Australia’s Perspectives of Sustainability
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 Human resources management 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 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”.
Pedagogical Practices implemented in Education for Sustainability
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 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.
Teaching Strategies to Encourage Children’s Learning of Sustainability
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.
References
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