Japanese children’s perspectives on the

5.4 Self-improvement

The results of analysis revealed that most peer supporters seemed to struggle to overcome several issues, which were related to the activities they termed ‘peer support’ that they were organising. Eventually, these challenges seemed to contribute to peer supporters’ own self-improvement. In particular, the findings highlighted four major benefits that were seldom raised as research topics in Japanese peer support literature. These were “Overcoming own weakness”, “Improving own life”, “Dealing with pressure”, and “Dealing with time management”. The details of these four benefits will be discussed in the following sections.

5.4.1 Overcoming own weakness

The findings revealed that there were many opportunities for peer supporters to overcome their own weakness through their peer support activities. Especially, when peer supporters needed to speak in front of other pupils, they were struggling to do that because of their shyness and nervousness. It seemed to be tough especially for teenagers to cope with their shyness and nervousness, however, peer supporters showed their positive views; willingness and motivation to tackle them rather than escape from them. Thus, most peer supporters had experience of overcoming these challenges, and these experiences eventually seemed to contribute to the peer supporters’ own emotional and behavioural self-improvement. It is acknowledged that the implementation of the JPSA training, drawing on citizenship education approaches is not reflected in the original JPSA training or writing.

As mentioned earlier, Japanese peer supporters were actively engaged into group level and whole school level activities. This meant that peer supporters needed to play a similar role as a group leader and a facilitator in their peer support activities. In this vein, peer supporters had many opportunities to actively communicate with other pupils and encourage them to join the activities. Thus, through the activities, peer supporters were supposed to improve their own communication skills.
In fact, several studies (e.g. Yamazaki et al, 2012; Fujikame, 2012; Yamada et al, 2011; Takahashi, 2010; Mihara, 2006; Sasaki, 2005) showed, the peer supporters could improve their interpersonal skills after joining the peer support programmes. These studies used social skill scales (e.g. Kikuchi’s social skill scale, Adaptation scale for school environments on six spheres), and mainly showed how much peer supporters improved their social skills and relational issues, which covered self-esteem, self-efficacy, satisfaction in school life, support from teacher, support from friends, and pro-social skills.
In the literature review, several teachers (peer support coordinators) acknowledged that peer supporters gained more patience through the activities. Kurihara’s study (2006) briefly mentioned that peer supporters could experience their emotional growth in terms of teachers’ feedback; however, this did not mention future information and any detailed issues. In this vein, the present study showed that a peer supporter explained her view about her role as follows;
“I should think if I try it, I can do it. Well, I think it depends on my mind……...like….it seems tough, but I will try to do it……rather than thinking it seems tough, thus, I may not do it.”……. “If I think it is possible to do it, it is possible for me to do it. If I think it is impossible to do it, it is impossible for me to do it.”

(Ellie, p42)

