Background: Emphasis on importance of evidence-based educational practices has been recently increasing. The US government, for example, has announced that they would not financially support new educational practices which are not evidence-based. Most of schools, however, may not acknowledge its importance and only few evidence-based practices have been developed or conducted in schools.

Objective: To examine reasons why the evidence-based practices have not been prevailing in schools

Methods: We reviewed studies addressing how often teachers participate in educational research and employ evidence from educational research in their practices. Studies about impressions and thoughts which teachers have on the research were also reviewed.

Results: Only few teachers have engaged in educational research, and evidence from the research is rarely utilized in educational programs and practices. Teachers tend to think that research is not helpful or useful in practical situations. They also seem to have an impression that research is conducted without considering real-world situations of school settings. An intervention study has, however, observed that improving teachers’ access to educational research might help teachers to consider educational research helpful in schools. Researchers should respect practical situations in schools when they conduct educational research. Careful explanations of the results of research including feed-backs to teachers may be important to increase teachers’attention on, and practical use of evidence from, research in schools. In addition, pre-service teachers should be taught methodology of research and how to employ evidence from educational research.

Conclusion: School teachers in general may not have positive impressions on, or use evidence from, educational research, which could be improved by researchers’attention and careful respects to schools and teachers. Curriculum for teacher education may also need to be improved.

Background: Sleep debt attributable to short sleep duration among adolescents is associated with a wide range of detrimental physical and mental health outcomes.

Objective: This cross-sectional study was conducted to assess sleep/wake patterns among high school students based on the perspective of sleep debt and to explore sleep-promoting behaviors for alleviating sleep debt, late bedtime and insufficient sleep.

Methods: A total of 2,195 students in five high schools completed a self-administered questionnaire including demographic information, sleep/wake patterns, subjective insufficient sleep, excessive daytime sleepiness, irritability and sleep-promoting behaviors. We defined sleep debt as“the cumulative hours of sleep loss with respect to a subject-specific daily need for sleep”, and calculated it using the following equation: weekend sleep duration minus. weekday sleep duration. We then classified the students into two-groups based on a weighted mean（100min）of the discrepancy of sleep duration between weekday and weekend those with or without sleep debt of ≥100min

Results: Students with the sleep debt went to bed 24min later on weekday, and slept 28min shorter on weekday than those without the sleep debt, but there was no significant difference in weekday wake-up times between the two groups. Contrary to weekday, students with the sleep debt went to 29min later, woke up 129 min later and slept 107min longer on weekends than those without the sleep debt. Furthermore, prevalence of insufficient sleep（70.7% vs. 54.2%）, excessive daytime sleepiness（49.5% vs. 41.5%）, irritability（29.6% vs. 24.7%）, breakfast skipping（19.5% vs. 12.5%）and nodding off during the day（71.6% vs. 60.4%）was observed more frequently in students with the sleep debt than in those without the sleep debt. Logistic analyses with a generalized linear mixed model revealed that practice of 12 sleep-promoting behaviors, such as getting up at a fixed time every morning（OR=0.81, 95% CI: 0.66-0.99）, exposing oneself to sunlight in the morning（OR=0.76, 95% CI: 0.64-0.89）, and not going out to brightly-lit places, such as convenience stores, after 9：00 pm（OR=0.70, 95% CI: 0.53-0.93）, were associated with a lower odds ratio of having the sleep debt, late bedtime or insufficient sleep.

Conclusion: Late bedtimes, less weekday and longer weekend sleep durations, and late weekend wake-up time were observed in students with the sleep debt. Our results suggest that 12 sleep-promoting behaviors, all of which are items contributing to advance bedtime and/or to ensure sleep duration, play an important role in alleviating the sleep debt, late bedtime and insufficient sleep in high school students. We hope that this sleep-promoting behavior menu is utilized as a sleep support for students with similar sleep problems.

Background: Adolescent sex education is important from the viewpoint of health education. In addition, the sexual behavior of children is diverse, and various forms of sex education exist.

Objective: The objective of this study was to shed light on the meaning of the inner world of third-year junior high school students who attend sex education classes.

Methods: The sample comprised five third-year junior high school students who attended classes in the author’s sex education program. The data were derived from semi-structured interviews and were analyzed with reference to Giorgi’s phenomenological methodology.

Results: The following four points became clinically evident through our sex education program. First, the students became aware that they stand on the threshold connecting their own past events with their futures. Second, the students associated photographs of childbirth with their personal concerns. Third, the students re-evaluated their knowledge of sex and sexual experiences. Fourth, the students discussed their concerns about whether they would contract sexually transmitted infections (STI) ; however, they thought they would be the exception to the rule.

Conclusion: The students associated their learnings from our sex education program with their past events and present concerns in chronological order. Through the process of integrating new knowledge based on our sex education program, the students were aware of the relationship between the content of our program and their personal lives. Our sex education classes provide the students with self-affirmation and prepare them for their future. However, our program did not have an effect on guarding against STI. Further studies should be pursued to plan sex education programs that promote safe sexual behaviors.

Background: The perception of “severity” and “susceptibility” concerning a certain health or safety problems is important when individuals will take the behavior to prevent them.

Objective: The objective of this paper was to evaluate the junior high school students’perception of “severity” and “susceptibility” of eight health or safety problems that were the contents in health instruction.

Methods: The participants were 153 eighth graders and 154 ninth graders of one junior high school. The eight health or safety problems of the questionnaire items were as follows: Influence of frustration and stress on mind and body; Impact on health in environments beyond adaptive capacity; Traffic accidents; Natural disasters; Secondary disasters; Lifestyle-related diseases; Influence of smoking, drinking, and drug abuse on mind and body and Effects of medicines. The data were collected anonymously in the physical education classes using a questionnaire sheet. At the time of research, the eighth graders had not yet learned the eight items, while the ninth graders had learned every item.

Results: The percentage of students responding about the “severity” of Influence of frustration and stress on mind and body, with “very severe” or “severe” was approximately 80%. The percentage of responding about the “susceptibility” of Influence of frustration and stress on mind and body, with “very imminent” or “imminent” was also approximately 80%. However, for the other seven items, the percentage of those responding with “very severe” or “severe” ranged from 77.8 to 93.4%, while the percentage of those responding with “very imminent” or “imminent” ranged from 24.7 to 63.1%. The ninth graders rated significantly higher than the eighth graders in the perception of “severity” of Traffic accidents（p＝0.0496）, Lifestyle-related diseases（p＝0.009）, and Effects of medicines（p＝0.025）. In the perception of “susceptibility,” the ninth graders rated significantly higher than the eighth graders regarding the item of Influence of smoking, drinking, and drug abuse on mind and body（p＝0.004）.

Conclusion: Although the perception of “severity” was high at every item, the perception of “susceptibility” was low at seven items. The perception of “susceptibility” of the ninth graders was significantly higher than the eighth graders at only one item. Therefore, perceived “susceptibility” does not increase sufficiently from eighth grade to ninth grade through standard junior high school health instruction.