Poster #89 - "You want to teach them to love the earth:" Preschool Teacher's Beliefs In, For, and About Environmental Education

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Environmental education often focuses on helping children return to the environment (Louv, 2007). Although "back to the woods" movement gained a lot of traction in the media (Chawla et al., 2014), this is only one facet of environmental education (Elliott & Davis, 2009). Davis (2010) argues that in addition to in the environment, educators need to consider for and about the environment. Though there have been many reviews of research surrounding environmental education (Ardoin, Bowers, Wyman Roth & Holthuis, 2017), few researchers have focused on what facets of environmental education motive children to act pro-environmentally (that is, for the environment). We aim to decipher how teachers believe they are teaching children to act pro-environmentally.

Specifically, following Davis' (2010) differentiation between in, for, and about the environment we examined (1) what educators believe they are doing in terms of education for the environment and (2) teachers' perceptions of barriers to including education for sustainability in early childhood classrooms.

Methods
Participants were 21 preschool teachers (85.7% White; 100% female) from 19 different nature-based preschool programs in the Northeastern US. Semi-structured interviews lasted between 60-90 minutes. Following Braun and Clark (2006), we inductively analyzed teachers' responses into codes. Then categorized each instance as in, for, and about the environment (Davis, 2010). Finally, we created categories separately to differentiate in, for, and about the environment. Two researchers coded all interviews, and disagreements were resolved through consensus.

Results
Q1. Most preschool teachers focused on education in the environment (with over 75% responses falling into this category; see Table 1). The most common coding category was love and care for nature which emphasized teachers' focus on going into the "woods" or creating their own nature through water play or pollinator gardens. This reflects Louv (2007)'s call to have children spend more time in nature. Teachers' identification of about the environment focused on common school curriculum. Although teachers engaged children in a variety of behaviors for the environment, they did not engage in the sociopolitical dimensions that help enforce social change. This may be due to teacher's beliefs about the limitations of children's cognition and emotional resiliency, as one teacher noted, "you don't wanna teach little kids about climate change, right? You want to teach them to love the earth."

Q2. Beyond traditionally reported barriers of "over protective parents," and "protected kids," teachers also reported larger societal issues such as consumerism, that prevent parents and kids from buying into sustainable education (see Table 2). Surprisingly, teachers did not report children's cognition or emotional resiliency, although they provided this as a reason why they did talk about why they engaged in recycling behaviors.

Conclusion
This study has found that although preschool teachers engage in environmental education in the environment, they are lacking in education for the environment, which Davis (2010) notes, promotes sustainability. This may be because preschool teachers do not think children can cognitively understand the complex issues, such as climate change, that impact sustainability.

Authors

• Julia Ginsburg, Smith College
  Presenting Author

• Shannon Audley, Smith College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ninian Stein, Tufts
  Non-Presenting Author