Peer supporters’ strong willingness to challenge the difficulties, seems to show their courageous views that their motivation and attitudes towards the problems were more important than their ability to tackle it. This implies that peer supporters were struggling with their roles; however, they keep continue to carry out their tasks without escaping from difficult circumstances.
Arai et al (2004) conducted an evaluation research of peer support programmes in terms of teachers’ views. This showed that many teachers were concerned that peer supporters were at risk of suffering from the difficulties caused by peer support activities. However, the present study also revealed that, through their struggles, many peer supporters eventually overcame their own issues and difficulties, where the activities help them deal with their shyness and nervousness.
As mentioned above, previous studies confirmed that peer supporters often improved their personal traits by making efforts to fulfil their roles. However, this does not mean that they could smoothly experience personal growth. In fact, several peer supporters shared their honest feelings such as, “....I am still not good at it…..but I overcame my shyness….” (Graham, Participant 14), and “I am still a shy person, but I can’t be too shy any more in front of people” (Natalie, Participant 7). Through the experiences of being a peer supporter, peer supporters have often gone through challenges. These experiences seem to enrich peer supporters’ inner strengths, which powerfully promote their emotional and behavioural developments. In a sense, these personal strengths seem to be essential in order to succeed in performing as a peer supporter.
The findings showed that most peer supporters were able to feel they have grown both emotionally and behaviourally. Some peer supporters regarded the experiences of being a peer supporter as a process to grow up to be a fine adult.
Even though their original interests in being a peer supporter were to give support to other pupils and contribute to improvements of the school ethos, they started recognising how effectively peer support schemes gave them positive impacts. In fact, in this study, none of them mentioned their personal growth as a main reason for applying to be a peer supporter. In a sense, their personal growth is a secondary benefit for them. Similarly, Fujikame’s study (2012), revealed that the majority of peer supporters chose “to give support to others (n=54)”, and “to behave in correct way (n=76)” as a main reason for being a peer supporter. Only few pupils commented that they joined “for their personal growth (n=10)”.
In terms of personal growth, the present study highlighted that the undefeated attitudes of peer supporters gave influence on their daily life in various ways. A peer supporter described how she improved her daily life because of experience of being a peer supporter as follows;
“…..before becoming a peer supporter, if I was tired, I tended to go to bed easily. But now I make an effort to study even for 5 minutes (before sleeping), and also I try to study in break time in school. I can wisely use free time, then my studies are going well. Eventually this makes it easier for me to attend ballet class as well” (Helen)


5.4.2 Improving own life

Several peer supporters shared similar experiences, which they were able to make efforts or work harder for something in their daily life, outside peer support activities. They believed that these changes were accelerated as a result of being a peer supporter, and it seemed that their experiences as a peer supporter enriched their resilience, which gave positive influences on their life in various ways. As an example, many peer supporters reported that their school records have been improved after being a peer supporter, even though they have faced time management issues. In terms of the improvement of school records, the pilot study of this PhD also showed the same results with different peer supporters (pupils in year 9).

There are few studies (e.g. Edahiro et al, 2012; Fujikame, 2012) that examined the relationships between academic achievements and peer support activities. Both Edahiro’s study (in primary school) and Fujikame’s study (in secondary school) showed that pupils tended to have academic improvements after joining peer support (although Edahiro’s study was not statistically significant). The findings of the present study seem to be consistent with those studies.
As mentioned above, peer supporters recognised how effectively peer support schemes gave positive impacts to themselves, even though their personal growth was a secondary benefit for them. In terms of promoting pupils’ emotional and behavioural well-being, peer support seems a powerful scheme for peer supporters themselves. Therefore, there is a debatable argument about increasing the number of peer supporters.
In this regard, Cowie (2008) mentioned that, if all pupils were given peer support training, this would not sound like “peer support”, but “social skill training”, which might not bring the same positive influences as peer support programmes do.
She mentioned that in reality, there are some capable pupils who are suitable as a peer supporter, thus, it is important to involve those pupils in peer support in order to provide greater support to other pupils.

5.4.3 Dealing with Pressure

The present study found that many peer supporters felt pressure from both pupils and teachers, which generally made peer supporters feel uncomfortable. “Pressure” was seldom raised as a research topic in Japanese peer support literature. Only a few papers reported it from peer supporters’ feedback after the training sessions and activities (Kamiya, 2007; Sato, 2005).

