This article is part of a larger project focusing upon explanatory illustrations that children encounter in pre- and primary school education. The research questions concerned (a) how preschool children make sense of iconic symbols when placing items of refuse on illustrations of refuse bins in a sorting task and (b) what stumbling blocks they…

This article analyses how "eco-certified children" are constructed as desirable subjects in teaching materials addressing education for sustainable development. We are interested in how discourses structure this cherished practice and how this practice has become "natural" and obvious for us. A discourse analysis is carried out…

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in pre-school children's meaning-making and learning in education for sustainability. Young children should be recognized as "agents for change" and active participants in their own day-to-day practices. Such issues are thoroughly discussed in the early childhood education for…

In recent times, Australia has recognised and enacted a range of initiatives at service, system and community levels that seek to embed sustainability into the early childhood sector. This paper explores the impact of a professional development (PD) session that provided opportunities for early childhood educators to learn and share ideas about…

In efforts to encourage use of natural outdoor settings as learning environments within early childhood education, survey research was conducted with 46 early childhood educators from northern Minnesota (United States) to explore their beliefs and practices regarding natural outdoor settings, as well investigate predictors of and barriers to the…

Environmental and sustainability issues pose challenges for society. Although education is seen as being a contributor to addressing sustainability, teacher education has been slow to act in preparing future teachers to teach sustainability. Recent Australian curriculum documents nominate sustainability as one of three cross-curriculum priorities.…

Culturally, childhood is often understood as a time of innocence which can mean that issues such as ecological sustainability are considered too problematic for early childhood practice. By drawing on findings from a research project that focused on issues of ecological sustainability in early childhood centres in New Zealand from Western and…

In the context of encouraging the use of natural settings for educational experiences with young children, an exploratory study using survey research and photographs of outdoor settings was conducted to understand how preservice early childhood educators perceive these settings and what educational opportunities, motivations, and barriers they…

The purpose of this article is to explore day care attendants' comprehension of the concept of sustainable development (SD) and to analyse the associated pedagogical practices at their place of work in pre-schools. The empirical data comprise written exam reports from 32 practising day care attendants attending an in-service education course. The…

In this study, engineers and educators worked together to adapt and apply the ecological footprint (EF) methodology to an early learning centre in Brisbane, Australia. Results were analysed to determine how environmental impact can be reduced at the study site and more generally across early childhood settings. It was found that food, transport…

The use of drawings as representations of personal mental models or images is one method of analyzing personal beliefs. This article discusses the development of the Draw-An-Environment Test and Rubric (DAET-R) for assessing the mental models or images of the environment held by pre-service teachers. It also provides results of preliminary…

In 2007, "Environmental Education Research" dedicated a special issue to childhood and environmental education. This paper makes a case for "early childhood" to also be in the discussions. Here, I am referring to early childhood as the before-school years, focusing on educational settings such as childcare centres and kindergartens. This sector is…

Children in middle class Australia, and many western countries around the world experience restricted opportunities to engage in free play in their neighbourhood streets and parks. The impact of this has been a drastic decrease in children's independent mobility and environmental play. Recent research has focused on the physical environment of…

This study was carried out within the framework of environmental education (EE) and its object was the recording, categorization and interpretation of kindergarten teachers' conceptions about two basic concepts: nature and the environment, which are key concepts of environmental education. The study involved the participation of 110 public…