Everyday environmental education experiences: the role of content in early childhood education

In recent years discussions surrounding early childhood curriculum have focused on the movement from developmental to sociocultural theory. A further area worthy of investigation involves the role of content in early childhood education, specifically the relationship between content, context and pedagogy. The article draws on teacher vignettes to consider how environmental education can be represented as a content area in early years education. Issues associated with environmental education as an emerging area of importance in early childhood education are also discussed. Environmental education provides a context by which children and teachers can construct everyday knowledge and offers a useful basis for examining issues associated with content in early childhood education. From this perspective, highly authentic learning experiences can be utilised to examine how teachers conceive content in early childhood education and how content knowledge is intersected with pedagogical knowledge to achieve intended environmental education outcomes with young children.