Peer supporters described that they felt pressurised to behave in an appropriate manner and meet the high expectations of being a peer supporter. Several peer supporters shared their experiences of this pressure, where other pupils and teachers said, “Because you are a peer supporter, so you should make effort to…” Peer supporters thought they were still pupils and they did not want to be regarded as something different from other pupils. However, they were used to being seen as a special figure in the school.
As mentioned, peer supporters believed their communication and relationship with other pupils was superior to the teacher’s. This was because peer supporters are pupils who have the same status as other pupils have. However, other pupils and teachers seemed to have different views about peer supporters. It can be speculated that peer supporters might be seen as “a mini teacher” by some pupils, because they were often facilitating and leading the activities for others. In this vein, also the present study found that during the interviews, peer supporters often judgmentally referred to some pupils as “anti-social”, whereas the teacher’s judgemental attitude seemed to be one of the teacher’s characteristics in education (Johnston, 1982).
Also the present study found that most peer supporters were shy and nervous for taking lead peer support activities at the beginning. Unexpectedly many peer supporters mentioned that they are generally shy and they did not actively lead activities in front of people before or during primary school. It can be imagined that high expectations from other pupils and teachers appears to increase the pressure on peer supporters, meaning they are making efforts to lead peer support activities under such a pressurised situation.
From the prior studies, the experiences of being a peer supporter seemed to contribute to their social, emotional and behavioural developments (Makinae, 2013; Yamada & Mori, 2010; Kamigaki, 2009; Hishida, 2009; Kamachi et al, 2007; Takahasi & Kurihara, 2006). The studies used several different assessment sheets or questionnaires, which showed that peer supporters improved their personal traits. This includes improvements in their self-efficacy, social skills, self-esteem, satisfaction level of school life, feeling of isolation, empathy, sense of virtue and leadership. Even under the pressured situations, peer supporters developed their own skills through their activities. This implied that they were making efforts to overcome their weaknesses; shyness and nervousness. In this vein, peer supporters shared their views that one of the strong reasons why other pupils do not want to be a peer supporter is to avoid being involved in such a nervous situation, which was amplified by high expectations and pressure.

5.4.4 Dealing with Time management

The results of the present study demonstrated that most peer supporters were struggling with time management, which was an unexpected result as a difficulty of peer supporters. The literature hardly showed any issues related to time management of peer supporters as a topic. Peer supporters were often required to spend time during their break and before/after school started on peer support activities. Consequently, this impacted on the time they had to participate in club activities, go to cram school (Juku), and to participate in social activities with friends. In fact, many peer supporters mentioned they were not able to go to or were late for club activities.

Peer supporters’ time issue have not appeared on the centre stage of the literature of peer support. Peer supporters live a busy school life, as a result of peer support activities being actively applied in school. These provide critical parts of the school curriculum, which promote pupils’ emotional and behavioural developments. In terms of their functions as emotional and behavioural support in school, peer supporters have often been compared against school counsellors, which are adult professionals (Murayama, 2004). As mentioned, in the late 90’s, due to mounting public opinion to enrich psychological support for children, school counsellors were allocated in the majority of primary and secondary schools at the national level (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports Science and Technology, 2014).
In most cases, however, school counsellors were not stationed in one school due to political and administrative reasons. They needed to visit many schools, which meant a school counsellor stayed only one or two days per week in a specific school. Therefore, school counsellors tended to focus on the individuals who had emotional and behavioural issues, meaning the majority of pupils had much less opportunity to contact school counsellors (Sakata, 2004).
On the other hand, peer supporters’ activities cover wider range of pupils’ issues, which generally school counsellors do not deal with. For example, they often tackle general issues on a daily basis, such as mediating friends’ quarrels. Also peer supporters were often involved in school events and peer-led activities as facilitators, spending time on the preparations as well as the events. In short, peer supporters tend to deal with a variety of pupils’ issues, and are easily accessible for any pupils when they need help.
Conversely, school counsellors tend to deal with more specific issues such as pupils who have some emotional and behavioural problems, meaning they are not accessible to the majority of pupils in the school. In this regard, Morikawa (2003) stated that school counselling is a scheme based on a counselling (clinical) model, while peer support is a scheme based on a community (educational) model. Nowadays most researchers (e.g. Nakano, 2006; Kakegawa, 2009) call this an educational model. Kakegawa (2009) and Nakamura (2009) stated that since peer support is based on an educational model, it was able to be adapted in Japanese school education. It was a suitable approach for the school curriculum and daily activities, which results in the peer supporters’ busy school life.
There are two possible reasons why the peer supporters’ time management issue has not appeared on the centre stage of the literature. Firstly, most Japanese research was conducted in terms of adult’s perspectives, meaning these did not consider the pupils’ feelings and experiences in deeper levels. As Murayama (2004) stated, it is necessary to specify numbers and evidence to indicate how effectively education schemes are able to contribute to improvement of the school environment as well as to individuals.
This is necessary to ensure the local government allocates the budget to the schools and related events for the peer support programme. Especially, as an educational scheme, peer support was new to Japanese educational systems. Japanese researchers were eager to know how effectively peer support has a positive influence on the pupils and school environment, and how the peer support scheme could be adapted to Japanese educational systems. In this vein, in the last 10 years, the JPSA conducted educational overseas tours; UK, Canada, USA, Australia, and Hong Kong, (JPSA, http://www.k3.dion.ne.jp). The main objective of the tours was to understand how peer support schemes are managed by schools, and to investigate how the scheme could be adapted for applications in Japanese schools, with considering the cultural diversity. Eventually, most previous studies were conducted using quantitative methods for their objectives, and these did not pay attention to the pupils’ inner world (lived experiences).
A few studies (e.g. Kondo, 2008; Okada, 2005; Inoue, 2005) mentioned time consuming or time management issues with peer support programmes. However, these studies simply explained supervisors’ time issues, which showed supervisors struggled to secure a timeslot for skill training and supervisions. Accordingly, the previous studies seldom discussed peer supporters’ time issues in deeper levels (in terms of children’s perspectives).
Secondly, pupils did not consider time management as a difficulty. The results of the present study showed that peer supporters tend to positively challenge their difficulties and overcome them. This finding seems to be consistent with previous research, which found that training and supporting activities, developed peer supporters’ communication skills, amplifying their self-esteem and self-efficacy to actively challenge their issues and difficulties (Okada, 2005; Takahashi, 2010).
Thus, peer supporters tend not to think of time management as a difficulty, rather, they think of it as the inevitable process to carry out their peer support activities. Several peer supporters mentioned that the time dedicated to their extra responsibilities was a good opportunity for them to learn how to use time wisely. In fact, even though peer supporters struggled with time management, most of them improved their academic records.
From the above, it seemed hard for the researchers/teachers to capture time management issues through their studies, especially when using quantitative approaches based on adults’ perspectives.

5.5 Cultural mismatch

The present study showed that the peer support training, as delivered by JPSA and based on person-centred Rogerian principles, had little or no impact on the peer supporters. In terms of the philosophical approach, person-centredness, the aims and content of types of activities, and peer supporter’s feelings and attitudes, there is some doubt about whether this can really be considered peer support mentoring and practice.

Hofstede et al. (2010) argue that collectivism, as a societal rather than an individual characteristic, concerns the degree to which people in a society are integrated into groups. On the collectivist side, there are cultures in which children and young people from the earliest years are integrated into strongly cohesive in-groups. This might explain why the Japanese interpretation of peer support seemed to appear completely different from the Western style approach, based on Carl Rogers’ individualistic model. Probably the researchers in the Western nations would not believe these Japanese style peer support practices were classified as the peer support approach. Rather they may think these were a kind of citizenship education or social skills training. The cultural dimensional model gives insights into how such differences in perspective can arise and the Hofstede model shows how cultural constructs, which children acquire from their earliest years, are deeply rooted in their minds. This would explain why the peer supporters in the present study appeared to be convinced that the group activities which they were so anxious for their peers to become involved in were a form of emotional support since, from their perspective, being secure in a group would be a strong force for emotional adjustment and personal development. From this perspective, the person-centred approach of Carl Rogers would not be appropriate for their classmates. Peer support practices are strongly influenced by cultural factors, and this seems to explain how the practices met the pupils’ and educational needs in Japan. In this study, the analysis of the interviews found two cultural tendencies of peer supporters as sub-themes that seemed to strongly influence the interpretation of the Western style approach: “aim to create supportive environments”, and “believing other pupils’ potential”. In short, in their activities, peer supporters tended to make efforts to create supportive environments as a main aim, and also they tended to believe other pupils potentials to improve their emotional and behavioural developments. These dimensions seemed to be more in line with Japanese educational needs, and so in turn, providing successful results to the schools and children. In conclusion, it appears that the Western-based, Rogerian approach to peer support does not suit the Japanese educational systems because of cultural mismatch.
The following sections will discuss the details of the cultural tendencies in peer support practices as well as the cultural mismatches.


