To develop human resources capable of taking charge of Japan's future science and technology, the government is aiming to enhance science education in elementary, middle, and high schools, and learning evaluation and connection to the learning have become an important mission of universities. For example, Japan's Super Science High School (SSH) system has already existed for 18 years, and evaluations of its outcomes and details of improvement are under way. This survey investigated nationally how early exposure to science education in the elementary, middle, and high school affected graduate students in science and technology, with the purpose being to consider the ideal way to advance science and mathematics education in elementary, middle, and high schools in the future. The survey was conducted between January 2016 and March 2017 among master's and doctoral students in medicine, science, and engineering programs in universities across Japan and those who had completed such programs within the past three years. After obtaining the approval of each department and each laboratory, the researchers sent the survey and the attached questionnaire to each department and laboratory separately. The questionnaire was anonymous and stated that answering was strictly optional. Most of the questionnaire was available on the Internet to be filled out. The survey obtained a total of 544 valid responses from students from 29 graduate schools in Japan; the response rate calculated from the number of responses to the number of questionnaires distributed was 21.6%. There were many responses from graduate students in master's programs, and those aged 22-24 accounted for 81.1% of the total. There were 390 male respondents, 133 female respondents, and 9 unspecified. When the answers were scored and compared for the three items "interest in nature," "interest in theory/principle in science and technology fields," and "experimental technology in science and technology fields"—those who had experienced extracurricular science and mathematics education at elementary, middle, and high school answered that they had significantly improved compared to those who did not. On the other hand, the difference was not significant in "ethics in science and technology fields (research ethics, bioethics etc.)," "searching techniques, such as documents," and "English ability (speaking ability, reading comprehension, etc.)."
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