Education for sustainability in higher education; Early Childhood Studies as a site for provocation,collaboration and inquiry

Fifteen years after they were created, the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have reached their expiration date. The United Nations asserts that surveys conducted in September 2015 suggested that only 4% of the UK public had heard of the MDG’s. The renewed focus on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer opportunities for higher education institutions (HEIs) to work alongside students to create a shared and contextualised awareness of sustainable development within Early Childhood Education. This aim is pertinent for those students studying Early Childhood Studies (ECS) degrees with the potential goal of working with babies, young children and their families. The research was situated within a paradigm of critical educational research to establish a shared understanding of sustainable development within a newly validated BA (Hons) ECS programme at a HEI in the Northwest of England. Visual provocations were used as a pedagogical intervention to present a disorientating dilemma, critical reflection on personal perspective and an examination of world views. Findings suggested that visual methodologies supported students to appreciate the ambiguity and contested limits of knowledge, and to draw upon wider sources related to moral and ethical principles and to established rights and responsibilities.