Article Education Information Sciences Psychology and Education

An Inquiry-Based Learning Support System for Children in Sports Acquisition Processes

This study examined an inquiry-based learning support system for children in sports acquisition processes and describes the characteristics of a case study on the long-term collaborative process of children’s forward and backward cycle practices on horizontal bars. We analyzed 18 horizontal-bar practices for two elementary schoolchildren who had not succeeded in their backward cycle for approximately half a year. They were required to make practice plans collaboratively to succeed in their forward and backward cycles. To support their practices, we provided them with “HDMi (HDMi is the name of a system we developed in the past.),” which was developed to support reflecting on one’s physical movements using movies. The movies were also used for discourse analysis to determine where the children focused, and OpenPose software was used for motion analysis to examine how the children’s actions improved on a horizontal bar. Both the HDMi and the discourse analysis suggested that two children selected their focusing points for their practice and they gradually became referring to “move toes toward opposite side of the bar” in the periods of practices. However, the motion analysis revealed that the focused points and actual movement of the body did not match completely.

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Article Education Interdisciplinary Sciences Psychology

Review matching task to diagnose basic review ability

Software development begins with writing a requirement definition document (RDD) specifying what software is to be built, and the RDD should define the necessary and sufficient conditions the software must satisfy. Preferably, the RDD is reviewed to guarantee its quality. However, the quality of reviews of such documents is not easy to evaluate, due to various review styles and the logical complexity of RDDs. Therefore, we regarded the review ability as the ability to match an RDD with a software and developed a game to make a matching task that can assess review quality. The task has four types of relationships, two-by-two classes of necessity (i.e., the RDD has no irrelevant sentences to define the given software) and sufficiency (i.e., the RDD covers all the parts of the software), between requirements and software, which are expressed in verbal and nonverbal forms. Results suggest that the game likely sufficiently simulated the process of making/reviewing RDD in the requirement definition process. Therefore, it is suggested that the matching task created through the game can be adequate to assess the review ability.

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Special Issue Education Psychology and Education

Japanese elementary teachers’ problem-based learning through online professional development on teaching Japanese language learners in physical education  

Public schools in Japan have become increasingly linguistically, ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse (Furuta et al., 2022). In rural regions, the number of Japanese-national students is declining in schools, and education services are shrinking (Mantanle, 2014) because of the aging population and low birth rate. This has led to serious economic concerns such as a smaller workforce and fewer taxpayers. This means that school districts in Japan will need new immigrant residents who can contribute to the sustainable future of education in Japan. However, in order to adequately serve this new population, Japanese teachers will need to receive training and demonstrate pedagogical knowledge and skills in relation to social justice and diversity, and facilitate inclusive and effective learning opportunities for all students. Our research team conducted two exploratory studies focusing on (a) Japanese elementary school teachers’ positioning in teaching physical education to Japanese language learners (Furuta et al., 2022) and (b) Japanese elementary classroom teachers’ experiences with the involvement of immigrant parents regarding physical education (Tomura et al., 2024a). Based on the findings of these studies, our research team developed online professional development modules for teachers using a problem-solving approach as part of a project funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

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Technical Article Education Electrical and Electronic Engineering Information Sciences Interdisciplinary Sciences

Possibility of regional revitalization by students’ IT

Recently, the number of students who can develop applications that can actually be used has increased. We thought that this power could be used for regional revitalization, we tried to connect the students and the region. As a result, we were able to create some interesting applications, some of which have become widely used in practice. For students, before going out to society, they can work on practical application development and know what kind of ingenuity is necessary to get them to actually use it. Although quality is not necessarily guaranteed in rural areas, the possibility of using the latest AI technology at a short development time and at a low cost was shown.

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Article Business & Management Economics Education Others Psychology

The Effect of Auditory Stimulation on College Sports Team and University Identification of Media Spectators: Focusing on the Presence or Absence of Live Play-by-Play Announcements and Commentary

This study aimed to determine how college sports team identifications and university identifications of college sports media viewers differ depending on the presence or absence of live play-by-play announcements and commentary. The participants in the experiment were 115 students from University A. A screening survey was conducted to confirm that these were essential attributes, resulting in 58 and 57 participants in the groups with commentary and without commentary, respectively. We conducted an Internet survey with these two groups of experimental participants before and after watching videos of the games. The results showed that only the group with commentary demonstrated improvements in the "public evaluation" of the college sports team and university identification (College sports team: F (1, 113) = 5.28, p < .05; University: F (1, 113) = 5.28, p < .05).

