Shiori Goto

This study elucidates the characteristics of Tsunekichi Masubuchi’s instructional approach to modern Japanese reading comprehension by analyzing materials related to his research lessons conducted in Kagawa Prefecture and collaborative studies with Takenodai High School. There are two main findings. First, the underlying mechanism of Masubuchi’s “problem-solving learning” is clarified. In this approach, learning is centered around answering questions either presented to students in advance or posed spontaneously by the teacher during the lesson. Classroom activities are structured around group discussions and presentations of answers to questions. Second, distinctive features of the manner in which Masubuchi formulated and sequenced his questions are identified. The questions are formulated based on the specific narrative elements of the literary texts and aligned with textual progression. The instructional design guides the students to analytically examine textual details before reflecting on the overall theme. These characteristics indicate Masubuchi’s emphasis on instructional methods grounded in intimate textual reading. When the subject, “Modern Japanese Language” was first introduced in high schools, many teachers experienced challenges with teaching reading comprehension effectively. For such teachers, Masubuchi’s model of “problem-solving learning” is a significant pedagogical benchmark.

This paper reports the implementation of the “Flipped Classroom” in the class about chemistry to solve the problems of conventional classes. The implementation was carried out by active learning based on the knowledge gained by watching video materials as preparation for a lecture. The effects and the results of these practices are evaluated through questionnaire survey among the 161 students who participated in the “Flipped Classroom”. The percentage of positive evaluations in terms of satisfaction towards the classes increased after the “Flipped Classroom” is introduced. These results showed that the “Flipped Classroom” explored in this study has certain benefits, such as helping the students to increase their motivation to learn, to be accustomed to the learning, and to increase their learning time outside the class.

In this paper, we analyzed the survey and results on basic knowledge and elementary concepts of chemistry in an institute of technology and clarified the actual condition of students’ misconception. The difference of the mastery situation of the basic knowledge may prevent the right mastery of the basic knowledge by the accumulation of scientifically wrong recognition. Such scientifically wrong recognition is called “Naive Concept” , and it may become a hindrance in learning the advanced special subject. Therefore, we investigated the status of possession of simple concepts and acquisition of basic knowledge on chemistry by first and third-year students in an institute of technology. As a result, the following conclusions were obtained:(i) In both the first and third-year students, many incorrect answers suggesting the possession of naive concepts are found in the low percentage of correct answers to the survey questions. (ii) The percentage of correct answers in the third-year students is almost the same as in the first-year students. Furthermore, the tendency of errors in the free response columns is also similar. This indicates that the naive concepts of third-year students have not been corrected despite having taken chemistry in the first and second-year students.