The Weekly Rhythms of Japanese Junior High School and High School Students and Structure of Yutori (Leisure) : A Comparison between Before and After Innovation of the Five-day School Week System Using the Experience Sampling Method

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On April 2002, Ministry of Education's the New Guidance Record on Education was implemented. The main purpose is to improve the learning environment by focusing more on "yutori". Yutori is a term that refers to the feeling of ease. There are three policies to achieve the goal. These policies include a shorter school week, a reduction of the quantity of instruction, and an introduction of "integrated project study". This innovative program follows up on the significant step taken when the Japanese school week was reduced from 6 to 5 days. This research project focuses on the effect of these changes on Japanese adolescents' weekly rhythms.The main purpose of this research was to compare Japanese students' daily experiences "before the implementation" and "after it", especially the yutori (defined as the subjective perception of leisure) experience and to clarify the structure of yutori. Research on 210 junior high school students and 210 high school students was conducted from December 2 … More 002 to December 2003, using the Experience Sampling Method. More than 11,000 self-reports of daily experiences were collected from 12 junior high school students in the surrounding area. The data include activities, locations, companionship, moods, feelings of yutori, and perceptions of yutori experiences.The research yielded the following results:1. In public junior high schools which first introduced the five-day school week, it was difficult to recognize distinct changes between "before implementation" and "after implementation".2. In private high schools which had already introduced the five-day school week for more than 20 years, there was an increase in yutori after the implementation".3. On structure of yutori, the following information was more clear than the previous research:When the weekly and daily patterns of yutori feeling scores were measured, the mean yutori feeling scores were predictably higher on weekends than weekdays.The yutori feeling scores were related to the "desire for continuity of the event", "easiness of the event", "freedom of choice", and "motivation of the event".As yutori feelings increase, perceived freedom and intrinsic motivation scores increase. This finding supports the explanations of the concept of leisure by Neulinger (1974), Kelly (1982), and Iso-Ahola (1980). These results are very important for conducting cross-cultural research in the area of leisure. Less