1. Fiona Ellis – University of Otago
Lyn Foote - University of Otago
Diti Hill – University of Auckland
Glynne Mackey – University of Canterbury
July 2012
OMEP World Project: Listening to
children's voices on sustainability

2. Listening to children’s voices on
sustainability: an international history
 Pramling Samuelsson, I.& Kaga,Y. (2008)- UNESCO report
on ECE’s role in a sustainable society.
 August 2009, OMEP world assembly in Lagos,Africa voted
to initiate a project that begins to address the urgent global
issue of education for sustainable development.
 Key issue: educating children to be critical about
consumerism and to be mindful of depleting the world’s
resources.

3. Part 1: OMEP World Project on Education
for Sustainable Development
 Informal child interviews
 Information about young children’s thoughts,
comments and understanding of ESD, using the
OMEP 2010 Congress logo.

4. Part 1: Child Views
 Participants
36 children were interviewed
25 from Otago
11 fromAuckland
Aged from 2 – 5 years
 Dunedin - Interest was sought from local early childhood centres
 Centres chose the children
 Teachers interviewed the children

5. Part 2 Children’s voices in
implementing sustainability
 Aotearoa/NZ: 165 children aged 3-5 years and 27 teachers
were participants across 5 urban and semi-rural early childhood
settings in Dunedin and Christchurch.
 Researchers: Lyn Foote, Fiona Ellis, Glynne Mackey
 Time frame: September 2010- February 2011.
 Methodology: Teachers gathered data through the use of
open-ended questions and responses to the question‘What do
you think is NOT sustainable here in our centre? How can we
change this together?
 Report: submitted June 2011 by Glynne Mackey (Aotearoa/NZ
project coordinator)

6. Part 2 – inspired by the 7R’S
 Respect,Reflect and
Rethink – relate to social
and cultural dimensions.
 Reuse and Reduce –
highlight environmental
aspects
 Recycle and Redistribute
– draw on the economic
perspective

7. Gathering the data
 Invitation to kindergartens/centres to participate - impact of
funding cuts and earthquakes
 Information and consent forms
 Centres chose their area of involvement in one or more of 7
R’s
 Teachers made written record of conversations with
children and their responses to the question

8. Valuing children’s voice
Teachers who value the participation of infants,
toddlers and young children are engaged with
children, whānau and community on several
levels.
 Practicing democratic processes
 Affirming children’s agency
 Supporting action competence

9. Democratic processes - Children as
citizens and decision makers
 Children have the right to be involved in democratic
community decisions (Penn, 2005).
 ‘ Democratic participation is an important criterion and
right of citizenship…Democracy provides meaning for
resisting power and its will to govern, and the forms of
oppression and injustice that arise’ (Moss, 2007. p.3) .
 In the ECE setting democracy becomes visible in
relationships and participation of families; valuing the
perspective of others; reaching consensus; being
respectful; our responsibilities to others.

10. Children have agency
 Kjørholt (2005) says that children making their own
decisions is part of agency.
 Clark (2005) also recognises the value of agency as it respects
children as being experts in their own lives.
Barriers to agency:
Children are too often‘underestimated and over controlled’
Alderson (2005)
When children are viewed as ignorant or not yet of citizen
status, this will hinder children from having a voice in their
early childhood setting, in their whanau and in their
community (Anne Smith, 2007) .

11. Competent children taking action
 Using a sociocultural lens that has a focus on
collaborative decision making and action– competence is
seen as specific to contexts in which the children live and
learn.
 Children as co-constructors with their own voice and
with their own valued contribution to make to social
resources and production (Dahlberg, Moss & Pence,
1999)
 ‘… action competence approach seeks to form a basis
for decisions and choices that are connected to
community and dialogue’ (Mogensen & Schnack , 2010.
p.65).

