Project Research of the FY2015-2016 National Institute for Educational Policy Research Project
Survey Research Report – “Comprehensive Study on Pre-service Training, Placement and InService Training of Teachers to Foster Children’s Competencies”
Differences in the status of interactions between teachers depending on class size and grade /school size
Focusing on formative evaluations thought to have a great influence on academic ability
Summary of the research

1. Issues

Class composition and teacher cooperation

It is apparent that it is easier for teachers to pay attention to individual children if the class is small,but the relationship between the class size and the state of cooperation among the teachers is not as clear.

Formative evaluations and academic ability

Many previous studies have shown that even in formative evaluations, the implementation ofevaluations where the results are fed back to the learner, and where the subject of the evaluation, thelearner, is able to use these results to improve his or her learning has a huge effect on the learner’sacademic ability. In order to make a formative evaluation, criteria to be used for interpretation in order
to measure the learner’s level against the achievement goals should be prepared beforehand using thestate of the learner’s efforts in the learning process and the state of the results of the achievements, andfeedback should be given to the learner using these criteria. In addition, cooperation between teachers
teaching the same subject is considered to be essential when deciding how to prepare the interpretation
criteria and how to effectively conduct feedback.

Technology to monitor teacher cooperation

Teacher cooperation is often carried out within a few minutes such as between lessons in a shortamount of time. In order to monitor the state of such communication, use of a wearable sensor which
incorporates an infrared sensor that records face-to-face situations and an acceleration sensor thatrecords physical movements in units of 1 second or less, which is one of the technologies used for
immediate and continuous measurement, was considered to be effective.

2. Purpose1

This depends on the size of the lower secondary school and the class size. The purpose of thisresearch is to clarify the differences in the status of cooperation among teachers when preparing aformative evaluation. In addition, preparing a formative evaluation means preparing the interpretation
criteria necessary for feedback to be given to the students and deciding on methods of effectively giving
feedback to the students.

3. Method

Survey target and contents
For the three types of schools of the same
size (12, 13, 15 classes), we surveyed two
schools respectively with different averageclass sizes, totaling six schools (Table 1).
We asked the managerial staff and teachers(excluding nursing teachers and nutrition
teachers) of each surveyed school to wear
wearable sensors from the time of arriving
at work to the time of leaving work forthree consecutive days (Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday), and also asked theteachers to answer a questionnaire giving areport on the contents of meetings anddiscussions with other teachers every day
for the three-day period.

Table 1 School size of the surveyed schools (number ofclasses in the regular grades), average class size,subjects of the survey and number of teachers analyzed
No. of teachers analyzed
Schools

No. ofclasses

1st school

Averageclass size

No. ofteachers
surveyed

1st day

2nd day

3rd day

12

33.925675nd1234.8

24987rd1434.2

26

674th1436.1

24887

th5 school

1534.326968

6th school

1535.72910992 school
3 school
4 schoolAnalyzed teachers

Out of the surveyed teachers, only teachers who were in charge of teaching all of the lessons of
all of the subjects for one grade were selected. This is because the state of cooperation among theteachers was thought to be different for those who were team teaching or teaching lessons for twogrades, or where two teachers were teaching one grade. On this basis, we analyzed teachers who had
been wearing a wearable sensor for two or more days during the three-day survey period for sevenhours or more a day.

Communication data by face-to-face partner and content

The communication data by face-to-face partner and content was created through the following
process. (1) We created face-to-face communication data for each day during the three-day survey
period for each target teacher to be analyzed; (2) the target time was 11 hours in total from 8:00 am
to 7:00 pm; (3) the face-to-face partner included all teachers who were wearing a wearable sensor at2

each surveyed school; (4) of the data output by Hitachi’s Human Big Data Service base station
terminal, and of the matrix data of face-to-face situations and average frequency for every 2.5 seconds,
which was face-to-face communication data; (5) the fact of face-so-face interaction was recorded
using an infrared sensor, and if the body movements of the people having the interaction weresynchronized at 1.0 Hz or more, it was judged that face-to-face communication had taken place; (6)the matrix data was divided according to the attributes of the face-to-face partner, and (7) the faceto-face communication time by face-to-face partner and content was calculated by multiplying thematrix data, which had been divided according to the attributes of the face-to-face partner, by theratio of the content of the meetings and discussions by attributes of the face-to-face partner monitored
through a questionnaire.

