Sustainability in Early Childhood Education

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A quintessential guide for educators and caregivers, this book explores the intersections of sustainability and childhood curriculum.

Educators Elaine Beltran-Sellitti and Margaret MacDonald follow the story and findings of a nine-month long research project that took place in a living, environmentally friendly, “more than green” building housing two university-run childcare centres. The building of interest was designed with many of Reggio Emilia’s learning principles in mind. Together, the authors asked the questions: What can children and teachers learn from and with this environmentally conscious Reggio-inspired building? And what is the educator’s role in supporting their resultant curiosity and learning? In addition to understanding the special context that was engendered by the living building, the book also addresses the wide-ranging tensions and pressures affecting contemporary teaching practices of curriculum as living inquiry.

This book includes the articulation of a vision for curriculum that is attuned to the elements of sustainability reflected in the architecture of the childcare building, in its furnishings and materials, in the intention to avoid waste, and in the relationships with the forest and garden. It highlights an emergent curriculum project attuning to children’s imaginative meaning-making through the structure of the building. Nurtured by varied perspectives including the pedagogy of Reggio Emilia, social constructivism, and new materialism, this book embraces a future for sustainability achieved through the nourishment of meaningful curriculum.