scholarly journals (Re)imagining Entangled Sustainability: A Human and Nonhuman Theorisation of Belonging to Safeguard Sustainability’s Holism

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 4714
Author(s):  
Alicja R. Sadownik ◽  
Josephine Gabi

After years of research and theorisation connected to education for sustainable development, the holistic core of sustainability seems to have disappeared within the frames of the social, environmental and economic pillars. This article suggests a post-humanism inspired understanding of a sense of belonging. Even though the phenomenon of belonging is ascribed to social sustainability, the post-human theoretical toolkit challenges the humanism-based understanding of a sense of belonging as a human-related phenomenon. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome and affect concepts and Barad’s concept of intra-action, we show the connections between the human and nonhuman elements constituting each other in our world. We conclude with the implications that using post-human language (to understand belonging) may have for policy, Early Childhood Education and care (ECEC) practice and theory.

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jyrki Reunamo ◽  
Liisa Suomela

Abstract In the Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC) curriculum, there is no specific content for education for sustainable development (ESD). Thus, it is not possible to get direct guidelines on how to conduct ESD in ECEC from the curriculum. We seek to look at the preferences of Finnish early childhood educators through the model of extended environmental education. Behind this model is Palmer's tree model and an emphasis on empirical, social and ethical components of ECEC. The research method employed a survey. Altogether 924 teams in Southern Finland evaluated their learning environments. By using a factor and reliability analysis, we extracted three factors relevant to the extended Palmer's model. The teachers primarily emphasised the understanding (learning) aspects of ECEC. The second most important aspect comprised the social aspects of education. The third most important aspect included the ethical and participant aspects of ECEC. Potential implications and indications to the practice of ESD are discussed


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 404-416
Author(s):  
Jane M Selby ◽  
Benjamin S Bradley ◽  
Jennifer Sumsion ◽  
Matthew Stapleton ◽  
Linda J Harrison

This article evaluates the concept of infant ‘belonging’, central to several national curricula for early childhood education and care. Here, the authors focus on Australia’s Early Years Learning Framework. Four different meanings attach to ‘belonging’ in the Early Years Learning Framework, the primary being sociopolitical. However, ‘a sense of belonging’ is also proposed as something that should be observable and demonstrable in infants and toddlers – such demonstration being held up as one of the keys to quality outcomes in early childhood education and care. The Early Years Learning Framework endows belonging with two contrasting meanings when applied to infants. The first, the authors call ‘marked belonging’, and it refers to the infant’s exclusion from or inclusion in defined groups of others. The second, the authors provisionally call ‘unmarked’ belonging. Differences between these two meanings of infant belonging are explored by describing two contrasting observational vignettes from video recordings of infants in early childhood education and care. The authors conclude that ‘belonging’ is not a helpful way to refer to, or empirically demonstrate, an infant’s mundane comfort or ‘unmarked’ agentive ease in shared early childhood education and care settings. A better way to conceptualise and research this would be through the prism of infants’ proven capacity to participate in groups.


2021 ◽  
pp. 16-29
Author(s):  
Kathryn Underwood ◽  
Tricia Van Rhijn ◽  
Alice-Simone Balter ◽  
Laura Feltham ◽  
Patty Douglas ◽  
...  

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed social organizations and altered children’s worlds. As part of an ongoing longitudinal study of the institutional organization of disabled children’s lives, since March 2020 we have conducted interviews with families in rural and urban communities across Canada (65 families at the time of writing). The narrow focus of governments on the economy, childcare, and schooling does not reflect the scope of experiences of families and disabled children. We describe emerging findings about what the effects of the pandemic closures demonstrate about the social valuing of childhood, disability, and diverse family lives in early childhood education and care. Our research makes the case that ableism, exclusion, and procedural bias are the products of cumulative experiences across institutional sites and that it is critical we understand disabled childhoods more broadly if we are to return to more inclusive early childhood education and care.


Author(s):  
Maurizio Ferrera

This paper discusses the basic rationale which has inspired the intellectual and policy reorientation towards “social investment”, with particular attention to child policy. The firstsection outlines the main features of the social investment approach, contrasting it with the more traditional “Fordist” approach. The second and third sections explain why and how early childhood education and care canmake a difference in termsofbothefficiencyandequity.Thefourthsectionbrieflysummarizes the British experience under New Labour, while the fifth section discusses issues of quality and accessibility. The conclusion wraps up, underlining the need to step up the shift to- wards social investment, overcoming the political obstaclesto reform.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidsel Boldermo ◽  
Elin Ødegaard

This study aimed to investigate research articles that relate to education for sustainability, primarily in early childhood, in order to describe to what extent a holistic perspective on education for sustainability has been applied, and how the social dimension is conceptualized. The review comprised research articles in Nordic Journals of Education, International Journals of Early Childhood Education, and International Journals of Education/Environmental/Sustainability education. The findings disclosed that researchers within the field of education for sustainability acknowledged, to a large extent, environmental, economic, and social aspects, and thus applied a holistic perspective. This review shows, however, that even if the social dimension were conceptualized as strongly related to topics such as social justice, citizenship, and the building of stable societies, few articles have investigated diversity, multicultural perspectives, or migrant children’s situations in the context of early childhood education for sustainability. This review discloses that the concept of belonging is rarely used in connection to migrants and refugees in research on early childhood education for sustainability. A further argument encourages the inclusion of these aspects in further research which claims social sustainability.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 335-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Delaune

This article draws from Nel Noddings’ ethics of care as a basis for analysing the political effects of the burgeoning Social Investment approach to governance in Aotearoa New Zealand. To assess the effects of the Social Investment paradigm of governance in relation to early childhood care and education, this article commences with an historical analysis of the relationships between the concepts of ‘care’ and ‘education’ through the history of Aotearoa New Zealand in relation to early childhood education and care. Following this, the burgeoning Social Investment paradigm will be charted. Then, the major principles of Noddings’ ethics of care are outlined and utilised to scrutinise current and potential effects the Social Investment paradigm will have on early childhood education and care and the discourses of ‘care’ and ‘education’. Foucauldian theories augment Noddings’ theories to highlight the bio-politics of care.


2013 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 308-324
Author(s):  
Joy Pastan Greenberg ◽  
Robert Herman-Smith ◽  
Susan F. Allen ◽  
Maryah Stella Fram

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