Keywords
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)
Framework for educational reform
Submitted : 2023-06-21
Accepted : 2023-07-06
Published : 2023-07-21
Abstract
This article presents a summary of a symposium that aimed to bridge the gap between educational practice and educational policies and systems. The symposium focused on creating a framework for supporting change in public schools, with a particular emphasis on the project titled “Development of an Organizational and Curriculum Model for Public Schools as a Foundation for ESD Practice.” The project aimed to connect intrinsic teacher practices with school organizational and curricular reforms, involving collaboration between municipalities, universities, and young researchers. The symposium included reports on school reforms in participating municipalities, discussions on logic models, and reflections on the effectiveness of the project framework. The discussions highlighted the benefits of the framework in promoting sustainable school reform and the challenges associated with implementing logic models. The article concludes by suggesting that educational practitioners and researchers should adopt a perspective and mindset approach and shift from a linear to a complex system framework for teacher learning. It emphasizes the importance of open and integrated knowledge in revitalizing schools and universities, ultimately contributing to the development of effective educational policies.
References
ESDHoRIP stands for “ESD Holistic Reform in Public Schools through Intrinsic Teacher Practice,” which is the abbreviation for a framework study group that links public schools to holistic reform through the intrinsic teacher practice of ESD.
The following statements are based on symposium records and later confirmed by the speakers.
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) website: “Regarding Workstyle Reform in Schools.”
Same as above.
Complex systems research has become an important theme in the field of science. It is a concept that, like biological phenomena, involves self-organization while considering the whole and the parts, and creatively activates both the individual and the whole simultaneously. It means “seeing the forest for the trees,” and this approach also applies to the “model development” (mold creation) in projects.
The framework of Evidence-Based Policy Making (EBPM) in education policy involves stakeholders creatively designing institutional systems, considering diverse contexts and content. For example, (i) the complexity of educational activities and interactions with children and parents, (ii) response to educational policies, (iii) changes in schools and society, (iv) creating schools that facilitate intrinsic educational practices, and (v) involvement of the community and universities (collaboration and cooperation).
The term “VUCA” was coined to express the difficulty of future prediction, representing Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity.
Please refer to the Shizuoka University Affiliated Education Practice Center Bulletin No. 31, 2022, titled “Connecting Educational Practice to School and Teacher Reform: From the Whole-School Approach of ESD/SDGs.”