The purpose of this study was to investigate the professional development process of an expert teacher for “Manabiai” from “practitioner-side” and “mentorside” through life-history approach. Mr. Hamasaki (pseudonym) participated in this study, who was an elementary school teacher and expertized both practicing and mentoring in “Manabiai”. The results of narrative analysis were followings. First, as “practitioner-side”, he constructed two personal theories for “Manabiai” that were “ensuring inquiry” and “ensuring participation by collaboration” toward actualization of “state of children’s supporting and connecting each other”, and that were contributed to by observing senior teachers’ lesson, deliberating practice with colleague, and encountering understandable practice and researchers’ advice. Second, as “mentor-side”, he believed that both “studying teaching materials” and “observing and practicing with reflection” from “sense of ownership” and “objectivity” were important from his experience. On the other hand, he felt difficulty of mentoring first-year teachers in three terms; they could not grow out of sense of mission that “I must teach”, they were required to learn teacher-led instruction style from other teachers’ mentoring or in-service training, and they could not understand means of observing practice.

  This report presents the results of a classroom study that examined the efficacy of a lesson that was designed to encourage student involvement in learning and to facilitate achievement of learning goals. Specifically, a lesson on the “methods of teaching morality” was planned, focusing on two of relevance-building strategies in the ARCS model of motivational design: “connecting to goals” (goal-orientation) and “linking to previous experience” (familiarity). The lesson was conducted by using cooperative learning within a teaching―learning unit framework.

  The results indicated that the lesson was effective to some extent at encouraging students’ involvement in learning and facilitating achievement of learning goals. Moreover, research investigating the classroom environmen―with a focus on “interaction” with teachers and peers to further encourage student involvement in learning―was identified as a challenge for the future.