For a very long time, the youngest classrooms were completely ignored when discussing climate education. Children that small were thought to be incapable of understanding something so vast, so politically charged, and so distant in time. When you witness a four-year-old crouch over a worm for ten minutes, totally engrossed, telling anyone nearby about its life, it’s an odd assumption.
Early Childhood Education for Sustainability occupies a unique position. It draws from three different traditions that, strangely enough, hardly spoke to one another for many years. With field trips and recycling units, environmental education primarily targeted older students. Again, almost exclusively for adults and adolescents, education for sustainable development leaned toward advocacy. Additionally, early childhood education, that loving and well-intentioned realm of finger paints and circle time, focused on holistic development with little regard for the state of the planet outside the window. It seems like no one really understood how the young ones fit in.
| Field Snapshot: Early Childhood Education for Sustainability (ECEfS) | Details |
|---|---|
| Field Name | Early Childhood Education for Sustainability (ECEfS) |
| Sits At The Intersection Of | Early Childhood Education (ECE), Environmental Education (EE), Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) |
| Origin Period | 1980s, with the field expanding noticeably from 2009 onward |
| Pioneering Researchers | Julie Davis (Australia), Eva Ärlemalm-Hagsér (Sweden), and a growing circle of international scholars |
| Three Pillars of Sustainability | Environmental, social, economic |
| Age Range Addressed | Roughly birth through age 8 |
| Key Shift in Thinking | From children as “not yet capable” to children as competent agents of change |
| Notable Curriculum Example | Swedish preschool curriculum, with eight explicit mentions of sustainability |
| Frequently Cited Research Source | International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education |
| Annual Awareness Moment | Week of the Young Child (April 1–7) |
Then, in 2009, Julie Davis, an Australian researcher, published a now extensively cited paper that explicitly identified the issue. She examined twelve years’ worth of scholarly publications in the fields of environmental education and early childhood education and discovered that less than five percent of the papers even hinted at the overlap. It was a “research hole,” as she generously described it. It resembled a research silence more.
Watching what has transpired since is truly fascinating. Much of the movement has been spearheaded by researchers in Sweden and Australia, whose work tends to share the belief that children are already capable and are not just waiting to become so. The Swedish preschool curriculum is frequently cited as a silent standard. The document treats children as “competent beings” and “active agents,” and a critical content analysis of it revealed eight explicit references to sustainability in all three dimensions—environmental, social, and economic. Before you realize how uncommon that framing is in the majority of national curricula, the phrase seems bureaucratic.
Another important point was made in a 2020 study that compared Korean and Australian curricula. Different cultures have different perspectives on nature and how children fit into it. What is effective in one nation may seem foreign and a little strange in another. Though it took some time for the field to fully embrace it, the lesson—that ECEfS must be culturally rooted to mean anything—is clear in retrospect.
Additionally, pedagogy is changing. In a 2019 theoretical paper, Barrable suggested centering early childhood education around a connection to nature, with environmental protection emerging naturally rather than as an afterthought. At the same time, Bascope and associates argued that a fundamental component of teacher preparation should be genuine, practiced, and rooted in the community. On paper, none of this is radical. In reality, it is more difficult than it seems for teachers to truly trust kids.
It turns out that nature play, which is sometimes written off as simply unstructured outdoor time, does a lot of heavy lifting. A 2021 systematic review of 32 studies identified 98 different outcomes associated with nature play, with self-regulation, connection to nature, and care of nature showing up most frequently. However, the same review took care to point out something simple to overlook. Playing in nature is insufficient on its own. Adults who can assist children in transforming observation into comprehension and curiosity into compassion are still necessary.
As this field develops, it’s difficult to ignore how frequently adult obstacles are present. Mostly underestimation. It’s still unclear if all of this scales quickly enough to be significant. However, the kids appear prepared when given the opportunity.
