2024 Volume 33 Issue 2 Pages 2_36-42
In the case of Japanese environmental education, there is a lack of discussion regarding curriculum in both practice and research. As a result, environmental education practitioners are unable to understand the bias in their own practices. Most environmental education researchers focus on research that is easy to publish in papers, and do not engage in research that takes into account the entirety of environmental education. Therefore in this paper, I have provided some knowledge and made some recommendations in order to overcome the lack of discussion regarding systematization and curriculum organization in environmental education. They are as follows:
(1) A structural model of school subject pedagogy (Fachdidaktik in German) was introduced as a reference for examining the overall picture of environmental pedagogy.
(2) Previous studies on environmental education curriculum have been concisely organized in terms of scope and sequence. Additionally, three examples of environmental education curriculum in Japan were presented.
(3) Curriculum frameworks for environmental education in California, USA, were presented and those characteristics were extracted. The targets of consideration were “Conceptual Matrix for Integrated Waste Management” (1993) and “Matrix of Environmental Principles and Concepts in CA NGSS” (2018).
(4) From the research on the factors that influence environmentally conscious behavior, suggestions to curriculum organization of environmental education were extracted.
(5) Finally, the importance of environmental education practitioners and researchers working together on the following three points to continuously improve environmental education using the PDCA cycle was pointed out: ① Analyze the Japanese courses of study from the perspective of environmental education; ② Find examples of systematic environmental education plans from inside and outside Japan and analyze their curricula; and ③ For example, an organization such as the Environmental Curriculum Formation Review Committee could be established to create a draft environmental education curriculum.
