International Conference: language education for sustainable development

Yoichi Kiyota is Professor of Education at Meisei University in Japan, where he has been involved in the management of English language education. His current research interest is English education in cooperation with museums. He has been involved in service-learning as a coordinator of teacher training and international educational projects.

The advanced development of automatic translation systems is forcing us to rethink our conventional learning methods in English education, such as exhaustive memorization of English vocabulary and grammar. Not only information technology, but the drastic changes in the world also forced us to face intense global issues, such as environmental problems, wars, and conflicts.
In such a situation, individual learners must develop an attitude that allows them to autonomously examine appropriate English language learning methods, rather than relying on learning methods and materials presented by teachers. In particular, in the case of English education, communication is an important element, so the changes in the world are expected to affect learners’ attitudes.
This study focused on the Atomic Bomb Painting Project, in which high school students in Hiroshima worked collaboratively with hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, to create a picture of the atomic bomb. This project originally included a gallery talk that explained the background of the picture in English and Japanese. The author studied one high school student who has engaged in the project evaluated whether the project can be a socially meaningful one for the student and examined its pedagogical significance in English language learning.
Three evaluators attended a gallery talk in English, which was set by the author for the research, and examined the educational significance of the project. They used descriptors of the Reference Framework of Competence for Democratic Culture (English Council, 2018) for the evaluation of the significance of the project and the student’s performance. The results showed the significance of the project was highly estimated. Moreover, the most important discovery was that the student deepened the awareness of peace culture through the project and this awareness promoted the willingness to communicate in English.

Council of Europe (2018) Reference Framework of Competencies for Democratic Culture. https://www.coe.int/en/web/reference-framework-of-competences-for-democratic-culture