Japanese children’s perspectives on the

Table 2.11: When you are in trouble, to whom you tell about your problem

_________________________________________________________________

“mother”………………….…… 64% “different gender friends”……..6.8%

“friends of the same gender”..58.7% “older pupils”……………………6.1%

“father”………………….…….. 29.5% “school nurse”………………… 4.9%

“teachers”……………….…… 18.7% “cram school teacher”…………3.9%

“sibling”…………………..….. 17.1% “school counsellor”…………….1.2%

“relative”……………………… 9% “(telephone) helpline”………….0.6%

*questions with multiple choice answer____________________________________

(The Cabinet office, government of Japan, 2007)

Also in 1995, the Cabinet office, government of Japan conduced a similar survey about children’s views on their life, and 2143 children aged 10 to 15 years old answered a questionnaire (response rate of 82.5%). This survey showed similar findings to the survey in 2007. When asked the question “when you are in trouble, to whom you tell about your problem”, 63.4% of children answered “mother”, followed by 57.9% in “friends in school”, 30.9% in “father”, and 13% in “sibling”. These data showed that pupils often tend to ask their “mother” and “friends in school” for help when they are in trouble. This seems to imply how important is the presence of pupils (peers) to give supports to other peers nearby. Especially peer supporters seem to play a critical role to give support to both psychologically and physically, and encourage others in distress to overcome their problems. Even though pupils generally views peer support scheme as beneficial strategies, some issues seem to arise relating the difficulty in asking peer supporters for help.
2.5.2 The impact on peer supporters

As indicated in chapter one, peer support in Japan has developed in its own unique way, even though influenced by Western models. There is less openness in Japan about emotional and social difficulties, and greater reluctance on the part of children to admit the need for support. As a result, Japanese educators have evolved culturally-appropriate peer support methods for meeting the needs of the peer group. Some systems provide active listening and befriending services; others offer support for academic work through peer tutoring; still others use drama as a powerful means of communicating with the peer group about such issues as bullying; others use newsletters to answer problem letters posted anonymously to peer supporters (Toda, 2005; Toda & Ito, 2005).

In Japan, Kondo and Sakai (2007) investigated differences in peer supporters’ relationship skills and their psychological aspects before and after peer support training in two schools. In school A, the participants were 18 peer supporters (17 males and 1 female) and 21 pupils (20 males and 1 female) as a control group in the upper secondary schools (age 15-18) in Aichi prefecture, Japan. The study employed pre- and post-tests with 3 month training and activities. All the peer support training and activities were led by teachers who certified as peer support trainers by the Japanese Peer Support Association (JPSA). The researchers used three different scales; 1) Relationship scale (Kokubu, 2003), 2) Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965) and 3) General health questionnaire (GHQ) (Goldberg, 1978). In the Relationship scale and Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale, a higher score means the higher level of skills and self-esteems. In GHQ, a higher score means more serious health condition. Figures 2.3, 2.4 and 2.6 show the results. After training sessions and activities, peer supporters clearly increased their scores on both relationship skills and self-esteem. There were significant differences in both peer supporters’ scores before and after the peer support activities.
Figure 2.4: Relationship scale with Peer support Programme


Figure 2.5: Self-esteem scale with Peer support Programme



Figure 2.6: GHQ scale with Peer support Programme


Time after training

Peer supporters decreased their scores on GHQ, indicating that their health conditions were also improved. However, the effects do not appear to be very large or significant. As several studies (Miyata, 2012; Yoshikawa & Konno, 2011; Miyano, 1996) reported, there are many cases of pupils suffering from mental illness (e.g. anxiety, psychosomatic disorder, and social withdrawal) due to the stress in the field of education. Also, even after graduation, many young adults have tendencies to be gloomy and depressed due to the personal experiences of being bullied in their schools (Isobe, 2014; Ishibashi et al, 1999; Miyano, 1996). The assessments of GHQ, in one sense, implied that through peer support activities, peer supporters improved their psychological well-being, which help them not to be involved in the mental illness, social withdrawal, school non-attendance, and depression.

