Shogo Kato

The study involved a practice of e-mail counseling for eleven students of "non-attendance at school", conducted from December 2000 to December 2001 at the education center. As of December 2001, the condition of non-attendance at school of almost all students improved. In order to investigate roles of e-mail counseling, 1) the e-mail messages sent by students were analyzed, 2) parents of students who participated in e-mail counseling were asked about the roles played by e-mail counseling for their students and families, and 3) counselors who participated in this practice were interviewed regarding the effectiveness of e-mail counseling. The result of content analysis of the e-mail messages by the students showed that there were more "school and study related" and "friend related" words in the e-mails of students whose improvement of condition of non-attendance was high, than in those of students whose improvement was low. There were more of such words in the e-mails which students sent in the latter half of the period than in former half. The results of questionnaires given to the parents and the interviews to the counselors indicated that communication of the students both at home and with other using the computers increased and that they began to explore interests with the Internet.