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(2017) Ethical literacies and education for sustainable development, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Challenging and expanding the notion of sustainability within early childhood education
perspectives from post-humanism and/or new materialism
Kassahun Weldemariam
pp. 105-126
This chapter traces the notion of early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) from its historical beginnings, through policy, curriculum, pedagogy and research perspectives. Intrigued by contemporary posthumanism and/new materialism thinking, the author poses fundamental questions about the ontological, epistemological and ethical starting points which call for a rethinking of the notion of sustainability within early childhood education (ECE) at large and in ECEfS in particular. Drawing on posthumanism and/new materialism perspectives, the chapter identifies and elucidates one of the deep-seated and inherent problems within the notion of sustainability, that is, its human-centric characteristics, and indicates the need to recognize agency of the more-than-human world and humans' complex interdependence and entanglement with it. In an effort to expand the prevailing notion of sustainability, this chapter challenges the existing dominant child-centric discourse and calls for the ECEfS field to consider the ontological, epistemological and ethical shifts that these perspectives provoke.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-49010-6_7
Full citation:
Weldemariam, K. (2017)., Challenging and expanding the notion of sustainability within early childhood education: perspectives from post-humanism and/or new materialism, in O. Franck & C. Osbeck (eds.), Ethical literacies and education for sustainable development, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 105-126.
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