Pre-school teachers connect sustainability in education to the care and protection of our world The ways that teachers understand education for sustainability influences their practices to at least some extent. Therefore, this Swedish study interviewed four Filipino and three Swedish Preschool teachers to understand their conceptions of sustainability. They organized their inquiry around two central research questions: (1) What preliminary variations of meanings about early education for sustainability can be discerned through a small sample of preschool teachers’ descriptions of their practice? (2) How can these preliminary variations of meanings be logically and hierarchically structured? With sustainability as a key policy concern, this research could inform how to engage with pre-school teachers to improve how they address environmental issues in their practice.
To investigate pre-school teachers’ conceptions of education for sustainability, the Swedish researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with preschool teachers from two countries with contrasting emphases on sustainability in education. In Sweden, sustainability features explicitly in curriculum and policy documents. In the Philippines, curriculum and policy documents do not specifically reference sustainability. By interviewing preschool teachers from different contexts, the researcher hoped to capture their collective experience of sustainability. The interviews were designed to get teachers to explicate their understandings and practices related to early childhood education for sustainability. The study then used thematic analysis to highlight key critical aspects of teachers’ experiences and then organize them by complexity and comprehensiveness of experiencing the phenomenon of sustainability.
Based on this analysis, the article concluded that the preschool teachers’ conceptions of education for sustainability were structured by four categories of description: connecting with the self; connecting with humans; connecting with more-than-humans; and interconnections. These categories were hierarchically related—beginning with the self and then radiating outwards. In other words, pre-school teachers related children’s health and well-being to maintaining a sustainable lifestyle before conceiving of sustainability more broadly and ultimately recognizing the interconnectedness of humans and the more-than-human world.
In conclusion, preschool teachers’ conceptions of sustainability began with connecting with the self before more broadly recognizing the interconnections among the preceding spheres. The most inclusive category couched sustainability within the care and protection of our world for the sake of human, plants, and animals. From the author’s standpoint, these four categories provide a starting point for pre-school teachers to explore more inclusive practices and dimensions of social, economic, and environmental justice that were less developed in their understandings and practices of sustainability education.
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