The purpose of the present study was to develop 2 new self-report measures for assessing help-seeking cognitions and help-seeking skills in children and adolescents. The goal was to develop instruments with good content validity. In the first study, 1,029 children and adolescents (ages 9-18 years) completed questionnaires describing characteristics of their help-seeking cognitions and help-seeking skills. Content analysis enabled the extraction of 18 cognition and 12 skill components, from which the first versions of the 2 scales were developed. In the second study, 9 experts evaluated the relevance and comprehensiveness of the 2 scales, after which revised versions of the scales reached consensus. In the third study, 484 children and adolescents (ages 9-18 years) evaluated the 2 scales for relevance, comprehensiveness, and comprehensibility by completing questionnaires about the content validity of the instructions, the recall period, the response options, and each item's sentences. The results from the third study showed that over 90% of the participants agreed on these aspects of the 2 scales. Thus, the revised version was determined to be the final version. The present research provided evidence of good content validity for both of the newly developed instruments.

  The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether differences in students' prior knowledge affected the deepening of their conceptual understanding. The study was conducted in 2 tenth-grade classes (N=25 and 26) whose curriculum aimed at deepening understanding of generalized mathematical concepts. One of the classes was taught with teaching method A, which used the topic of bouncing of objects as knowledge gained from daily experience. The other class was taught with teaching method B, which used the topic of geometric sequences as knowledge already studied in mathematics. Both classes were taught by the same teacher. The data were the students' descriptions of tasks related to exponential functions before and after these topics had been taught and their in-class worksheets. Analysis of the data revealed the following: (a) Teaching method A promoted a deeper conceptual understanding of generalized exponentials than teaching method B did, and (b) deepening of the students' conceptual understanding of generalized exponentials was especially achieved through the exploration of problems that captured the characteristics of constant ratios in exponential changes. The discussion dealt with teaching methods that might promote a deepening of students' conceptual understanding of generalized mathematical concepts.

  The present study examined in-service childcare workers' motivational processes and coping hypotheses, based on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model of work engagement. Childcare workers (N=283) completed questionnaires. After a second-order factor analysis identified the structure of job and personal resources, structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted. The results indicated motivational processes in which job and personal resources, mediated by work engagement, increased emotional commitment. In addition, a multi-group simultaneous analysis of high and low job demand groups was conducted. The correlation between job resources and emotional commitment indicated effects of coping on job demands. However, contrary to the authors' hypotheses, the correlations between job and personal resources and work engagement revealed no significant effects of coping. These findings fully support the job demands-resources model's motivational processes, and partially support the coping hypotheses of work engagement. The discussion deals with interventions for enhancing childcare workers' expertise and working environment.

  In the present study, female university students were given training based on a program for improving teamwork competency in order to examine whether their advanced skills improved in relation to the contents of the training and to determine the timing of any changes in their basic and advanced skills. The experimental conditions were: (a) communication ability sessions and team-oriented ability training sessions, plus backup ability sessions (n=25), (b) communication ability sessions and team-oriented ability training sessions, plus monitoring ability sessions (n=19), and (c) no training (n=76). All participants' skills were measured before the training, at the end of the basic skills sessions, and after the completion of the training. The results showed that although the participants' scores for the sub-skills did not improve at the end of the basic skills session, they did improve after the end of training, except for the scores on assertiveness and relationship-building skills. The results for the advanced skills sessions suggested the possibility of improving not only the target skills but also basic skills related to the sessions' content and advanced skills other than the target skills. The students' decoding and encoding basic skills improved after they had learned specific usage scenarios in the advanced skills sessions. These results suggest that there may have been a bidirectional relationship between basic skills and advanced skills, that is, they may have influenced each other.

  The effectiveness of lesson induction, a learning strategy in which learners draw lessons after solving problems, has been demonstrated. However, few intervention studies have been published, even though the necessity of an intervention has been suggested. This is especially true in the area of reading comprehension. The present case study of a student who received cognitive counseling reports the student's difficulties in mastering lesson induction and suggests an intervention to deal with such difficulties. The participant was a fourth-grade girl who had difficulty in inferring characters' feelings and summarizing descriptions of narrative texts she had read. She had not induced lessons such as reading or problem solving strategies. In 10 study consultations with a counselor, she was encouraged to solve problems using the lessons induced through interactions with the counselor, and was supported when using lesson induction as a learning strategy by herself. After this intervention, she became aware of lesson induction as a learning strategy. Improvements were observed in her motivation and beliefs about learning. The discussion presents key points of the intervention that may have promoted her lesson induction in reading comprehension, and describes some unresolved issues relating to this case study.