12. Elliott & Davis (2009) are concerned
that adult views of children’s
incompetence and perceived inability
to understand abstract concepts will
hinder learning within an education for
sustainability curriculum that focuses
less on conceptual knowledge and
more on values, problem solving,
creativity and collaboration.

13. Findings
Social-cultural (Respect, Reflect, Rethink)
 Respect – cultures, animals, water use
 Reflect – community involvement, energy use, consumerism
 Rethink – centre garden, use of plastic, where food comes from
Environmental (Reuse, Reduce)
 Reuse – water, creative arts,‘designer’ jewellery
 Reduce – water use, amount of waste, packaging
Economic (Recycle, Redistribute)
 Recycle –‘recycling is when you make something new out of something
old’ 4 yrs
 Redistribute – old toys, plants, garden produce

14. Respect
 The teachers talked with the children about taking creatures
from the garden. They emphasised the importance of
treating insects kindly and with respect, and returning them
to the garden. A child remembered he had left a worm in
his cubby. The child retrieved it and returned it to the
garden. The teacher commented that even if the worm was
dead its body would help the soil grow plants.

15. Reflect
 They were trying to make the earth happy. They were
cleaning the earth, watering the earth. They didn’t want
there to be rubbish on the earth. The earth is green and blue,
the one on the picture was dirty, grey and black, they needed
to get it clear again. The children came from different
countries. They didn’t like the earth to be unhappy, it doesn’t
want to have recycling all over it. They don’t want it to die
out like the dinosaurs.

16. Rethink
 The centre was rethinking the use of their back area to give
children a nature experience. They talked with the children
about playing out the back. The children wanted to know
when the equipment was arriving. Discussions ensued in
relation to playing without toys.
 Discussions with the children encouraging them to re-think
where food comes from. The supermarket is usually the
obvious answer so we have been talking about planting,
maintaining and harvesting our own fruit and vegetables and
getting children to think about where food may come from in
the future.

17. Recycle
Child: The countries might be dirty
Teacher: Is our country dirty?
Children: No
No, it is clean
The gutter is not clean
Grass is in the gutter at our house
Everyone throws things in the gutter
Teacher: Is that a good thing to do
Children No
It is littering
You should put it in the rubbish
The conversation continued about where rubbish goes and about burying rubbish in the ground
Teacher: ….Then what happens to the rubbish in the ground?What do you think?
Child: Actually, I think it is th devil’s lunch.
The conversation moved on to worms and composting.

18. Reuse
 The centre was given a box of tiles from one of the parents
flooring shop. Most of the tiles were broken. It was decided
to reuse the old concrete pavers by sticking the tiles on
them. They also did this with an old table.
 Reused old sheep pen wood to create a pathway

19. Reuse
 Teacher: Can anyone help me think of things that we can reuse?
 Je: A t shirt could go into the dress ups
 Je: We can use bags for our wearable arts
 S: We reuse paper from our bin
 Teacher: We can also reduce some of our rubbish and packaging
by making biscuits instead of buying them. I wonder what you
could do to make the rubbish mountain smaller?
 Ta: We went to the recycle centre inWanaka and I got some toys
like wonky donkey and Shrek
 KC: Sometimes we also buy recycled clothes.
 Ta: The recycled centre is fun.

20. Reduce
 Water in outdoor play. Children think there is an endless
supply. Children transferred water from the trough to
buckets and tipped down the path. Children: “Can we have
more?”. Teacher explained “No, that is all there is.” A
discussion about water and its useage took place. Other
children came to play and there was none left and no more
to be had. The original children explained why. This was
accepted by the children.
 World Earth Day – explored use of electricity, counted the
lights and the amount of energy that the lights used.

21. Reduce: Children influencing practice
In the sandpit one 4 year old boy noticed other children using
water freely.
He said‘We need to conserve water!’
So he found a plastic container, partly filled it with water so
that children could use a small bucket to access a smaller
quantity of water when they needed it.
His idea has influenced a teacher who is using this system with
all the children.

