Too Young to Know? A Multiple Case Study of Child-to-Parent Intergenerational Learning in Relation to Environmental Sustainability

Abstract

Little is known about child-to-parent intergenerational learning for environmental sustainability. This qualitative multiple case study research investigated how young Maltese children (aged three to seven years) influence their parents’ pro-environmental actions. Participants included 12 children and 10 parents. Data were collected via observations in one household and two state schools, conversational interviews with children, children’s drawings and their interpretations of them, children’s photograph interpretations, semi-structured interviews with parents and document analysis. Findings revealed that most parents were influenced by their children’s requests to engage in pro-environmental actions, which in turn they had learned about as part of the Eco-Schools programme. Additionally, some parents regarded their children as having agency in discussing environmental issues and strived to empower them in acquiring environmental stewardship skills, but others did not. These findings provide insight into young children’s direct and indirect abilities to influence adults’ actions towards environmental sustainability.

Youth-Led Climate Change Action: Multi-Level Effects on Children, Families, and Communities

“…Children's intra-and intergenerational influence must also be considered when estimating the practical significance of children's behavior changes. Findings of the present study contribute to the growing evidence base that children can be effective climate change communicators and change agents in their families and communities and across generations [11,12,35,[60][61][62][63][64]. A finding worth noting is that the largest single-item shift on the post-program survey was, "I talk to my friends and family about the environment" (see Table 3).…”

Children in marketing: A review, synthesis and research agenda

“…Children are proven to have an influence on their parents' spending patterns and the immense commercial media environment that surrounds them (Calvert, 2008). Studies on children's environmental education have also demonstrated that children can influence the behaviours of their parents regarding sustainability issues (Spiteri, 2020), including sustainable consumption (Ritch & Brownlie, 2016). Despite all these promising signs, sustainability marketing and children are considerably under‐researched.…”

Nature-Based Learning and Digital Competencies in Early Years Education

“…Nature-based education, including a wide range of approaches such as forest schools, nature kindergartens, outdoor education, environmental education, and sustainability education, has attracted considerable attention, both scholarly. This kind of education has overarching aims to support children through individual experiences (Beery & Jørgensen, 2016), cooperation (Gruno & Gibbons, 2020), collaboration (Spiteri, 2020), communication (Collado et al, 2020), exploration (Silverman & Corneau, 2017), construction (Dennis et al, 2014), and imagination (Cordiano et al, 2019). In addition, there are a variety of activities that can take place in naturebased education, such as using outdoor spaces as learning places (Leea & Bailie, 2019) and including nature as a resource or concept in the regular program (Harwood et al, 2020) in order to raise environmental awareness (Bonnett, 2021), create a bond between nature and children (Gull et al, 2019), protect the environment (Güler Yıldız et al, 2021), or learn with nature even during Covid-19 pandemic (Burke et al, 2021).…”

“…Orman okulları, doğa anaokulları, açık hava eğitimi, çevre eğitimi ve sürdürülebilirlik eğitimi gibi çok çeşitli yaklaşımları içeren doğa temelli eğitim bilimsel olarak büyük ilgi görmüştür. Böyle bir eğitim, çocukları bireysel deneyimler (Beery & Jørgensen, 2016), işbirliği (Gruno & Gibbons, 2020;Spiteri, 2020), iletişim (Collado et. Al, 2020), keşif (Silverman & Corneau, 2017), inşa (Dennis ve diğerleri, 2014) ve hayal gücü (Cordiano ve diğerleri, 2019) yoluyla desteklemeyi kapsamaktadır.…”