Investigating early childhood education for sustainability : insights from history and literature

Seemingly straightforward tasks often have a way of becoming complex. This was the case for our guest editorial team charged with creating Early Childhood Australia’s Best of Sustainability publication drawn from the the Australasian Journal of Early Childhood and Every Child. The complexities we encountered ranged from the varied terminologies and understandings of constructs such as education for sustainable development, environmental education and education for sustainability, through to the fundamental lack of published research on which to draw as the basis for a special issue. It is timely to explore these complexities as we face the global challenges of The Critical Decade (DCCEE, 2011) including rising sea levels, extreme weather events and food security. At a local level, the early childhood field in Australia is seeking to interpret sustainability with systemic support from the National Quality Standards(NQS) (ACECQA, 2011), while elsewhere environmental/sustainability education is encouraged through national curricula documents (for example, Singapore Ministry of Education, 2008; Swedish National Agency for Education,2010; Ministry of Education of Korea, 2011). Both The Critical Decade and the NQS provide imperatives to drive early childhood education’s engagement with sustainability. In other words, sustainability in early childhood education is no longer optional, but essential (Elliott, 2010). While some twenty years of advocacy has led to this somewhat subdued celebratory position, in this publication we do recognise the historical contexts that have led to early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS), as we (Elliott & Davis) phrase it, becoming almost ‘mainstream not marginal’ (Davis, 1999)— a stitching together of the isolated ‘patches of green’, first identified a decade ago by Elliott (NSW EPA, 2003). Here we weave together, through these articles, a story of the evolving history of ECEfS from our particular perspective. In so doing, we also acknowledge that there are other perspectives or ‘paths’ for this field as identified by Edwards and Cutter-McKenzie in their concluding paper to this compilation.

The History and Literature of America's Oysters

Historically, America's use and enjoyment of the oyster extend far back into prehistoric times. The Native Americans often utilized oysters, more intensively in some areas than in others, and, at least in some areas of the Caribbean and Pacific coast, the invading Spanish sought oysters as eagerly as they did gold-but for the pearls. That was the pearl oyster, Pinctada sp., and signs of its local overexploitation were recorded early in the 16th century. During the 1800's, use of the eastern oyster grew phenomenally and, for a time, it outranked beef as a source of protein in some parts of the nation. Social events grew up around it, as it became an important aspect of culture and myth. Eventually, research on the oyster began to blossom, and scientific literature on the various species likewise bloomed-to the extent that when the late Paul Galtsoff wrote his classic treatise "The American oyster Crassostrea virginica Gmelin" in 1954, he reported compiling an extensive bibliography of over 6,000 subject and author cards on oysters and related subjects which he deposited in the library of the Woods Hole Laboratory of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (now NMFS). That large report, volume 64 (480 pages) of the agency's Fishery Bulletin, was a bargain at $2.75, and it has been a standard reference ever since. But the research and the attendant literature have grown greatly since Galtsoff's work was published, and now that has been thoroughly updated.

The Jewish encyclopedia : a descriptive record of the history, religion, literature, and customs of the Jewish people from the earliest time to the present day ; complete in 12 volumes

Isidore Singer, projector and managing ed.

Scrolls : essays on Jewish history and literature and kindred subjects: in 2 vol.

by Gotthard Deutsch

The history and literature of the Israelites according to the Old Testament and the Apocrypha

by C[onstance] and A[nna] de Rothschild

Texts and studies in Jewish history and literature,

Errata slip inserted between p. [vii] and viii of v. 1 and p. [iv] and v of v. 2.

Art in costume design : practical suggestions for those interested in art, sewing, history and literature /

Mode of access: Internet.

A short bibliography on Scottish history and literature,

A list of books arranged by subject followed by an author list, with publisher, date, etc.

The masterpieces and the history of literature,: analysis, criticism, character and incident /

Published in 1898 under title "The literature of all nations and all ages."

The Jewish encyclopedia: a descriptive record of the history, religion, literature, and customs of the Jewish people from the earliest times to the present day/

Mode of access: Internet.

The standard dictionary of facts; history, language, literature, biography, geography, travel, art, government, politics, industry, invention, commerce, science, education, natural history, statistics and miscellany,

Mode of access: Internet.

A history of Greece, from the earliest times to the Roman conquest, with supplementary chapters on the history of literature and art,

Mode of access: Internet.

The Annual review, and history of literature.

Mode of access: Internet.

The history of ancient Greece : its colonies and conquests; from the earliest accounts till the division of the Macedonian empire in the East. Including the history of literature, philosophy, and the fine arts /

Mode of access: Internet.

A history of Greece, from the earliest times to the Roman conquest. With supplementary chapters on the history of literature and art.

Mode of access: Internet.