EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM & PRACTICE IN JAPAN
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0 V Classroom Management & Guidance Download : V Classroom Management & Guidance
1 V Classroom Management & Guidance A classroom is a physical space where students grouped in a class focus on learning subjects and social interactions in school life. Especially at the level of elementary schools, the time spent in classrooms is significant as students’ characters are formed through interactions among students under group-based study arrangements.
A disciplined, friendly and comfortable atmosphere is indispensable in classrooms since it forms the basis for students to live and learn year around. A classroom that groups students with individual personalities is not an easy or automatic situation to sustain.
In elementary schools in Japan, therefore, home-room teachers have to make their own annual plans on classroom management and then proceed to manage their classes on the basis of the annual plan.
2 V Classroom Management & Guidance Home-room teachers usually are in charge of their classes in Japan’s elementary schools. While recently, some specialized teachers only teach specific subjects, such as, music, drawing and handcrafts, home-room teachers teaches and handled multiple subjects and also are in charge of moral education, Special Activities and Guidance. Therefore, classroom management by home-room teachers ranges from subject instructions to extracurricular activities.
Students develop individually by exercising their own abilities, personalities, and by improving self-confidence in class. At the same time, they develop social group skills by cooperating or discussing with classmates with differing personalities and abilities. In classroom management, teachers provide guidance for students individually as well as for the whole class as a group.
3 V Classroom Management & Guidance A class management plan needs to be made with a perspective of educational A class management plan needs to be made with a perspective of educational activities that includes guidance on both subjects and extracurricular activities. Home-room teachers need first to understand the characteristics and conditions of each student, ascertain the features of required group tasks, and then set class management objectives for the year.
The teacher writes down precisely what kind of tasks need to be performed in order to achieve the yearly objectives for each subject as well as for moral education, special activities, and the period of integrated study.
4 V Classroom Management & Guidance Key class objectives are to develop student groups that function to enhance individual growth and that have positive impacts on the education of individual student s. Students themselves help to determine the objective of their classes. The objectives can be slogans or mottos for each student who belongs to the class. Formulating and pursuing such objectives have an important function in creating orderly classroom conditions where groups function in both learning and living contexts.
5 V Classroom Management & Guidance Class objectives play significant roles for home room teachers in every day teaching. Teachers should understand the educational objectives of both their schools and their individual grades. These objectives of classroom educational activities are operationalized in terms of timeframes such as terms, months and weeks.
Teachers should understand the development and growth of students both as individuals and in groups and then provide appropriate guidance to their students by keeping class objectives in mind.
6 V Classroom Management & Guidance Each class has its own internal atmosphere. Placards exhibited by on classroom walls help contribute to this atmosphere. Class objectives that show the class motto are exhibited primarily in the form of posters at the most noticeable places in the classroom as reminders to both teachers and students. (Notice/posters 1-->Ⅸ-58)
(1)
(2) 6th grade, Nov. 2004
(3) 1st grade, Nov. 2004
7 V Classroom Management & Guidance Class activities are the most important activities in a class functioning as one unit and include special activities that are a part of the formal curriculum. They are defined as “activities to enrich and to solidify everyday life in class and school” and “activities to adapt to daily life and to learn and improve health and safety.” Solidarity making and enrichment activities are done by “solving life problems in school and class, organized class settings in a way to help students cope with a division of work.” Other activities are designed to promote “the formation of attitudes of helpfulness and purpose, the development of basic life style, the formation of desirable inter-personal relationships, the utilization of school libraries, the nurturing of physically and mentally sound and safe life styles, and the formation of desirable eating habits.”
The objectives and contents of class activities have implications for both class-based and group-based activities as well as for day duties. Class-based activities are the ones that students undertake involving a variety of classroom work by making individual assignments. Group-based activities involve cooperation among students in small groups by engaging in various study and other activities. The day duty is daily work shared by the entire class.
8 V Classroom Management & Guidance Class activities are placed in the formal curriculum to encourage students to do activities voluntarily and independently. They are as important as learning individual subjects since they are basic to establishing class groups.
Class activities have various elements and approaches. The day duty and the class-based activities promote voluntary activities among individual students. Class-based activities done by student groups as a unit along with other group-based activities help to cultivate the ability of a group of students to work and interact together autonomously.
9 V Classroom Management & Guidance Students who are in charge of class activities have their names recorded on the wall in a classroom along with the kind of activities they have to perform. By demonstrating that all students share a variety of classroom tasks, the responsibility and desire of students to participate actively in class activities increases.
