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Creative Arts-Based Pedagogies in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability (EfS): Challenges and Possibilities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2014

Kumara S. Ward
Kumara S. Ward*
Affiliation:
School of Education, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
*
Address for correspondence: Dr Kumara Ward, School of Education, University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South DC NSW 1797, Australia. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article showcases a creative approach to early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS). It reports on the author's doctoral research program, which examined the effectiveness of arts-based pedagogies for exploring and understanding the natural world in an early childhood education program. Motivated by their existing commitment to education for sustainability (EfS), the participating educators used the arts for further exploration and understanding of the natural world in teaching and learning. They explored the role of the arts in knowledge production and embodied experience, and reinterpreted and built on their own funds of knowledge about their environment. The result was meaningful curriculum steeped in content about the natural environments that were local to the children and their educators. The findings further signify the challenges educators needed to overcome in order to intensify their connection with their own local environments, and the effect that this enhanced connection had on their capacity to reflect local natural environments in their programs with the children.

Keywords

early childhood educationnatural learningarts-based pedagogiessustainability
Type
Feature Articles
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , December 2013 , pp. 165 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2014 

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