In their study (Kondo and Sakai, 2007), the same assessments were applied into the school B where participants who were 31 peer supporters (3 males and 28 female) and 38 pupils (3 males and 35 female). The study found similar results that after training sessions and activities, peer supporter significantly increased their scores on both relationship skills and self-esteem. However, on the GHQ score, there were no significant differences in both peer supporters’ and control group between before and after the peer support activities.
Similarly, Sasaki (2005) examined how peer support training and practice influenced peer supporters’ (age 15-18) social behaviour and self-esteem in an upper secondary school. The study employed 3 different assessment scales; Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale (1965), Kikuchi’s Social Skill Scale (1988), and the Pro-social Behaviours scale (Taniguchi & Ura, 2003), respectively. Participants were 17 peer supporters (3 male and 13 female) and 33 pupils (22 male and 11 female) as a control group in Hiroshima, Japan. Peer support training was given to the selected peer supporters 8 times within 2 months and pre- and post-test conducted before and after the activities using 3 assessment questionnaires. Each training session took 50 minutes and was conducted after school (see the details of the training session in table 2.8). These sessions were often carried out through the role-play among peers who join the same training sessions. The training sessions were designed to help children to learn counseling and communication skills, which help them to work as a peer supporter.


Table 2.12: The training schedule for peer supporter

	Theme	Skills & activities
1	Self-Introduction	To introduce yourself , assertion skills
2	Understand myself	Egogram (Transactional analysis)
3	Nourishing others’ heart	Using positive stroke
4	Building trust	Blind walk, trust work.
5	Active listening	Practice active listening
6	Questioning skills	How to use open-questions
7	Understanding feelings	Repeating others’ comments & feelings
8	Summary	Three steps in listening

(Sasaki, 2005)
As to their self-esteem, the results did not show significant differences in both peer supporters and a control group before and after the peer support activities. However, as to both social skills scale and pro-social behaviours scale, the study found that peer supporters scored significantly higher after the supporting activities. A control group did not show a significant difference before and after the supporting activities in comparison with the peer support group.
In summary, Japanese research indicates that peer support programmes have positive influences on peer supporters, especially with regard to peer supporters’ internal and emotional development, and to improvements in their social skills and behaviours. From the research findings, it appears that the benefits to peer supporters are considered as one of main objectives of the peer support programmes.

2.5.3 The impact on the wider peer group

One of the main purposes of peer support is to offer support to vulnerable children or children in distress at school. Regarding the benefits to users (who need help) and potential users (other children), a large number of studies have shown positive results in Western countries (Houlston et al, 2009). However, in Japan, few studies have been conducted to deepen understanding of the views of the wider peer group, including users of the systems. One major issue is that the training is often implemented without a deep theoretical understanding of the person-centred nature of peer support which is implemented in Western countries. Potentially this could create a mismatch since the values promoted in Japanese educational contexts emphasise collective solutions to emotional and social difficulties and there is a deep-seated reluctance to admit having personal difficulties in relationships with peers. The costs to peer supporters are potentially huge since the training is at variance with their typical method for dealing with personal distress. Additionally, the culture within Japanese schools would be antagonistic to disclosing vulnerability or ‘weakness’ to another person since the emphasis is on self-control and there is shame in admitting what is perceived a failure. One reason is the strong cultural pressure in Japan not to admit to having emotional or social difficulties. Additionally, there is a tendency to encourage vulnerable children to join the peer support activities for their emotional and behavioural development (Seto & Mori, 2009). In addition, it seems to be difficult to examine the users’ benefits because most users are sensitive children, and they tend to keep their issues confidential. In fact, in Okada’s study (2006), when peer supporters were asked to reveal the users’ gender and frequency of use in one upper secondary school, more than half (24 out of 40) peer supporters refused to give the information. Peer supporters’ reasons were as follows, “I cannot tell a specific person’s name”, “I do not want to tell”, “I am afraid it will reveal who is a user”, “I forgot it” and so on. It is likely that the peer supporters have a strong sense of responsibility, and they want to keep users’ information confidential.

