The overarching aim is to produce a course in an App that promotes the awareness of ECE educators about sustainability related issues, such as climate change, global warming and the importance of taking actions for transformative change towards a sustainable lifestyle. The early childhood years (birth – 8), represent an unequalled, but poorly tapped, window of opportunity to instil long-lasting sustainability-related skills, attitudes, and habits. All of the UN Sustainable Development Goals impact young children. Through this project, children, their families, in-service and pre-service early childhood practitioners, and teacher educators will contribute directly to the implementation of SDG 4.2, which recognizes the importance of pre-primary education, and 4.7 about Sustainable development and global citizenship. The on-line curriculum includes activities relating to many or all of the UN SDGs, thereby increasing knowledge about the goals and providing direct experience contributing to their achievement. In the longer perspective, we want to Increase the number of participating preschools and universities to more countries in Europe and beyond.
The development and learning of values, attitudes and behaviour starts from birth, which makes early childhood education and care (ECEC) very important. However, this is not always informing policy and decision makers. The partners in this project, Sustainability from the Start: An On-line ESD Curriculum for Early Childhood Education, have for many years been actively involved in Education for sustainable development (ESD), with a childoriented perspective. However, the results show that the success or failure with the projects depends on the ECEC educators, and especially on the ECE teachers.The same conclusion is drawn by UNESCO in the 2020 ESD Roadmap. Since the Covid pandemic, professional communication and learning were often moved to digital media, and e-learning grew as a field. However, for young children, the most important group to have ICT competencies are the ECE teachers who then may plan, implement and monitor what ESD actions are suitable and relevant in the early years. This project integrates digital learning, ESD and ECEC, focusing teachers and young children. We aim at a reorientation of all education towards sustainable development.