The early childhood period critically influences how children form their fundamental lifestyles. However, little is known about the pedagogical moment of Environmental Education or how children acquire early attitude towards the environment. Children often acquire knowledge about the world through images within picture books. These images affect children's attitudes toward the environment. Upon analyzing the contents of 358 children's picture books, three major thematic categories appeared:
  (A) Environmental-Education picture books, which discuss environmental topics overtly, with a call to action
  (B) Environmental-issues picture books, which present various environmental issues without calling for specific actions and charges.
  (C) Environmental-related picture books, which merely touch upon environmental issues.
  In this paper, types (A) and (B) are examined, and I found that there are three main characteristics. Such books have at least one or two of the following characteristics in common:
  1) The planet earth is shown from space
  2) Images of animals and plants suffering adversely from pollution are shown
  3) environmentally-friendly messages are featured in the form of, both directly and indirectly, slogans cartoons, pictures, etc.
  Since the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, researchers and environmental educators seem eager to construct the “ideal” environmental education. Such an approach could be described as “Politically-based environmental education”. “Politically-based environmental education” ignores the existence of “Unconsciously-continued environmental education”, which is often obscured by modern daily life. Even though this subtle folk knowledge is overlooked by many researchers, examining it is a good method to learn about alternative environmental education.
  I would like to emphasize the importance of “unconsciously-continued environmental education” by examining environmental picture books.

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構造性をもった文章としての物語の理解に影響する先行情報として, 物語が扱われる話題の中心的問題と提起するFrame情報と, 通常は物語の中に含まれ, 話題が展開する場面や主人公を紹介するSetting情報をとりあげた。前者は, 理解の枠組みを, 後者は, 被験者のもつ物語シェマを一定の方向をもって賦活させる機能をもつと考えられる。
本実験は, これらの先行情報を与えることが情報そのものの重複による効果を越えて, 後続する物語理解のための認知的枠組みを形成することによる理解の促進効果をもつものか否かを検討することを目的として企画された。アンデルセン原作の「パンをふんだ娘」のTVシルエット動画を材料とし, 先行して与える情報による理解度の差が分析された。被験者は小学校2年生80名, 先行情報条件により, Frame+Setting群, Frame群, Setting群, 統制群の4群に20名ずつ割り当てられ, 集団で実験が行われた。直後と一週間後の理解テストの結果から次のようなことが明らかにされた。
(1) 物語理解は, 物語の構造部位によって異なり, 中心話題での理解は先行情報の有無にかかわらず優れている。
(2) 物語の背景を示すSetting情報は, 単独では物語理解を促進する効果は少なく, 全体理解のための十分な枠組みを提供するとはいえない。(3) 問題提示を内容とするFrame情報は, 単独では, 情報の重複による理解の促進効果ももたず, 全体理解の枠組みとしての効果も示さなかった。
(4) Frame情報とSetting情報を共に与えた場合には理解テストでの成績の上昇がみられ, これらが枠組形成の機能を果たしていることが明らかとなった。
これら両情報による枠組み形成は, Frame情報によって問題解決過程として物語を処理する枠組みができ, Setting情報によりその解決過程としての物語処理に一定の方向性が与えられたためだと考察された。

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The Constitution called for equality between men and women, prohibited discrimination, and expected its realization in education. The Fundamental Law on Education specified equal opportunities in education and coeducation. It abolished single-gender education, and brought an epoch-making reform by making higher education open for women. However, looking at society as a whole, there remain clear gender distinctions, and Japan is still a developing country in gender equity. In this study I analyze these factors based on a view of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women Treaty, and I examined what future gender-equity education should be. The Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women Treaty says that "physiological difference"is not the basis of gender discrimination, but it proposes that custom and practice should be modifid from the view of gender. In this respect, interpretations of the equility between men and women of the Fundamental Law on Education were restricted by historical facts, and it recognized gender roles and specialization. There have been some factors which prevented gender-equity education. The first factor is that education policy introduced the intention of the industrial world where the idea of gender roles and specialization because of different traits and characteristics was preferred. The second factor is that single-gender elementary and secondary schols, many women's colleges, and women's universities were established and have been maintained. The third factor is the formal curriculum classified by gender and the hidden curriculum which reproduces gender have been continued at school. However, in the interaction that competes with those elements above, "education about life and reprocuction of life, " "education about occupation and skill, " "sexual education, " and "gender-free discrimination" have been creating contents for Gender-fair education. However, in the recent government announcement the problem of gender-equity education was not discussed as an educational policy for the 21^st century. From now on, it will be thought important that the modern school which has contributed to industrial development and state control should reviewed for the purpose of promoting gender-equity education. Furthermore, both parents and students should reach mutual agreement on gender-equity education, and course of studies should be of local citizen's own creation.

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Nowadays the extreme reaction against the idea of gender equality and sexuality education has broken out in Japan. In this paper I intend to clarify the difference of opinions about these subjects by analyzing typical cases. Then I examined the subjects for solving the conflicting situation by comparing the view of sexuality education since 1992 in Japan with the actual situations of gender equality and sexuality education in Finland as an advanced country in the field. The findings are as follows. Regarding gender equality and equality education, there is still the greatest conflict of views between equality approved gender roles and the resulting equality by aiming actual equal relations without regard to sex. Regarding sexuality education, the educational administration oppress teachers to teach exactly and concretely the route of infection and prevention against HIV/AIDS and other sexual infectious diseases in spite of being expected the big prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Asia. It can be seen that there remains still a deep -rooted view of sexuality as immoral in Japan. For solving this situation, it is important to familiarize many excellent models of sexuality education which was promoted by a few teachers and to cooperate with medical experts in this field. In Finland, many social organizations and facilities support children's sexual independence besides parents or teachers in the district. We also should promote children's sexuality education using existent institutions in each district such as health centers and promote it as adult education for people using community centers and such in Japan.

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