Across the globe, waste management is a pressing issue. In Britain, the home country of this paper's authors, the vast majority of the nation's municipal waste is from households, and the government has emphasized the need for individuals to be part of the country's waste management strategy. But, the authors note that getting people to take on environmental behaviors such as recycling is no small feat.
In Western culture, childhood is often understood as a time of innocence, when children should be sheltered from harsh realities of the world. Topics such as climate change—which emphasize the urgency for behavior change and engagement—can be difficult for early childhood education (ECE) teachers to introduce, because they can bring “reality” into the protected space of childhood. In the first section of this paper, the author explored dominant perspectives about what ECE is and how those perspectives can be detrimental to teaching sustainability.
This study explores the role of parents in influencing their children's behavior, specifically the recycling and reuse of paper. The researchers were particularly interested in how parents may activate norms that lead to these behaviors in children. Citing various theories on human behavior, the authors differentiate between different types of norms: A personal norm is a personal moral obligation to take specific actions, while a social, or subjective, norm is influenced by others who are relevant to the individual.
Global consumption of materials and energy is one of the greatest contributors to current environmental crises. However, sustainable consumption curricula and corresponding educational research are in their infancy. The author of this paper used recent case studies and EE literature to investigate discrepancies between consumption patterns and attitudes within different socioeconomic contexts. Based on her findings, the author proposes that the Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C) framework could address challenges of teaching sustainable consumption behavior by shifting the paradigm altogether.