[Deliverable] Okayama ESD Promotion Commission 20th Anniversary Commemorative Book: Chapter 6 “Achievements of ESD”

Okayama City has published a bilingual report entitled “(insert official title here),” which reviews approximately twenty years of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) initiatives in the city. The full report is available as a PDF on the city’s official website (link below).

Chapter 6, “Outcomes of ESD in Okayama” presents the findings of a commissioned study on the effects of ESD in Okayama City, which Assist. Prof, Dr. Shibakawa conducted for the municipality. In this chapter, I focus on the transformative processes experienced by participants, using the Modified Grounded Theory Approach (M-GTA) to qualitatively analyse interview data from citizens, school pupils, and educators involved in ESD activities.

The analysis explores how ESD contributes to changes such as internalisation of ESD-related ideas and values, expansion of perspectives through diverse experiences and encounters, deepened reflexivity and agency, the development of collaborative relationships and community, and the move towards various forms of social action. These categories are presented in the form of conceptual diagrams that illustrate participants’ trajectories of change.

This chapter may be useful for those interested in understanding the impacts of ESD in terms of human transformation, as well as for researchers looking for examples of applying M-GTA to the evaluation of educational practice.
https://www.city.okayama.jp/kurashi/cmsfiles/contents/0000076/76008/okayamaesd20english.pdf