FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE “JOY TO LEARN” IN JAPANESE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY USING QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE

Abstract

Positive psychology has come to point out the effectiveness of positive emotions. The joy of learning is an important positive emotion that encourages children to continue learning. Therefore, in the fi rst study, we investigated the joy of learning from the child’s perspective and examined the factors that infl uenced it through quantitative analysis. In the early grades, classroom atmosphere and approval and subjective academic ability, had facilitating effects on the joy of learning. In the upper grades, in addition to the factors mentioned above, social skills and motivation had facilitating effects. Furthermore, it was found out that the joy of learning decreases as the grade steps up. Therefore, in the second study, we extracted the responses of the sixth graders, who still fi nd joy in learning and did a qualitative analysis. The result showed that they found fun in cooperative learning in Maths. It was discussed from the viewpoints of meta-cognitive development, classroom atmosphere, cooperative learning in various subjects, and the experiences from the inter-group competition.