Do you want to become part of our global project and network ?
From Visions to
Actions:
Early Childhood
Educators for Sustainability
We, two Griffith University (Australia) students, developed an Education for Sustainability (EfS) workshop dedicated to help early childhood educators around the world running a more sustainable ECE service and to implement EfS relevant teaching and learning strategies into the curriculum.
Please send us a short application together with some key information about your institution to: info@edu-seasons.com .
What are your objectives after running the workshop ?
The first 3 one-day workshops will be offered for FREE.
We would like to reach out to as many ECE services worldwide as possible and our vision is to build a large network for best practice exchange in Education for Sustainability in ECE. With the money we can raise, we intend to create 2 more workshops as part of the series.
What can you expect to get for your ECE service ?
Introduction :
Early Childhood Education recognises children as competent and capable
beings with the capacity to be active agents of change now and in the future.
Educating young children plays a significant role in developing „healthy
communities“ (Friendly & Browne, 2002, p.19) and more specifically,
developing a sustainable future for the world.
National and international concern for ‘healthy communities’ and
sustainability has led to increased interest in Early Childhood Education for
Sustainability (ECEfS). ECE in Australia has highlighted the importance of
sustainability by incorporating Education for Sustainability (EfS) requirements
into the new National Quality Standards and curriculum framework document.
However, the EfS requirements are very general and dependent on interpretation,
which leads to a lack of practical information and examples of ‚good practice‘
for educators (Davis & Ferreira, 2010).
The ‚From Visions to Actions: Early Childhood Educators for Sustainability‘
workshop series makes a significant contribution towards EfS by providing
educators with the practical knowledge and skills to run a more sustainable ECE
service, and empower children to become powerful “agents of change for
sustainability” (Davis & Ferreira, 2010, p.2).
This workshop is the first of three in the series examining a whole-service
and curriculum approach to ECEfS with an emphasis on inquiry learning. The
workshop series anticipates a rich exchange of ideas and practical examples
through its twelve experienced and/or newly trained early childhood educator
participants.
To help meet the objectives of EfS, this series of workshops has been
developed around inquiry learning, which serves for better thinking and problem
solving skill development (UNESCO, 2006). Educators are often challenged to
implement inquiry learning. Therefore, educators should strengthen their
teaching skills and empower the children to become active members in our
society (Gordon, 2000).
General information :
The series entails 3 x 3 hr workshops which are anticipated to be conducted
across a 6 month period. Below is an outline of this series.
Workshop 1 – ‚Getting Started‘ – Introductory workshop about EfS
(whole-service and curriculum based approach). Focuses on developing knowledge
and skills to implement sustainability within an ECE service, creating a shared
vision, selecting priority issues and developing an action plan.
Workshop 2 – ‚Actions and Reflections‘ – Focuses on reflection of projects
implemented after workshop 1, examines barriers and challenges encountered, and
continues the practice of inquiry based learning in ECEfS.
Workshop 3 – ‚Review, Reflect and Plan for the Future‘ – Evaluate results
of recent / ongoing projects. Use these results to plan upcoming projects and
develop evaluation tools for Inquiry Learning.
This workshop series encourages early childhood educators to implement
sustainability strategies into their ECE services. As educators it is important
to lead by example. The authors of this workshop series therefore recommend
that every attempt should be made to limit paper usage by providing
participants with a resource DVD.
Throughout this workshop participants are required to take notes and make
regular reflections related to their own ECE service. To assist the
participants in this process a ‘Sustainability Reflection Workbook’ has been
developed (see resource 1.1).
Objectives for the first 1-day workshop :
By the conclusion of this workshop participants will
•
increase their knowledge about ‘Education for Sustainability’, as it
applies to Early Childhood Education services in Australia;
•
create a bank of practical ideas and acquire skills to assist educators to
implement a more sustainable Early Childhood Education service; and
•
be enabled to network with other workshop participants and share
examples
and ideas of best practice in ECEfS.
Workshop authors :
Penelope Savage , Australia,
Griffith University student
Milena Berné, Germany, Griffith University
student
