Drama in Education for Sustainable Development: Preservice Preschool Teachers on Stage

Abstract

Early childhood education for sustainable development roots on environmental, socio-cultural and economic ground for encouraging lifelong learning and improving values and behaviors that support sustainable development such as use of natural resources, cultural awareness, gender equality, and democracy. Educational drama contributes to the development of skills necessary for sustainable development such as communication, cooperation and decision-making. This study has two main objectives: the former is to raise awareness and to develop these skills of pre-service teachers by organizing drama activities in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD); the later objective is to implement and to evaluate the activities based on the data collected from pre-service teachers and from one specific pre-school teacher, in whose classroom these activities were carried out. Phenomenographic approach was adapted for the current study and the data was collected through interviews, photos, and field notes. The study shows that the drama activities increase awareness and improve skills for ESD within pre-service teachers. Furthermore, opinions and experiences of the pre-service teachers and the preschool teacher state that drama has positive impact on learning of pre-school children about sustainable development.