ECSFC102A Essay: Sustainability in Early Childhood Education

This essay explores the crucial role of sustainability education in early childhood settings, emphasizing its importance in addressing environmental challenges and fostering sustainable living for future generations. It defines sustainability, referencing the Bruntland Report, and highlights the significance of education for sustainability as an approach to raise awareness and encourage sustainable practices. The essay examines Australia's perspective on sustainability, noting the evolution of education for sustainability over the past 30 years. It discusses the challenges faced by early childhood education in engaging with sustainability issues, including concerns about outdoor safety and misconceptions about children's ability to understand complex environmental issues. The essay then outlines various pedagogical practices, such as open-ended play, modeled play, and purposely framed play, that can be implemented to educate children about sustainability. It also suggests practical strategies like composting and planting, and emphasizes the importance of involving educators, children, and caregivers in a cultural transformation. Finally, the essay proposes teaching strategies like intentional teaching, learning through play, and utilizing the learning environment to support and encourage children's understanding of sustainability, ultimately concluding that providing education for sustainability is essential for young children to develop a deeper understanding of sustainability as a process of change.

ECSFC102A Sustainability in Early Childhood Essay
Tittle: The importance of education for sustainability in early
childhood
Nowadays, the human race has faced many environmental problems on
this planet due to economisation all over the world. As such, there has
been air pollution, waste disposal, climate change, global warming,
deforestation, natural resources depletion and so on. It is important for
everyone to conserve energy, save the planet, and preserve valuable
natural resources for the next generations by living sustainably now. This
essay will justify the importance of education for sustainability in early
childhood centres, describe Australia’s perspectives of sustainability and
some of the pedagogical practices implemented in education for
sustainability across the curriculum, as well as propose some teaching
strategies that can encourage children’s learning of a deeper
understanding of sustainability as a process of change.
Sustainability has more than one definition. According to a description
from the Bruntland report in 1987, sustainability is described as meeting
“the needs of the present generation with compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs” (p. 9). Education for
sustainability, as stated by Australian Education for Sustainability Alliance
(2015), is the educational approach that targets to build up people’s
awareness, ability, respect and support to the sustainable ways of living. It
is believed that education has vital influences in solving the
environmental issues and encouraging the sustainability and it is
essential, not optional, to educate people about sustainability at a very
young age. Education for sustainability in Australia has developed and
changed over the past 30 years. As suggested in an brochure titled
“Education for sustainability : The Role of Education in engaging and
equipping people for change” by the Australian Research Institute in
Education for Sustainability : “Education for sustainability facilitates
change by working in conjunction with complementing other approaches,
building capacity in individuals and organisations for transformational
change, fostering new knowledge, new behaviours, systems and practices
and emphasising creative, critical and innovative approaches” (n.d.).
Furthermore, all educational sectors such as schools, universities,
technical colleges and community education has made effort to promote
the knowledge, raise awareness and strive for conducting sustainability
education ( (Elliot & Davis, Exploring the resistance: An Australian
perspective on education for sustainability in early childhood, 2009). For
instance, Australia with all states and national, has committed to
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ECSFC102A Sustainability in Early Childhood Essay
Sustainable School initiative, Europe’s Eco-schools, the Green School
Project in China, Enviroschools in New Zealand and the Foundation for
Environmental Education’s Eco-schools the biggest international
coorperated effort with 48 countries (Henderson & Tilbury, 2004).
According to Davis in her forthcoming, a skim through the present
research journals in early childhood education indicates minor reference
to environmental sustainability issuses, in other words, early childhood
education has been slow to engage with practice around sustainability.
The first reason is that there are considerations about safety outdoor and
new learning technologies that has more attractive replacements that
against experiencing learning in natural outdoor play space for young
children (Elliot & Davis, as cited in Furedi, 2001; Gill, 2007; Louv, 2005;
Malone, 2008; Palmer, 2006). According to Rivkin (1998) stated “good
schooling for Dewey was dependent on the outdoor world, because that is
where life occurs” (p. 200). Despite this importance, early childhood
educators are still not engaging young children in education for
sustainability. This is due to three major reasons. Firstly, outdoor play
spaces are somewhat overprotective of children from actually engaging
with the natural environment, which makes it hard for them to learn about
sustainability. Secondly, there are fallacies about children being way too
young to understand sustainability issues (Elliot & Davis, Exploring the
resistance: An Australian perspective on education for sustainability in
early childhood, 2009). It is considered that children are so innocent,
sensitive and immature that they cannot actually understand the meaning
of global warming, climate change or natural resources depletion and take
actions to change them (Elliot & Davis, Exploring the resistance: An
Australian perspective on education for sustainability in early childhood,
2009). People actually do not expect a four-year-old to have a deep
understanding about environmental and sustainability issues. Finally, the
is a misconception which indicates that it is too appalling to present the
distress of the planet to young children who appear to be incapable of
taking no action to protect it (Elliot & Davis, Exploring the resistance: An
Australian perspective on education for sustainability in early childhood,
2009). However, Palmer and Suggate (2004) demonstrated that even 4
year-old children are able to think of complex environmental issues and
they do have fundamental experiences with sustainability concepts. Elliot
and Davis (2009) stated that “It is urgent for the early childhood sector to
engage in education for sustainability without postpone and to ‘get active’
for sustainable future”.
There are the number of pedagogical practices that can be implemented
for education of sustainability across the curriculum. For example, it is
recommended to use play-based pedagogical practices as an effective
method of educating children about sustainability according Edwards and
Mackenzie (2013). It is also stated that teachers should be engaged in
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children’s play so as to encourage and support to broaden their
knowledge and awareness of sustainability for the world (Edwards &
Mackenzie, 2013). As written in an article titled: “Pedagogical play types:
What do they suggest for learning about sustainability in Early Childhood
Education” by Edwards and Mackenzie, three major types of pedagogical
play : open-ended play, modelled-play and purposely framed play. First,
open-ended play (or “trust in play” – identified by Trawick-Smith (2008)
includes educators proving children with materials related to sustainability
concept and minimally engaging and interact with children, educators
allow silent time for children thinking and exploring themselves the given
materials as a method of studying about sustainability. Second, in term of
modelled play or “facilitate play” -identified by Trawick-Smith (2008), it is
involved with teachers demonstrating and explaining the use of
sustainability materials before approving children to use them and learn
about sustainability and there is minimum in interacting of educators to
children. Last but not least, purposely framed play or “learn and teach
play” – identified by Trawick-Smith (2008), according to Edwards and
Mackenzie, it was claimed to be the combination of both open-ended play
and modelled play. That means purposely framed play involves educators
providing children knowledge about sustainability concept with using
physical materials, illustrating and explaining it to children and allowing
them to use and explore and educators totally engage in and interact with
children as a good basis of learning about sustainability (Edwards, et al.,
2010).
In addition, applying sustainability practices in early childhood is quite
simple. Composting, planting vegetables and plants, using sustainable
cleaning products and so forth are such easy and effective to conduct at
early childhood centres. As those practices so important, however, in a
research, Davis and Elliot as well as Vaealiki and Mackey stated that it is
about everyone – educators, children, caregivers – who join in early
childhood society and conduct practices, which are the main roles can
broaden and set in cultural transformation. According to Elliot (2010), she
claimed: “ …sustainability becomes lived rather than learnt and a shared
journey for all participant in an early childhood community” (p. 35). As
stated in a journal titled “ Early childhood education for sustainability:
Recommendations for development” (Davis, et al., 2009), it is
recommended to establish new cultures that honour beneficial practices
in early childhood education for sustainability, consists of providing
rewards, prizes, opening exhibitions and festivals in order to support and
promote the development of sustainability methods implemented in early
childhood settings.
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Teaching strategies for sustainability are various for educators to
implement for children in early childhood centres. As such, it can be
conducted with intentional teaching or learning through play or learning
environment (DEEWR, 2009, p. 15). With intentional teaching, educators
can apply three mentioned pedagogical practices (open-ended, modelled
play and purposely framed play) (Edwards & Mackenzie, 2013) across all
the curriculum in order to get children understand meaning of
sustainability and interact and engage them with sustainability practices.
In term of learning through play, it is important for educators to catch
precious moments about sustainability concepts and try to teach the
children during their play time. For example, when children play home
corners with kitchen time, educators can engage in their play. The
children may be waste water in washing dishes, educators can tell them
about the consequence of wasting water, how it effects on people and
animals’ lives and nature (Fitchett, 2016), as well as teach them how
wash dishes properly without wasting water. When being taught during
play time, it may help children to remember better about sustainability. In
addition, learning environment also has significant role in supporting and
encouraging children’s learning about sustainability. According to Elliot
(2010), outdoor play space can be natural area which provides children
different sensory experience and the ability to explore and discover
nature or an outdoor play area which consists of artificial sensory
experience, secure equipment with basic colours. Those types of outdoor
play area, it may help children in experiencing the natural or the most
natural synthetic play space, which encourages their appreciation with
nature and raise their awareness in environmental issues and
sustainability concepts.
In conclusion, it has been argued that it is essential to provide education
for sustainability for young children in early childhood centres as a ‘mind
shift’ and an effective process of change for sustainably living for next
generations. Australia’s perspectives about sustainability in early
childhood settings has changed for the last 30 years, though Australian
early childhood settings is considered as “slow to engage in sustainability
concepts and environmental issues” (Elliot & Davis, 2009) , it is still
changing in a good way to raise awareness and do practices for
sustainable purposes for young children. Some pedagogical plays and
teaching strategies are suggested to improve, develop, support and
encourage children’s learning of a deeper understanding of sustainability
as a process of change.
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References
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ECSFC102A Sustainability in Early Childhood Essay
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