Abstract
Indicating forecast of Learning through Experiencing Nature (LEN) from environmental education has become an urgent task for education in Japan. In this article, discussion is reviewed reflectively to explore the direction for solving the task. In the first chapter, we organized social needs for LEN identified in domestic and overseas measures. In the second chapter, taking LEN for nurturing youth, we categorized it with regards to (1) object and practicing subject, (2) learning aims of educational fields, and (3) LEN programs. In the third chapter, focusing on training leaders, we indicated that people in the local community can be leaders as well as school teachers, and leading actor in school education. In conclusion, we stated three points; (1) the requirements for accumulation of empirical research in nurturing youth like clarification of the relationship between LEN and competence, (2) research and development with new viewpoints which are training leader as “interpreters” who can be communicators eliciting people's positive world view of nature, and (3) framing system which have a view to the relationship between LEN and local systems of environmental education for sustainable and symbiotic community development.
