The term universal design has come to attract attention, but its concept is vague and has a variety of ways of thinking. This paper aims to develop a model of universal design based on domestic and international trends in education. In this way, we consider the results and issues of universal design in the current education. First, we defined universal design in education by considering the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the inclusive education system, which form the basis of the concept of universal design in education. As a result, based on the educational needs of each child, we were able to understand that, to the maximum extent possible, it is necessary to create an environment in which all children can feel that they are participating in activities related to learning and social life and have a sense of accomplishment while spending fulfilling time. The environmental improvement is related to the content and method of guidance support, and to the system, facilities and equipment of guidance support. These environmental improvements were organized as a means to achieve the goal of enriching children’s lives and participation in learning activities. Then, two universal design approaches in the present education are mentioned. Finally, the results and future problems are examined.

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Based on the two approaches of universal design in education so far, this study reported the practice from the Japanese language education which corresponds to the third approach which supplements these problems. Two things are common to these practices. First, what children have experienced and are interested in daily life and their interests are directly reflected in the class, and they can express themselves in talking, moving and creating. Second, children’s learning in class is that they can feel otherness by mimicking the relationship with themselves, friends, and family, or by applying others to themselves, in relation to the characters and themes in the text. In the past, the two approaches of universal design did not refer to the contents of learning, but instead focused on the visualization of teaching materials and the use of movement as teaching methods, and shared learning contents. The third approach cited in this paper, however, is that instead of teachers deciding how to teach from the start, children emphasize child-centered learning by expressing themselves as needed through activations and by sharing and focusing on what they talk about with each other. The model of the universal design approach which incorporated the above three approaches was clarified.

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This study’s purpose was twofold: First, it was aimed at constructing and validating a quantitative measurement instrument to determine the structure of a self-efficacy scale that measures teachers’ 21st century skills on the basis of educational activities. Second, it was intended to analyze in what areas teachers exhibit excellent and poor self-efficacy. To these ends, empirical data (N = 132) were collected via a web-based, theoretically informed questionnaire applicable to the professional domain of education and intended to cultivate teacher education in a global society. The questionnaire incorporated 21st century skills, seven transversal competencies stipulated in the Finnish curriculum, and PISA 2015 global competencies, which considerably influenced the development of a Japanese course of study released in 2018. From a viewpoint that focuses on teachers’ practical and performative abilities in realizing the new course of study, the inquiry was directed toward the extent to which teachers can deliver lessons and work in school organizations. The exploratory factor analysis revealed three determinants. The results also indicated that the structure of teachers’ 21st century skills comprises three dimensions: interactive task performance, the ability to develop a pluriliteracies approach in foreign language teaching, and analytical design thinking. These findings enrich current 21st century skills and benefit educators and school organizations with an interest in fostering teacher education. The repeated-measures analysis of variance between the factors showed that the differences were statistically significant. The self-efficacy of teachers with respect to factor 1 was high, but such competency was low in terms of factor 2. The participating Japanese teachers considered themselves skilled at raising pupils’ self-consciousness and carrying out tasks such as active learning and project planning in teams, albeit they acknowledged weakness in developing lessons that tackle work in a global society. In addition, the findings on the three factors suggested the potential of teachers to design new frameworks that can be used across disciplines, such as science, the arts, and fields dealing with emotions.

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COVID-19 has led to remote classes in many universities, but the impacts on students are not clear. Guided by Ryan and Deci’s self-determination theory, this study explored how remote classes were conducted by teachers in Japanese universities and examined the effect of teaching styles on students’ well- and ill-being. A pilot survey (N = 200) was conducted to collect instructor’s teaching behaviours in remote classes via open-ended questions. The main survey was conducted with 400 undergraduates; 200 were taking real-time online classes and 200 were taking on-demand classes. The participants were asked to indicate the teaching style of a class they received, need satisfaction and dissatisfaction from the class, and their well-being/ill-being. Factor analysis on teaching style’s items revealed three factors: “clear direction”, “lack of concern”, and “interaction”. Supporting the self-determination theory, structural equation modeling revealed that clear direction was related to well-being by mediating need satisfaction, whereas the lack of concern was related with ill-being by mediating need dissatisfaction. Moreover, clear direction and interaction were directly related with students’ well-being without mediating need satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The effective and appropriate methods for teachers who conduct remote classes is also discussed.

