Teaching Young Children About Sustainability: A Constructivist Approach

Introduction

Science education for preschool children has recently received considerable attention. Recent research has shown that children who engage in scientific exploration in early childhood have a better understanding of science concepts later in life (Patrick, 2009). Children are natural scientists: inquisitive and enthusiastic with a predisposition for investigation. Children are living in a world of thing that are constantly beckoning: some living, some hard and cold, some large, some metallic, and some dirty (Suransky,1982). Some refer to it as an innate curiosity to discover everything within their reach (Bredekamp & Copple, 2009, Piaget, 1955). Preschool children are engaged in the study of science long before they have entered any school building (Grennon-Brooks, 2011). As soon as children realize that they can discover things for themselves, their first encounter with science has occurred (Bredekamp, 2014; Tu, 2006).

Despite its importance, teachers tend not to provide high-quality science experiences in early childhood classrooms (Gerde, Schacter, & Wasik, 2013; Fitzgerald & Schneider, 2013; Tu, 2006). Many early educators are hesitant about introducing science in their own classrooms, citing that they themselves did not enjoy studying science as students and they feel ill prepared to teach it (Conezio & French, 2002). As a result, many teachers teach science through a series of isolated experiments without any connection to a meaningful and broader science curriculum. In one study, preschool teachers reported that the science curriculum consisted of children watering plants and displaying a random assortment of stones and shells in the back of their classrooms (Fitzgerald & Schneider, 2013).

Therefore, it is not surprising that a number of studies have discovered that preschool students are not ready to learn science when they enter kindergarten (Conezio & French, 2012). Studies have found that children in kindergarten are already forming negative views about science that might negatively affect their dispositions towards science throughout their school years. When researchers interviewed kindergartners from typical classrooms, scarcely a third of the children showed any knowledge of science. Further, student interest in science fades through the elementary years, which has been attributed to ‘‘less investigative science practices’’ employed by their classroom teachers (Watters and Diezmann 2007, p. 351). This is especially true for girls, who even before entering kindergarten are less likely to say they like science (Sharapan, 2012).