4. Results

Table 2 shows the averages and rates of face-to-face communication time according to theattributes of the face-to-face partner by school, and Table 3 shows the average times and rates by
face-to-face communication content among teachers teaching the same subject.

Table 2 Average and rate by school of face-to-face communication by the attributes of the face-to-facepartnerFace-to-face partners
Teachers of the same subject Teachers of same grade Teachers of other subjects/grades Managerial post

Schools M

1st school
2nd school
3rd school
4th school
5th school
6th school

SDM

RateSDM

Rate

19.23 10.14 0.04 230.42 70.09
23.89 22.38 0.04 413.56 223.35
79.46 104.28 0.19 267.38 221.25
5.83 16.50 0.02 167.55 136.9026.76 38.52 0.08 214.63 70.79
33.58
43.13 0.06 312.46 120.66

SDRate0.49 179.05 128.47
0.75 94.68 38.41
0.66 58.27 43.44
0.65 70.57 58.35
0.64 55.88 62.88
0.57 139.71 109.15

M

0.38
0.17
0.14
0.27
0.17
0.26

SD

Rate

43.81 37.82
19.63 16.54
2.62
3.14
13.28 11.54
35.56 36.56
61.79 49.40

0.09
0.04
0.01
0.05
0.11
0.11

Table 3 Average time and rate by three-day contents of face-to-face communication with teachers teaching the same
subject

Formative evaluation preparation

Lessons

Student guidance

School affairsOthers

Schools Average time

Rate

Average time

Rate

Average time

Rate

Average time

Rate

Average time

Rate

1stschool
2ndschool
3rdschool
4thschool
5thschool
6thschool

1.88

0.08

0.42

0.02

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

21.04

0.90

9.29

0.32

11.9

0.4

1.63

0.06

2.35

0.08

4.23

0.14

60.42

0.39

51.06

0.33

24.86

0.16

0.06

0.00

19.44

0.12

0.00

0.00

26.67

0.57

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

20.00

0.43

9.48

0.34

4.94

0.17

0.00

0.00

6.29

0.22

7.55

0.27

1.58

0.04

6.79

0.18

4.500.12

17.1 4

0.46

6.86

0.19

3

5. Study
As shown in Figure 2, although this is not applicable to schools with 12 classes, the study
suggests that if the size of the school is the same, it is more likely in schools with smaller classes that
preparations for formative evaluations will have been made such as the interpretation criteria
necessary to give feedback to the students being created through cooperation among teachers of thesame subject, and methods determined to effectively give feedback to the students. However, as
shown in Table 3, the average preparation time for formative evaluations through cooperation amongteachers teaching the same subject by school was about 60 seconds for one school, 9 seconds for twoschools, and 2 seconds or less for two schools, and the preparation time itself for formativeevaluations through cooperation among teachers teaching the same subject is short. In addition, as
shown in Table 2, the average face-to-face communication time among teachers teaching the same
subject by school was about 6 seconds for the minimum value and about 80 seconds for the maximum
value, and the time spent was also short.
Many previous studies have revealed that the implementation of formative evaluations has a great
effect on academic ability. In addition, in order to conduct formative evaluations, it is necessary to
prepare interpretation criteria in advance to judge the level of achievement of the target goals fromthe state of the learner’s efforts in the learning process and the state of the achievements, and toprovide feedback to the learners using these criteria. Based on the findings of these previous studies,
it is considered that the ease with which these formative evaluations are implemented may lead toincreasing the academic abilities of the students. Moreover, the results of this study suggest that thesekinds of effective formative evaluations are easier to implement in smaller classes.

6. Issues of the research

The objective was to clarify the differences in the status of preparing formative evaluations
through cooperation among teachers teaching the same subject depending on the size of theschool and the size of the class, but the difference in the average class size through acombination of schools with 12 classes was 0.9, the average class size through a combinationof schools with 14 classes was 1.9, and the average class size through a combination of schools
with 15 classes was 1.4, and the problems remain that although comparisons were madedepending on the size of the class, there was little difference, and face-to-face communication
itself among the teachers fluctuated widely within the same school and with other schools. Inaddition, since the surveyed schools were six schools in a specific region, the results of thisresearch can only be taken as examples.
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Figure 1 Percentages of face-to-face communication time by attributes of the face-to-face partner by school

Figure 2 Percentages of face-to-face communication with teachers teaching the same subject

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