The purpose of this paper is to clarify students' thought structure in an assembly session of a manufacturing class. The question items were developed on the basis of a preliminary investigation, which was carried out on 493 junior high school students. As a result of a factor analysis, five factors were extracted: "F1: Practice on assembling work," "F2: Identification of parts," "F3: Examination of tools/assembling," "F4: Inspection and revision of parts," "F5: Prospect of assembling." A thought structure model was developed on the basis of the unity of thoughts, and the allied structure between the five factors was examined. From the results, it can be concluded that starting from the thought about parts (F2), thoughts about the preparation for assembling (F3, F4, and F5) have an influence on the thought about the practice session (F1).

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The purpose of this research is to clarify the relation between consciousnesses of geometric figures and mathematical study attitude in junior high school students to obtain suggestions about figure teaching in regard to their concerns and attitudes of willingness. A questionnaire was administered to 547 students of three grades, and factor analysis by the principal axis factoring and promax rotation was examined. As a result, in the mathematical study attitude, two factors of "inquiring mind for mathematics" and "mathematical ways of observing and thinking" were extracted, and three factors of "relation to the real world", "the beauty of shapes", and "contribution to society and culture" were extracted with regard to the consciousness of geometric figures. Furthermore, we carried out a structural equation modeling analysis using the result of multiplex comparison, Pearson's correlation coefficients and multiple regression analysis as a reference in order to examine how the five extracted factors influenced each other. "Relation to the real world" influenced "inquiring mind for mathematics" and "mathematical ways of observing and thinking", while "contribution to society and culture" influenced "mathematical ways of observing and thinking", making it clear that "mathematical ways of observing and thinking" influenced "inquiring mind for mathematics". Consequently, students should recognize their ability to view problems from many teaching materials based on "relation to the real world" and/or "a contribution to society and culture".

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The purpose of this study is to discuss some key elements of the OECD/PISA mathematics framework in the light of Hans Freudenthal's didactics of mathematics, and to propose a component of PISA's definition of "mathematical literacy" in the light of his didactics. In order to accomplish this, this study outlines Freudenthal's didactics and the PISA mathematics framework, and compares the two from the following four viewpoints: first, using the concept of "mathematical literacy", and then by looking at three components of PISA investigation, that is, "situations and contexts", "mathematical content' 'and "mathematical processes". Apart from the evident influence of Freudenthal on PISA's concept of "mathematical literacy", the influence of his didactics on all three components is confirmed. To be specific, the place of "situations and contexts" in the PISA mathematics framework is closely aligned with Freudenthal's didactics; PISA's "overarching ideas" for its mathematics framework are also influenced by Freudenthal's "didactical phenomenology"; and the key idea of "mathematisation" in the PISA mathematics framework has its origins in Freudenthal's concept of "mathematizing". If Freudenthal's concept of "mathematizing" is at heart of mathematics education, individual's capacities for "local organization" according to context rightly occupy a central place in PISA's rich definition of "mathematical literacy".

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We examined the factors promoting "recognizing listener's understanding" in distance learning, using synchronous CSCL. The following points were considered. 1 The level of "recognizing listener's understanding" will rise when the number of exchanges increases. It is thought that this aspect has relevance to the experience of activity and the number of self-presentations. 2 The level of "recognizing listener's understanding" will rise in accordance with the number of "unintended conversations". 3 Time and space for free exchange are necessary for "unitended conversation" to occur. Synchronous CSCL, in which a student can design the contents and the position of a label freely, is effective in raising the level of "recognizing listener's understanding."

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This paper introduces a program that developed educational materials for teachers using manga, and evaluates the effectiveness of such materials. Using manga for educational materials has the following merits: manga is easy to understand, interesting, accessible, and easy to review. Manga also allows control of information and multiple interpretations. The educational material we developed is designed to help teachers learn about cooperative learning methods applicable to science classes. To evaluate the educational material featuring manga, we used the material to teach students in a preservice teacher training class. As a result, we found that manga is easy to read, and effective in communicating cooperative learning methods. We also found that manga facilitates understanding of cooperative learning.

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In this paper, we studied plants introduced as teaching materials in forty-eight elementary school science textbooks. These textbooks were edited by six different textbook publishers on the basis of the Course of Study for Elementary School in Japan, which was revised in 1998; the texbooks were published in 2002 and 2005. The editing of textbooks published in 2005 was influenced by a partial revision of the Course of Study in 2003. We investigated plants used for observations and experiments in different grades from various viewpoints such as plant species, sowing time, period of germination, optimum temperature for germination, fructification season, flowering season and time, and characteristics of flowers and fruit. The results of the study are as follows: The number of plants described in textbooks generally increased in the textbooks published in 2005 compared with those published in 2002. Most plants appearing in the textbooks have the following common properties: the sowing season of their seeds is from April to May, and the temperature for germination is 20-30℃. The germination periods are relatively short at one to two weeks, the flowering and fruiting are from summer to autumn, and the flowers open in the morning. It is thought that the plants are suitable as teaching materials for observations and experiments, since they are easily cultivated and their flowers can be seen by pupils in the morning. In addition, these plants will enhance children's interest because of their beautiful flowers, characteristics of shape and edibility of fruit. However, there are several exceptions. For example, the "balsam pear (Momordica charantia)" and "okra (Abelmoschus esculentus)" grow at a warm climate of about 25-30℃. In contrast, as the "potato (Solanum tuberosum)" grows in a cool climate, it is necessary to plant it from February. The "balloon vine (Cardiospermum halicacabum)" needs a relatively long time (20-30 days) for germination, and the "bottle gourd (Lagenaria leucantha)" opens its flower in the evening. It is necessary to pay attention to these characteristics when these plants will be introduced as teaching materials in school science textbooks.

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In science education, fostering scientific thinking is important, though few examples of scientific thinking are known. Sakamoto et al. (2007) advocated "meta-understanding of scientific principles" as one area of scientific thinking. If one is capable of meta-understanding, one is able to approach unknown phenomena with the assumption that scientific principles are applicable. Sakamoto and her colleague claim to have verified the existence of meta-understanding and the possibility of teaching it to elementary school students. However, we think they failed to provide proof, because their definition of meta-understanding is somewhat confused. Through inspection of the idea of "meta-understanding of scientific principles" and a process of inference with this meta-understanding, we refined the definition of meta-understanding introducing an important distinction they missed: whether a key causal mechanism of phenomena is known to students or not. Based on our new definition, we designed a clearer experiment which contained two pairs of tasks. We predicted a different response pattern for each pair of tasks, where the original paper expected no difference. As the result of the experiment supported our predictions, we achieved a more reliable verification of meta-understanding.

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The purpose of this research was to examine the teaching effect of using a "Multi-view VR Teaching Material of the Solar System". The teaching experiment was conducted with elementary and high school students. The result shows that the VR Teaching Material improved the interest and attitude of the elementary school students. In addition, it was shown that when the VR Teaching Material was used as an introduction, the level of understanding improved. Moreover, high school students obtained a similar learning effect, regardless of the use of the VR Teaching Material. In addition, we suggeste that the VR Teaching Material improves the level of understanding of elementary school students, and high school students with low learning capacity.

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