Kamigaki (2009) examined the effect of peer support in a lower secondary school in Japan. The study was carried out in 2005 and also a similar study was carried out in the following year 2006. Nineteen third year pupils (14-15 years old) spent 20 hours for the training as preparation of peer tutoring. The training mainly covered communication skills, assertion skills, problem solving skills and positive supporting skills. After the training, 19 third year pupils joined the first year (12-13 year old) pupils’ group study at English and Math classes to support their learning 8 times per year. After all the supporting activities, the first year (n=155) completed self-report assessments about peer tutoring. The authors did not provide the response rate. The results showed that when asked the question ‘how do you feel about peer tutoring’, 61.9% of pupils (N=96) answered “be pleased”, followed by 34.8% (n=54) “neither pleased nor unpleasant” and 3.2% (n=5) “Unpleasant”. When asked the question ‘do you think peer tutoring is useful for yourself’, 80.6% (n=125) answered “useful” and 19.4% (n=30) “not useful”. The results also showed some feedback such as, “positive feeling toward peer tutors (n=85)”, “negative feeling toward peer tutors (n=14), “raising motivation to learn due to peer tutoring (n=7)”, “not much difference between peer tutoring and teaching (n=13)”, “could actively attend the lessons (n=11)” and so on.
In the following year, Kamigaki (2009) examined how peer tutoring impacted on users and other pupils in the same lower secondary school with the same content. After all the supporting activities, the first year (n=153) completed a self-report assessment about peer tutoring. The results showed that when asked the question ‘how do you feel about peer tutoring’, 75.2% of pupils (N=115) answered “be pleased”, followed by 22.9% (n=35) “neither pleased nor unpleasant” and 1.9% (n=3) “Unpleasant”. Also when asked the question “do you think peer tutoring is useful for yourself”, 96.1% (n=147) answered “useful” and 3.9% (n=6) “not useful”. These studies found that the first year pupils generally had positive feelings and attitudes toward peer tutoring and also most peer tutors had positive feedbacks too.
Fujikame (2006) examined the impact of other types of peer support on pupils in schools in a study of peer-led drama produced by student council members (n=12) who were given peer support training, and then prepared and performed a drama which aimed to show how important it is that pupils support each other in school. The drama was shown to all the pupils in the school. Then, pupils (n=400) were asked about drama and their feelings and attitudes. The study employed the questionnaire and did not apply any statistical methods or test in the pupils’ comments. Most pupils had positive feedback on toward the drama as follows: “importance of peer relationships (n=27)”, “unity and cooperation (n=25)”, “sympathy (n=36)”, “willingness (n=23)”, “self-understanding (n=6)”, “understanding others (n=10)”, “steady effort (n=15)”, “courage (n=2)”, “positive comments on student council members (n=63)”, “positive comments on drama (n=160)”, “negative comments on drama (n=4)”. Additionally, the study examined how the third year pupils (n=165) changed their attitudes and behaviours after seeing the drama. The results showed that 35 pupils answered “yes, changed (improved)”, however, 111 pupils answered “neither yes or no”, and 19 pupils answered “no, did change”. Even though, a large number of pupils had positive feedback on the drama itself, it seems that the drama had less impact on pupils’ behavioural changes.