(1) (2) (3) Various tasks
(4) A student who has done his duty can record it with a color seal. 4th grade,
(5) Students responsible for school lunch introduce interesting information about today’s lunch menu. 6th grade
(6) Students responsible for school lunch help clean desks used for serving lunch.
(7) (8) Students decide allocation of tasks through discussions.
(-->Ⅸ-31, 32, 50)
10 V Classroom Management & Guidance (1) Study group. 6th grade, Dec. 2003
(2) School lunch group, 1st grade, July 2004
(3) Group for cleaning, December 2003
(4) Group for serving school lunch, 6th grade, December 2003
11 V Classroom Management & Guidance (1) Day duty tasks
(2) Names of day duty assignments for the day, 1st grade, July 2004
(3) A day duty student is writing the class timetable before a morning meeting. 6th grade, December 2003
(4) Students performing the day duty are cleaning blackboard after a class, 4th grade, January 2005
(5) A day duty student is writing a journal for the day, December 2003
12 V Classroom Management & Guidance Class newsletters are published as one means of communication by home-room teachers in cooperation with students and parents. Some teachers don’t publish them. The contents and the methods used to publish newsletters differ between teachers. The newsletter can be an important way to make a class pull together.
Newsletters have several functions. The most common function is to inform parents regarding children’s school life and planned school events. They have another important function to convey to students a teacher’s thoughts and ideas, and to provide guidance by teachers to students and their parents through class newsletters.
13 V Classroom Management & Guidance Classroom newsletters are handed to students and their parents. Through newsletters parents understand the situation of students in class and are informed of educational policies of home-room teachers as well as how home-room teachers view their students. Students also receive messages from home-room teachers through classroom newsletters and during daily classroom life.
Home-room teachers with the ability assess the effects of their classroom newsletters try to do the following: to appropriately ascertain the circumstances of students as a group and to inform them of relevant issues; to ask parents about their level of understanding of teacher policies; to prompt parents to work with their children. Through newsletters, teachers also send messages to enhance students’ motivations for life and learning.
14 V Classroom Management & Guidance
15 V Classroom Management & Guidance In Japan’s elementary schools that follow the grade system, internal group activities traditionally have been conducted among children of the same age (peer groups) based on grade levels and homerooms. However, recently the number of siblings in a single family has been decreasing. As a result, children have fewer opportunities to play with children of differing ages in their daily life. This leads to a diminishment of a local community’s bond.
Therefore, in many elementary schools, small group activities spanning children of various ages have been introduced into the formal curriculum. Seniors play roles as older brothers and sisters of juniors. This is done through such activities as cleaning school premises and by taking excursions organized into small groups that consist of students from differing age levels, such as spanning 1st graders to 6th graders.
16 V Classroom Management & Guidance Group activities of differing aged children usually consist of 1 or 2 students selected from each grade level from the 1st to 6th grades. They are organized into vertical divisions, thereby breaking the age boundaries found in conventional grades and classes where children have similar ages. A 6th grader becomes a leader of a group and all members actively cooperate together.
17 V Classroom Management & Guidance (1) Group members are deciding plays which they previously enjoyed at a city park.
(2) Each group starts from school.
(3) Enjoying quiz rallies on the way to the destination.
(4) Arriving at the city park.
(5) Playing and enjoying snacks with group members.
18 V Classroom Management & Guidance (1) Group leaders are gathering their group members.
(2) (3) Group members are planting new flowers.
19 V Classroom Management & Guidance 6th grade students are instructing 1st grade students about how to clean the toilet. December 2003
20 V Classroom Management & Guidance Since the Meiji era, “increases in educational enrollment and advancement rates” in Japan have served as important indices to demonstrating the development of public education. After World War Ⅱ, enrollment rates reached almost 100% in 9-year compulsory educational facilities. While increasing advancement rates to universities followed the rapid increases in advancement rates to upper secondary schools from 1950 to 1970, students who cannot and/or don’t want to go to school are appearing today.
