Occupational low back pain is a serious problem among nurses, and the incidence of low back pain and the rate of absences resulting from low back pain are high among new nurses. Therefore, measures for low back pain are urgently required from the perspective of preventing the loss of nurses. In addition, as low back pain also frequently develops among nursing students during training at hospitals, measures for preventing low back pain must be established from an early stage, in other words basic nursing education. Forward leaning, which involves the forward flexion of the upper body, is a cause of low back pain developing during nursing actions. However, the application of body mechanics, which promote efficient actions, improves posture and may lead to prevention of low back pain. Therefore, in the present study, we focused on bedmaking, an action that nursing students learn at an early stage as a basic nursing technique, and developed a "checking system for body mechanics" that enables self-checking of the angle of forward leaning during actions. The results of an evaluation experiment on nursing students revealed that 1) the system enabled users to objectively and easily assess their nursing actions, and 2) the angle of forward leaning during actions remained ≤30°, the range in which minimal burden is placed on the lower back. The objectives of system development were thus achieved.

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Learning in museums is considered that visitors construct their original knowledge or experiences through museum objects as learning resources. However, it is said that they need museum literacy to interpret them, and such literacy is not an innate but acquired ability from their previous knowledge and experiences. Unfamiliar visitors tend to fail museum learning because of their lacks of the literacy. Therefore, museums should compensate their shortages to develop their learning, but the way has yet to be revealed. This study aims to propose a way to support museum visitors to construct an interpretive framework for studying objects. We analyzed what kind of information constitutes museum literacy by reference to the previous researches. According to this analysis, we outlined a pedagogical process model named as the Cognitive Orientation of Museum and developed a learning material based on the COM to investigate this effect on an actual museum experience. We investigated the effects through a comparative experiment between the COM material and the other interpretative material. As a result, the COM model showed the positive effects on the users' museum learning.

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The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of participating in continuous and direct experiential activity on pupils' altruistic attitudes. Seventy-seven 4^<th-> grade pupils interacted experientially six times with kindergarten children in naturalistic social settings. They also completed a questionnaire that measured altruistic attitudes both before and after the activity. The results indicated that students who had positive experiences through the activity increased their scores on the affective component of altruistic attitudes after the activity. By contrast, the scores of students who had negative or did not have positive experiences decreased on behavioral components of altruistic attitudes after the activity. Their scores on cognitive components remained high even after the activity. These results suggest that continuous and direct experiential activity is one effective method for changing pupils' altruistic attitudes.

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This study is designed to extract findings inductively by conducting verification for the effect of collaborative learning to be introduced in its first year on students and providing further insights into the quality of its effect. We performed the ethnographic research for the college students with the diversified backgrounds in the first year on what dynamics they would have in college life focusing on a class for one year since their school entries. As a result, the affiliation motive to try to develop personal relationships newly served in the class of the collaborative-learning environment in the first semester of freshman and the social community functioned also as the learning community. When the latter term came, the affiliation motive decreased as the individual student life got enriched and the classes were grouped by the presence of spontaneous motivation for the original learning. By the grouping, we saw difference in others' positions as well as the quality of its effect in the collaborative learning.

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We proposed the high-resolution and low-bit-rate lecture-video distributing system for the chalk-and-talk based lectures. The preliminary experiment on the VoD based e-lecture showed that students are conscious of the following two issues: (1) written letters are legible and (2) the lecturer's indicating position is recognizable. In consideration of these, we proposed a high-resolution and low-bit-rate lecture-video distributing system for chalk-and-talk based lectures. The proposed system superimposes two kinds of camera images: one is low-resolution video from a digital camcorder and the other, the high-resolution image sequences from a digital still camera. The subjective assessment experiment showed the effectiveness of the proposed system.

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I investigated the turning points in the careers of people who organize workshops, as well as their expertise regarding the design of workshops using semi-structured interviews. Organizers of workshops (n=19) with more than 5 years experience took part in the study. Results indicated that turning points in their careers could be classified into five categories. (1) Noticing the necessity to design workshops according to the needs of participants, (2) Noticing the necessity to design workshops that correspond to their own standpoint, (3) Noticing the need for collaborative design with others, (4) Intention for continued practice, (5) Reflecting on their own practice. Moreover, development of expertise on workshop design consisted of nine elements. (1) Primal Scene, (2) Personal Practice Theory, (3) Independent spirit, (4) Conflict and breakthrough, (5) Reflections on own practice, (6) Considering the context of workshops, (7) Other people's evaluation, (8) Intention for continued practice, (9) Documenting own practice in writing.

