한국일본학회

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) refers to educational activities that enable people to address current and future global challenges and realize a more sustainable and resilient society. In other words, it is the ability to understand the various issues facing people in the world today, such as the environment, development, poverty, peace, and human rights, from an interdisciplinary perspective and through systematic thinking, to derive solutions to these issues, and to act for the transformation of oneself and society. For this purpose, ESD aims to nurture transversal competencies. This paper discusses the current status and issues of ESD in Japan, examines how ESD should be introduced in school education, and then discusses the results of a questionnaire survey conducted in Yokohama City, which is actively promoting ESD. The survey reveals that the positive impact of ESD can be seen in the attitudes and behaviors of students. In addition, it was also apparent that the schools are focusing on things that are easy for students to understand and work on in their daily context when promoting ESD practices. We commend these schools for their efforts to focus on helping students understand familiar issues and acquire the general skills needed to deal with more complex problems, in accordance with their developmental stage. On the other hand, the survey also shows that it is important to actively create opportunities for cross-disciplinary and cross-curricular learning, and to encourage students to see global agendas that are distant from their daily context.