Fiona Ellis – University of Otago Lyn Foote - University of Otago

Diti Hill – University of Auckland Glynne Mackey – University of Canterbury

July 2012

OMEP World Project: Listening to children's voices on sustainability

Listening to children’s voices on sustainability: an international history Pramling Samuelsson, I.& Kaga, Y. (2008)- UNESCO report

on ECE’s role in a sustainable society. August 2009, OMEP world assembly in Lagos, Africa voted

to initiate a project that begins to address the urgent global issue of education for sustainable development.

Key issue: educating children to be critical about consumerism and to be mindful of depleting the world’s resources.

Part 1: OMEP World Project on Education for Sustainable Development Informal child interviews Information about young children’s thoughts,

comments and understanding of ESD, using the OMEP 2010 Congress logo.

Part 1: Child Views Participants

36 children were interviewed

25 from Otago

11 from Auckland

Aged from 2 – 5 years

Dunedin - Interest was sought from local early childhood centres

Centres chose the children

Teachers interviewed the children

Part 2 Children’s voices in implementing sustainability

Aotearoa/NZ: 165 children aged 3-5 years and 27 teachers were participants across 5 urban and semi-rural early childhood settings in Dunedin and Christchurch.

Researchers: Lyn Foote, Fiona Ellis, Glynne Mackey Time frame: September 2010- February 2011. Methodology: Teachers gathered data through the use of

open-ended questions and responses to the question ‘What do you think is NOT sustainable here in our centre? How can we change this together?

Report: submitted June 2011 by Glynne Mackey (Aotearoa/NZ project coordinator)

Part 2 – inspired by the 7R’S

Respect, Reflect and Rethink – relate to social and cultural dimensions.

Reuse and Reduce – highlight environmental aspects

Recycle and Redistribute – draw on the economic perspective

Gathering the data Invitation to kindergartens/centres to participate - impact of

funding cuts and earthquakes Information and consent forms Centres chose their area of involvement in one or more of 7

R’s Teachers made written record of conversations with

children and their responses to the question

Valuing children’s voice

Teachers who value the participation of infants, toddlers and young children are engaged with children, whānau and community on several levels. Practicing democratic processes Affirming children’s agency Supporting action competence

Democratic processes - Children as citizens and decision makers

Children have the right to be involved in democratic community decisions (Penn, 2005).

‘ Democratic participation is an important criterion and right of citizenship…Democracy provides meaning for resisting power and its will to govern, and the forms of oppression and injustice that arise’ (Moss, 2007. p.3) .

In the ECE setting democracy becomes visible in relationships and participation of families; valuing the perspective of others; reaching consensus; being respectful; our responsibilities to others.

Children have agency Kjørholt (2005) says that children making their own

decisions is part of agency. Clark (2005) also recognises the value of agency as it respects

children as being experts in their own lives. Barriers to agency: Children are too often ‘underestimated and over controlled’

Alderson (2005) When children are viewed as ignorant or not yet of citizen

status, this will hinder children from having a voice in their early childhood setting, in their whanau and in their community (Anne Smith, 2007) .

Competent children taking action Using a sociocultural lens that has a focus on

collaborative decision making and action– competence is seen as specific to contexts in which the children live and learn.

Children as co-constructors with their own voice and with their own valued contribution to make to social resources and production (Dahlberg, Moss & Pence, 1999)

‘… action competence approach seeks to form a basis for decisions and choices that are connected to community and dialogue’ (Mogensen & Schnack , 2010. p.65).

Elliott & Davis (2009) are concerned that adult views of children’s incompetence and perceived inability to understand abstract concepts will hinder learning within an education for sustainability curriculum that focuses less on conceptual knowledge and more on values, problem solving, creativity and collaboration.

Findings Social-cultural (Respect, Reflect, Rethink) Respect – cultures, animals, water use Reflect – community involvement, energy use, consumerism Rethink – centre garden, use of plastic, where food comes from Environmental (Reuse, Reduce) Reuse – water, creative arts, ‘designer’ jewellery Reduce – water use, amount of waste, packaging Economic (Recycle, Redistribute) Recycle – ‘recycling is when you make something new out of something

old’ 4 yrs Redistribute – old toys, plants, garden produce

Respect The teachers talked with the children about taking creatures

from the garden. They emphasised the importance of treating insects kindly and with respect, and returning them to the garden. A child remembered he had left a worm in his cubby. The child retrieved it and returned it to the garden. The teacher commented that even if the worm was dead its body would help the soil grow plants.

Reflect They were trying to make the earth happy. They were

cleaning the earth, watering the earth. They didn’t want there to be rubbish on the earth. The earth is green and blue, the one on the picture was dirty, grey and black, they needed to get it clear again. The children came from different countries. They didn’t like the earth to be unhappy, it doesn’t want to have recycling all over it. They don’t want it to die out like the dinosaurs.

Rethink The centre was rethinking the use of their back area to give

children a nature experience. They talked with the children about playing out the back. The children wanted to know when the equipment was arriving. Discussions ensued in relation to playing without toys.

Discussions with the children encouraging them to re-think where food comes from. The supermarket is usually the obvious answer so we have been talking about planting, maintaining and harvesting our own fruit and vegetables and getting children to think about where food may come from in the future.

