This study has two aims: the first aim is to investigate the relationships between components of social thinking and judgment abilities (i.e. inductive reasoning ability, deductive reasoning ability, social judgment ability, and critical thinking ability)-especially the relationships of the other components to critical thinking ability, and the second aim is to develop a lesson unit as an example of history lesson design on the basis of experimental lessons. To achieve our first aim, we

more »

... d experimental lessons (seven credit hours), selecting the Pacific War as a topic of history learning and implemented them for 4 classes of third grade junior high school students. The results (derived using post-class tests) suggested that social judgment abilities could facilitate critical thinking abilities. This suggestion also yields a hypothesis about history lessons, that it is essential to foster social judgment abilities as an educational approach in history lesson to encourage development of critical thinking abilities for junior high school students during their second and third years. To achieve our second aim, we developed a lesson unit based on the hypothesis on history lessons entitled "Women and War" (three credit hours). The unit is composed of four parts to make students evaluate the role and responsibility of women in the war effort during 1931~1945 (three parts), and also to inquire into their own evaluation criteria reflectively (one part).