No abstract

In this end-piece to the special issue of the Japanese Journal of Environmental Education: Environmental Education in Asia, we review, compare and synthesize the discussions provided in this issue to reach our aim of going beyond merely describing environmental education (EE) in Taiwan, Korea, and Japan, and seek further questions and common issues relevant to the region and possibly the global community. From the first three articles, which overviewed formal EE in each country, three issues emerged for further study: institutionalizing EE in schools, the roles of EE in improving the quality of school education, and marginalization of EE in schools oriented towards college entrance. The next three articles suggested the limited impacts non-formal EE has made on society as a whole in these places and the need to investigate how governmental institutionalization affected the characteristics, contents, and qualities of non-formal EE, to avoid weakening its diversity and autonomy. The next three articles, which overviewed EE research trends, led to the questions: "How can we transform EE practices into EE research?" and "How can we enhance the field of EE as an academic discipline?" The contribution from Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia discussed the importance of understanding EE in relation to biogeography, sociocultural and socioecological history, and proposed collaboration in cross-cultural EE exchanges, "posthumanist" EE development, and EE for Asian migrants in Austrasia. Finally, the last paper invited us to envision futures for EE, raising critical questions in relation to the roles of EE to "invite" people to reflect on values, controversies, and dilemmas, to critically face the "post-truth" era, and to take necessary action. Our next step is to invite more people to join our challenge in reflecting critically on our practices as EE professionals in Asia in relation to the ecological, geographical, social, political, economic, and cultural contexts and finding ways for further development and contributions to global EE collaboration.

Taking into account of the both significant growth of higher education in Asia and the infiltration of cosmopolitan viewpoints in environmental education research, our team designed and conducted pilot survey amongst EE researchers of Japan, Korea and Taiwan (n=51) concerning: self-evaluation; methodology; training; themes; education sector levels and interests in and barriers against international collaboration. This paper shares notable trends revealed through the pilot survey and discuss the significance of these in relation to our future, full-scale survey. Toward conducting a larger-scale survey, two aspects should be stressed. First, use of native language is essential to securing greater participants. This would improve the accuracy of meaning sometimes lost through translation and increase the efficiency of completion. More survey participants would enable us to conduct crossnational comparisons, which this study could not. Second, the support from the participating academic societies is crucial not only for executing a full-scale survey but also facilitating opportunities for increasing research skills and capacities international collaboration.

This chapter describes innovative approaches, both within schools and across multiple sectors, to urban environmental education in the highly urbanized environments of Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Seoul. Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea—the so-called “Four Asian Tigers”—pursued aggressive industrialization to boost economic growth, resulting in rapid urbanization. Today their cities are faced with acute urban problems. As each of these highly urbanized cities faces the complex challenges that come with development, they turned to urban environmental education to foster environmental awareness and environmentally responsible behaviors. The chapter examines the strategies adopted by Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Seoul, such as integrating environmental education into the school curriculum, inquiry-based field trips, technology, partnerships, and urban environmental centers.

There are eight countries in the world that have enacted the Environmental Education Acts (hereinafter referred to as "EEAs") as of 2019. Of these, three countries in East Asia-Japan, Taiwan, and Korea-established the EEAs and they conduct pioneering efforts around the world. In Japan, the EEAs was enacted in 2003 and revised in 2011. In Korea, it was enacted in 2008 and revised in 2015. In Taiwan, it was promulgated in 2010 and put into effect in 2011. When we look at trends in previous studies in Japan, international comparative studies of the management of environmental administrations and the EEAs are not really investigated in the previous studies. We think this is because the contents and characteristics of specific systems indicated in the individual articles of the EEAs are not provided in these international comparative studies. The purpose of this study is to compare the EEAs in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, to clarify the institutional issues of the EEAs in the three countries. In this paper, as a first step, we would like to clarify the similarities and differences in the management of the systems for the promotion, support, and provision of participation opportunities in environmental education in each country. We organized the similarities and differences of the EEAs in the three countries. We found that the similarities included the fact that participation and collaboration by various actors were emphasized in the purpose,the definition of environmental education, and the basic policies and plans of nations and municipalities. On the other hand, differences could be found in the legally binding nature of the EEAs. We therefore propose a hypothesis that there are differences among the three countries in the roles of administrations in promoting environmental education. Based on this, we offer further areas of study to clarify the comparative studies.