Transformational model of education for sustainable development (TMESD) as a learning process of socialization^*

* All the translations of Japanese quotations into English were completed by the authors.

ABSTRACT

In this article, we provide guidance for the implementation of education for sustainable development (ESD) in schools. We combine Bhaskar's Transformational Model of Social Activity (TMSA), and his approaches to inference, retroduction and retrodiction; and apply these to ESD. Consequently, we arrive at an approach to ESD that we term the Transformational Model of ESD (TMESD). We argue that TMESD is preferable to other contemporary conceptions of ESD because it is inherently tensed, that is, it has a time-based conception of sustainable development (SD). It therefore insists on a version of SD that refers to our present actions, is aligned with the wellbeing of present and future generations, and is based on our understanding of, and learning from, past activities. We consider one case of ESD practice in a Japanese school and conclude that, whilst it has some sense of tense, this is not well-developed regarding retroductive and retrodictive moments.

KEYWORDS:

• Education for sustainable development
• sustainable development
• absenting absence
• Transformational model of social activity
• socialization
• metaconceptual pedagogy of education for sustainable development

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our deep gratitude to Dr. Leigh Price and Dr. Robert O’Donoghue, of the Environmental Learning Research Centre, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa and also to the two reviewers for their valuable suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Kensuke Chikamori is a visiting and an emeritus professor of Naruto University of Education. For more than 30 years, he has been involved with teacher education in science, environmental and international education. He has been studying critical realism (CR) together with members of Naruto CR Study Group. His research interest is in the application of CR to education including ESD. Since July 2017, he has served as a director of the ESD Resource Center of Shikoku, Japan.

Chie Tanimura, Ph.D. in Human Sciences, is an associate professor of Naruto University of Education. She is an editorial board member of the Studies in Philosophy of Education (Japan). As an advisor, she is involved with human rights education in Tokushima Prefecture. Her research focus is on school-based disaster prevention education (DPE). Based on the critical realism, her special interest is in the research and practice of DPE in relation to human rights, morals and ethics.

Masae Ueno, Ph.D. in Human and Environmental Studies, is an independent researcher with interests in environmental education, interpretation, and communication. Trained in natural and social sciences, she focuses on the importance of innate human need for nature, exploring ways to illuminate and communicate that need. Her current research includes learning and transformative praxis of children and teachers in the field of home economics. She has also engaged in teaching and learning support of students, including those with special needs, outside of mainstream school education.

Notes

* All the translations of Japanese quotations into English were completed by the authors.

1. We use the term ‘metaconceptual pedagogy’ to refer to a pedagogy that provides ESD practice with a theoretical and conceptual basis, regardless of the concrete objective/aim, outcome, content, and learning environment of an individual ESD practice.

2. The questionnaire survey targeting schoolteachers was carried out by Niihama city board of education, Niihama city, Ehime prefecture, Japan in 2015 at the start of three years city-wide ESD promotion project. One of the authors, Chikamori, participated in this project as an advisor and analysed the responses from teachers. Although these types of feelings have not been completely eradicated, teachers’ feelings or attitudes to ESD have increasingly improved over three years since 2015.

3. Reiko Iwasa (2014) has proposed the place-based conception of ‘Endogenous ESD’. This conception is underpinned by place-based values such as traditions, heritage knowledge practices, and power that are situated in the local community.

4. Shikoku is the smallest of the four main islands of Japan. It is located in the southern-western part of Japan and consists of four prefectures.