Early Childhood Educators’ Professional Learning for Sustainability Through Action Research in Australian Immersive Nature Play Programmes

Abstract

In this paper, I provide insights into how action research influenced the movement of Australian early childhood educators’ worldviews, identities, and their agency in relation to education for sustainability (EfS) in natural outdoor settings. This was integral to a larger study that explored early childhood educators’ understandings of a nature–sustainability nexus and its influence on their pedagogies in Australian immersive nature play programmes. The findings indicated personal transformations for some participants as individuals and as teams of early childhood professionals, resulting in new discourses for EfS—with others engaging in an ongoing journey of disrupting dominant anthropocentric ways of thinking.