Early childhood education for sustainability and natural outdoor playspaces: Researching change and theorizing about interfaces

Abstract

The implementation of early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) is often explicitly linked with natural playspaces in early childhood settings. In this chapter, I question how natural playspaces offer contexts for ECEfS and how early childhood services might engage in transformative change for sustainability. The research project on which this chapter is based involved Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) with two case study early childhood centres in Victoria, Australia. These were Acacia Kindergarten and Banksia Childcare Centre, and the study was conducted over a one-year period. The interfaces, or points of interaction, between the natural outdoor playspace context and educators' socially-constructed understandings of sustainability and education for sustainability were explored, and analyses of these centres' transformative changes invited theorizing about the interfaces. In an attempt to better understand the natural outdoor playspace as a context for ECEfS, a theoretical framework emerged as the study progressed, depicted here as three nested triangles informed by Sterling's (2001) nested systems theory. This chapter offers insights into transformative research approaches in early childhood settings and the complexities of using natural outdoor playspaces as contexts for ECEfS. I conclude that in some settings a few sustainable practices may provoke early childhood educators to think and act differently not only about sustainability, but also about early childhood pedagogy and philosophy.