Playing with environmental education.

Cutter-Mackenzie, Amy ; Edwards, Susan

This article represents the early collaboration of Cutter-Mackenzie and Edwards in early childhood environmental education. The article grappled with the notion of knowledge and its role in the teaching and learning of early childhood education. At that time, 'knowledge' was viewed as difficult to integrate with play-based approaches to learning in early childhood education due to reliance in the field of traditional theories of play as a basis for early childhood pedagogy. This meant that open-ended or free play dominated practice, where the role of the teacher was invariably to be seen but not heard. Since the publication of this article, Cutter-Mackenzie and Edwards have rapidly expanded upon these early ideas through an active research agenda focused on the pedagogies of play in early childhood environmental education (Cutter-Mackenzie & Edwards, 2013; Cutter-Mackenzie, Edwards, Moore, & Boyd, 2014; Cutter-Mackenzie, Edwards, & Widdop Quinton, 2014; Edwards & Cutter-Mackenzie, 2011, 2103). In their most recent book, entitled Young Children's Play and Early Childhood Education in Environmental Education, Cutter-Mackenzie et al. (2014) identified two principles of play-based learning, drawing on three types of play, namely open-ended play, modelled play, and purposefully framed play. The first principle is that all three play-types are as equally pedagogically valuable as each other. The second principle is that the play-types can be used in multiple combinations to help teachers integrate knowledge into children's play-based learning experiences. This work represents a new approach towards the pedagogy of environmental education in early childhood. Such work repositions the early childhood educator as a pedagogue with a central role in supporting the development of conceptual learning through play-based pedagogies.

doi 10.1017/aee.2014.38

References

Cutter-Mackenzie, A., Edwards, S., Moore, D., & Boyd, W. (2014). Young children's play and environmental education in early childhood education. The Netherlands: Springer.

Cutter-Mackenzie, A., & Edwards, S. (2013). The next 20 years: Imagining and reimagining sustainability, environment and education in early childhood education. In S. Elliott, Davis, J., Edwards, S., & Cutter-Mackenzie, A. (Eds.), Best of sustainability: Research, practice and theory (pp. 61-67). Canberra, Australia: Early Childhood Australia.

Cutter-Mackenzie, A., Edwards, S., & Widdop Quinton, H. (2014). Child-framed video research methodologies: Issues, possibilities and challenges for researching with children. Children's Geographies. Advance online publication. doi:10.1080/ 14733285.2013.848598

Edwards, S., & Cutter-Mackenzie, A. (2011). Enviromentalising early childhood education curriculum through pedagogies of play. Australian Journal of Early Childhood Education, 36(1), 51-60.

Edwards, S., & Cutter-Mackenzie, A. (2013). 'Next time we can be penguins': Expanding the concept of'learning play' to support learning and teaching about sustainability in early childhood education. In O. Lillemyr, S. Dockett, & B. Perry (Eds.), Varied perspectives on play and learning: Theory and research in early years education (pp. 255-274). Charlotte, NY: Information Age Press.

Biographies

Amy Cutter-Mackenzie is an Associate Professor in the School of Education, Southern Cross University. She is the Director Research for the School of Education and Research Leader of the Sustainability, Environment and Education (SEE) Research Cluster (http://scu.edu.au/education/index.php/45). Amy is also the Editor of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education. Email: Amy.Cutter-Mackenzie@scu.edu.au

Susan Edwards is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education and Arts at the Australian Catholic University. She has research interests in play-based pedagogies in the early years. Susan is currently a Co-Editor of the Asia Pacific Journal of Teacher Education. Email: Suzy.Edwards@acu.edu.au

Amy Cutter-Mackenzie (1) & Susan Edwards (2)

(1) Southern Cross University, Gold Coast Campus, Queensland, Australia

(2) Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia