Abstract
Educators can drive educational change and enable children’s learning for sustainable development. Early childhood education is an important component of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and analyzing early childhood educators’ ESD practices can help advance the implementation and realization of ESD. However, the existing overseas studies’ survey instruments do not systematically reflect the basic ideas of ESD. Furthermore, few studies have explored early childhood educators’ ESD practices in China. Therefore, this study established a newly developed and validated instrument, the Early Childhood Educators’ Education for Sustainable Development Practices Scale (ECEESDPS), to assess early childhood educators’ ESD practices. We randomly surveyed 7287 early childhood educators from Shandong Province. The psychometric properties show that the ECEESDPS is a reliable and valid scale that contains four constructs: Values, Content, Competency, and Implementation. The descriptive statistics revealed that educators scored relatively higher for the Values and Implementation constructs, and lower for the Content and Competency constructs. These results suggest that early childhood educators’ ESD practices are generally positive, which correlates with the theoretical background and policies of early childhood education in China. We provide implications for policy development and practical improvement.
Highlights
Educators can drive educational change and enable children’s learning for sustainable development
These results suggest that early childhood educators’ Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) practices are generally positive, which correlates with the theoretical background and policies of early childhood education in China
The scale has been pilot tested in several countries, and the results show that educators in all applicable countries generally have the highest scores in the environment field followed by the society field, whereas they score the lowest in the economy field [20]
Summary
Educators can drive educational change and enable children’s learning for sustainable development. The descriptive statistics revealed that educators scored relatively higher for the Values and Implementation constructs, and lower for the Content and Competency constructs These results suggest that early childhood educators’ ESD practices are generally positive, which correlates with the theoretical background and policies of early childhood education in China. The Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development (GAP on ESD) states that: ‘Political agreements, financial incentives, or technological solutions alone do not suffice to grapple with the challenges of sustainable development It will require a wholesale change in the way we think and the way we act—a rethink of how we relate to one another and how we interact with the ecosystems that support our lives. This is where education has a critical role to play’ [2]
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