Transitional gaps and resilience in Japan

Abstract

This chapter reviews a study on resilience and school transition gaps in Japan. The author developed an inventory: school diagnosis chart. The participants were 119 secondary school freshmen. The author categorized participants into three groups according to their change of metacognitive ability: the uptrend, the same, and the downtrend. The downtrend group was overconfident in their metacognitive judgments as compared to the uptrend group. The former did not judge their weak points from the start of their school year. The participants who evaluated their metacognitive abilities from the lowest among the three groups improved to a moderate metacognitive ability level. They became efficient students in terms of metacognitive judgments at the end of the school year. The group-oriented factor, metacognitive ability, and higher-order learning strategies contributed positively to the study motivation of math. Good use of higher-order learning strategies contributed to“academic resilience” which could prevent them from losing motivation yo study.