Webinar: Environmental education in early years teaching.

This online seminar, with UCL researcher Adriana Burciaga González, looks at interpretations of environmental education in Mexican preschools. This event is part of a series of seminars run by ANGEL partners the Development Education Research Centre (DERC), a UCL Institute of Education research centre that acts as the hub for knowledge generation, new thinking and quality output on development education, global learning and global citizenship.

This is a rescheduled event which will now happen on Zoom. Tickets are free but you need to register via the below link.

Seminar focus

Recently, the idea of incorporating and promoting Environmental Education [EE] in early childhood education has gained force. It is argued that EE should start in early childhood as this is a crucial moment to foster long-lasting values, attitudes, skills and behaviours that could help to create a more sustainable worldview and commitment.

However, the Early Years' sector shows a slow engagement with EE and sustainability principles. Particularly, young children are still left aside when it comes to understanding and having a say about the problems that affect life on earth.

Adriana's study unfolds from the idea that dominant discourses rooted in different political, philosophical and theoretical influences have created diverse views and understandings of children, the environmental and education. These discourses, which are linked with particular images of childhood could either promote or prevent the engagement of environmental education and sustainable practices in the Early Years' sector.

In this seminar Adriana will share the preliminary findings of the study she has conducted in two Mexican preschools. She will present the views of children, teachers and parents around the idea of environmental education and taking care of the environment, and will then discuss how these ideas and practices reproduce, produce or contest traditional views of education, what challenges they envisage and ultimately how these could inform and advance the incorporation of EE in the early years.

Intended audience

This seminar will be of interest to early years teachers, educators, students, researchers and academics. More broadly, it will be relevant to anyone involved with young children, education and the environment.

Speaker biography

Adriana Burciaga González is a PhD student at the Institute of Education of University College London. She holds a MA in Early Childhood Education and Care and a BA in Psychology.