Sustainability from the Start: An Online ESD Curriculum for Early Childhood Education

The development and learning of values, attitudes and behaviour starts from birth, which makes early childhood education and care (ECEC) very important. However, this is not always informing polic...

The overarching aim is to produce a course in an App that promotes the awareness of ECE educators about sustainability related issues, such as climate change, global warming and the importance of taking actions for transformative change towards a sustainable lifestyle. The early childhood years (birth – 8), represent an unequalled, but poorly tapped, window of opportunity to instil long-lasting sustainability-related skills, attitudes, and habits. All of the UN Sustainable Development Goals impact young children. Through this project, children, their families, in-service and pre-service early childhood practitioners, and teacher educators will contribute directly to the implementation of SDG 4.2, which recognizes the importance of pre-primary education, and 4.7 about Sustainable development and global citizenship. The on-line curriculum includes activities relating to many or all of the UN SDGs, thereby increasing knowledge about the goals and providing direct experience contributing to their achievement. In the longer perspective, we want to Increase the number of participating preschools and universities to more countries in Europe and beyond.

The Project Management Board (PMB) has successfully met and surpassed the project goals set out in this application. The main results are the free online course ‘Sustainability from the Start’ and ‘the ECE Academy App’ (AppStore / Google Play). The course integrates a variety of sustainability concepts into teaching and daily life of young children. The course is offered in six languages, serving a diverse global audience. At the end of the project, an exceptional interest has resulted in the course being downloaded in 54 countries, by 3 300 paprticipants. The App ECE Academy functions well with few emailed questions from participants. The course is also implemented at nine universities in the five partner countries, Already, the exceptional interest has resulted in the course being downloaded in 54 countries. Furthermore, the course was presented as an example of best practice at COP 28 in Dubai and the UNESCO ESD-NET 2030 in Tokyo. Additionally, the Swedish National Agency for Education has included the course in their regular continuous professional development programme.