Oscar Barbarin has served on the faculties of the Universities of Michigan, Maryland, and North Carolina as well as Tulane University. His scholarship examines social context, ethnicity and child development, particularly the impact of racism and material hardship on socioemotional development. He has studied the development of children with life-threatening illness, urbanization in South Africa, and quality of early childhood settings. His research has centered on boys of color and the identified auspicious conditions that promote their mental health, social competence and emotional resilience. These conditions include (a) systems of caring, (b) structures supporting their self-regulation of behavior and emotions, and (c) interpretive frameworks by which affirming familial relations, culture and spiritual values provide boys of color a sense of connection, purpose, and an understanding of their place in the world. He has proposed that paradoxical attributions are a key cognitive strategy in maintaining emotional balance by affirming personal agency.

This introduction sets the scene by exploring the richness of the diversity of learners and critically examines the imperative for educators within the current educational climate to employ pedagogies that transform learning experiences, particularly for those who continue to be marginalised and are increasingly disengaged from education. The aim of the introduction is to lay the foundation for the significance of supporting educators in pedagogical decisions that prioritise and are socially just and responsive to the inclusion of all learners, thereby engaging and empowering learners as active co-designers and self-regulators of respectful, meaningful and impactful learning. In scaffolding educator efficacy, the introduction encourages self-reflective strategies for sustained critique of applying inclusive, responsive, enabling and socially just pedagogical approaches within their educational practice.

Early childhood is a time of profound growth and development and early experiences during this period have important implications for life-long health and development. Evidence for the benefit of investing in early childhood is so strong that it is considered a public health issue by many researchers and policymakers. This chapter explores efforts within Cooperative Extension in fostering health and well-being among young children, suggesting a holistic approach that involves supporting children’s parents and caregivers, early childhood educators, and fostering a positive context in which children can thrive. Extension continues to play important roles in providing culturally responsive education to families, working with families to cocreate knowledge, and assisting communities in supporting the well-being of young children for lifelong success. Specific examples of promising programs are provided to highlight the impactful work conducted by Extension to support young children around the country.

This chapter extends beyond the single Australian early childhood centre focus offered by Robert Pratt in Chapter 4 of both previous editions. As co-editor, it has been a pleasure to collate five stories from the field with educators from early childhood education services across Australia. These stories highlight a deepening of pedagogical approaches and consolidation of what it means to be a sustainable early childhood service. The story authors well demonstrate how, over time, the multidimensionality of sustainability can readily be embraced in both meaningful and unique ways in early childhood education settings.

It is close to 15 years since the first edition of this text was published in 2010, and then translated into Korean in 2014. The second edition was published in 2015 and translated into Chinese in 2018. Much has happened in early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) since then. Hence, the case for a third edition was persuasive. When the first edition was written, the text demonstrated mainly an Australian orientation, while the second edition expanded authorship to include more international chapters. This third edition builds on the work of all previous authors and, as editors, we argue that the content of the two previous editions continues to be highly relevant! This third edition offers a much wider range of chapters from around the globe and almost double the number of authors, though it continues to maintain its Australian applicability. We reflect that Australian ECEfS benefits from the ideas and experiences of authors beyond Australia, just as we believe Australian perspectives have much to offer readers internationally.

In this chapter, the intersection between digital technologies and sustainability is explored, supported by many practice examples and comprehensive linking to relevant resources. Central to this chapter is a digital technology for sustainability education (DTfSE) framework proposed by the authors to guide educators in navigating this intersection. In a field of rapidly changing digital technologies, the possibilities for ECEfS are expanding.

In this chapter by three Swedish authors, the core positioning of children’s rights and equity in ECEfS is explored. The Swedish early childhood curriculum is strong on these points and sustainability, thus offering a unique platform for implementing a revised Swedish version of the OMEP ESD Rating Scale. The authors’ research study focused on the implementation of the scale as a self-assessment tool for teachers in their preschool contexts. The outcomes highlighted preschool teacher commitment to ESD, as well as the need for professional learning and systemic approaches to facilitate transformative change.

In this chapter, the authors write about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and its relationship with ECEfS. They argue that these fields are connected through their common, underpinning inquiry-based approaches to learning and teaching. They illustrate these connections through two stories from the field. They take these connections even further, however, and show how STEM and ECEfS can be enriched by adding an ‘A’ into STEM, to become STEAM. The ‘A’ stands for the ‘arts’, which can broadly include the humanities and social sciences. By expanding STEM into STEAM, richer, fuller learning experiences can be generated that offer stronger interdisciplinary connections to the ways in which the world really works, where empathy, creativity and curiosity are fostered and given multiple opportunities to be expressed. They show how a STEAM approach focusing on the creative arts can be used to reflect on artworks, for example, and how it can enrich a study of frogs and frog habitats. The authors also introduce a practical guide to assist early childhood educators to choose appropriate pedagogies when using inquiry-based learning. This is the IKOPE planning model – interest, knowledge, organisation, practice, empower – a series of iterative steps that build on children’s interests, supporting the creativity, problem-solving and communication of their STEAM learning.

Dr Jodi Edwards, an Aboriginal woman of Yuin and Dharawal kinship, wrote this chapter through her lens as an Elder connected to Country and the waters of the Illawarra coast of New South Wales. She explains how cultural knowledge-holders have seen, and continue to see and interpret, the natural environment through rich environmental play experiences that help shape cultural identity and strengthen Aboriginal Lore/Law. In a contemporary context, Jodi extends on these ways of understanding by sharing the rationale behind a children’s playscape and public art space being developed by the Shellharbour City Council in collaboration with the local Aboriginal community. The playscape is a play-based site for physical activity, and a place for storytelling and language learning, and for learning about bush tucker and bush medicines. It is intended to inform local young people and visitors alike about the multiple sustainable practices engaged in by the Aboriginal community of the area. At a broader level, the playscape also offers considerable potential for enhancing cultural and language reclamation, decolonisation and reconciliation.