How to Educate Children for Sustainable Learning and for a Sustainable World

Abstract

This article discusses how early learning might be made sustainable for children. It considers the application of Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals to early childhood education to ensure that inclusive and equitable quality education that promotes lifelong learning opportunities is available to all children. Early childhood practitioners and researchers are encouraged to implement curricula and pedagogies that can support sustainable learning. While educational research about sustainability is necessary, understandings of sustainability policies and values are also required. Values related to sustainability promote a certain type of pedagogy in which the child should be allowed to take initiatives, think, and reflect. This requires high-quality early childhood education. How sustainability concepts can be applied to both content and pedagogy are discussed, as well as different preconditions that are necessary so that all children can access education for sustainability. Important preconditions of education for sustainability include a need for awareness that lifelong learning is applicable to early childhood education, as well as educated staff who are aware about what is relevant for young children to learn about sustainability. Résumé Cet article discute de la façon dont l'apprentissage dès le plus jeune âge pourrait être rendu durable pour les enfants. Il examine l'application à l'éducation préscolaire de l'objectif 4 des Objectifs du Développement Durable (ODD) pour assurer à tous les enfants l'accès à une éducation de qualité, inclusive et équitable, permettant des apprentissages tout au long de la vie. Les professionnels et les chercheurs de la petite enfance sont encouragés à mettre en oeuvre des programmes d'études et des pédagogies qui peuvent soutenir l'apprentissage durable. La recherche sur l'éducation durable est nécessaire, mais il faut aussi comprendre les politiques et les valeurs en matière de durabilité. Les valeurs relatives à la durabilité promeuvent un certain type de pédagogie dans laquelle on devrait permettre à l'enfant de prendre des initiatives, penser et réfléchir. Ceci exige une éducation de grande qualité pour la petite enfance. L'article aborde la manière dont les concepts de durabilité peuvent être appliqués tant au contenu qu'à la pédagogie ainsi que les différentes conditions préalables nécessaires pour que tous les enfants puissent avoir accès à une éducation durable. Ces importantes conditions préalables de l'éducation au développement durable incluent une prise de conscience que l'apprentissage tout au long de la vie est applicable à l'éducation préscolaire, ainsi qu'un personnel instruit, informé de ce qu'il est pertinent que les jeunes enfants apprennent au sujet du développement durable.Resumen Este artículo discute de qué manera el aprendizaje temprano podría hacerse sostenible para los niños. Este artículo considera la aplicación del Objetivo número 4 de los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible (ODS) para a la educación de la primera infancia, la que pret...

What about the Migrant Children? The State-Of-The-Art in Research Claiming Social Sustainability

“…Another important finding worth noting is that the issue of children's agency was recurring in many of the articles, and children as agents for change and the need to listen to children's voices was described both in relation to environmental aspects as well as social aspects of sustainability [47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58].…”

“…A holistic perspective in Education for Sustainability was more or less applied in an overwhelming majority of the articles (36 of 41). At least three interdependent dimensions-environmental, economic, and social-were described in almost all of the articles, implicitly or explicitly, and, while some of them mainly related their research, findings, and discussions to the environmental dimension [59,60], a large proportion of the articles explicitly supported a socially critical and holistic informed perspective on Education for Sustainability [21,40,[48][49][50][51][52]54,56,57,[61][62][63][64][65][66].…”

“…The authors contended that there was much work to be done to extend the thinking and practice related to the education for sustainability beyond the environmental dimension, in order to embrace a more holistic perspective that also incorporates the social and cultural dimension. A greater focus on sociocultural issues like equality and justice and the negotiation of new approaches to link democratic values to issues of sustainability within education was called for [49,50,52,58,61,69,70].…”

“…The social dimension of Education for Sustainability was, to some extent, present in the vast majority of the articles, very often described within the explanation of the three interdependent dimensions of sustainability and conceptualized or emphasized in various ways. Recurring topics related to the understandings of the social dimension in the articles were democracy and democratic values, children's rights, citizenship, children as active citizens, and as participating agents of change [49,50,[52][53][54]61,62,66,70,71].…”

“…Issues of Education for Sustainability related to migrant children, multicultural aspects, or diversity were neither investigated nor outlined; however, the subject was identified as relevant in some of the articles [39,40,50,56,61,62,66,70,72]. Pramling Samuelsson and Park [50] considered that the diversity of cultural contexts in children's lives could be what sustainability might be all about. Sageidet [56] stated that Education for Sustainability as a pedagogical approach promoted a solidarity as well as a global perspective and could contribute to children's multicultural belonging.…”