As a former high school teacher in Okayama Prefecture, she has practical experience of ESD. Her current research focuses on ESD in the context of social education and lifelong learning, and explores the structure of educational practices that create ESD communities of practice in local communities. Through Service-Learning practices at public high schools in Okayama, she investigates the process of raising interest in education and creating new collaborations among the local community actors for building a sustainable society, and the mechanism for the emergence of transformative learning required for ESD. As a full-time staff member of the ESD Promotion Centre at Okayama University, she has been supporting UNESCO Associated Schools (ASPnet) in Okayama City. In Okayama City, 51 public elementary and junior high schools have joined ASPnet, and she has been working with the Okayama City Board of Education from the application stage to provide teacher training sessions, individual consultations, and dispatch of lecturers to workshops. Also as a coordinator between schools and social education, she has been working with community learning centers called Kominkan and local companies to develop ESD programmes, teaching materials, and teacher training. She is also appointed as an advisor to the network of 10 ASPnet high schools in Okayama Prefecture, which was formed through the organization and participation in the Student Forum, the final year meeting of the UN Decade of ESD, held in Okayama city in 2014, she has been supporting the implementation and exchange between these schools as well as with overseas schools. She has been also training the students graduated from these schools to support the network's learning activities as volunteer staff. As a citizen of Okayama and a teacher, researcher, coordinator and think-tank, she has been contributing to ESD in various ways since the earliest stages of ESD in Okayama. Okayama City has three rivers and the world's second largest man-made lake, Kojima Lake, which was once the worst water polluted lake in Japan. Although Okayama has a thriving agricultural industry and many of its waterways are well-developed, its rapid economic growth has led to water pollution and environmental destruction, and the city faces a number of challenges. The challenge for schools is how to transform river and coastal clean-up activities from mere service activities into ESD activities. She has been focusing on the activities related to the conservation of rivers, which are a natural part of people's lives in Okayama area, as one of the key elements of educational reform in in-service teacher training for ESD.