This symptom of dropout children has come to be viewed as remarkable and has been termed a “school phobia”. It is commonly viewed as a kind of disorder in which children of school age personally don’t like attending school. More recently this phenomenon has begun to be called “tohkoh-kyohi,” which means children themselves refuse to go to school. And now it is termed “non-attendance at school,” or absenteeism, which has a more general meaning that acknowledges the fact that children don’t go to school for various reasons. (Non-attendance -->Ⅱ-47, 48)
21 V Classroom Management & Guidance The number of non-attending school students increased remarkably during the 1980s to 1990s. But the number has leveled off for 10 years since 1999. The total number of non-attending school students at elementary and lower secondary schools are over 126,000 as of 2008, in the ratio of one to 300 elementary school students and three to 100 lower secondary school students. (Non-attendance → II-48)
22 V Classroom Management & Guidance The reasons for non-attendance at (absenteeism from) schools vary and include deteriorating relationships with friends and/or teachers. Also, the number of absentee students from school is increasing remarkably because of personal problems like languidness or anxiety. In both cases, attention should be paid to the multiplication and overlapping of factors leading to continuous non-attendance at school.
There is also a view that from a macro level perspective, that the enforced conformity and uniformity bearing down upon individual students in the national modern public education system in Japan may inevitably have caused this phenomenon to appear and grow.
>http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/21/08__icsFiles/afieldfile/2009/08/06/1282877_1_1.pdf
23 V Classroom Management & Guidance The reasons for non-attendance at (absenteeism from) schools vary and include deteriorating relationships with friends and/or teachers. Also, the number of absentee students from school is increasing remarkably because of personal problems like languidness or anxiety. In both cases, attention should be paid to the multiplication and overlapping of factors leading to continuous non-attendance at school.
There is also a view that from a macro level perspective, that the enforced conformity and uniformity bearing down upon individual students in the national modern public education system in Japan may inevitably have caused this phenomenon to appear and grow.
>http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/21/08__icsFiles/afieldfile/2009/08/06/1282877_1_1.pdf
24 V Classroom Management & Guidance The phenomenon of “non-attendance at school or school absenteeism” in contemporary Japan has occurred for complex reasons. The reasons include relationships between teachers and students in school, academic pressures on students, problems which derive from the diversification of family, and students’ mental and emotional problems. In Japanese society which has achieved economic affluence and maintains high educational enrollment and advancement rates, perhaps it is becoming harder for such students to find meaning in “attending school.” ’
25 V Classroom Management & Guidance (1) A free school located in Tokyo rents this school building from a Tokyo city office paying money. (2) Regular meeting on Friday afternoon: all students attend, join in and decide their activities or other topics (topics; art festival, cleaning up before summer vacation, a free school schedule while summer vacation, lodging at free school (3) Timetable (4) At the back of the room; making home page for this free school, on the floor; translating documents into English which will be announced at events in German, on the desk; self-study (5) Exercising playing the guitar (6) Playing video game
This free school established in 1985 was authorized as an NPO by the Tokyo city office in 1999. In 1992, the ministry of education indicated that it would leave the matter up to the principal’s discretion to determine the number of days required to go to the free school in contrast to the number of days required for ordinary schools, and in 1993 agreed that commuter’s tickets could be used by students. These developments indicate that social awareness of the problem of non-attendance at schools (absenteeism) has increased.
26 V Classroom Management & Guidance It is necessary to deal with non-attending, absentee students individually because there are various and multiple factors behind their non-attendance at school. It is necessary to understand the present conditions in which it is no longer possible to affirm that it is absolutely good or positive for all children to go to school, since most non-attending school children want to go to school, but cannot do so for various reasons. It is necessary to take measures to help such children to adapt to school life and to rejoin classes.
“Visits to children’s homes by teachers” are designed to exchange information regarding the reasons for non-attendance by school children with their parents and to communicate directly with the children. “Attendance in health rooms” is an option for some children who want to go to school but cannot join a class because study pressures or poor relationships with their friends. “Special classrooms for absentee school children,” established by municipal boards of education function to provide such children with guidance and help facilitate their attendance at public schools.
27 V Classroom Management & Guidance There are many ways to deal with absentee students. One option is to deepen their understanding of the negative aspects of their non-attendance at school through workshops and to provide direct guidance to such students. Schools may also try to promote cooperation with the families of such students and with other organizations.
>http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/21/08__icsFiles/afieldfile/2009/08/06/1282877_1_1.pdf
28 V Classroom Management & Guidance There are many ways to deal with absentee students. One option is to deepen their understanding of the negative aspects of their non-attendance at school through workshops and to provide direct guidance to such students. Schools may also try to promote cooperation with the families of such students and with other organizations.
>http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/21/08__icsFiles/afieldfile/2009/08/06/1282877_1_1.pdf
29 V Classroom Management & Guidance Reasons behind non-attendance at school are various and composite. Therefore in order to tackle them, a variety of appropriate measures have been devised involving differing perspectives.
