In order to “identify where environmental education research has reached, ” this project will go back to the 20th anniversary special issue of the Journal of the Japanese Society of Environmental Education 13 years ago, and the summaries of the two persons in charge of the project at that time will be regarded as one of the points of achievement. Based on the results, I would like to offer a view on what has been confirmed and what remains to be done as of 2010. This view is what is meant by the title of this paper, “raising the question, ” and the author will also explain the aims of the seven “Editorials” that follow specifically discussing the remaining issues. It is important to note that this project is not a complete effort to “ identify where environmental education research has reached,” but rather a way to propose that an open discussion be initiated after “raising the question” of this project.

  One of the issues raised by this paper is that, in order to systematize research, the original principles that form the order are necessary, but as a result of a reexamination of this 20th anniversary special issue, there is still no consensus within the academic community regarding the original ideas, and in fact, the issue is fraught with controversy. Another issue was how to link academia and the field (practice). In response to this, the author proposed to promote dialogues where various environmental education practices can mutually confirm the place where they stand, and where academic concepts with different orientations can mix with each other. This idea had already been proposed in 2010.

  From the perspective of environmental education, the reviewer raised the issues, achievements and basic concepts of nature conservation education including experiential nature learning. Based on the results of the special features on nature conservation education and nature experience learning published in the journal “Environmental Education” from the Japanese Society for Environmental Education in 2009 and 2013, the reviewer reconsidered how to approach the goals of nature conservation education and the lack of an “education” perspective, which have been issues since the early days of nature conservation education. Nature conservation education is a unique field of environmental education as it specifically clarifies the relationship between humans and nature. In addition, nature conservation education has many similarities with learning about pollution (education) due to its close relationship with environmental issues, and both are aimed at environmental ethics, bioethics, recognition of others, ownership, social justice, and the formation of individual identity. At the same time, these characteristics have an “educational” perspective in the sense that they contribute to and support the development of the personality and potential of the person receiving the education. On the other hand, “○○ education” such as “environmental education” and “agricultural education” has a mission from the beginning to disseminate ○○. Nature conservation education has the same mission. In addition, from the perspective of “education,” it may be possible to position the recognition of “the educational power of nature and friends” and “the educational power of place” as the basis of the skeletal structure of nature conservation education.

  In the 20th anniversary commemorative issue, Asaoka (2009) pointed out the need to envision “environmental education as post-pollution education” as “local/community-building studies” while learning from the experience of pollution education (PE). In response, Ando (2009) expressed discomfort with the discourse that positions PE as the “prehistory” of environmental education (EE) and perceives PE as a known subject. Ando argued that research on PE itself must be advanced in the future. Subsequently, in the 2010s, interest in PE gradually expanded within JSEE, and the first special issue in JJEE on PE was published in 2015. The background to this was the growing concern over pollution issues due to the Tohoku earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear accident (2011), as well as the establishment of the Pollution Museum Network (2013) connecting pollution museums built nationwide. The “PE Research Committee” was established within JJEE in 2016, and it has been accumulating research meetings in collaboration with the Pollution Museum Network. Since then, by the end of 2019, 14 research meetings have been held, discussing various topics surrounding pollution education. In 2021, Pollution Studies: Agony, Sorrow, Struggles, and Handing Down was published as the result of these research meetings. A thorough review of the history of PE research is now necessary. Within this task, there is a need to deepen the discussion on issues such as what PE is, what research on PE entails, how to preserve materials related to PE research, and what the challenges of PE research are.

  This article first summarized the basic research concepts of early childhood environmental education. International trends in early childhood environmental education research since 2009 were subsequently reviewed, explaining that in Western cultures — under the influence of the new view of early childhood after the Convention on the Rights of the Child — environmental education has been included in national guidelines for early childhood education, and that in terms of the research field concerning early childhood education, environmental education and education for sustainable development (ESD) have become research subjects, with research progressing rapidly. There is also an increasing number of studies on the benefits of relations with nature. In Japan, on the other hand, there has been no such movement, and environmental education and ESD are still not described in the national guidelines for early childhood education, leaving research attempts and output stagnant. When researching environmental education in early childhood in Japan, it is necessary to define the meaning of the basic concepts and to closely examine foreign developing trends and previous research in Japan.

  In this paper the author discusses the merits and demerits of cross-curriculum and an independent subject as learning methods for environmental education, and furthermore points out that more integrated learning methods should be developed in the future.

  Since 1990, Japanese schools have adopted a learning method called cross-curriculum, in which environmental factors are covered in each subject. However, around 2010, many argued that environmental education should be an independent subject.

  The author is positive about making environmental education an independent subject, because in South Korea, which made environmental subjects an independent subject in 1992, teachers specializing in environmental education were trained, and the content and methods of environmental education continued to be innovated. This kind of innovation is difficult to achieve in cross-curriculum learning. On the other hand, in Japan, each subject group has strong power to its interests, so it has been difficult to keep a certain number of hours for environmental education and make it an independent subject.

  In recent years, there has been a growing recognition that it is important to integrate various fields to solve problems for a sustainable society. From this point of view, cross-curriculum and making environmental education an independent subject is not appropriate. This presupposes divided subjects, which is the opposite of integration.