2.5.4 The impact on the whole school

To a greater or lesser extent, the implementation of peer support programmes has positively influenced thoughts and attitudes of peer supporters, users, other pupils and teachers, and these also seem lead to improvements in school climate and school ethos. Arai, Kurosawa, and Mori (2004) investigated the impact of peer support scheme on school climate from teachers’ viewpoints. The participants were 237 teachers from 8 lower secondary schools, where the selected pupils had been working as peer supporter. After the supporting activities (e.g. peer tutoring, peer counselling, peer mentoring, making school paper), the teachers made assessments about their school climate. The study employed Nakano’s school climate assessment (Nakano et al, 1998), which was based on Sulzer-Azaroff and Mayers‘ assessment (1986). The assessment consist of 8 subscales, which are “relationship skill”, “school violence”, “school bullying”, “school refusal”, “behaviours in class”, “tidiness of school”, “submission rate of assignment”, and “obedience”. Also ANOVA was used to examine the mean differences in subscales between before and after the peer support activities. There were significant improvements in most subscales after peer support activities. In particular, most schools had significant improvements in “behaviours in class”, “tidiness of school”, and “obedience”. However, some schools did not show significant improvements in “relationship skill”, “school bullying” and “submission rate of assignment”. Similarly, other studies found positive changes in problem behaviours due to peer support programmes, such as decrease in bullying (Takahashi et al 2009), raising awareness of anti-bullying (Ito, 2011), improvement of pupils behaviours (Mihara, 2006).

In summary, the implementation of peer support programmes have positively influenced thoughts and attitudes of peer supporters, users, other pupils and teachers, and these also seem to lead to improvements of school climate and school ethos.


2.6 The lack of qualitative studies in Japanese peer support

Regarding Japanese articles, I used the largest Japanese electronic database, CiNii (Citation Information by National Institute of Infomatics) for literature search. This search resulted in 616 articles. Out of the 616 articles in full text, only 65 met the inclusion criteria, then all these articles were carefully reviewed in this thesis. Also the author collected 67 relevant articles in full text from Japanese peer support association (JPSA). This procedure resulted in a selection of 132 (65 from CiNii and 67 from JPSA) partly or highly relevant references.

All these references (n=132) were classified into three groups by the type of employed research methods; 1) Quantitative, 2) Qualitative and 3) Others. Some studies conducted the surveys using questionnaires and these studies were also classified into “Quantitative” or “Qualitative” depending on types of questions and results. For example, if the study used “Open format questions” which gave the participants opportunity to express their opinions, this was classified as Qualitative. On the other hand, if the study used “Closed format questions”, which include multiple choice answers, this was classed as Quantitative. Also other types of articles such as the theory of peer support, the review paper, the practice report of peer support, and the history of peer support, were classified as “Others”. The table 2.9 shows the summary of type of research method in Japanese peer support studies.
Table 2.13: Type of research methods in Japanese peer support studies

1. Quantitative	74
2. Qualitative	4
3. Others	54
Total	132

From the table 2.9, it is clear that the majority of studies were classifies into quantitative studies. Most quantitative studies employed psychological scales or statistical tests to assess the effectiveness of peer support in terms of the impacts on bullying, school climate, pupils’ views and behavioural changes, and the benefits to wider peer groups.

There were four studies, which were classified as qualitative. However, none of them employed rigid qualitative data analyses such as Grounded theory, Discourse analysis, Protocol analysis, and Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). In terms of qualitative methods, four major data collection methods (i.e. semi-structured interviews, participant observation, diaries and focus group) are often mentioned in research method books (e.g. Willig, 2001). These four qualitative studies did not use any of these data collection methods, instead employed questionnaires (open format questions) to ask the participants to express their opinions and feelings.
Table 2.14: The summary of data collection methods in Qualitative studies

1. Interview (semi-structured)	0
2. Participant observation	0
3. Diaries	0
4. Focus group	0
5. Others (e.g. questionnaire , worksheet )	4
Total	4

Interestingly, there were 2 studies using interview methods (i.e. Kamiya, 2007; Yamada & Mori, 2010) in quantitative studies. Basically, these two studies were designed to show quantitative data using the questionnaires (using closed format questions). However, these studies also used the interview methods as a part of their data collections, and did not show any further details of interviews except superficial descriptions of participants’ feelings and thoughts, such as “it was good” and “It was helpful”. There was no in-depth analysis being applied.

