graduated without trouble. The team effort appeared to have had a meaningful influence. The following points are discussed:(1) opportunities and possibilities created through team counseling,(2) the importance for school counseling of goal setting and approaches,(3) the importance of the selection of the members of the core team, and (4) the necessity of guidelines for confidentiality at school.

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Many junior high school students in Japan give a wide berth to learning English, most especially to listening activities. In the present study, foreign movies with lines spoken in English were used as course material, in order to expose students to authentic spoken English. It was expected that the English movies would stimulate students' intrinsic interest and motivate them to try to improve their listening comprehension, because English movies not only give an authentic and attractive context to the use of English, but also contain unique English expressions. Ninth graders (N=200) were assigned to 1 of 3 curricula:(1) dialogues from actual movie scenes,(2) the same dialogues replaced by frozen frames, with dubbing done by Assistant Language Teachers (ALT; native speakers of English working as part-time assistants in English classes), and (3) the same dialogues replaced by daily conversation by the Assistant Language Teachers. The results showed that listening to actual movies was the most effective of the 3 curricula for promoting students' intrinsic interest and voluntary engagement in further learning. That group also attained the highest scores on a listening comprehension test. These results support the effectiveness of using English movies to promote students' motivation for listening comprehension.

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When students expect to be tested, they often accommodate their method of learning to the test demands or to their teacher's evaluation criteria. This phenomenon is, in the present article, called “adaptation to the test.” In a review of the relevant literature, 3 issues are addressed. First, the critical role of learning strategy was confirmed from a review of empirical findings on test expectancy effects and studies of learning strategies. Second, the present review points out that adaptation to the test leads to 2 crises: problems with students' learning behavior, and problems with test validity. Third, the following were presented as possible ways to overcome these difficulties:(1) the elimination of individual differences in test-wiseness and test-taking skills,(2) the introduction of alternative assessment methods,(3) informed assessment,(4) an expansion of the concept of validity, and (5) a concern about face validity.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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