TY - JOUR

T1 - Impact of early childhood education settings on the systems thinking skills of preschool children through the lens of Bronfenbrenner's theory

AU - Feriver, Şebnem

AU - Olgan, Refika

AU - Teksöz, Gaye

AU - Barth, Matthias

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

PY - 2022/1/1

Y1 - 2022/1/1

N2 - The new generation spend a considerable amount of their time in formal education settings. Only a small fraction of this time is allocated to equipping children with the ability to deal with sustainability issues and so empowering them to respond to the key challenges of our time. Systems thinking (ST) has been promoted as a way of responding to these challenges by facilitating the understanding of complex dilemmas and mitigating them. The aim of this multiple case study is to shed light on the impact of early childhood education (ECE) settings on the ST skills of preschool children aged between four and six. For this purpose, we developed a strategy and instruments to determine ECE setting variables that could potentially be taken into consideration in ST education. We applied this methodology to contrasting cases from Turkey and Germany. The findings have important implications for policy makers, researchers and ECE teachers.

AB - The new generation spend a considerable amount of their time in formal education settings. Only a small fraction of this time is allocated to equipping children with the ability to deal with sustainability issues and so empowering them to respond to the key challenges of our time. Systems thinking (ST) has been promoted as a way of responding to these challenges by facilitating the understanding of complex dilemmas and mitigating them. The aim of this multiple case study is to shed light on the impact of early childhood education (ECE) settings on the ST skills of preschool children aged between four and six. For this purpose, we developed a strategy and instruments to determine ECE setting variables that could potentially be taken into consideration in ST education. We applied this methodology to contrasting cases from Turkey and Germany. The findings have important implications for policy makers, researchers and ECE teachers.

KW - bioecological theory of human development

KW - early childhood education setting

KW - preschool education

KW - sustainability

KW - systems thinking

KW - Sustainability education

KW - Sustainability sciences, Communication

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85094188137&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1002/sres.2749

DO - 10.1002/sres.2749

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85094188137

VL - 39

SP - 85

EP - 103

JO - Systems Research and Behavioral Science

JF - Systems Research and Behavioral Science

SN - 1092-7026

IS - 1

ER -