A review of research on the Anthropocene in early childhood education

The purpose of the study is to describe and analyse previous research that investigates the topic of the Anthropocene in kindergarten. The research questions are: 1) How do kindergarten researchers define the Anthropocene? 2) How is the relationship between children and nature described in the research articles? 3) What ideas about the purpose of education are proposed in the articles?

The analysis shows that the term Anthropocene has only appeared in kindergarten research in recent years. At the same time, the term has also received criticism, especially from feminist and anticolonial perspectives. The research articles describe the relationship between children and nature in two different ways: ‘entangled children of the Anthropocene’ and ‘extraordinary children of the Anthropocene’. Children are described in most of the articles as being entangled in nature. That is, children are part of nature, as one of many species on Earth. When it comes to the educational role kindergarten should have for children in the Anthropocene, several of the research articles in the knowledge overview view children as essentially different from adults. This view portrays the educated adult as corrupted, while the not yet educated child possesses the proper knowledge the human species needs to be able to exist in the Anthropocene. 

The study is a systematic overview of knowledge with a total of 19 included articles published between 2015 and 2020. The researcher searched for relevant articles via various databases in May and June of 2020 using the keywords ‘Anthropocene’ and ‘early childhood’. Only peer-reviewed journal articles were included.

Sjögren, H. (2020). “A review of research on the Anthropocene in early childhood education”. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood.