Education for Sustainability Programs - Case Study Example

Education for Sustainability: Саsе Study on children’s books and nature Name Institutional Affiliation Education for Sustainability: Саsе Study on children’s books and nature Rationale In most cases sustainability in the educational context is taken to refer to environmental sustainability. It encompasses issues such as the minimization of consumption, waste reduction, as well as wildlife and natural habitat protection and conservation(Wals, 2011). In recent years, however, there has been a transference in the definition of sustainability. Sustainability has been defined in broader terms that connote a futuristic view of the education process. The most widely used definition of sustainability is the capability to meet our current essentials without necessarily infringing on future cohorts’ ability to meet their needs. In this regard, sustainability goes beyond conservation to include related issues of equity and fairness as well as a serious consideration of the impact of actions on the environment to the lives of future generations(Wals, 2011). Education for Sustainability programs are implement from a range of perspectives, most of which are centred on educational content as well as pedagogical approaches. While early childhood educators in most countries adopt approaches skewed towards one of the perspectives while relatively disregarding the other, the most effective approach has been cited as one that combines two or more perspectives (Duhn, 2012). However, educational content pertaining to curriculum development and content of educational materials has been found to be the most effective EfS approach over the years. An educational content perspective takes into consideration the physical environment, the curriculum, as well as the philosophical or cultural aspects of EfS. One of the most fundamental components of an EfS program is the content as well as structure of the study material, especially textbooks, to be used in ensuring that early childhood learners are effectively introduced to nature for sustainability(Duhn, 2012). While working as an early childhood teacher for four years, I came face to face with the reality of the process of developing and implementing an effective EfS program. While the process is relatively dynamic in the current settings all over the world, the content as well as the structure of the educational material, primarily books, being used to teach children about nature caught my attention. While a range of educational material is used to help children to learn about nature, books comprise the primary instructional resource. In my experience as an early childhood education teacher I noted the shift in focus of EfS programs from education in the environment, to education about the environment, as well as the gradual shift from education about the environment to education for the environment. The pedagogical approaches adopted by teachers of young children in their quest to help them in learning about nature have equally changed. Today, instructional methods have taken more proactive approaches as opposed to the traditional reactive approaches. In my practice as an early childhood education teacher, I encountered numerous challenges relating to curriculum content as well as pedagogy specifically concerning education about nature. Majority of the children’s books about nature available for both the teacher and the learners failed short of meeting the objectives of EfS as stipulated in the government’s guidelines on early childhood education. My decision to appraise children’s books about nature was triggered by the desire to find out the inadequacies in these books and to make an attempt to make recommendations for future early childhood educationists. While considerable effort has been put to ensure that early childhood education (ECE) has been tailored to encompass EfS objectives, there exists numerous shortcomings in the content as well as the structure of the children’s books used in the learning process. Firstly, by making an overview of the content of these books, it is clear that nature has been romanticised (Mygind & Andkj\a er, 2013). In this regard, the books contain a clear bias and exaggeration of some aspects of nature while disregarding others, a phenomenon that has amounted to a significant impediment to the effectiveness of EfS programs. Secondly, most children books encompass similar views of nature. Accordingly, there lacks the desired diversity in the views of children books about nature(White & Stoecklin, 2008). Thirdly, children’s book about nature have historically overprotected young children from big issues about nature that would shape their lives. The common assumption by most authors of children’s books about nature is that young children are too naive to bear the responsibility of big issues such as environmental conservation and water recycling. They assume that by exposing young children to such issues, they would erode the interest of learning about nature, a core component of early childhood learning. The overprotection is mainly seen in children’s books for young learners below five years. Finally, most children books complicate nature experiences rather than simplifying them. While authors make deliberate effort to tailor the learning material to the level of the young learners, such efforts often result in more complex approaches as opposed to simpler ones. However, there are a considerable number of children’s books that have successfully simplified nature experiences for young learners making the learning process enjoyable(Veselack, Cain-Chang, & Miller, 2009). The paper is a case study of three commonly used children’s books about nature. Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long’s A Seed is Sleepy, Virginia Lee Burtons’ The Little House, and Greame Base’s The Water Hole are appraised in light of the criteria highlighted above. The case study identifies the key issues relating to EfS as encompassed in literature and relates them to the structure as well as the content of the three books. It highlights the interdisciplinary aspect of EfS in reference to the themes contained in the three books and relates those themes to observations from early childhood literature. Finally, the paper explores the possibilities of transformative change that emerge from the case study. It then concludes with considerations of specific possibilities to deepen EfS in ECE. Literature Review For many years since the Enlightenment age, educational policy makers, scholars and laymen alike have pointed to the existence of a strong correlation between young children and nature. Theories developed in the field of early childhood development, including Frobel’s pedagogy of natural unfolding, Rousseau’s notion of nature as the definitive source of human potential, as well as contemporary theories of child development, reveal the exemplified natural and pure human potential in the child. In the educational realm, the intertwined relationship between the two phenomena is clearly manifested in the word kindergarten. The term romantically connotes the existence of a garden where young and innocent children can grow and develop under the blueprint of nature. The spirit of ECE curriculum, philosophy, and pedagogy has continued to get inspiration from this intricate relationship. Following this romantic legacy, ECE all over the world has fallen short of encompassing a critical engagement aspect of the implications of the child-nature intersection for EfS(White, 2004b). The engagement of young children in ecological learning activities has been documented by scholars worldwide as one of the most critical elements in the cultivation of life-long disposition for environmental care. Early childhood education comprises a significant site in which the disposition can be developed as the earliest point in the life of the child. ECE books about nature are expected to naturally measure up to this observation. As the main learning materials for early childhood learners, these books should contain provisions for the inculcation of fundamental outlooks about nature in the learner. The existence of a historical trajectory linking the child to nature has been cited to be one of the main factors that have contributed to the existence of a research gap in the critical analysis of debates on environmental and sustainability issues in early childhood education(Veselack et al., 2009). A key component of the research gap is the social and cultural assumptions that the child is innocent and vulnerable. The treatment of childhood as a time of innocence that should be protected from complex knowledges amounts to a considerable impediment to educators in their bid to develop curricula and pedagogies addressing contestable concerns such as climate change in an early childhood context. The shyness from engaging complex issues of nature can be clearly observed in Greame Base’s The Water hole. While the author has a golden opportunity to introduce his audience to the underlying global warming issue, he chooses to take a more romantic perspective of animals depleting the water source in a bid to make the book enjoyable for the young readers(Base, 2001). Traditionally, the work of an early childhood teacher has been considered to be complementary to motherhood. Any intention by an early childhood teacher to engage critically with complex issues of nature must be based on an elaborate examination of their understanding of childhood as well as the maternal consideration that has increasingly influenced the conceptualisation and the practice of teaching young children(Wals, 2011). The maternalism theory as conceptualised by Aliwood gives weight the protection assumption discussed earlier. It is built on the childhood innocence assumption and positions the adult, namely the early childhood teacher, in a supportive and protective role. The assumption supports the notion that ECE should steer away from multifaceted ecological sustainability issues as well as potentially political issues relating to nature. The basis for maternalism leaves the child in a malleable position where they are viewed as a resource to carry the hopes and desires of the adult for a better future. For teachers and other early childhood educators including authors, the implication is that they ought to shield the children from harsh realisms in a bid to guard their culturally protected innocence. Virginia Lee Burtons’ The Little House captures this maternal assumption by the author. She assumes a very subtle perspective of the critical environmental sustainability issues such as recycling so as to abide by the maternalism discourses rampant in early childhood education circles(Duhn, 2012). The maternal assumption in this book amounts to an invaluable alternative perspective of children’s books about nature. The power of the stringent assumption of childhood innocence is clearly depicted in the appearance of the over-protected child whose childhood is structured by the yearning of the parents to guard them from the alleged problems of the outside world. Such structuring is most rampant in middle-class economic settings that are characterised by a clear desire by parents to create a special place for their bubble-wrapped children (Duhn, 2012). The assumption is clearly manifested in early childhood centres and kindergartens. These institutions are the epitome of the innocence, vulnerability, and protection discourses. They are structured highly controlled and closely monitored environments through daily practices, policy and pedagogy(Mygind & Andkj\a er, 2013). Overprotected children together with their over-anxious parents are immersed into the culture of fear. In fact, as Jones (2003) argues, the belief that youngsters are at risk and inherently vulnerable has developed into a cultural dogma in many quarters including early childhood education. The special places for children come in the form of primarily inside places constantly monitored by the adult scrutiny for potential hazards in order to provide a risk-free setting for the young child. The management of potential risk goes beyond the physical realm to encompass the social, cultural, emotional, mental, as well as virtual realms (Kernan & Devine, 2010). Early childhood teaching in such an environment characterised by an overemphasis on risk makes the teacher a subject who is strictly governed by a swirl of caution, surveillance, anxiety and rules. For teachers, this implies risk-avoidance in their practice which often leads to resistance and shying away from addressing potentially complex and challenging topics (Little, Wyver, & others, 2008). In a culture characterised by risk, childhood takes the form of a domain requiring constant surveillance and vigilance. Adults, including teachers, authors and parents, whose perspectives of childhood are founded on a culture of fear are usually frankly unsupportive of having the young child becoming a producer of complex meanings (Davis, 2009). In many quarters, understandings of childhood embed childhood to a governed domain perspective in which power relations between adults and children is primarily unexamined. Most children books about nature are founded on the above assumption. They are structured in such a way that they both establish and foster the observance of a risky environment. The fact that these relations are unexamined amounts to a significant disruption in the assumption of the naturally unfolding, at-risk child(Duhn, 2012). Consequently, any attempt to adopt pedagogies that challenge the common understanding of risk-oriented childhood requires players, teachers and authors, with the ability to work with uncertainty, complexity, risk and imagination. Such a move, however, is a big challenge, given the risk-averse nature of the early childhood education profession. In their book A Seed is Sleepy, Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long attempt to adopt a complex approach to early childhood learning about the environment. In the course of narrating the story of the process through which the seed develops into a tree, they intertwine complex environmental issues such as global warming and human impact on natural vegetation. Although the complex themes are subtle to a large extent, the effort to introduce young children to such issues is significant(Aston & Long, 2013). The concept of learning to care for all life on earth as introduced through complex topics such as climate change which emphasize the earnestness of engagement at all levels of educational pedagogy makes an inevitable introduction of reality into the threatened space of childhood. It is interesting to note the paradox behind protection approaches as encompassed in risk assumptions(Davis, 2009). While such approaches are geared towards ensuring that the young child is protected from the outside world, reality states otherwise. As future citizens, the young children will have to build capacity to in increasingly unstable and unpredictable natural, economic, social, cultural and political environments. As such it is incumbent on early childhood teachers and educators to foster ethics of care in the young children. Edwards, Cutter-Mackenzie, & others (2011) argue that doing so requires that the adults challenge the dominant risk constructions of childhood by ensuring that the children are enabled to participate and contribute to the issues affecting their lives now as well as in the future. Taking on such a call to engage the misinformed constructions amounts to the early childhood teacher or educator assuming a serious leadership role(Duhn, 2012). The early educational context has increasingly become global. Regional policies as well as pedagogical approaches are increasingly being tailored to international standards. However, even with these advancements, early childhood education still remains a highly unexamined domain especially in light of policy, practices and educational discourses(Kernan & Devine, 2010). The research gap is biggest in regard to the place of early childhood education in the preparation of young children to be take care of the future. If children are to be equal to the responsibility of being humanity’s hope for the future, then there exists an urgent need for the reconceptualization of childhood (White & Stoecklin, 2008). For early childhood education, this implies that rethinking childhood with respect to ethics of taking care of all life in nature has to be a fundamental aspect of eco-focused early childhood pedagogies. Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long’s A Seed is Sleepy is a perfect example of the reconceptualization. The authors make deliberate efforts to introduce their young audience to complex aspects relating to taking care of all life in nature for the sake of the future such as habitat conservation(Sleepy, 2007). As earlier mentioned, the themes are subtle to a large extent. However, the effect their inclusion has on the young readers is immense. A key pedagogical consideration in early childhood education globally is its instrumental perspective. In this regard, much environmental education is seen as a means of changing the behaviour of the learner such as beliefs, attitudes and values(Ogelman, 2012). Accordingly, early childhood environmental education researchers and authors have continued to structure environmental education using hierarchical levels of measurable outcomes and universal goals (Davis, 2014). It is as a result of such efforts that the establishment of knowledge and awareness of environment and nature as well as the application of what is learnt are taken to be fundamental steps of the learning process with environmental education settings aimed at changing the behaviour of the learner (Lewis, Mansfield, & Baudains, 2010). Serious attention is given to the evaluation of the attainment of the goals in the determination of the success of the environmental education programme and in the justification of government spending on environmental education(White & Stoecklin, 2008). Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long’s A Seed is Sleepy is a perfect representation of the instrumental perspective. The book as well as its guide for early childhood teachers encompasses clearly stated learning objectives and measurable goals at each level. The learning goals are hierarchical in structure and are aimed at changing the young learner’s behaviour in reference to the environment and nature. The attainment of the goals at each level amounts to success in the bid to help the young child in learning about nature. Educators and policy makers in environmental education have also raised a fundamental emancipatory perspective concern in relation to early childhood education. In this respect, educators with a strong pedagogical basis have poked holes into the behavioural change focus (instrumental perspective) of environmental education (Davis, 2014). Those who subscribe to the emancipatory perspective school of thought argue that the focus of environmental education at all levels should be critical thinking and capacity building that allows the learner to have a clear understanding of what is going on in society, to critically appraise the current state of affairs, and to make a determination on themselves about what needs to be done. They further argue that aiming to change the environmental behaviour of the learner in a predetermined way is a contradiction of the fundamental foundations of education and amounts to indoctrination(Veselack et al., 2009). Children’s books about nature comprise one of the major considerations in this respect. Their ability to instigate the change on behaviour about the environment in the early childhood learner of utmost significance (White, 2004a). In recent years, the emancipatory perspective of environmental education for early childhood environments has been boosted by uncertainties regarding what comprises environmentally sustainable behaviours. There lacks universal answers to the above question. In addition, the instrumental perspective disintegrates in the face of the continuous shift in insights and knowledge base in a post-cultural and post-modern world. As such a behaviour considered to be sustainable at a given time may actually turn out to be unsustainable under different settings with respect to time and geographical position(White, 2004b). Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long’s A Seed is Sleepy, Virginia Lee Burtons’ The Little House, and Greame Base’s The Water Hole all fail to match up to the emancipatory perspective in its absolute sense. However, Virginia Lee Burtons’ The Little House has subtle connotations of an emancipatory perspective. It does not only trigger the young learner to critically think about the environment, but also advocates for capacity building to deal with complex issues about nature. Another relatively new concept in environmental education as envisioned in education for sustainability and embedded in natural resource management and governance, is social learning. In light of early childhood education, scholars have identified four key features of social learning. First, it gives value to diversity and difference in energising the young learner by introducing dissention and unleashing creativity. Secondly, it gives significant importance to reflexivity and reflection. Thirdly, it is based on the power of social capital and social cohesion in creating change in uncertain and complex situations related to nature that the young child is likely to face. Finally, it recognises the power of collaborative action as a way of strengthening the unique qualities of each individual child(Wals, 2011). Consequently, children’s books about nature should make provisions for social learning approaches, both in their structure and content (Lewis et al., 2010). However, as will be shown later, authors of children’s books about nature only capture the social learning perspective in very subtle ways. With sustainable development and sustainability being increasingly linked to collaborative learning, there is an urgent need for learning for the creation of a sustainable world. The kind of learning that will meet this objective is one that will result in creative solutions from a new kind of thinking, co-owned by more reflexive citizens, with alternative values, and living in more resilient and reflexive society(Duhn, 2012). Virginia Lee Burtons’ The Little House captures this aspect of social learning in the best way among the three books in this study. Each chapter of the book is summarised with a series of reflexive questions aimed at instigating a new kind of thinking for the young reader. Most of the questions in this section are supposed to be answered in groups, as can be seen in the teacher’s guide accompanying the book. Greame Base’s The Water Hole also contains some aspects of social learning, though subtle. It makes numerous references to the activities of other readers of the book in its activities section of every chapter. In the early childhood education context, social learning can be defined as learning characterised by mirroring the individual young child’s ideas, values, views and perspectives with those of others. As such it is based on the assumption of pluralism and heterogeneity across the young child’s cohort. In other words, children will learn more from each other when they possess significant intellectual as well as other forms of differences than when they are alike (Edwards et al., 2011). However, learning will only occur when there is social cohesion within the group. Lack of cohesion makes the differences that the children possess to become impediments to mutual learning. Accordingly, researchers have pointed out that the development of social cohesion among a diverse group of young learners results in a better listening and empathetic environment, not only for the young children but also for the educator(Duhn, 2012). In Virginia Lee Burtons’ The Little House, there is a clear emphasis on group work with the aim of fostering social learning. The activities to be done by each child in every chapter of the book are aimed at creating social cohesion within the group and acts as the basis for subsequent exercises in the chapter including answering reflexive questions(Burton, 2009). Implications While the content and the structure of the children’s books reviewed in this case study is relatively satisfactory in the context of education for sustainability in early childhood education, a lot still needs to be done. There exists an urgent need for alternative forms of education and learning capable of developing the qualities and capacities of young children to meet the challenge of sustainability in nature. A whole new range of forms of learning is not only recommendable but also indispensable in the face of the dynamic nature of sustainability in nature in the new technology-oriented world. Such forms of learning as transformative learning, trans-disciplinary learning, collaborative learning, anticipatory learning, as well as social learning would go a long way in ensuring that the content and structure of children’s books about nature and environment are satisfactory. They would amicably resolve the overprotective aspect of these books emanating from risk-oriented parents and teachers(Mygind & Andkj\a er, 2013.). In respect to the observation that children’s books about nature have been romanticized in a bid to make them enjoyable for the learner, authors should ensure that they strike a balance between their efforts to make the books enjoyable and ensuring that the books present complex environmental issues as they are. While acknowledging that such a balance may be difficult to achieve, it is incumbent on authors as well as early childhood educationists to ensure that early childhood learners are presented with the correct picture of nature without unnecessary alterations. Clearly, authors, educators and other stakeholders in early childhood education should make deliberate efforts to ensure that they consider learning as more than a mere knowledge-based process. They should recognise the place of the quality of interaction with the environment and others in the learning process. Education for sustainability in the early childhood setting must be based on real and relevant issues that are essential in the engagement of young learners. Children books about nature must be structured in such a way that they view learning as an inevitably transperspectival and transdisciplinary process; one that cannot be captured by a single perspective or a single discipline(Duhn, 2012). As such, early childhood learning cannot be limited to classrooms, local environmental education centres, corporate boardrooms, or regional government authorities. It must take a global perspective with the aim of equipping the young learners with capacity to build a sustainable society. Conclusion In conclusion, it is evident that the structure as well as the content of children’s books about nature is of utmost importance in the achievement of the objectives of education for sustainability in ECE. An appraisal of three children’s books, Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long’s A Seed is Sleepy, Virginia Lee Burtons’ The Little House, and Greame Base’s The Water Hole shows that there exists fundamental shortcomings in structure and content. Consequently, stakeholders in ECE, especially authors, should ensure that children’s books about nature present the correct picture to learners and that their structure and content is tailored to meet the objectives of EfS. References Aston, D. H., & Long, S. (2013). A seed is sleepy. Chronicle Books. Base, G. (2001). The water hole. Viking. Burton, V. L. (2009). The little house. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Davis, J. (2009). 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