Researching Early Childhood Education for Sustainability

Challenging Assumptions and Orthodoxies

Sue Elliott, Eva Ärlemalm-Hagsér, Julie Davis, Sue Elliott, Eva Ärlemalm-Hagsér, Julie Davis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429822674
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book captures the now burgeoning research field of early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) and comprises insights from an ever-widening and diverse pool of researchers, who are promoting, engaging, and explaining the latest ECEfS research in the light of local, national, and United Nations global policy directives. With the increasing urgency of global climate disruptions, resource depletions, and biodiversity losses alongside greater human dislocation, the international scope of research and theory in this book provides a comprehensive guide to the role of sustainability in early childhood education, at a time when it is needed more than ever.

Elliott, Ärlemalm-Hagsér, and Davis have brought together a collection of studies that offer new insights and approaches to ECEfS which challenge dominant narratives surrounding early childhood education and sustainability, including topics such as:

• how diverse worldviews and cultures challenge perceptions of sustainability;
• how bold national early education policies and urgent shifts in teacher education are imperative for driving transformative practices; and,
• how ECEfS curriculum and pedagogy can be incorporated successfully into early years settings.

This book will both inspire researchers and more deeply enable early years' educators to practise sustainability with children, and so will be of great interest to scholars, lecturers, and researchers, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students, across the increasingly intersecting fields of sustainability and early childhood education.

CLUSTER III

Curriculum and Pedagogy

9

Early Childhood Teacher Education and Education for Sustainability

A Review of the Literature and Mapping of Courses

Julie Margaret Davis and Juliet Elizabeth Davis

Many universities internationally have agreed to create an “institutional culture of sustainability” and educate “for environmentally responsible citizenship” (Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future, 1990), with willingness to leverage their profiles through engagement with the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations General Assembly, 2015) and as signatories to initiatives such as the Talloires Declaration of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future. In Australia, some universities are members of the Green Gown Award Scheme dedicated to recognizing excellence in sustainability within the tertiary sector. At the school level, Education for Sustainability (EfS) is formally embedded in the national curriculum, while the national Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) includes environmental and sustainability topics (DEEWR, 2009). Despite a watering down of sustainability in the recently revised National Quality Standard (NQS) (ACECQA, 2018), environmental responsibility is still considered an aspect of a quality program for children in early childhood and care settings. With such high-level policy levers supporting EfS at university and practitioner level, what is the contribution of initial teacher education (ITE) – and specifically initial early childhood teacher education (IECTE) – to developing educators who are advocates for environmental and sustainability education? The authors investigated this question through two interrelated research projects. The first involved an audit of EfS within IECTE in Australian universities regarding the extent to which “sustainability” appeared in publicly-available program materials. The second involved a systematic literature review, both national and international, to investigate what has already been researched and reported about EfS within IECTE. Our chapter uses evidence from these two studies to advocate for stronger commitment to EfS in IECTE and to ally this with a robust research agenda from which the entire early childhood education field could benefit. Further studies about early childhood teacher education research are shared in Chapters 10 and 15 of this volume.

Introduction

Some universities in Australia are signatories to international covenants and agreements related to sustainability, such as the Talloires Declaration of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future, with its pledge to create an “institutional culture of sustainability.” Some are members of the Green Gown Award Scheme dedicated to recognizing excellence in sustainability across areas including environmental management, research, and teaching and learning. At the compulsory schooling level of education in Australia, Education for Sustainability (EfS) has been formally embedded in the national curriculum (Commonwealth of Australia DET, 2018). The national Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) also includes environmental and sustainability topics (DEEWR, 2009) for children in before-school contexts such as kindergartens, preschools, and preparatory classes (prep). At first glance, these pledges and policy levers for education systems in Australia from birth through to university could have one presume that learning and teaching about/for sustainability is a completed task across the learning lifespan of most Australians. Similarly, one could assume that EfS is an embedded aspect of initial teacher education (ITE) which, at the Bachelor level, is provided by universities. So, how well are Australian universities developing early childhood educators who know how to include education for sustainability in their early years’ curricula?

We investigated this question through two research projects, one aimed at the practice of EfS in IECTE courses, the other looking at published research on this topic. The first involved an audit undertaken in 2015 of EfS within IECTE in Australian universities regarding the extent to which “sustainability” appeared in publicly-available program materials for IECTE courses, as an indicator of what actually happens for student teachers around sustainability and EfS. The full results of this investigation are presented in a paper (Davis & Davis, under review), however, a brief overview of our methods and results are provided here. The second study involved a systematic literature review, national and international, investigating what has already been researched and reported about EfS within IECTE, and is the main focus of this chapter. We use evidence from both studies to highlight significant gaps in both practice and research regarding EfS in IECTE, and to advocate for a much stronger commitment from the early childhood education field about sustainability matters that are already having deep and broad impacts on the health and wellbeing of young children.

The Role of Education in Contributing to Sustainable Futures

This section explores the potential of higher education to contribute to the changes necessary to underpin sustainability with a particular focus on teacher education.

University Education

There is extensive recognition of the urgency for learning and teaching about sustainability. However, the general consensus is that EfS is far from being wholly integrated into mainstream university curricula (Evans, Stevenson, Lasen, Ferreira, & Davis, 2017; Lee, Barker, & Mouasher, 2013). While there have been considerable achievements regarding campus “greening” initiatives, such as improving recycling and transportation efforts, reducing waste and energy, and constructing “green buildings” (Davis & Ferreira, 2016), as well as developing sustainability-based research profiles and capabilities, the focus on teaching and learning is disappointing. We argue that such efforts, while important, fail to harness the essential power of higher education: to inform and engage citizens in the pursuit of more sustainable modes of living. Further, we argue that EfS should be at the heart of higher education’s approach to solving “wicked problems” surrounding sustainability (Leal Filho, Azeiteiro, Alves & Molthan-Hill, 2017; Sterling, 2014) and that EfS must be embedded into every facet of a university’s operations (Evans et al., 2017; Sterling, 2014). As Lee et al. (2013) comment, “At an institutional level, integrating sustainability in higher education includes changes in planning and policy, academic curricula, and research that facilitate positive environmental and social changes.’ Furthermore, EfS must be embedded into every discipline taught at university including Education.

Teacher Education in Universities

Turning our attention to Education programs within universities, with our primary focus on ITE (previously referred to as “preservice teacher education”), this is regarded as one of the disciplines that has been slow to embed sustainability and EfS in its undergraduate degree courses (Dyment & Hill 2015; Evans et al., 2017; Stevenson, Ferreira, Davis, & Evans, 2014). This is in contrast to discipline areas such as Engineering and Architecture. While there may be some subjects within teacher education programs that orient towards sustainability and EfS – generally within Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education (for example, Tomas, Lasen, Field, & Skamp, 2015) – we contend that this narrow focus sidelines the full potential of EfS as a powerful force for learning and social transformation that can be generated by much wider disciplinary engagement. Examples include with the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (O’Gorman, 2015) within teacher education programs. Another critique of EfS within Teacher Education (TE) is that most EfS initiatives are not linked into university or Faculty strategies, emerging, instead, from the interests of individual academics. Evidence suggests that such efforts are somewhat fragmented and ad hoc (Ferreira, Ryan & Davis, 2015).

Early Childhood Teacher Education

As a subset of teacher education, IECTE lags even further behind the Teacher Education field with regard to embedding EfS into its programs. Davis (1998) wrote that preservice early childhood teacher education in Australia at that time had not had any generalized engagement with “greening” its curriculum. Further, what little there was appeared ad hoc and limited, even though student teachers showed keen interest in environmental/sustainability matters. This point was further acknowledged in, for example, the ARIES report on school education (Tilbury, Coleman, & Garlick, 2005) that highlighted that the ECE field was just at the beginning of its journey in EfS. We know this continues to be the case because of the literature review conducted for the two studies reported on in this paper (Siraj-Blatchford & Pramling Samuelsson, 2016; Elliott, McCrea, Newsome, & Gaul, 2016). We also know this anecdotally from working in IECTE over many years, but wanted to investigate this assumption empirically. Researchers such as Elliott and Davis (2009) have commented that early childhood initial teacher education’s dilatory take-up of EfS might be explained by the fact that EfS is not seen as relevant to young children, or that it is “too hard” or “too depressing” to introduce at an early age. There is growing evidence, however, that such arguments are not defensible as they disempower children, especially in relation to issues that impact current life circumstances and future prospects (Doctors for the Environment Australia, 2015). Indeed, there is increasing evidence that young children are capable of understanding ideas related to sustainability (Ärlemalm-Hagsér & Engdahl, 2015; Borg, Winberg & Vinterek, 2017) and many are willing and able to engage in learning and actions that are pro-environment/sustainability (Ji & Stuhmcke, 2014). Thus, with growing worldwide acceptance and practice of EfS by early childhood practitioners, and a rapidly expanding research base in ECEfS (Davis & Elliott, 2014), the invisibility of initial early childhood teacher education programs in universities in Australia in support of EfS is concerning. This is especially so as the vocational education sector that prepares early childhood educators with certificate and diploma qualifications has, since 2012, delivered compulsory training packages dedicated to ECEfS – for example, the Teaching and Further Education (TAFE) New South Wales Training & Education Support Industry Skills Unit (2010), “Small footprints: CHCPR515A Develop and implement a program to support sustainable practice.” As a result, educators who complete this training are likely to be more qualified in EfS than most of their university-educated colleagues who hold Bachelor degrees, are in higher leadership positions, and earn considerably more salary (Elliott & McCrea, 2015).

The Two Studies

To reiterate, in this chapter we report on two intertwined studies that examined different aspects of EfS within IECTE, one looked for evidence of EfS in the design of initial early childhood teacher education programs; and, the other reported on existing research through a systematic review of literature. In both studies we sought to answer the following: To what extent is EfS embedded in IECTE practice in Australia, and what does the research literature say about IECTE and EfS?

Study 1: Auditing EfS in Early Childhood Teacher Education Programs

In this study, we examined the extent to which EfS has been embedded into subject and course design within IECTE in Australian universities. This involved an audit (Hughes, 2005), commencing in 2015 and updated in 2017/18, of publicly-available university materials. Auditing can be viewed as research related to assessing quality. The websites of 41 Australian universities and their Colleges/Faculties/Schools of Education were reviewed to respond to Study 1’s research questions:

• To what extent do terms related to “sustainability” appear in initial early childhood teacher education subject materials?
• To what extent do terms related to “sustainability” appear in Education Faculty/School statements regarding their values and aims?
• To what extent do terms related to “sustainability” appear in university policy strategy, and promotional materials?

As a first step, each university’s online course list was examined for undergraduate courses that involved Early Childhood Education (ECE) as a complete degree, or part of a degree combined with Primary Education. Once a course (e.g. Bachelor of Early Childhood Education) was selected, its course description, general information sections, and individual unit descriptions, were searched for key terms including “sustainability,” direct variants of “sustainability” (e.g. “sustainable”), or other related terms (e.g. “ecology,” “environmental education,” “environmental management”). Second, the website of each university’s College/Faculty/School of Education was audited for any introductory material which included any key terms. This material comprised information about the School itself, such as an “Abou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Re-Framing the Text, a Second Time
• CLUSTER I: Ethics and Values
• CLUSTER II: Historical and Sociocultural Contexts
• CLUSTER III: Curriculum and Pedagogy
• Index