Yuto Kitamura

Education for Sustainable Development at Universities in Japan

Purpose – Education for sustainable development (ESD) aims at changing the approach to education that integrates principles, values and practices of sustainable development, and needs to be incorporated into all forms of learning and education. The purpose of this paper is to review the way in which ESD has been developed at universities in Japan. The paper also seeks to examine major patterns of education and research related to ESD at Japanese universities.Design/methodology/approach – The authors adopted two research approaches: a review of literature and electronic resources, mainly the web sites of universities, to present the overview of ESD at Japanese universities; and a questionnaire survey which analyzed responses from 18 undergraduate programs and 14 postgraduate programs at Japanese universities.Findings – The paper points out that the ESD implementation in higher education in Japan lacks coherence with other education reforms and is not linked with ESD at school and local levels. The paper al...

An Integrated Framework for Analyzing Education Reforms and Capacity Development in Developing Countries: Why, How, and for Whom?

The World Conference on Education for All held in Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990 and the World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000 led to the agreement on the Education for All (EFA) goals that aim to diffuse basic education. Throughout the world, especially in developing countries, attempts to realize these goals are being made. The diffusion of basic education as symbolized by the EFA goals is widely recognized not as a task of the education sector alone but as one of many extremely important challenges facing the socioeconomic development of developing countries. This is readily appreciated by the fact that out of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted after the UN Millennium Summit of 2000 the universalization of primary education (Goal 2) and the elimination of gender disparity in education (Goal 3) are the same as the EFA goals. Nonetheless, despite the wide variety and successive efforts of the international community, many problems still beset the achievement of the EFA goals. A review of the strategies for achieving the EFA goals is underway in many developing countries, donor countries, and international agencies. Part of such reconsideration efforts has given rise to international debate from the position of each stakeholder on the ideal means of providing aid in regard to the development of basic education in developing countries. The impact of this debate is embodied in action at the frontline of basic education support, with the Sector-Wide Approach (SWAp) and the Program-Based Approach (PBA) becoming mainstream. Also, in the context of decentralization that many developing countries are currently promoting, the major focus is on the importance of capacity development on many fronts. Such

An Analytical Framework of Educational Development and Reform in Developing Countries: Interaction Among Actors in the Context of Decentralization

Effort toward diffusing basic education in developing countries is a widely shared international agenda through the designation of the Education for All (EFA) goals and the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Diverse actors of the international community are promoting educational development aid. Influenced by such international debate and support, many developing countries are upholding as their policy goals such issues as the diffusion of primary education and the elimination of the gender gap relating to educational opportunities. Education reforms aimed at realizing these outcomes are ongoing. What has become accepted more recently as the model for international cooperation in the education and other sectors is the effort to harmonize aid and to make it compatible with the plans and strategies of the developing countries themselves, thereby attempting to establish the ownership of developing countries and the partnership among actors, as was encapsulated in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness adopted in 2005 (OECD High Level Forum 2005), and discussed in Chapter 1. Nevertheless, it has to be said that in many developing countries there remains a long road toward achieving these goals. The reasons for this are multifarious, depending on each country’s particular circumstances, but a common thread among all countries is the frailty of the capacity of the education sector in terms of its systems, organizations, and human resources. To achieve the educational development goals as typified by the EFA goals, the key issue is how to strengthen such capacity. In educational development aid today, it has become essential to consider the capacity development of the entire education sector. To encourage capacity development and to improve the learning environment in a sustained manner, what we need is improvement of

The Emergence of International Dimensions in East Asian Higher Education: Pursuing Regional and Global Development

This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical dynamics and actual approaches toward the emergence of international dimensions in East Asian higher education (In this book, “East Asia” implies mainly ASEAN+3 (Japan, China, and South Korea). However, this term has also been defined as an open region without clear borders. Therefore, this book does not exclude influences and exchange with Asia-Pacific, Oceanic, South Asian, and/or other countries.). In discussing higher educational reforms in a dynamically changing East Asian region, the authors describe how the steadily rising international profile of Asian universities is accompanied by a rapid expansion toward mass and universal attendance. However, intense competition among countries and regions is now under way in various aspects of politics, business, society, and culture. Under these circumstances, higher education is undergoing diverse reforms in Asian countries.

Higher Education in Cambodia : Expansion and quality improvement

While many countries have experienced rapid growth in higher education in recent years, few have grown as rapidly as Cambodia. Moving from less than a thousand students in a single institution in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge regime, the Cambodian higher education system has expanded by a factor of 65 over 1980 levels. This paper draws on a unique dataset of national higher education statistics to paint a picture of the growth of the system over the past 30 years, its extent and nature, along with some of the implications for access, quality, and composition. While some of this expansion has taken place in the public sector, the vast majority of growth can be seen in the proliferation of private institutions and in dramatic increases in the numbers of fee-paying students in public institutions. Demand for higher education has far outstripped government capacity for provision. Government allows a robust private sector while working to establish an appropriate regulatory regime.

