MODERN TENDENCIES OF ECOLOGICAL EDUCATION OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN: FOREIGN EXPERIENCE

Abstract

Educational reforms in Ukraine provide possibility for in-depth analysis and reorganization of education from the point of view of its ecologization and approaching world standards. The basis for creating a new educational space is its preschool link as an important stage in the formation of the individual ecological culture. This motivates tostudy the foreign experience in the environmental education of preschool children in order to adapt the constructive approaches to the national education system. The article attempts to characterize the priority tendencies of preschool children's ecological education in foreign practice, as well as to determine the possibilities of using progressive ideas of this experience in institutions of preschool education in Ukraine. To the modern directions of ecological education of preschool children abroad there were reffered: growing up of love for nature through direct communication with it; forming of healthy lifestyle skills as a component of ecological culture; upbringing of a thrifty attitude toward nature through the formation of saving natural resources skills; unity of the family and the preschool education institution in the ecological upbringing of preschool children. The key tendencies of modern foreign ecological pedagogy were established; strengthening of the emotional-sensory component, growing of the spiritual, aesthetic value of nature; preserving and strengthening the child health in the harmony of relations with the environment; formation of an ecologically individual conscious through the formation of a culture of natural resources consumption; increasing the role of the family as a partner, an ally with the right to initiative, act and control. The article establishes the unity of ecological education principles in foreign and domestic practice: ecocentrism, natural correspondence, humanity, integrity, continuity and culture compliance with environmental education. The revealed tendencies of foreign ecological education are key in the domestic educational space, but require more active testing and wider implementation. The subject of further study will be the question of approbation of new, effective forms and methods of foreign ecological education in domestic institutions of pre-school education.