Abstract
This study examines the current fashion education curricula on sustainability in higher education institutions in Japan. The historical background of today’s fashion institutions is first examined alongside the government efforts to promote education for sustainability and sustainable development. Although Japan has made significant contributions in promoting sustainable development at an international level, the efforts to introduce sustainability in domestic higher education fashion programs have been limited and fragmented. Rather than resulting from institutional or policy-led initiatives, the current efforts have largely been driven by individual educators and implemented through small-scale projects. Based on an analysis of the available fashion institution curricula and the pedagogical methodologies used in sustainable education, this study reveals that sustainable practices are mainly approached from environmental material perspectives that focus on material reduction through approaches such as upcycling. These approaches are found to largely stem from the traditional technical focus of fashion education and narrow interpretations of sustainability centered on resource management. Limited faculty training and institutional support are identified as the key barriers to developing effective sustainable education curricula. To address these issues, this study proposes that rather than simply including more sustainability related topics in the curricula, education for sustainable development needs to be integrated alongside practical project-based learning objectives.
Keywords
Sustainability; Fashion education; Fashion institutions; Japan
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.565
Citation
N., C.L.,and Mizuno, D.(2025) Sustainability in Japanese Fashion Higher Education: An Evaluation of Pedagogical Approaches., in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.565
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 12 - Design Education
Sustainability in Japanese Fashion Higher Education: An Evaluation of Pedagogical Approaches.
This study examines the current fashion education curricula on sustainability in higher education institutions in Japan. The historical background of today’s fashion institutions is first examined alongside the government efforts to promote education for sustainability and sustainable development. Although Japan has made significant contributions in promoting sustainable development at an international level, the efforts to introduce sustainability in domestic higher education fashion programs have been limited and fragmented. Rather than resulting from institutional or policy-led initiatives, the current efforts have largely been driven by individual educators and implemented through small-scale projects. Based on an analysis of the available fashion institution curricula and the pedagogical methodologies used in sustainable education, this study reveals that sustainable practices are mainly approached from environmental material perspectives that focus on material reduction through approaches such as upcycling. These approaches are found to largely stem from the traditional technical focus of fashion education and narrow interpretations of sustainability centered on resource management. Limited faculty training and institutional support are identified as the key barriers to developing effective sustainable education curricula. To address these issues, this study proposes that rather than simply including more sustainability related topics in the curricula, education for sustainable development needs to be integrated alongside practical project-based learning objectives.