Organizational Legitimacy in the Global Education Policy Field: Learning from UNESCO and the Global Monitoring Report

In the field of global education policy, it is common for scholars to reflect on the progress made toward internationally agreed-upon agendas, such as Education for All (EFA). However, scant research has turned the gaze back on the major multilateral institutions that commit to taking the lead in meeting these agendas in order to ask, what implications do such agendas have for these organizations? We respond in this article by investigating the way in which UNESCO used its position as the coordinator of EFA to help it regain some of the legitimacy it lost in the preceding decades. To do so, the article first elaborates a tripartite conceptualization of organizational legitimacy and then applies it to the two prongs of UNESCO’s strategy—EFA coordination and the production of the Global Monitoring Reports (GMRs) during a key period, 2000–2014, that were at the forefront of UNESCO’s efforts to rebrand and reposition itself in the context of multilateralism.

Ideologies Inside Textbooks

This chapter analyzes school textbooks in Cambodia during the 1980s when the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) was in power. Our paper focuses on the portrayal inside textbooks of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), which was the regime that preceded the PRK and is commonly known as the Khmer Rouge. Education during this period attempted to unify survivors of the auto/genocide that occurred during the DK period (1975–1979) and was used as a political tool to create favorable public sentiment for the ruling power in the capital, Phnom Penh (Okada, 1998).

Introduction: Japanese Education in a Global Age

This introductory chapter clarifies the aims, framework, and outline of the book. The book aims to highlight the forefront of Japan’s education research through sociological and other related research approaches to historical developments and accomplishments provided mostly by members of the Japan Society of Educational Sociology (JSES). Japanese education exhibits unique dynamics among policy, demand, and supply. Sociologists and other social scientists in education in Japan have approached this issue mainly focusing on familial relationships, equity, and poverty. This chapter focuses on educational research phenomena which are possibly unique to Japan to many international readers. This includes global and regional policy and social trends such as neoliberalism, mobility, and the diffusion of ICT medias, while the reactions of researchers and society against these trends have often been different from other countries. It is hoped that this collection will contribute to the international debate on education and help sociologists and a wider range of social scientists outside of Japan gain a precise comprehension of ongoing changes in education in Japan as well as its historical and structural contexts.

Beyond National Frameworks: Patterns and Trends in Articles by Japanese Researchers Published in International Journals of Sociology of Education and Related Fields Since the 1990s

This chapter examines how Japanese researchers’ contributions to the international scholarly community in the fields of sociology of education or related fields have transformed over the years. It does so by examining the trends and patterns of Japanese researchers’ articles in key international journals in these fields since the 1990s. The analysis of 90 articles revealed that Japanese researchers’ presence in the international scholarly community of the sociology of education and related fields has steadily increased since the 1990s, particularly through their active publications of English language articles in the field of comparative education, international education development, and higher education. The regions and themes of focus have also changed, from the dissemination of the particularities of Japanese education to the world in the 1990s to the investigation of contemporary educational issues through either single -country or comparative study and in more recent years to active engagement in theoretical and epistemological debates.

Post-Fukushima radiation education for Japanese high school students in affected areas and its positive effects on their radiation literacy

Abstract In post-Fukushima Japan, radiation education is very important, and the subject is being actively discussed. However, little information is available about the amount of knowledge students initially had about radiation or about how well radiation education improves their understanding. Using the questionnaire results of 717 students completed before and after radiation lectures held in three high schools in Fukushima, we examined the number of answers to the questionnaire aligned with the evidence base, and classified the students into clusters based on radiation-related behavior and attitudes to assess the effectiveness of the lecture. The contents of the lectures consisted of (i) scientific knowledge relating to radiation, (ii) results of radiation examinations conducted locally following the disaster and (iii) measures and precautions for daily radiation protection. Associations between the type of knowledge and radiation-related behavior and attitude were also examined to determine which type of knowledge was more important for deepening students’ understanding of radiation. This study revealed that radiation education in high schools was effective for students with respect to acquiring relevant basic and practical knowledge; however, the effects of the radiation lecture differed greatly between schools, presumably due to differences in the delivery and atmosphere of the lecture. The present study also suggested that radiation education may positively transform student attitudes and behaviors related to radiation. To enable such a change in awareness, the acquisition of scientific knowledge is essential, for it enables individuals to make better decisions about important matters in their daily lives.