Editorial Note: Provocations for the "next big thing" in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability (ECEfS)

Abstract

In the previous issue of IJECEE, Ruth Wilson's Editorial Note (2015) offered some salient points that I would like to build on in this issue's Editorial Note. Before identifying these points, as a personal reflection I recall that Ruth Wilson and I first communicated across the Pacific Ocean in the late 1980's. We shared our mutual professional interests in early childhood environmental education and plans for facilitating uptake in our respective countries. I recall letters from Ruth Wilson in the United States of America (yes, we corresponded by hard copy posted letters!) were a source of encouragement and validation for our attempts to introduce early childhood environmental education in Australia. Subsequently, the first practitioner guides for early childhood environmental education, 'Fostering the Sense of Wonder During the Early Childhood Years' (Wilson, 1993) and 'Snails Live in Houses Too: Environmental Education for the Early Years' (Elliott & Emmett, 1991) were published. As Ruth Wilson recognised in her Editorial Note (2015) there have been many developments in early childhood education since that time about 25 years ago, but advocacy and action for early childhood environmental education, or education for sustainability, is still much needed. The Earth has changed dramatically, human impacts on the Earth's ecosystems have created a new geological epoch, 'The Anthropocene' (Steffen, Crutzen & McNeill, 2007) and there is no doubt that global temperatures are increasing (IPCC, 2014). I question whether the early childhood education field has kept pace and wonder how can we move forward with renewed vigour and commitment in these globally precipitous times?