VIRTUAL EVENT: The importance of environmental education in early years teaching

Recently, the idea of incorporating and promoting environmental education in early childhood education has gained force. It is argued that environmental education should start in early childhood as this is a crucial moment to foster long-lasting values, attitudes, skills and behaviours that could help to create a more sustainable worldview and commitment.

However, the early years' sector shows a slow engagement with environmental education and sustainability principles. Particularly, young children are still left aside when it comes to understanding and having a say about the problems that affect life on earth.

Adriana's research unfolds from the idea that dominant discourses rooted in different political, philosophical and theoretical influences have created diverse views and understandings of children, the environment and education. These discourses, which are linked with particular images of childhood, could either promote or prevent the engagement of environmental education and sustainable practices in the early years' sector.

Adriana will present the views of children, teachers and parents around the idea of environmental education and taking care of the environment. She will discuss how these ideas and practices reproduce, produce or contest traditional views of education. She will explore what challenges they envisage and ultimately how these could inform and advance the incorporation of environmental education in the early years.

This webinar is part of the Development Education Research Centre (DERC) seminar series.

DERC seminar series

The DERC seminars examine new thinking and discussion on development education, global learning and global citizenship.

Links

• Development Education Research Centre (DERC)
• Department of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment