The purpose of this article was to use classroom climate assessment strategies to evaluate school counseling programs. “Supportive” climate provides a climate that is conducive to children’s adjustment and healthy development and as such classroom climate can be used as a direct and indirect index of effective school counseling. However, methodological difficulties remain outstanding in assessing classroom climate. One such difficulty concerns the unit-of-analysis in assessment because each scale score supposedly reflects multiple students’ perception of one classroom which they all share. It is a distinctly unique methodological problem associated with climate scales. A history of classroom assessment was reviewed and the Classroom Climate Inventory (Ito & Matsui, 2001) was discussed as an exemplar of a psychometric scale that could be used to address these issues and that may be used for evaluating school counseling programs.

Recently school counselors in Japan require community psychological perspective that they treat person and environment through a comprehensive approach. In this article, we reviewed the role of school counseling from viewpoint of community psychology. We discussed the relation between school counseling and community psychology, and introduced MEASURE model (Stone & Dahir, 2004, 2006). MEASURE includes six steps, Mission, Elements, Analyze, Stakeholders-Unite, Results, Educate. Finally we considered MEASURE from community psychological and difference between Japanese and American school counseling perspectives. This review demonstrated the need of community psychological paradigm shift for Japanese school counseling.

In this paper, the school counselors’ skill at evaluating their own effectiveness was discussed in relation to the American school counselor training system. In the United States, training for the evaluation of skills was conducted in graduate schools, and the national standard of school counselors defines the appropriate manner by which to evaluate school counselors. There are differences in the expected roles of school counselors both in Japan and in the United States, since Japanese school counselors were dispatched to deal with increasing bullying and non-attendance at school. Regardless of these differences, there are many aspects that we can learn from the school counseling practices in the United States. In this paper, the comprehensive school counseling theory and system (Gysbers & Henderson, 2000) is discussed in terms of their applicability to the Japanese school counseling system and the training possibilities.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the merits and limitations of using practical and qualitative research methods in evaluating student counseling system. Clinical psychologists and other members of a community will evaluate services together efficiently when they use practical and qualitative methods, such as action research, case study, and practical fieldwork. Using them is not only useful for assuring reliability and validity of evaluation, but also for developing a more collaborative relationship between clinical psychologists and other people concerned in student counseling. A study which evaluates a student counseling system by interviewing faculty is presented as an example of this type of study.

Recently in Japan, although the implementations of the school counseling programs have been increased rapidly, the evaluation researches on those are very insufficient. One of the reasons of the insufficiency seems to be poor understandings of the evaluation research in Japan. In this paper, a textbook on the evaluation research which emphasizes the evaluation hierarchy is introduced, what are the needed evaluation researches in the field of school counseling in Japan is discussed. The school counseling programs in Japan is in the early stages of planning, and consequently the needs assessment and the program theory assessment, namely the formative evaluation is needed. The practices including the evaluation researches implemented by the author and her colleagues arc introduced as well.

The purpose of this study was to clarify the process of how a community becomes empowered. Data were collected by interviewing 8 core members who were involved in a movement for promotion of volunteer activities in M town, A Prefecture, and analyzed qualitatively. We identified the process of the emergent social interaction that involves core members in activities to solve problems in their community. The process had four components: (1) process of creating an understanding among community core members of the meaning of the problem, (2)role-making process as core members, (3) process of having things pointed out by themselves and (4) basis of an emergent social interaction. These four components are interrelated. It is suggested that the four components are closely associated with community empowerment and the practice of activities that are directed toward support of community empowerment. It is important for a professional to promote formation of these elements.

The purpose of this action research was to analyze ways of developing a network of supporters for Brazilian-Japanese students living in Japan based on the perspective of community psychology. We have been engaged in support activities as volunteer students and in networking supporters for Brazilian-Japanese students for approximately three years. The sites for these activities were places where only a few Brazilian-Japanese students were living. In the first year, we investigated problems of Brazilian-Japanese students and the surrounding community support systems, and made preparations for carrying out support activities. The second year, we started conducting the support activities, and through these activities, we encouraged supporters to start networking. The third year, we conducted a psychological study of Brazilian-Japanese students and their parents. Through this research and feedback from it, networks of supporters were expanded throughout the community and a formal network with a wider variety of supporters was established. From this experience, we identified five major factors that would make a networking process more effective: (1) clinical practice, (2) key persons, (3) informal relationships, (4) research, and (5) research funds. We discussed limitations of this practice, focusing on the fact that parents of Brazilian-Japanese students did not take part in the networks.

We investigated the effect of group persuasion in encouraging farmers’ goal intention and behavioral intention pertaining to agricultural drainage reduction. As part of group persuasion, four experimental conditions were set up: emotional persuasion (E condition), rational persuasion (R condition), complex persuasion (emotional plus rational: E + R condition), and control condition that did not involve persuasion. An open-ended questionnaire distributed to participants a week after each workshop (n=39) revealed that neither the goal intention nor the behavioral intention was facilitated under the control condition. On the other hand, the behavioral intention was promoted under the E condition and the goal intention was promoted under the R condition. Furthermore, the E + R condition facilitated both the goal intention and the behavioral intention. As mentioned above, the effects of persuasion differed depending on the presented information. In order to encourage farmers’ agricultural drainage reduction behavior, it seemed important to present information in multiple ways.