2019 Volume 74 Issue 3 Pages 158-170
The importance of the concept of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) was specified in the Basic Plan for Promoting Education, ten years ago. This concept of ESD is an integral part of Integrated Geography, which is a new compulsory subject in the geography and history curriculum for high school, announced in 2018.
While teaching high-school geography, I have included the perspective of ESD in my classroom practices. Specifically, I have taught disaster prevention geography. This is done as an exercise which involves thinking about natural disasters as local issues. I have also taught geography as a means to prevent crime. This is the geographic study of decreasing the likelihood of crimes. I believe that my classes about disaster and crime prevention, which incorporate the perspective of ESD, can help to cultivate systems thinking. This thinking takes a systematic perspective that combines human activities with the natural and living environments, as well as a systemic perspective that broadly considers overall society and lifestyle. I believe that one's ability to think and judge in real life scenarios can be improved by applying this systems thinking to other phenomena.
This study identifies results and issues that became apparent through my classroom practices. It also suggests key points that need attention and the direction for nurturing and utilizing systems thinking through ESD in future geography education. I feel there is a need to develop teaching units that make one think about the improvements that can reduce overall risk. This requires systems thinking that comprehends the situation as it is at that time. It should also help one to perceive broader causal relationships of the changes that are brought about by initiatives taken in one place, perhaps in the form of a risk trade-off perspective.