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Article Education Psychology

Creating a scale for measuring non-cognitive abilities developed through sports for elementary school students

The purpose of this study was to create a scale to measure non-cognitive skills that can be developed through sport. To begin, a draft of a non-cognitive ability measurement scale was developed based on previous research. A preliminary survey of 346 elementary school students (318 males and 28 females, mean age 8.90 ± 1.76 years) was conducted, and a preliminary scale was created using exploratory factor analysis. A subsequent main survey was conducted with 1171 elementary school students (1025 males and 146 females, mean age 8.77 ± 1.73). In the present study, confirmatory factor analysis, reliability testing using cronbach's alpha, and structural validity of the entire scale were examined using structural analysis of covariance. Furthermore, theoretical interpretations were also taken into account, and finally, a non-cognitive ability measurement scale that can be developed through sports for elementary school students was created, consisting of 50 items with 5 factors: "self-management," "problem-solving," "cooperativeness," "leadership," and "greetings/polite".

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Report Education Others Psychology

Development of Japanese women professional soccer athletes’ second career training

The purpose of this study was to describe, explain, and recommend how women’s professional soccer players and clubs could prepare for second career transitions in a way that minimizes psychosocial crises upon retirement. The Japan Women’s Empowerment Professional Football League (called the WE league) was founded with a mission to contribute towards building a sustainable society through promoting female social participation and enhancing diversity and choice. This study suggested training strategies that could foster second career development in the WE league. These strategies are (a) including theoretical frameworks in second career pathways, (b) the necessity of dual education pathways for Japanese women’s professional athletes, (c) promoting virtual internship experiences for Japanese women’s professional athletes, and (d) recommendations of second career training workshops for professional athletes in the WE League. The WE League and teams should allow professional athletes to improve meaningful skills and knowledge development, multiple experiential learning opportunities, and applicable training on second career development. Due to the paucity of research in this area, it is essential for scholars to further explore potential education and internships opportunities to ease transitions to second careers upon retirement.

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Article Education Others

Proposal of Rubric for Information Security Education Materials

This study proposes a generic rubric that can be used as an assessment axis for information security educational materials regarding existing computer science education evaluation standards to assess the learning effectiveness of information security educational materials aimed at young people. The proposed rubric includes items such as “understanding of cyber security” and “understanding why passwords are necessary,” and five-level learning objectives are defined for these items. Furthermore, the proposed rubric was used to assess the existing information security educational material “Hajimete no Joho Security (Learning First Information Security in a Different World)” using Minecraft. The proposed rubric was mapped to the learning contents of the teaching material as an assessment method, and the learning effectiveness of the teaching material was measured using Minecraft with the cooperation of a community center project in Sayama City in Japan. Therefore, we were able to evaluate the learning effects using the proposed rubric.

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Article Education Others

The relationship among skills/factors and their structure and wins/losses in games in basketball classes

This study aimed to extract the structure of plays/fouls of basketball games in university PE classes using MDS and to investigate the relationship between wins/losses and their structure using logistic regression analysis in the games. Targeted games were 20 games performed in university PE classes at F-university and the plays/factors observed were assessed by a 5-point scale. The items observed were 52 items chosen from “Passing,” “Dribbling,” “Shooting,” “Rebounding,” “Fast break,” “Cooperative plays,” “Violations,” and “Fouls.” After the principal component analysis was applied to the whole data, the items that did not show significant loadings were removed from the analysis, and a correlation matrix among only the items that had significant principle loadings was computed. Another principal component analysis was performed and the principal component scores for each skill/factor were computed. Nonmetric MDS was applied to the correlation matrix, a two-dimensional space was extracted, and the rotation of axes by Varimax criterion and clustering by hierarchical cluster analysis were applied to the two-dimensional space. Finally, logistic regression analysis to predict wins/losses was carried out using skills/factors including gender and evaluators to remove their influence as independent variables. As a result, the following results were obtained: 1) The two-dimensional space obtained was interpreted as “Individual skills and skills leading to fouls/violations” and “Individual – group skills.” Again, the four clusters obtained were also named “Ball-advancing individual skills,” “Under-basket individual skills,” “Cooperative skills,” and “Against-rule and unskilled plays.” 2) Although the likelihood ratio test of logistic regression analysis with all independent variables was not significant, the test of the model after the independent-variable selection was significant, in which “Shooting,” “Cooperative plays,” “Fouls,” and “Gender” were included. In the univariate analysis using correlation ratios, “Dribbling,” “Shooting,” and “Cooperative plays” were significant, but “Fouls” were not. It is thought that “Dribbling” lost its significant relationship with wins/losses when removing the influence of “Cooperative plays,” and insignificant “Fouls” in the univariate analysis showed an important impact on wins/losses because the fouls provided the change of offense and the risk of a losing score increased.

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Technical Article Business & Management Economics Education Psychology

A fundamental examination of the attentional function in the rhythm game

This study aimed to clarify the effect of the rhythm game "Osu!" on attentional function and its factors. Participants wore an electroencephalograph and played "Osu!” for 10 minutes (four games), and the Trail Making Test was performed before and after the games. As a result of the analysis focused on the frequency of the games, only the "high frequency group" showed an effect on attentional function. From the results, it can be inferred that rhythm games can improve attentional function and can function as a training tool for game users. The results also suggest that rhythm games can be used as a health-promoting tool owing to their ability to improve attentional function.

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