  Therefore, in this paper, the author argues that each school should set up a “Period for becoming a creator of a sustainable society”, in which integrated project learning is carried out to solve issues related to building a sustainable society.

  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.

  This paper discusses the principles of knowledge and knowledge systems that are significant in considering the construction and systematization of environmental education as a discipline from the perspectives of conservation biology and citizen science. Conservation biology is an interdisciplinary discipline with the goal of conserving biodiversity. Recognizing that conservation education is important for the conservation of biodiversity and its implementation, the Society for Conservation Biology has developed 5 principles as guidelines for conservation education in 2004. The guidelines are intended to describe the body of knowledge required for conservation literacy, rather than prescribe what specific individuals should achieve. The principles related to goals, values, concepts, threats, and actions are discussed. Citizen science is the participation of the general public (citizens) in the process of scientific research, often in partnership with scientists and a variety of organizations. Because citizen science is conducted by a wide variety of implementing organizations and covers many different fields, the European Citizen Science Association developed the 10 Principles of Citizen Science in 2015. The ten principles describe important considerations for planning, practicing, and evaluating citizen science projects. This commentary also discusses the significance of conservation education and citizen science in building a science of environmental education and bridging the gap between research and practice.

  In recent years, zoos have been expected to fulfill a role as cultural bases through provision of education. Zoo education in Japan is said to have begun with Ueno Zoo’s ‘Children’s Zoo’ and ‘Summer Schools’. However, transport company-managed zoo, ‘Itozu Yuen’ (now Itozu-no-Mori Zoological Park) has been running its summer school, ‘Rinkan Gakuen,’ with the development of children’s culture as its goal, for more than eighty years, since before WWII. Focusing on Takehiko Kurushima and Itozu’s Rinkan Gakuen, this paper will follow the evolution of the relationship between children’s culture and zoo education, which has given birth to its own unique educational activities, and clarify the way in which educational activities which nurture children’s culture have been able to continue.

  This study aims to investigate the effects of an integrated approach to evaluate the natural conditions and human perceptions related to nature experience study which utilizes multiple different ecosystems in the local area. Research focused on learning sites and implementing organizations for nature experience study and examined the effectiveness of the integrated approach in the case of Shiga Prefecture. All elementary schools in the prefecture were targeted, and the natural environment around the schools was analyzed using GIS and cluster analysis. As a result, these elementary schools could be classified into five groups. In addition, a questionnaire survey was conducted with all residents of the prefecture as the population, and analysis was performed using the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). As a result, it was shown that the Willingness To Pay (WTP) for nature experience study is about three times higher than the burden calculated from the current budget amount. From the results of the survey, four places of learning that citizens prefer were extracted and examined to see how to implement a learning program that utilized each location.

  This study developed and evaluated a behavioral science tool, based on the nudge and shikakeology theories, to improve household waste separation behavior of parents and children. Conventional environmental education does not adequately address learners’ cognition about environmentally conscious behavior or analyze the problems related to such behavior. To address this problem, this tool focuses on three aspects: 1) specific waste separation behavior in the home; 2) the feelings associated with such behavior; and 3) reducing these feelings based on behavioral science. This experiment was performed over three sessions with a sample of 34 fifth-grade students, and questionnaire surveys were administered to the children and their parents. Based on the findings, there was an increase in the “sense of effectiveness” of the target children’s environmentally conscious awareness and a decrease in “cost-benefit evaluation” of the target parents’ environmentally conscious awareness. Meanwhile, the open-ended responses indicated that the children and their parents found their waste separation behavior enjoyable and interesting. Moreover, through our developed tool and program, the children and their parents showed a change in their consciousness, leading to an improvement in the formation of environmentally conscious behavioral intentions. However, some issues were unresolved, including securing a field for practice, controlling the means of intervention, and improving implementation of waste separation behavior.

  Hands-on experience is important in environmental education. However, virtual reality (VR) technology could effectively replace hands-on learning for locations that are difficult to access, subjects that are difficult to see, and dangerous situations. Due to restrictions associated with the global COVID-19 pandemic, digital tools have been incorporated into education. Both adults and children have become aware of VR, and the experience is becoming less of a novelty. Therefore, this study predicted that interest in learning content between learners with no VR experience and those with VR experience would differ. We held two science events for environmental education and administered a questionnaire to the participants. We divided the participants into two groups—those with no VR experience and those who had experienced VR three or more times—and conducted a comparative analysis. The results revealed that participants with VR experience tended to be more interested in specific learning content than those with no VR experience. These results suggest that differences in VR experience may lead to differences in interest in the learning content.

  We conducted experiments using several plant species to examine the effects of dyeing time and methods of preserving plant materials on the coloring of cotton cloth. The dyeing times ranged between 30 and 90 minutes. The results revealed that dyeing time that is too short may affect the color of the dyed cotton cloth. Regardless of preservation methods (dry, frozen and liquid form), the change in color was observed more in Bidens pilosa var. radiata and Coreopsis lanceolata than in Acer buergerianum. We found that A. buergerianum could be stored for one month in the three preserving methods of this study. In light of these results, we proposed to introduce the dyeing process as an educational experience in elementary schools.