Effective learning requires that people reflect on their thinking processes after experiencing failure in problem-solving and that they acquire knowledge to use in the next problem-solving task. However, previously researchers have pointed out that some learners cannot reflect appropriately on their mistakes. The present study focused on the quality of the lessons in the use of the metacognitive learning strategy called "lesson induction", in order to examine the kind of knowledge learners acquire after problem-solving failure. A criterion was developed to enable an evaluation of the quality of the lessons induced. Middle school students (8th graders at 1 school: 86 boys, 73 girls) took a lesson-induction task and then completed a questionnaire. The data analysis examined the relationship between the quality of the lessons and the students' academic performance, and compared the quality of the lessons with an evaluation by mathematics teachers. The results indicated that the new criterion may be useful for capturing the quality of the lessons induced. The results from the evaluation of the quality of the lessons suggested that the students may have had difficulty analyzing their own mistakes and extracting knowledge that would be useful for problem-solving transfer. Furthermore, the results of the analysis of the relationship between the quality of the lessons and the students' characteristics suggested that a learning belief that emphasizes deep cognitive processing, such as deep understanding or failure utilization, may be related to inducing high quality lessons.

  Among the ways to get feedback from students in order to improve a lecture, both multiple choice questions and free text questions are helpful. An important point in the latter is the saturation of the collected opinions, that is, the ratio of the collected opinions to the total population of opinions. In the present study, a Bayesian estimation method that uses the Zipf distribution is proposed that can be applied to analyses without replacement data, such as free text feedback on a lecture in which students can give multiple opinions. A method for estimating the degree of oligopoly is also proposed that is a measure of the degree of concentration of the students' opinions that are the highest frequency among all opinions received. Several lecture evaluations were conducted with various sample sizes. The accuracy of estimation was discussed.

  The present cross-sectional study examined changes in and differentiation of children's perceived utility value and interest in subjects in elementary and junior high school. Students attending a cram school (4th graders: 252 boys, 221 girls; 5th graders: 337 boys, 304 girls; 6th graders: 429 boys, 381 girls; 7th graders: 135 boys, 103 girls; 8th graders: 147 boys, 138 girls; 9th graders: 213 boys, 179 girls) completed questionnaires. Analysis of their responses revealed that, although the utility value of practice in English increased in the reports of the 7th-grade students, the reported value of other subjects tended to decrease with increasing grade level. Furthermore, the reported utility value of entrance examinations tended to increase in English and decrease in science and social studies with increasing grade level. Correlations were found in students' reported interest in subjects that are related, such as mathematics and science; this remained relevant in all grades. However, the correlation between unrelated subjects, such as mathematics and Japanese, weakened with increasing grade level. Although the correlation among the utility values tended to decrease, they remained relevant, but the trend for English differed from the other subjects.

  The present study examined conditions contributing to young children's "inscriptions" being memory aids. "Inscriptions" refers to all lines produced by children, including scribbles, drawings, and written materials. In Analysis 1, the relationship between a note-taking task and a note evaluation tasks was examined. The note-taking task was concerned with whether the inscriptions produced by the participating children (3 to 7 years old) were useful to them as memory aids; the note evaluation task was concerned with whether the children's inscriptions were understandable by others. The results suggested that those inscriptions that were understandable by others were also useful as memory aids for the children. However, some of the inscriptions that were useful to the children as memory aids were not understandable by others. In Analysis 2, the children's utterances when they were producing the inscriptions in the note-taking task were examined. The results suggested that those children who produced inscriptions that were not understandable by others but were useful as a memory aid for the children spoke more about the meaning of the inscriptions while producing them than the other children did. These results suggest that one condition for children's inscriptions as memory aids is understandability by others; another is their meaning-making, based on children's spontaneous utterances.

  Individuals with high levels of test anxiety may experience anxious thoughts during examinations and those, in turn, may cause lowered performance. Published research has reported that test anxiety is highest in students around the 8th grade. Even so, the present authors were unable to identify any interventions have been proposed to alleviate test anxiety in junior high school students. The goals of the present study were to create a short structured expressive writing intervention and then to examine its effects on 8th graders' test anxiety and performance on a mathematics final examination. In Study 1, which was a preliminary study, a short structured expressive writing intervention was conducted with 8th graders (N=35) in an attempt to lower their daily anxieties. The results suggested that the intervention was highly applicable to 8th graders. Study 2 was an intervention study with 8th graders (N=141), in an attempt to address their anxieties about a final examination. The results suggested that the intervention had promoted various types of emotional regulation and had alleviated the participants' test anxiety. Additionally, the students' performance on a mathematics final examination suggested that junior high school students who had high levels of test anxiety performed better after greater decreases in anxiety. The results of the present study suggested that the intervention may have promoted emotional regulation strategies and alleviated the students' test anxieties, and that this, in turn, may have reduced the previously observed decrease in 8th grade students' performance on a mathematics final examination. Future research should further elucidate effects of this intervention on students' emotional regulation processes.

  The present study explored short-term longitudinal relations between several types of stress coping and psychological stress responses of junior high school students who were preparing for high school entrance examinations. Ninth graders (N=268) completed a questionnaire once a month for 3 months. Analysis using a multivariate latent curve model revealed the following: (a) the intercept of stress responses negatively affected the slopes of both problem-solving coping and dependent emotion-focused coping, (b) the intercept of dependent emotion-focused coping negatively affected the slope of stress responses, and (c) the intercepts of both stress responses and avoidant coping were positively related, however no longitudinal relation between stress responses and avoidant coping was found. The discussion deals with the influence of coping on stress and the importance for students who are preparing for high school entrance examinations of utilizing several types of coping.

  Contract research on the utilization of school counselors began in 1995. The present review focuses on trends in academic activities in Japan from 1995 to 2019 that are related to school counseling, systematically reviewing results from that research, focusing on changes in the number of research papers on school counseling published in academic journals and bulletins between 1995 and 2019, and on the content of the research papers published in academic journals during that time period. The articles were divided into a first group, which was research papers published between 1995 and 2000, and a second group, research papers published between 2001 and 2019. The analysis was conducted that way because 2001 was the official beginning of the employment of school counselors in public junior high schools. The results indicated that the number of journal and bulletin articles published after 2001 was significantly more than before that year. However, despite an annual increase in the number of school counselors starting in 2001, no increasing trend in the number of publications since 2001 was found. A quantitative text analysis of the content of the research papers in academic journals indicated that the studies that were published before 2001 investigated or evaluated the roles and functions of school counselors in schools, whereas the studies published starting in 2001 mainly investigated support for students who were not attending school and characteristics and functions of counseling rooms. The most recent publications have focused on facilitating practical cooperation and collaboration between school counselors and teachers. In the context of the present results, the discussion deals with issues related to future studies of school counseling.