Recycle Child: The countries might be dirty Teacher: Is our country dirty? Children: No No, it is clean The gutter is not clean Grass is in the gutter at our house Everyone throws things in the gutter Teacher: Is that a good thing to do Children No It is littering You should put it in the rubbish The conversation continued about where rubbish goes and about burying rubbish in the ground Teacher: ….Then what happens to the rubbish in the ground? What do you think? Child: Actually, I think it is th devil’s lunch. The conversation moved on to worms and composting.

Reuse The centre was given a box of tiles from one of the parents

flooring shop. Most of the tiles were broken. It was decided to reuse the old concrete pavers by sticking the tiles on them. They also did this with an old table.

Reused old sheep pen wood to create a pathway

Reuse Teacher: Can anyone help me think of things that we can reuse? Je: A t shirt could go into the dress ups Je: We can use bags for our wearable arts S: We reuse paper from our bin Teacher: We can also reduce some of our rubbish and packaging

by making biscuits instead of buying them. I wonder what you could do to make the rubbish mountain smaller?

Ta: We went to the recycle centre in Wanaka and I got some toys like wonky donkey and Shrek

KC: Sometimes we also buy recycled clothes. Ta: The recycled centre is fun.

Reduce Water in outdoor play. Children think there is an endless

supply. Children transferred water from the trough to buckets and tipped down the path. Children: “Can we have more?”. Teacher explained “No, that is all there is.” A discussion about water and its useage took place. Other children came to play and there was none left and no more to be had. The original children explained why. This was accepted by the children.

World Earth Day – explored use of electricity, counted the lights and the amount of energy that the lights used.

Reduce: Children influencing practice In the sandpit one 4 year old boy noticed other children using

water freely. He said ‘We need to conserve water!’ So he found a plastic container, partly filled it with water so

that children could use a small bucket to access a smaller quantity of water when they needed it.

His idea has influenced a teacher who is using this system with all the children.

Recycle T walked past with a trolley full of plastic shovels “What are

you doing T?” “I’m putting out my recycling bin” He informed the teacher. “Why are you putting out your recycling bin T? Because it’s all plastic, you can recycle plastic and I’ve finished playing with it. “Excellent work young man. I love the way you are looking after the sand pit and thinking of the environment T.. It’s here, I’ll put the recycling here. We can dump it here for others to use” T. said.

Recycle Wearable arts. Discussions with children about how to use

items from home in a variety of ways. B shared her creative recycling ideas with others by discussing her designer jewellery she made using utensils, tinfoil, milk bottle lids and cellotape. “I used these (utensils) cause it was sensible” (strong). I sorted through all these (bottle tops) and made it myself.

Recycle M – Recycle – “bottles and tins and paper, we recycle the paper in

the green bin, we walk to the unders [under 2 years old] and put them into the recycling bins.

K – ‘…but not in the nappy bins, we have to keep the planet safe. We put the scraps in the scrap bowls’.

M- ‘…and they go to the chookies, we have a vegie garden’.

‘The worms make wee that we put on our garden. Sometimes birds like to eat worms.’ (giggles) M, 4 years

The worms do eat our yucky food. And they go like this’. (she demonstrates a munching worm – hands up to her screwed up face) P, 4 years

‘We can put our food scraps into the bins, and some for Susanna’s chickens.’ M, 4 years. ‘We don’t need to recycle. We could make things out of our rubbish in our lunchboxes.’ L, 4 years ‘We make a mess if we don’t recycle.’ M, 4 years ‘We could turn it into paper aeroplanes.’ H, 4 years. ‘When we ride our bikes we don’t use the petrol in the car!’ L, 4 years ‘When there was the earthquake we couldn’t use our water. The pipes were broken, and we had to be very careful.’ F, 4 years.

Redistribute Children and teacher went to teachers house to collect

strawberry plants to redistribute to the centre garden. Children and teacher talked about what the strawberry plants needed to grow. Children made comments and asked questions – “Why do they need sun?” , “Why are they here?”, “Can we have one?”, “They need sun and water to grow”.

Talked about the earthquake in Christchurch, and the children wondered what happened to the children’s toys. We all decided that it would be good to help and everyone could bring in small toys we could package up to send to the children.

Teacher Reflection One centre spoke of being surprised to find they did not use

as much sustainable language as they thought Do we need to put a focus on sustainability if it is to be an

integral part of the programme?

One centre spoke of having a culture of sustainability – true integration However, in documentation this integration was not necessarily

evident. Could sustainability become ‘invisible’ in this context?

Reflections on our research Children have rich knowledge of environmental issues around

some complex issues

The concept of sustainability is complex and often not understood by teachers and children

Often a mistaken belief that by engaging with the issues they are ‘doing sustainability’. Teachers found there was less sustainability language than they thought

Is this because we believe that these terms and issues are too complex for young children?

Practitioners involved in research are challenged to continue exploring ways to engage children in the language and experience

Need to think holistically – some areas received more attention than others, e.g. reuse, reduce as opposed to respect, reflect and rethink

Teachers have a key role – need to be intentional in how they engage in conversation

Action Competence – do they know why not just how?

Are children encouraged to engage in critical reflection as to why

Are we too consumerist oriented in our early childhood environments?

Do we critically reflect on children’s understandings?

References Clark, A. (2005). Listening to and involving young children: a review of research and practice. Early Child Development and Care, 175(6), 489-505.

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