Fumiyo Kagawa is Research Director of Sustainability Frontiers. She was Research Team Coordinator and, before that, Research Assistant at the Centre for Sustainable Futures at the University of Plymouth, United Kingdom from September 2005 to August 2010. Earlier (2001-3) she worked as Country-Specific Researcher (South Africa) for the Education for Global Citizenship Education Project based at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT), Canada. Fumiyo is a Japanese citizen.
After working as a high school English teacher in Japan, she pursued her Master of Education at OISE/UT, where she became involved in the fields of global, peace and sustainability-related education.
Over the last ten years, she has gradually developed her capacities as a qualitative researcher in education and has engaged in a number of pedagogical and educational change research initiatives in different cultural contexts including within Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Vanuatu and the Central and Southeast Asian countries. She has been especially keen to develop and practice participatory and non-exploitative research methodologies that are congruent with the principles of social justice, equity, and human rights.
Fumiyo worked as Graduate Coordinator and Consultant for the UNICEF CARK (Central Asian Republics and Kazakhstan) Global Education Project for national educational reform in the five Central Asian countries (2002-2005). She coordinated a team of twenty-four Canadian and British consultants, liaising regularly with UNICEF Country and Area offices, while undertaking consultancy herself in four of the five countries in the region.
Her more recent consultancy work for Sustainability Frontiers includes the following co-consutancies with David Selby: a Climate Change for Education for Sustainable Development (CCESD) teacher education program for UNESCO (2011); undertaking a mapping study of the integration of disaster risk reduction in school curricula globally for UNESCO and UNICEF (2011); conducting a baseline study of disaster risk reduction curricula in Vanuatu and a dovetailed consultancy writing grade 4, 5 and 6 curriculum materials and associated teacher training programs and materials for piloting in Vanuatu schools for Save the Children Australia (2012); developing a technical guidance tool for the integration of disaster risk reduction in school curricula for UNESCO and UNICEF (2012); undertaking safe school research in Cambodia, China and Indonesia for Plan International in Asia (2012).
From the Centre for Sustainable Futures in the UK, she has coordinated a number of curriculum and pedagogical research as well as institutional change research initiatives in higher education. She has published several academic articles out of this research.
In 2009 she completed her doctorate at the University of Plymouth. In her doctoral thesis, Navigating holistic and sustainable learning: Challenges and opportunities in ongoing and creeping emergencies, she examines the interface between emergency education and education for sustainability. Following on from her doctoral research, her current research interests include: conducting empirical research into emergency education initiatives informed by a holistic philosophy and vision; developing educational theory and practice by embedding insights from the field of emergency education into mainstream ‘non-emergency’ contexts; developing forward-looking educational theory and practice that considers the runaway nature of climate change.
She has recently edited a book with David Selby, Education and Climate Change: Living and Learning in Interesting Times(Routledge, New York 2010), the first comprehensive academic study of the educational implications of climate change. Further books with David Selby on climate change education are on the drawing board.
New publications with David Selby arising out of the Sustainability Frontiers consultancies described above include: Disaster Risk Reduction in School Curricula: Case Studies from Thirty Countries (UNESCO/Paris, UNICEF/Geneva, 2012); Disaster Risk Reduction Education in Vanuatu: A Baseline Study (Save the Children Australia, 2012); Disaster Risk Reduction & Climate Change Education in Vanuatu (Save the Children Australia, 2012); Towards a Learning Culture of Safety and Resilience: Technical Guidance on Disaster Risk Reduction in School Curricula (UNESCO/Paris, UNICEF/Geneva, 2013 forthcoming).
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Contact Fumiyo : fkagawa@sustainabilityfrontiers.org
