Social Psychological Issues and Perspectives in School Education:

Abstract

The focus of this article is to provide an over view of research trends in social psychology studies within the field of educational psychology published between July 2016 and June 2017, as well as to discuss some of the topics on school education. In the first part of the paper, social psychology studies presented at the 59th annual meeting of the Japanese Association of Educational Psychology held in 2017 are reviewed. Frequent research themes were as follows: interactive learning, teacher＇s behavior toward students, and social skills. In addition, the articles published in The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology during the aforementioned period are reviewed. In the second part of the paper, the topics focusing on interactive learning within classroom and teacher education are discussed from a social psychological perspective. The main points of contention are as follows: (a) group structure and interactive learning within the classroom, (b) friendship and interactive learning within the classroom, and (c) reflective and collaborative practices in the field of teacher education.