30 V Classroom Management & Guidance (1) The classroom is a space to act collectively rather than personally. If a student wishes to study in nurse’s room, his/her desk will be placed there. Students can have their own personal space in school. February 2005
(2) This educational training center provides any counseling needed by phone everyday from Monday through Sunday. February 2004
31 V Classroom Management & Guidance (Visits to children’s homes-->Ⅶ-8-10)
32 V Classroom Management & Guidance
33 V Classroom Management & Guidance (1) At a student’s house.
(2) A teacher talks with a student’s mother.
(3) Leaving to the next student’s house.
34 V Classroom Management & Guidance As a result of increases in serious negative behavior by students (delinquency, violence, bullying, suicide, non-attendance at school.), it became necessary to provide students with “education for sound mental development.” To deal with these problems, counselors” began to be deployed to schools as “specialists in mental soundness” by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Between 1995 to 2000, such counselors were deployed to a limited number of schools financed by MEXT that wanted to assess the use of counselors and the resulting impacts. Supported by grants from the government, the project has expanded to prefectures and designated cities.
By the middle of 1998, counselors of “education for mental soundness” were deployed to lower secondary schools lacking school counselors to relieve pressures and stress upon students by providing them with opportunities to talk about their distress without constraints.
35 V Classroom Management & Guidance There are no official qualifications for school counselors, although occasionally certified clinical psychologists or school psychologists are employed as school counselors. School counselors are commissioned by regional autonomous bodies and are assigned to specific schools. In most cases, counselors work at schools on a part-time basis,once or twice a week. School counselor provide guidance to students as well as to teachers and parents.
36 V Classroom Management & Guidance School counselors can respond to students’ distress by taking advantage of their presence as “outsiders” at the school, having a non-teacher status.
However, there are cases where assigned counselors are unable to fully understand the school’s atmosphere because of the part-time nature of their jobs. It is necessary for counselors and teachers to establish cooperative relationships in order to provide more effective and appropriate guidance for students.
37 V Classroom Management & Guidance (1) This school counselor (has a qualification as a clinical psychologist) is reading the impressions of students’ who attended peer counseling in a “lounge room.”
(2) This counselor of education for mental soundness has a 2nd grade master’s degree.
(3) A counselor of education for mental soundness
(4) The school counselor is taking school lunch to talk with students in one of the classrooms (1st grade of lower secondary school) .
(5) Afternoon break in “lounge room”
38 V Classroom Management & Guidance At elementary schools where home-room teachers take charge of a class, there is a tendency that the problems of student groups and individual students remain within the class. Because of this, when a problem arises in a group of students in a classroom setting, or when problems gets worse between teachers and groups of students, teachers sometimes tend to keep the problems to themselves.
In order to avoid such situations, teachers are given opportunities to regularly exchange information about the situations of their classes and students and concerns about class management and guidance, and then discuss with other teachers on how to deal with the problems.
39 V Classroom Management & Guidance Under the home-room teacher system used in Japanese elementary schools, it is difficult to identify problems in classes from the outside such as individual students’ serious behavioral problems, problems within a group of students, and trouble between homeroom teachers and students. That is why such problems often tend to become serious. Teachers who assume a strong sense of responsibility tend to blame themselves for problems in their classes.
By sharing problems from each class along with ideas on teaching at teachers’ guidance meetings, guidance provided to students will be improved.   
40 V Classroom Management & Guidance
41 V Classroom Management & Guidance Japanese compulsory education represents a free education system: tuition fees are not collected at public school and textbooks are distributed free of charge at both public and private schools.
However, incidental private expenses are actually collected at many schools, such as class fees and an appropriation for expenditures for educational activities from students’ parents. (Education costs paid by guardians -->Ⅶ-71)
42 V Classroom Management & Guidance The above table shows that an expenditure of 6,600 yen per year for a 3rd grade at an elementary school is needed. Parents are required to pay “class fees” of 600 yen per month. By looking at the items of expenses in this table, it is clear that class fees are spent on teaching materials that are used in regular educational activities such as tests, drill books and reading drills.
In addition to teaching materials, schools collect money from parents for expenditures such as school lunches, expenses for excursions and school trips, and paper used in the classroom environment. The task of collecting money is usually a part of the duty of a home-room teacher.
(Education costs per child -->Ⅶ 72-74)
43 V Classroom Management & Guidance (1) (2) After a morning meeting, a home-room teacher starts to collect class fees.
(3) Recording the names of students who have paid class fees
(4) A home-room teacher quickly brings the class fees to the teachers’ room.
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