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There are multiple expressions of utterance to encourage a certain action from a socially superior person to a subordinate one. The types of expression may influence the recipients’ responses. One of the types of expression is goal framing: positive goal flaming and negative goal flaming. The present study examined the effects of goal framing in utterance expression on recipients’ cognition, affects, and motivation for action. Fifty graduate and undergraduate students participated in an experiment using a hypothetical situation method with positive and negative goal framing. Two types of situations were provided: high involvement and low involvement. The situation was seminar in high involvement condition and job in low involvement condition. The speaker was a seminar professor in the former situation, and that was a workplace boss in the latter situation. The main results were as follows. (1) Utterance expression with positive goal framing led to recipients’ more positive responses in cognition, affects, and motivation for action than expression with negative goal framing. (2) Interaction between utterance expression and situation was significant in all indexes except cognition of utterance intention. There was no difference between the two situations in positive framing, while job situation induced more negative responses than seminar situation in negative framing. These findings suggest that positive framing can be used safely regardless of the situation, while negative framing requires caution in some situations for encouraging utterance. The present findings were discussed from the point that the influence of goal framing is not the same in personal communication and impersonal message.

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When we think of Eastern Cultures, Japan, China and Korea immediately comes to mind. When we compare Eastern to Western Cultures, the popular believe is that Japan, for example, is a collective culture and The United States is an individualistic culture. I call that the one size fits all comparison as there’s so much more to meet the eye. Takano & Osaka (1999) and Matsumoto (2018) studies both refute the collective-individualistic contention. Are there any differences between these countries? Research comparing Eastern countries is important for answering this question. Fu (2018) showed the differences of Japanese and Chinese children’s behaviors when solving the puzzle tasks. In this study, we presented the same puzzle solving tasks which had been used in the former study (Fu, 2018) to typical developing 4-year-old Korean children (n = 14, 10 boys and 4 girls) and 3-year-old Korean children (n = 11, 3 boys and 8 girls). Those children’s behavioral responses were analyzed by using 16 behavioral items that were divided into the three identical categories: actions, words and facial expressions. The results indicated that 4-year-old children showed more behaviors than 3-year-old children. Also, when children were asked if the puzzle they had just solved were difficult or easy, 4-year-old children responded more clearly than 3-year-old children. Moreover, the comparison with the results of former study (Fu, 2018) indicated that the behaviors of Korean children were different from Japanese and Chinese children. In cultural psychology, Japan, China, and Korea are often treated as one group when comparing Eastern and Western countries. The results of this study demonstrated that this practice is problematic.

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The purpose of this study was to clarify the attitudes of 28 elementary school teachers who had been in charge of special needs classes, guidance through special classes, and regular classes regarding the use of psychological tests in the assessment and support of children with disabilities. The results showed that although there was a tendency for many teachers to consider the use of psychological tests are meaningful, but teachers were not confident in their use. In addition, there are many people who think that it is important for teachers to identify the training related to psychological tests based on objective understanding and results. However, if teachers are not confident in utilizing psychological tests, they are not able to state the specific reasons for the necessity of training, and the utilization of psychological tests is considered to be a peripheral task, and there is a possibility that teachers are too busy to afford it. Based on the above results, we proposed two future issues; first, to report concretely the practice of the assessment by the psychological test in the school field and second, to cultivate self-confidence by increasing the number of teachers who can utilize psychological tests based on the first perspective.

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[in Japanese]

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Fostering self-affirmative must take place throughout school education activities, not just in specific areas of education activities. The aim of this study was to develop a cross-disciplinary training program for self-affirmative by approaching self-affirmative from the three areas of educational counseling, extracurricular activities, and moral education. Self-affirmative must be fostered throughout educational activities. Therefore, it makes sense to approach self-affirmative from these three areas. In this paper, as a preliminary step to the development of such a program, we developed a scale for measuring self-affirmative, especially the selection of question items. As a result, a total of 31 items, “self-affirmative,” “stable self/self-confidence,” and “self-determination/career,” were suggested.

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Previous studies have shown that uncertainty and threat promote politically conservative choices, and that political ideology is also strongly associated with moral foundations. Based on these findings, by manipulating the levels of uncertainty and threat to the future, the current study tested Japanese undergraduates and examined the effects of perceived uncertainty and threat on cognitive motives and moral foundations. To begin with, participants responded to their political attitudes, which were included as a covariate in the following analysis. Two weeks later, participants were randomly assigned to a threat condition or a control condition. In the threat condition, participants were asked to read a brief article describing changes in social system regarding the immigration of foreign workers, which would be likely to evoke the feelings of uncertainty and threat for Japanese university students. In the control condition, participants were asked to read another brief article on the immigration of foreign workers, which would be unlikely to accompany threat. Participants also responded to questions about their cognitive needs and moral foundations. Results showed that compared to those in the control condition, those in the threat condition judged moral deviance behavior to be more wrong across all moral foundations. However, the threat manipulation did not affect participants’ cognitive needs measured by the need for cognitive closure. These findings suggest that threat would play a significant role in individuals’ moral judgment on wrongness.

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