“I Have a Hippopotamus!”: Preparing Effective Early Childhood Environmental Educators

Abstract

This article describes an early childhood teacher-preparation program that infuses environmental education and nature experiences into courses, practicum, and student-teaching experiences. Program philosophy, pedagogy, materials, and methods are described and linked to the Early Childhood Environmental Education Programs: Guidelines for Excellence, the Guidelines for the Preparation and Professional Development of Environmental Educators, and state-level early learning guidelines that focus on connecting young children with nature. Preservice teachers build knowledge, skills, and dispositions for effective environmental education beginning from an awareness level and progressing to application and refinement. The value of nature is communicated explicitly and implicitly throughout the program. Preliminary analysis of student outcomes indicated that, over the course of the program, students' ratings of the importance of nature and science experiences and outcomes increased, along with their confidence implementing environmental-education activities. There is growing interest in nature and environmental education (EE) in early childhood. Guidelines for Excellence have been published for early childhood education (North American Association for Environmental Education [NAAEE], 2010a), and the North American Association for Environmental Education has added a "Connecting Kids and Nature" track to the annual conference. Several books have been published on connecting young children with nature (e.g., Davis, 2010; Ward, 2008; Wilson, 2012) and early childhood EE curricula have been developed by Project Learning Tree and Project Wild (Council for Environmental Education, 2009; Project Learning Tree, 2010). A professional development program focusing on discovering nature with young children has been funded by the National Science Foundation (Chalufour & Worth, 2003) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children published a compilation of articles on nature and EE in early childhood (Shillady, 2011). A rating scale designed to assess EE in early childhood has also been published (Bhagwanji, 2011). You know things are getting serious when we start measuring! CONTACT Julia Torquati,

The Teachability of Global Citizenship to Children through Empirical Environmental Education: Reflections from a Horticultural Project in a Spanish School

“…Strengthening a day-to-day connection to nearby natural environments generates a sense of belonging in the students, at the same time as impacting positively on the construction of values and attitudes such as respect, empathy, and critical thinking. Thus, when EE and ESD propose a harmonious relationship between human beings and their natural environment, pedagogies are required that contribute to collaborative work and the active participation of the student body (Wongpaibool et al 2016;Torquati et al 2017).…”

From the Ground Up: Children's Experiences of Connecting With Nature Through Technology

“…In thinking of broader recommendations for practice, it may be beneficial to integrate nature-based courses into postsecondary education programs (ex. early childhood education and Bachelor of Education programs) as not all educators are comfortable with or have experience incorporating nature into their pedagogy (Torquati et al, 2017). These courses should be present anyways as it is children's right to have education that fosters their development of respect for the natural environment (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989).These courses may also inform how technology could be incorporated into children's nature exploration and engagement.…”

Impacts of School-Based Outdoor Pedagogical Training Programme on the Teaching Practices of Pre-Primary School Teachers in Oyo State, Nigeria

“…These include Australia (Kubat, 2017;Torkos, 2018;Tuuling et al, 2019) and the Middle East (Ihmeideh and Al-Qaryouti, 2016). The UK (Scott et al, 2015;Glackin, 2016;Marchant, Todd, Cooksey, Dredge, Jones, Reynolds, Stratton, Dwyer, Lyons, and Brophy, 2019) and the US (Torquati, Leeper-Miller, Hamel, Hong, Sarver, and Rupiper, 2017).…”