Relationally Enhancing Teacher Education in Early Childhood Learning Environments towards Sustainability

Abstract

Teacher education in early childhood learning environments (ECLE) is a generally neglected space in teaching and learning, more so when the focus is on relationality and sustainability. ECLE refers to the Care and Education of children between 2-4 years of age. The focus of this paper is on ECLE from a post-humanist perspective, which goes in tandem with UNESCO’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Emphasis is on inclusive economic development through environmentally sustainable social inclusion for all. Relationality has been chosen because of its power to advance the deconstruction of the hitherto taken for granted canons of humanism and enlightenment that promote hierarchies in knowledge and its production. These hierarchies disregard the voices of the vulnerable and the excluded, in terms of social class and other markers like age, but most importantly their erroneously assumed lack of knowledge. To date, the voices of the aspirant teachers in ECLE, as well as those of the children and parents, are non-existent when teacher education programmes are designed and implemented. This paper reveals that including the voices of these beneficiary communities enhances the quality of the discourse, theorisation and praxis in the provision of ECLE, as well as in the crafting of relevant teacher education programmes. Thus, the design and delivery of a programme is better based on the relationalities among humans, animals and plants; and between them and inanimate entities like infrastructure and resources. The relationality among all of these in the crafting of the beyond human is enhanced using advanced digital technologies. A relational approach recognises our entanglement with our entire universe in a manner that does not centre on identity. Quality therefore is about the ever-increasing complexity of diffractions of multi-layered and multi-perspective engagements across borders.