CHALLENGES OF TEACHERS TO INTEGRATE ESD DESIGN ACTIVITIES IN TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION IN JAPANESE PUBLIC JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS

Abstract

The study aims to clarify teachers’ challenges in Technology Education (TE) when implementing Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) design activities into the curriculum in Japanese public junior high schools. The current research is conducted as a case study. The main participants of this study were four TE teachers currently teaching in public junior high schools in Nara City, Japan. A questionnaire survey for TE teachers and a field survey were conducted. According to the findings, the main barriers faced by teachers are a low understanding of ESD and design, low motivation to implement ESD design activities, insufficient teaching materials, and limited teaching time, which prevent TE teachers from integrating ESD design activities into the curriculum as new learning content. A suggestion proposed is that the current TE curriculum can be redesigned through project-based learning (PBL) to regroup and integrate all the learning contents into ESD design activities. Therefore, this study provided a possible new framework for redesigning a new TE curriculum.