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This study investigated factors affecting critical thinking. One hundred and thirty-eight undergraduate students read three articles that included a number of fallacious arguments. In this study, the credibility of the information source was examined by identifying the authors of these articles as experts to half of the participants and as anonymous university students to the other half of the participants. Participants were asked to describe their opinions about these articles in the free-form opinion phase; to offer criticisms of the articles, if any, in a voluntary critical phase; and to provide at least one criticism of the article in a compulsory critical phase. The descriptions offered by participants included references to fallacious arguments. Although highly credible sources tend to inhibit critical thinking, we found that the effect differed according to the type of fallacious argument and the extent to which external demands involved critical thinking. Results also indicated that critical thinking was promoted as the demand for it became explicit and that the type of fallacious argument could inhibit critical thinking.

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The major purpose of this study was to investigate the development of practice teachers' images of teaching, teachers, and children, and class observational skills through their actual communication with their supervising teachers, children, and colleagues. The following aspects of the practice teachers' communication were analyzed: (1) the quantity of experience; (2) the impression of experience; and (3) the degree of usefulness of their experiences. Fifty-eight student teachers participated in this study. Major findings were: (1) a lot of communication with children in activities and critical communication between practice teachers and their colleagues was related positively with changes in the images of teaching to more flexible ones; (2) a lot of critical communication between practice teachers and their colleagues was related to changing both their development as teachers and their images of teachers to authoritative ones; (3) a lot of critical communication with children and colleagues was related to changes towards a negative image of children, and a lot of positive communication with supervising teachers and children was related to positive change in the image of children; and (4) critical communication with supervising teachers and children was meaningfully important for practice teachers' class observational skills ("the number of descriptions that identified problems in the class" increased). Also, a lot of negative communication with children was related negatively with practice teachers' class observational skills ("the number of negative descriptions that proposed alternative plans for the class").

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In this paper, the authors presented STICS (STream Indexing and Commenting System), a simulation system used in professional skills training at law schools. STICS is a web-based system in which comments can be attached to videotaped simulations. To reveal the characteristics and structure of the comments on the system, the authors analyzed the comments from the following three viewpoints: the kind of structure present in the contents of the comment, whether students reflect the contents of theoretical study in the comments, and whether the content of the comment is concrete. The authors also compared these results with those from the analysis of comments collected after a class conducted without the use of STICS. The findings suggested that (1) the contents of the comments could be classified into seven groups, (2) students may have already internalized the contents of theoretical study to some extent when they make comments, and (3) STICS ensures much more concrete comments than in the case of a report collected at the end of the class

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The major purpose of the present study was to investigate how images of university lectures change before and after practice teaching. The following aspects of the practice teachers' images of university lectures were analyzed based on Ida (2003): (1) guidance for instructional method in school subjects; (2) lectures on psychology; and (3) lectures on pedagogy. One hundred and twenty-two practice teachers participated in this study. Major findings were; (1) "interest value" scores increased after practice teaching, suggesting that practice teachers started to have a more positive image of university lectures, (2) scores for the "systematic utility value" of lectures on psychology increased after practice teaching, suggesting that practice teachers developed more positive images of the subject and that they found lectures on psychology to be useful for the school teachers' examination; (3) "public attainment value" scores are correlated with the degree of desire to become a teacher, suggesting that practice teachers who came to want to be teachers after practice teaching started to consider others' perspectives; and (4) scores for the lectures on pedagogy were lower than the other two kinds of lecture, suggesting that it is difficult for practice teachers to find the lectures on pedagogy as meaningful as the others.

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The major aim of the present study is to investigate undergraduate trainee teachers' perspectives of a taught class in relation to their images of teaching, teachers and children. Twenty-eight trainee teachers, who are majoring in Education, reported their impressions of a videotaped math class, paying special attention to the good and bad points concerning teaching. The relationship between these impressions and the trainee teachers' images of teaching, teachers and children were examined. Major findings are: (1) the trainee teachers mainly focused on "the construction/structure of the class under discussion", and generally made negative comments about it, (2) the trainee teachers made favorable observations concerning "the teaching materials" or "the construction/structure of the whole teaching unit" in the textbook used for the class, (3) negative and more realistic images such as the images of teachers as "authoritarian" are related with trainee teachers' favorable perspectives, and (4) positive images such as the images of teachers as "supporters", negatively influence the trainee teachers' perspectives. The relationship between practice teaching experience and the trainee teachers' observation perspectives are also discussed, and some pedagogical implications are considered and suggested.

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