The major purpose of this paper is to analyze the characteristics of mori-no-youchien, which is starting to have a high profile in infant education, and thereby determine its significance in today's education system in Japan. There are already more than one hundred mori-no-youchien in Japan, and they can be classified into three groups: the “everyday”, the “event” and the “integrated” types.
  This paper focuses on the first “everyday” type, which is defined in this paper as the type that provides nursery and educational services every weekday, all year around, in principle, and is largely managed by a citizens’ voluntary circle. This type of mori-no-youchien shares many important characteristics with shizen-gakkou. The “everyday” type has three major characteristics: education that embraces nature, freedom from established curricula, and management by independent citizens.
   Historical and terminological analysis of mori-no-youchien and shizen-gakkou shows that the “everyday” type can provide a critical viewpoint for examining the role of the school system in supporting an industrial society and helping us become aware of problems arising from today’s education, which, for example, sometimes places excessive emphasis on conformism on the one hand and competition on the other. While this posture of mainstream school education is not necessarily compatible with democratic values, the “everyday” type of mori-no-youchien reflects democracy through both daily kindergarten activities and participatory management by committed citizens.
  In conclusion, mori-no-youchien is not only an emerging hope for early childhood education, but also provides a setting for development of promising alternatives to today's formal education system.

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  A movement for basing educational facilities on nature, i.e. the "nature school", has been established in Japan since the 1980s, and has extended to various regions. Three factors are central to the background of this movement. These are the presentation of an proposed alternative to the conventional educational system, a sense of crisis regarding the sustainability of human society, and depopulation in rural areas. Outdoor education has become established as a profession over the last 20 years, and its social cognition has advanced. The "nature school" concept is expected to play a role as a "creative basis for a sustainable society".

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  Since the Doi Moi reform policies launched in Vietnam in 1986, remarkable economic development has given rise to serious environmental challenges in urban areas, such as air pollution, contamination of rivers, and an increase in garbage. To tackle these urban environmental issues, there is a real need for not only an improvement of infrastructure and regulation by the government, but also a reform of citizen awareness and behavior. 　
  This paper proposes an environmental education program for junior high schools regarding the issue of household waste disposal. Aiming to encourage assertive environmental behavior through a reduction of household waste in Hanoi, the program has been developed by adapting local variables in Hanoi, such as knowledge of household waste, to the Hungerford and Volk model for nurturing behavior centered on environmental protection. 　
  This approach is now reducing household waste in Hanoi, and has been effective at introducing environmental education through a context familiar to students. When the program was trialed at junior high schools in Hanoi, a number of positive results were achieved. However, some further improvements to the program are still necessary, and implementing these should yield the empowerment variables defined by Hungerford and Volk.

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  Existing learning tools involving images have a risk of creating false perceptions due to inappropriate editing. This problem can be resolved by using unprocessed and unedited image archives openly available on the Internet. However, there is still no proven approach for providing learning tools using such image archives. The objective of this study was to examine the development of phenology observation learning tools using unprocessed and unedited image archives. For this study, learning tools using unprocessed and unedited image archives collected since 1995 in the University Forest in Chichibu (the University of Tokyo) were used on a trial basis for phenology observation studies at three elementary schools. The reactions of the pupils were videotaped, and the resulting responses of the teachers and pupils were analyzed. We also performed textual analysis of the pupils’ post-lesson statements about their impressions. As a result, the following three development courses were revealed. First, over a time scale of one year, learning tools that asked pupils to observe more detailed changes based on their previous experience were recommended. Second, in expanding the time scale from one to two years, it was found desirable to include learning that supported the expansion of a time scale including immediate experience. Finally, for multi-year phenology observation, we found it necessary to clearly convey to teachers and pupils that inter-annual variations of phenology were observable, and that long-term trends were not evident.

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  This study analyzed a five-year adult learning course focusing on conservation of the natural environment in suburban area. The course included field trip activities involving visits to certain communities to observe their environmental conservation efforts, as well as observations of the natural environment and landscape of participants’ community. Our analysis sought to determine whether field trips lead to acquisition of knowledge of action strategies for conservation of the natural environment. Data obtained from 124 descriptions of impressions written by members were divided into individual words through text mining. Cluster analysis using 63 words with high appearance frequency revealed nine themes. Two themes, “Activities/Programs of Conservation” and “Citizen Participation,” suggested that the trips facilitated opportunities for the participants to witness citizen volunteers and government officials together creating conservation plans and managing the parks and conservation areas to conserve the natural environment. It is suggested that the community regime on citizen’s participation contributing to the successful policy and action, as collaborative planning for conservation, is important for the acquisition of action strategies for environmental conservation. These findings implied that acquiring information about citizen participation influencing the process of successful environmental policy and action is important in education focusing on environmental behavior. Statistical analysis revealed that the occurrence ratios of both themes, “Activities/Program of Conservation” and “Citizen Participation”, were relatively higher in educational programs for visits to other communities than in other programs such as lectures and environmental surveys of their community. Additionally, both themes were closely related to the “Action/Attitude” word group. Thus, field trips enabled participants to understand the importance of community participation and learn of environmental action strategies through observing effective policies and citizen participation.

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