When examining the Great East Japan Earthquake from the standpoint of environmental education, it is necessary to focus on education and learning from the perspective of those affected by the disaster. To realize the aims of education in assisting the victims, it is important for teachers to be involved in reconstruction efforts outside of the school environment. In this study, I examine the example of Mr. Hiroshi Tokumizu, an elementary school teacher in Ogatsu, Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture. My objective was to understand what kinds of perspectives teachers affected by the disaster acquire from their own experiences of the disaster, their opinions on providing support for reconstruction, and information on how they utilize such experiences to develop their educational practices toward assisting the victims.

  I found that Mr. Tokumizu participated in reconstruction activities in a disaster-affected area from three perspectives: as someone facing a sense of loss, as someone helping with reconstruction, and as someone offering consolation to suffering children and their parents.

  It can be concluded that, in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake, teachers took on a new role; that of environmental educators in affected areas. In this sense, teachers based in local communities enhance their educational practices through involvement in local activities.

  Because Japan is an island country, it presents possibilities for the establishment of an energy-saving, cyclical society by fostering intrinsically motivated communities based on the forest‒river‒ocean relationship. To establish such a society, learning and educational theory must emphasize forest‒river‒ocean-based learning communities and uniting cities and villages in watershed areas. This study was conducted to clarify the dialog processes at program development meetings that particularly discuss the forest‒river‒ocean and human relationship in tsunami disaster areas. Results show that the development process of dialog consists of problem presentation, followed by sharing of understanding, critical opinions, self-reflection, creative ideas, support, approving opinions of creative ideas, and finally, a summarization of opinions. Participants’ creativity developed along the dialogue stages, advancing relatedness, competence, and autonomy analyzed by self-determination theory and learning cycle theory. Furthermore, the leading group served an important role as a facilitator in fostering autonomy and creativity.

  To raise public awareness of the importance of biological diversity, providing opportunities for children and people to learn biodiversity in familiar environments are required. Ants are one of the most common insects that can be found in various environments and are rich in species. Therefore, it is possible to be effectively use them as a learning material to realize biodiversity in familiar environments. In this study, first, ant fauna was surveyed at 50 familiar green spaces in Tokamachi City, Niigata Prefecture in 2012 and 2013. Collection was carried out using simple manual hand collection within each green space for 30 minutes per green space. As a result of the survey, the average number of species collected per green space was 10.0 species, and species compositions in 50 green spaces were clearly related to the environmental conditions. Secondly, events were carried out to provide a hands-on educational program using the above collection method for children and adults. Questionnaires given to the participants revealed that impressions of biological diversity in the green spaces surveyed were changed by the experiences gained through the program. This indicates that the educational program using surveys of ants at familiar green spaces is effective for raising public awareness of biodiversity in familiar environments.

  Learning about environmental problems that include human-wildlife conflict with international students could provide great opportunities for students to improve their understanding of the theme from a global perspective and to train themselves to potentially become global leaders in this field. The author conducted a study to understand the effects of a course entitled “Facilitating Nature Conservation in Our Society,” taught in English at Chiba University, Japan. Every class included lectures and group discussions. The author taught this course for one semester (i.e., a total of 15 classes) in which 12 students―7 from Japan, 2 from the US, and one each from Australia, Finland, and Thailand―attended. The contents included understanding the relationship between human society and the natural environment, the value of biodiversity, human-wildlife issues in Japan, and efforts to live in harmony with wildlife all over the world. Throughout the course, students were required to submit reports after each class. These reports, submitted by the 12 students, were reviewed to understand what students learned from the class and group discussions with other students from various countries. The author subjectively analyzed some reports and revealed that students 1) learned about similarities and differences of environmental issues all over the world, and 2) acquired communication skills such as how to reach a consensus with people from different cultural backgrounds. For example, an American student and a Finnish student felt the characteristics of wildlife issues in Japan were somewhat different from their countries. They addressed that interventions well used in their countries (i.e., the US and Finland) such as participatory monitoring of wildlife movement around cities and hunting could potentially mitigate the issues in Japan. Japanese students learned about the importance of actively stating their opinions in English in the group discussions and workshops in order to promote mutual understanding.