Early Childhood Educators’ Practices in Education for Sustainable Development in China: Evidence from Shandong Province

Abstract

Educators can drive educational change and enable children’s learning for sustainable development. Early childhood education is an important component of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and analyzing early childhood educators’ ESD practices can help advance the implementation and realization of ESD. However, the existing overseas studies’ survey instruments do not systematically reflect the basic ideas of ESD. Furthermore, few studies have explored early childhood educators’ ESD practices in China. Therefore, this study established a newly developed and validated instrument, the Early Childhood Educators’ Education for Sustainable Development Practices Scale (ECEESDPS), to assess early childhood educators’ ESD practices. We randomly surveyed 7287 early childhood educators from Shandong Province. The psychometric properties show that the ECEESDPS is a reliable and valid scale that contains four constructs: Values, Content, Competency, and Implementation. The descriptive statistics revealed that educators scored relatively higher for the Values and Implementation constructs, and lower for the Content and Competency constructs. These results suggest that early childhood educators’ ESD practices are generally positive, which correlates with the theoretical background and policies of early childhood education in China. We provide implications for policy development and practical improvement.

Learning for early childhood using the IcanDO platform: Breakthroughs for golden age education in Arabic learning

“…This needs to be done considering that early childhood is the golden age (Almy, 1986 ; Rozi et al, 2022 ), therefore the experience and education they get should not interfere with their brighter future (Bakken et al, 2017 ; Hakim et al, 2020 ). The form of efforts to build the future of early childhood is to provide the best education for them (Cheng & Yu, 2022 ).…”

Quality Education for All: A Fuzzy Set Analysis of Sustainable Development Goal Compliance

“…All the world regions and the whole sample present total coverage above 0.92, meaning that the causal paths indicated cover the biggest part of the outcome (the achievement [31], which, according to [21] and [32], validates the existence of robustness). Pre-primary education provides a stimulating environment for children's cognitive, social, and emotional development; it promotes essential skills such as literacy, calculus, and problem-solving [33][34][35][36]. On the other hand, successful completion of lower primary education is crucial for continued education, as it provides a solid foundation for more advanced skills in secondary and higher education [37].…”

Saudi Kindergarten Teachers and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD): Concept and Practice

“…For example, a comparative study found that Japanese and Australian early childhood educators lack well-developed theories and practices in education for sustainability [20]. The findings of another study showed that ESD practices among early childhood educators are usually positive [16]; however, although some early childhood educators claim they are educating the children about sustainable development, they frequently employ rigorous, traditional, direct, and prescriptive interactional methods [2,20]. These previous results might imply that early childhood and kindergarten educators must be given more support to develop a deeper knowledge of sustainability and how to apply it in their contexts and overcome challenges that could prevent them from achieving ESD.…”

“…Therefore, various initiatives have been taken to establish ESD competency frameworks to solve this issue. To carry out the current investigation, the researcher adopted the framework of [16], who established the "Early Childhood Educators' Education for Sustainable Development Practices Scale" (ECEESDPS) to evaluate the ESD practices of early childhood educators in China. The framework, developed based on United Nations publications and associated research, categorised the core ESD concepts into four categories: values, content, competency, and implementation.…”

“…In line with this argument, [14] believes that the desired transformation must start in the kindergarten phase, asserting the prominence of high-quality education in the early years and the role of well-qualified teachers in children's education environments [15]. Early childhood educators, including kindergarten teachers, have a huge opportunity to promote the attitudes, beliefs, abilities, and behaviours that promote sustainable development [16,13]. In this regard, the DESD has emphasised the role that teachers play in supporting sustainable development; the DESD further stated that to enable the next generation to create a more sustainable world, teacher educators, preservice teachers, and in-service teachers must learn how to integrate SD issues into the curriculum and use pedagogical techniques associated with quality education for sustainable development [17].…”