Analysis of Practical Examples of Experienced-Based Marine Education for Marine Space Utilization

Environmental education is being promoted worldwide and is the subject of active effort in Japan as well. However, many environmental education programs focus on land-based systems, and currently only few schools have programs on the marine environment. Toward the goal of developing an educational game for advancing marine environmental education, we assessed the current state of environmental education and conducted basic research on existing educational games. The current state of environmental education indicated a need for developing educational games with a marine environmental theme to be linked with outdoor hands-on activities. As for the game itself, a card game is likely to be a suitable basic format because it can be used regardless of physical setting and also because the use of a variety of cards can be effective in maintaining continued interest and developing the capacity to understand the annual cycle of the natural environment. We also developed a region-specific card game whose objectives were to understand the region’s organisms and the relationship between people and the environment.