This study explores the multifaceted concept of "public good(s)" in the context of Japanese higher education. Through interviews with 11 stakeholders, including policymakers, representatives from academic associations, and institutional leaders from two national universities, the research reveals that "public good(s)" are…

A novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has spread widely throughout the world. To reduce the spread of infection, children are prevented from going to school and have fewer opportunities for in-person communication. Such changes in the everyday lives of children might influence their socio-emotional behaviors; however, the whole picture of the possible…

Moral pride is a key component of virtue development. This study provides developmental insight into children's moral pride across cultures, and the potential for moral pride to underlie prosocial behavior. Participants included children and adolescents ages 6, 9, and 12 years from Canada (n = 186; 50% girls; ethnically diverse sample), Japan (n =…

Background: Individuals pursue teaching careers for numerous reasons, such as for instrumental or prosocial purposes. Aims: This study examined the personal (instrumental motivation) and social (prosocial motivation) utility of teaching as predictors of teaching quality in terms of clarity of instruction, classroom management, and cognitive…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of prosociality, which is defined in terms of helping and benefitting others, between teacher collaboration and their turnover intentions. Prosociality was measured as prosocial impact and prosocial motivation. Design/methodology/approach: This study was conducted through a…

Background: Countries around the world have struggled to implement education policies and practices to encourage more female youths to pursue Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). This has resulted in a persistent and sizeable gender gap in science and mathematics subjects in some countries. Using mixed-methods sequential…

This quasi-experimental, mixed methods study explored student perceptions of class climate before and after implementation of a two-week social and emotional learning (SEL) intervention in elementary classrooms in Japan. The sample consisted of 131 second and third grade students. A one-time SEL lesson focusing on offering kind words to peers was…

As one of the super-aged countries, Japan is facing serious social and economic implications of the rapidly increasing elderly population while the working population is decreasing. This has created tremendous burden not only on the Government of Japan but also on the local administrative units like Kobe City to provide adequate health and social…

This study examines the interaction between gender and classroom social goal structures and the impact they have on children's prosocial behaviors and classroom adjustment. Specifically, classroom social goal structures (consisting of prosocial and compliance goal structure) are the degree to which focal social goals are presented in classrooms.…

This study examined whether children understand that people selectively conceal or express emotion depending upon the context. We prepared two contexts for a verbal display task for 70 first-graders, 80 third-graders, 64 fifth-graders, and 71 adults. In both contexts, protagonists had negative feelings because of the behavior of the other…

The development of metalinguistic awareness for linguistic politeness was examined in 68 Japanese-speaking children aged between three and five years old. A politeness judgement task was administered together with several phonological judgement tasks and false-belief tasks. Four- and five-year old Japanese children, but not three-year-olds, made…

Children's reasoning about the appropriateness of accepting credit for one's own prosocial behavior was examined. Participants aged 7-11 years old in Japan and the USA (total N = 206) were presented with a series of stories in which a protagonist performs a good deed and is asked about it by another character. Across stories, the protagonist…

This study investigated the reciprocity of prosocial behavior among 3- and 4-year-old Japanese preschool children during free-play time. Matrix correlation tests revealed positive correlations between the frequencies of object offering given and received within dyads and between the frequencies of helping given and received within dyads. These…

Using social network analysis, we investigated the characteristics of social networks composed of positive relationships (positive network: PN) and negative relationships (negative network: NN) in classrooms of Japanese 3- and 4-year-olds. Analysis of "density" showed that PNs were denser than NNs among 4-year-olds but that this was not…

Examined attributions of credit and blame for good and bad deeds. Found that Portuguese children's attributions of credit and blame for moral and academic norms were similar to those of Japanese and U.S. children. They tended to give weight to negative outcomes because of the belief that appropriate behavior might not be praised but that…