In Japanese literature, there seemed to be hardly any studies to analyse participants’ qualitative data, especially about depth and rich information of children’s views and feelings in peer support. From the previous sections above, it appeared that Japanese literature explored various areas of research in peer support, which include pupils’ attitudes on peer support, users’ comments, the impact on peer supporters, the wider peers, school climate and pupils behaviours. However, the literature obviously seems to lack the qualitative research, which is valuable for understanding the inside view of pupils’ lives and needs. In short, no studies have been conducted to explore the details of individual personal and lived experiences in peer support and examine how pupils are making sense of their personal and social world.
One of the strengths in qualitative methods lies in the fact that it has a holistic focus, allowing for flexibility and the attainment of a deeper, more valid understanding of the subjects than could be achieved through a more rigid qualitative approach (e.g. IPA, Discourse analysis) (Duffy, 1986). Even though, quantitative studies explored pupils’ views in peer support, qualitative studies allows subjects to raise issues and topics, which the researchers might not have included in a structured research design. For example, it is hard for researchers to correctly imagine peer supporters’ own experiences, such as what kinds of difficulties peer supporters have experienced in both internal issues (e.g. anxiety) and external issues (e.g. interference from other peers), how peer supporters overcame or dealt with their difficulties, and why peer supporters became a peer supporter. This implies that researchers’ structured research design in quantitative study has limitations, which does not provide us with the in-depth understanding that would be provided with qualitative research (Yokozawa & Kakegawa, 2004). In fact, Japanese literature lacks the studies to deepen the knowledge of peer supporters’ experiences of difficulties and their reasons to become a peer supporter through analysing qualitative data, which are the research gaps in the literature.
In Japan, the studies of peer support were often designed to examine the peer support’s impact on peer supporters, the wider peer group, school climate and behavioural issues (e.g. bullying). In terms of peer support’s impacts on the peer supporter, the studies tended to focus peer supporters’ emotional development and behavioural changes (e.g. social skills), and also their attitudes and feelings toward peer support activities. Generally the studies showed that peer supporters had positive attitudes toward peer support, and also peer supporters tended to experience their emotional and behavioural improvements (e.g. self-esteem, acquisition of social skills, peer relationship).
On the other hand, in terms of peer supporters views, there is scarce evidence available that has explored peer supporters experiences at a deeper level, especially there were hardly any information in the knowledge of what kinds of difficulties peer supporters experienced, and how peer supporters overcame or deal with the difficulties. Similarly, few studies have explored why peer supporters become the peer supporter. The findings available suggest various factors (e.g. empathy), relating to the reasons to be a peer supporter, however, the studies did not capture their reasons and their views in qualitative approach (e.g. interview). In a sense, the lack of qualitative research might result in creation of these research gaps in peer support study. To deepen the knowledge in these unrevealed areas will provide further information on peer support study and bridge the research gaps in peer support study.
I have speculated the there are some reasons why less qualitative approaches were employed in the research of peer support. Firstly, qualitative approach generally produces vast amounts of data, which often generate a large number of pages of transcripts and notes. The systematic and rigorous preparation and analysis of these data might be time consuming and laborious work for researchers (Pope & Ziebland, 2000). Secondly, the quality of researcher’s skills, vision, design and their characters directly reflects on data analysis (Pope & Ziebland, 2000). This implies that if researchers have less confidence in their ability, they may not employ the qualitative approach. Thirdly, there are historical bias and literatures, which have played in giving qualitative approach a lower status (Carr, 1994). On the contrary, quantitative approach appeared to produce legitimate scientific answers and data.
Although quantitative and qualitative approaches are different, both approaches have recognised strengths and weaknesses, and one approach is not superior to the other. Both approaches have positive and negative issues in terms of sampling, reliability, validity, data analysis and ethical issues. In fact, about 30% of authors in Japanese articles were school teachers, thus, they may feel less comfortable with qualitative methods, because of time consuming issue and less confidence in their ability to manage data. Also for the researchers, it may be laborious work, and has less attractiveness because of historical bias. However, an in-depth exploration into personal and lived experience of individuals and an understanding of how pupils make sense of their lived experience would be very valuable research. Especially, exploration of the unrevealed research areas (the research gaps) will provide further information on peer support study.