Mayuko Suzuki

The current urgent task facing school education is to nurture the literacy of critical thinking, expressiveness and problem-solving skills among students to enable them to survive in the rapidly changing society. Teachers are required to empower themselves and their own abilities to cope with these missions; that is, to support students' developing such new scholastic literacy. In this research, a twelve-hour program of lessons for home economics teachers was developed and implemented for three years from 2009 to 2011, within the framework of "the Teacher License Renewal Program" organized by the University of Fukui. The program contained collaborative learning and problem-solving activities, aiming to nurture teachers' (i.e. the attendees') literacy of problem solving and their lesson-planning skills. The effectiveness of program was analyzed by using teachers' work such as illustrations and lesson plans, descriptions and other evaluation data over the three years. Through data analysis, teachers' enthusiastic approaches towards, and deeper understanding of, the collaborative activities and problem-solving learning became apparent, and the program received high evaluations from the attendant teachers. Based on all of the analysis, the effectiveness of the program was indicated.

The purpose of this research is to clarify influences and problems of reducing home economics credits in senior high schools. The method of research was the mail survey to home economics teachers of 1311 public senior high schools in 21 prefectures. 621 schools replied. The following things became clear as a result of analyzing them. 1) About 70% of schools didn't place only one or less full-time teacher for home economics. And about 60% of full-time teachers were teaching subjects except home economics. This means that it is difficult to place one full-time teacher only for teaching home economics. 2) About 70% of home economics teachers had experienced the decrease in the number of required credits in home economics. 3) The decrease in the number of required credits in home economics caused reduction of study activities, and also caused the decline of each student's life skill, and the decline of evaluation and importance to home economics.

The aim of this research is to grasp situations of home economics credits in general course of senior high schools all over Japan. 1331 curriculums were conducted at 1062 public senior high schools in 16 prefectures and the curriculums for students who entered schools in 2009 were analyzed. The following are the results. 1) Required subjects of home economics are not always having standard credits. 2) In prefectures with many numbers of senior high schools, the ratio of required home economics with more than 4 credits is relatively high. On the other hand, in prefectures with fewer numbers of schools, the ratio of home economics with less than 2 credits is relatively high. 3) There is a remarkable difference among prefectures on how many credits students would get of home economics. The more schools make students study less home economics credits, the fewer schools tend to post full-time teachers of home economics. 4) In about 60% curriculums, special subjects of home economics are added as elective ones to the required subject of home economics. In some prefectures, adding of special subjects is related for home economics teachers with getting full-time post.

The purpose of this study is to clarify the conditions of the number of required credits and teacher placement in senior high school home economics. Analyzing 2009 survey of senior high school home economics teacher supervisors in each prefectural board of education in Japan, the following results were obtained: 1) Selection rate of the required subjects in Home Economics for all students differed from one prefecture to another. 'Basic Home Economics' were selected at the rate of over 70% in nine prefectures, and about 60% of teacher's supervisors recognized the decreasing tendency of the number of required credits in home economics. 2) In Terms of the placement of home economics teachers, the number of full-time teachers, lecturers, and assistants for practical exercises remarkably differed in each prefecture, and the placement of full-time teachers was influenced by the selected subject