Abstract
Homeroom teachers in Japan are responsible for the whole-person education of students, which includes fostering students’ life skills. They provide their teaching based on their own beliefs because there are no official guidelines for homeroom teaching. Since there are very few previous studies on homeroom teachers’ beliefs, this research aims to understand homeroom teachers’ beliefs, which underpin their teaching, and establish a foothold for future research. In order to explore what kinds of students’ life skills homeroom teachers wish to foster through their teaching, data were collected through a questionnaire from 42 homeroom teachers in three different Japanese high schools. Moreover, online interviews were conducted with 16 teachers of the 42 participants to gain insights about factors that affect the formation of their beliefs. According to the findings, homeroom teachers especially emphasise fostering skills to build relationships with others and attitudes to follow rules in society. Furthermore, rather than teacher education, the personal experiences of each teacher affect the formation of these beliefs. These results suggest that to maintain the quality of whole-person education by homeroom teachers, it would be effective to provide teacher trainings focusing on homeroom teaching or opportunities to share beliefs with other teachers.