Environmental Education in Training Courses for Early Childhood Educators in Junior Colleges in Japan

Abstract

  Inoue & Tajiri (1999) proposed the following three goals for environmental education training courses for early childhood educators: (1) to enable the educators to understand environmental issues and realize the need for early childhood environmental education, (2) to enable them to develop environmentally responsible behaviors, and (3) to enable them to develop practical environmental education skills, especially by focusing on interactive play with nature. However, the analysis of syllabi gathered in 2002 from 149 junior colleges (2-year courses) offering training courses for early childhood educators revealed that the curricula did not correspond to the goals mentioned above. Only 2.8 subjects that included content pertaining to environmental education were offered per college, and 59.2% were liberal arts subjects. In a short-term training course, it may be difficult to add extra subjects that are unrelated to obtaining the necessary qualifications and license for becoming an early childhood educator. However, it is important to include environmental education in the training courses for early childhood educators because, in the future, they will need to impart environmental education to the young children they teach in kindergartens and nursery schools. Therefore, in junior colleges, teachers of liberal arts subjects should improve the content and teaching methods from the viewpoint of environmental education.