Education for sustainable development in early childhood education in Finland

• Authors: Jyrki Reunamo , Liisa Suomela
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In the Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC) curriculum, there is no specific content for education for sustainable development (ESD). Thus, it is not possible to get direct guidelines on how to conduct ESD in ECEC from the curriculum. We seek to look at the preferences of Finnish early childhood educators through the model of extended environmental education. Behind this model is Palmer's tree model and an emphasis on empirical, social and ethical components of ECEC. The research method employed a survey. Altogether 924 teams in Southern Finland evaluated their learning environments. By using a factor and reliability analysis, we extracted three factors relevant to the extended Palmer's model. The teachers primarily emphasised the understanding (learning) aspects of ECEC. The second most important aspect comprised the social aspects of education. The third most important aspect included the ethical and participant aspects of ECEC. Potential implications and indications to the practice of ESD are discussed

Keywords

EN

education for sustainable development; environmental education; early childhood education and care; curriculum; learning; agency

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 91-102

Dates

published

2013-12-01

online

2014-03-12

Contributors

author

Jyrki Reunamo

• University of Helsinki, Finland

author

Liisa Suomela

• University of Helsinki, Finland

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/jtes-2013-0014