Creative Arts-Based Pedagogies in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability (EfS): Challenges and Possibilities

Abstract

This article showcases a creative approach to early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS). It reports on the author's doctoral research program, which examined the effectiveness of arts-based pedagogies for exploring and understanding the natural world in an early childhood education program. Motivated by their existing commitment to education for sustainability (EfS), the participating educators used the arts for further exploration and understanding of the natural world in teaching and learning. They explored the role of the arts in knowledge production and embodied experience, and reinterpreted and built on their own funds of knowledge about their environment. The result was meaningful curriculum steeped in content about the natural environments that were local to the children and their educators. The findings further signify the challenges educators needed to overcome in order to intensify their connection with their own local environments, and the effect that this enhanced connection had on their capacity to reflect local natural environments in their programs with the children.

Systematic Review of Education for Sustainable Development at an Early Stage: Cornerstones and Pedagogical Approaches for Teacher Professional Development

“…On the other hand, Ward [48] uses creative art-based pedagogies to support children's engagement with their environments. Through relevant creative experiences, sustainability content is incorporated and expressed in meaningful ways.…”

The Art of Portraiture: An Urban School Art Teacher’s Use of Art as Creative Resistance

“…It is an approach grounded in the peculiarities of the local community and attentive to how power and culture work through places to enhance or limit human potential. Art education informed by a critical place-based pedagogy emphasizes the activist, restorative possibilities of art making and affirms the need for students to become involved in learning outside of school (Garcia, 2012(Garcia, , 2014Graham, 2007;Ward, 2013).…”

“…Educative experiences of this sort are catalysts for new understandings of the purposes and meanings in Indigenous art and are illustrative of place-specific social justice art education. Lilyea (2015) explains that the process of engaging the community, especially those who are marginalized, using art can create a powerful learning space (Bequette, 2014;Vande Zande, 2007;Ward, 2013;Wildemeersch & von Kotze, 2014). A critical place-based pedagogy creates possibilities for art teaching and learning that are responsive to the ecology of local communities.…”

“…What makes Dr. Gee's story so exciting to me as a researcher is his ability to teach intersectionally (in social studies, language arts, and ethnic studies) using art, with the purpose of preparing his students to understand and meaningfully participate in public conversations around the social and political relations of art to power, culture, and democratic citizenship. Dr. Gee wants his art students to be empowered and believes that if cultural struggles are to change, then the struggle must be made visible through art (Darts, 2004;Garcia, 2012;Tavin, 2003;Ward, 2013).…”

Creating Pedagogy to Integrate Sustainability and the Arts

“…With respect to sustainability pedagogy specifically, scholars have demonstrated the usefulness of the arts at all levels of education. Preschool curricula that study seemingly unrelated concepts about the natural world through art yield unique educational benefits in terms of awareness about local environment and culture (Ward, 2013). Environmentally-based storytelling, drama, and visual arts in an elementary school in Botswana resulted in better communication and a more egalitarian, locally-connected educational experience (Silo & Khudu-Petersen, 2016).…”