Full Description
Sustainability is a global issue that urgently needs addressing, and for which the most serious consequences are for children and future generations. This insightful research text tackles one of the most significant contemporary issues of our times - the nexus between society and environment - and how early childhood education can contribute to sustainable living. By offering international and multidisciplinary research perspectives on Early Childhood Education for Sustainability, each chapter explores and investigates the complex topic of sustainability and its relationship to early childhood education. A particular emphasis that runs through this text is young children as empowered citizens, capable of both contributing to and creating change for sustainability.
The chapter authors work from, or are aligned with, a transformative education paradigm that suggests the socio-constructivist frameworks currently underpinning Early Childhood Education require reframing in light of the social transformations necessary to address humanity's unsustainable, unjust and unhealthy living patterns. This research text is designed to be provocative and challenging; in so doing it seeks to encourage exploration of current understandings about Early Childhood Education for Sustainability, offers new dimensions for more deeply informed practice, and proposes avenues for further research in this field.
Contents
Preface Introduction 1. Examining Early Childhood Education through the lens of Education for Sustainability: Revisioning rights 2. Belonging, value conflicts and children's rights in learning for sustainability in early childhood 3. Learning from the wisdom of elders 4. Intercultural Dialogues in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability: Embedding Indigenous Perspectives 5. Perspectives on Early Childhood Environmental Education in Japan: Rethinking for a Sustainability Society 6. The Role of Early Childhood Education in Building Singapore as a Sustainable Nation 7. Norwegian perspectives on ECEFS: What has developed since the Brundtland Report? 8. Early childhood education for sustainability and natural outdoor playspaces: Researching change and theorizing about interfaces 9. An AuSSI Early Childhood Adventure: Early Childhood Educators and Researchers Actioning Change Together 10. The Project Approach for Early Childhood Education for Sustainability: Exemplars from Korea and Australia 11. Valuing agency in young children: Teachers rising to the challenge of sustainability in the Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood context 12. I want to do real things: Explorations of children's active community participation 13. Education for Sustainability in Swedish preschools: Stepping forward or out-of-step? 14. Innovative Approaches to Early Childhood Education for Sustainability in England: Case studies from the field 15. Early childhood education for sustainability in the United States of America 16. The Arts and education for sustainability: Shaping student teachers' identities towards sustainability 17. Science in Preschool - A Foundation for Education for Sustainability? A View from Swedish Preschool Teacher Education 18. Early Childhood Education for Sustainability in the United Kingdom: Generating Professional Capital 19. Expanding worlds of early childhood education for sustainability: Looking back, looking forward