22. Recycle
 T walked past with a trolley full of plastic shovels “What are
you doingT?” “I’m putting out my recycling bin” He
informed the teacher. “Why are you putting out your
recycling binT? Because it’s all plastic, you can recycle
plastic and I’ve finished playing with it. “Excellent work
young man. I love the way you are looking after the sand pit
and thinking of the environmentT.. It’s here, I’ll put the
recycling here. We can dump it here for others to use”T.
said.

23. Recycle
 Wearable arts. Discussions with children about how to use
items from home in a variety of ways. B shared her creative
recycling ideas with others by discussing her designer
jewellery she made using utensils, tinfoil, milk bottle lids and
cellotape. “I used these (utensils) cause it was sensible”
(strong). I sorted through all these (bottle tops) and made it
myself.

24. Recycle
 M – Recycle – “bottles and tins and paper, we recycle the paper in
the green bin, we walk to the unders [under 2 years old] and put
them into the recycling bins.
 K –‘…but not in the nappy bins, we have to keep the planet safe.
We put the scraps in the scrap bowls’.
 M-‘…and they go to the chookies, we have a vegie garden’.
 ‘The worms make wee that we put on our garden. Sometimes
birds like to eat worms.’ (giggles) M, 4 years
 The worms do eat our yucky food.And they go like this’. (she
demonstrates a munching worm – hands up to her screwed up
face) P, 4 years

25. ‘We can put our food scraps into the bins, and some for
Susanna’s chickens.’ M, 4 years.
‘We don’t need to recycle.We could make things out of
our rubbish in our lunchboxes.’ L, 4 years
‘We make a mess if we don’t recycle.’ M, 4 years
‘We could turn it into paper aeroplanes.’ H, 4 years.
‘When we ride our bikes we don’t use the petrol in the
car!’ L, 4 years
‘When there was the earthquake we couldn’t use our
water.The pipes were broken, and we had to be very
careful.’ F, 4 years.

26. Redistribute
 Children and teacher went to teachers house to collect
strawberry plants to redistribute to the centre garden.
Children and teacher talked about what the strawberry plants
needed to grow. Children made comments and asked
questions – “Why do they need sun?” ,“Why are they here?”,
“Can we have one?”,“They need sun and water to grow”.
 Talked about the earthquake in Christchurch, and the
children wondered what happened to the children’s toys. We
all decided that it would be good to help and everyone could
bring in small toys we could package up to send to the
children.

27. Teacher Reflection
 One centre spoke of being surprised to find they did not use
as much sustainable language as they thought
 Do we need to put a focus on sustainability if it is to be an
integral part of the programme?
 One centre spoke of having a culture of sustainability – true
integration
 However, in documentation this integration was not necessarily
evident. Could sustainability become‘invisible’ in this context?

28. Reflections on our research
 Children have rich knowledge of environmental issues around
some complex issues
 The concept of sustainability is complex and often not understood
by teachers and children
 Often a mistaken belief that by engaging with the issues they are
‘doing sustainability’.Teachers found there was less sustainability
language than they thought
 Is this because we believe that these terms and issues are too
complex for young children?
 Practitioners involved in research are challenged to continue
exploring ways to engage children in the language and experience

29.  Need to think holistically – some areas received more attention than
others, e.g. reuse, reduce as opposed to respect, reflect and rethink
 Teachers have a key role – need to be intentional in how they engage in
conversation
 Action Competence – do they know why not just how?
 Are children encouraged to engage in critical reflection as to why
 Are we too consumerist oriented in our early childhood environments?
 Do we critically reflect on children’s understandings?

30. References
 Clark, A. (2005). Listening to and involving young children: a review of research and practice. Early Child Development and Care, 175(6), 489-505.
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 Elliott, S., & Davis, J. (2009). Exploring the resistance: An Australian perspective on educating for sustainability in early childhood. International Journal
of Early Childhood, 41(2), 65-77.
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