5.5.1 Aim to create supportive environments
As mentioned in Chapter two, peer support was carried out at several different levels; Individual support level, Group support level and Whole-school support (& wider community) level (Kurihara, 2009; Cowie & Jennifer, 2008). In Japan, peer supporters were often involved in activities at group and whole-school support levels. This is because peer support had often been applied to the Japanese traditional school activities and events (e.g. greeting campaigns, fund-raising activities and cleaning campaigns).
Also the present study showed that peer supporters were more often engaged in the group and the whole school level activities, rather than providing one-to-one support to individuals. Peer supporters made efforts to encourage other pupils to join the activities, and they believed this would increase pupils’ supportive behaviours and supportive environments, which eventually gives a strong positive influence to each individual.
Thus, in the interviews, peer supporters kept mentioning that they would like to increase activities and school events, where all pupils can participate. In a sense, peer support activities provided good opportunities with pupils to create supportive environments through the supportive and caring activities. This implied that peer supporters made effort to actively create supportive environments as a main aim. In fact, in this study, most peer supporters often used several key words, such as “unity”, “cooperate together”, and “grow together”, which seemed to be related to the “aim to create supportive environments” as a group.

From their experiences, it was clear that peer supporters believed the large scale and group activities provided good opportunities for pupils to talk with others whom they would not normally communicate. This would often strengthen peer relationships in classroom and groups, which eventually contributes towards an improved school ethos. In Fujikame’s study (2012), the majority of pupils mentioned they received more support from friends in their daily life through the peer support activities.

For example, the group and whole-school level practices had been reflected as anti-bullying practices in Japan. In the literature review, many Japanese secondary school pupils had been struggling to provide support with other pupils who were in troubled situations, especially in school bullying (Morita et al, 1999). The issues of school bullying seemed to be strongly related with the interrelations among pupils (Salmivalli’s participant roles), therefore, strengthening the supportive ethos might help improve the interrelations among pupils.
However, in some cases, peer relationships would deteriorate due to conflicts and misunderstanding caused by the group activities. In this regard, several peer supporters have a positive view that pupils who actively join the activities, tend to show cooperative attitudes and they are mostly cheerful in general, which would not cause serious relationship problems.
A peer supporter also mentioned that the more pupils communicate with others, the more approachable they become to others. Several studies reported that there is an increasing tendency that children hardly develop their communication skills due to social changes (e.g. Okamasa & Taguchi, 2012; the Ministry of education, culture sports science and technology, 2010; Emura, 2007; Kobayashi & Aikawa, 1999). Especially, children have less opportunity to have interactions with others, which seemed to be strongly related with children’s undeveloped personality and their poor social skills (e.g. the Ministry of education, culture sports science and technology, 2010; Nakayama, 2005).
Peer supporters believed if there are more opportunities to communicate with others, this would provide good opportunities to develop their social skills. This would be achieved through unity where pupils work together. Therefore, peer supporters make efforts to encourage pupils to join the activities and work together to create unity among other pupils. As mentioned, the present study was conducted in the previously troubled school where peer supporters believed the peer support schemes were essential for providing a positive influence to their school ethos. Most of peer supporters strongly mentioned that the school atmospheres would be certainly deteriorated if there were no peer support schemes in the school.
From the above, it seemed that Japanese style peer support effectively gave positive influences to pupils as well as the whole school. However, in terms of the original nature of the peer support programme, some Japanese style peer support seemed to need to be classified as different schemes. The details of this issue will be discussed in later sections.