Solveig Hägglund

Early childhood education and learning for sustainable development and citizenship

SummarySince the end of the 1980:s when OECD published the Brundtland report, in which the concept of sustainable development as a critical global issue was introduced, the role of education for global survival has been frequently discussed and explored, by politicians as well as researchers. In school curricula and educational practice, efforts have been made to include material and issues related to, for example, climate changes and nature resources in teaching and learning. Surprisingly little attention has however been paid to the question of the way (and on what premises) early childhood education might (and should) be involved. In this article we discuss some aspects of early childhood education with a bearing on its role in education for sustainable development. The fact that early childhood education belongs to the larger educational system means that global political and economical issues are involved when planning and conducting education for sustainability in pre-school as much as in the rest of the educational system. Recent changes in Swedish educational policy, characteristic traits in pre-school pedagogy and the pre-school child as learner of sustainability are commented upon and discussed.RésuméDepuis la fin des années 1980, lorsque l’OCDE a publié le rapport Brundtland abordant le concept du développement durable comme problème majeur, le rôle de l’éducation pour la survie globale a été fréquemment discuté et exploré par les politiciens et les chercheurs. Dans les programmes scolaires et dans la pratique éducative, des efforts ont été faits pour inclure dans l’enseignement et dans l’apprentissage du matériel et des questions liées, par exemple, aux changements climatiques et aux ressources naturelles. Etonnamment peu d ’attention a été accordée à l’implication de l’éducation de la petite enfance. Dans cet article, nous discutons de quelques aspects de l’éducation de la petite enfance, dont son rôle dans le développement durable. L’éducation de la petite enfance faisant partie du système d’éducation dans sa globalité signifie que les questions de politique et d’éducation mondiales sont en cause lorsqu’il s’agit de planifier et d’offrir l’éducation relative au développement durable à l’école maternelle, aussi bien que dans le reste du système scolaire. Les récents changements dans la politique scolaire suédoise, traits caractéristiques de la pédagogie de l’école maternelle et de l’enfant de maternelle se formant au développement durable sont les éléments commentés et discutés.ResumenDesde fines de los años 80, cuando la OCDE publicó el informe Brundtland, en el que se introduce el concepto de desarrollo sustentable como un asunto crítico a nivel global, el rol de la educación para la sobrevivencia global ha sido objetivo de discusión y análisis permanente por parte de políticos e investigadores. En el curriculum escolar y en las prácticas educacionales, se han desplegado esfuerzos para incluir materiales y asuntos relacionados con, por ejemplo, el cambio climático y los recursos naturales en la pedagogía y el aprendizaje. Sin embargo, resulta sorprendente que se considera poco en qué forma y sobre qué premisas puede y debería participar la educación preescolar. En este artículo, analizamos algunos aspectos de la educación preescolar respecto de su rol en la educación para el desarrollo sustentable. El hecho de que la educación preescolar pertenezca al sistema educacional general significa que hay asuntos políticos y económicos globales involucrados al momento de planificar y orientar la educación para la sustentabilidad tanto en la educación preescolar como en el resto del sistema educacional. Aquí, se comentan y analizan cambios recientes en la política educacional sueca, rasgos característicos en la pedagogía preescolar y los preescolares en su condición de personas que aprenden sobre sustentabilidad.

Turning the UNCRC upside down: a bottom-up perspective on children's rights

Childrens rights have been studied from several perspectives. The implementation of childrens rights has been argued in a corpus of seminal works seeking to problematise ways in which rights may be integrated and visible, with a particular focus on childrens participation. Research also exists in the areas of policy, democratic practice and methodological considerations, particularly in the field of early childhood education. Although the obligation to realise childrens rights has been repeatedly argued in the literature, there are few (if any) studies that have examined rights from the child perspective as seen through the lens of their everyday experiences of life. This paper will present some of the significant early findings around a potential disjunction between rhetorical rights and lived rights. The authors will argue that the implementation and action around childrens rights should be positioned from a bottom-up perspective, rather than constrained to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child Articles.

Children’s rights at 21: policy, theory, practicemIntroductory remarks

When the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in November 1989, this was the final step in a long process which started around the first world war. Three Declarations on rights for children, dated 1924, 1948 and 1959 were forerunners. The early one was adopted by the League of Nations, the other two by the United Nations. The main concern in these early documents was an emphasis on protection and on children’s rights to social welfare, i.e., the child’s needs dominated the image (Thelander, 2009). The appearance of these documents at the international stage was linked with humanistic rhetoric and charity movements, particularly visible and outspoken in Europe. They directed attention towards children’s vulnerable position in war times and towards the bad provision of health and social service for children in general. Individual contributors referred to as particularly significant for this “children’s movement” history, are Ellen Key, Eglantyne Jebb and Janusz Korczak, all active in the first half of the 20th century (ibid.). Even though the Convention on the Rights of the Children only recently passed its 21st birthday, the story of children’s rights thus has been around for almost a century, a period of time during which major shifts in the ways children and childhoods are viewed took place.