Investigating the associative meanings of sustainability among greek kindergarten teachers

Abstract

The study reported in this paper was conducted among 167 Greek kindergarten teachers with an aim to identify and explore their conceptual frameworks on sustainability. This is a concept prominent in the environmental education discourse although not with a single and commonly approved meaning. What one meets in the literature and in practice is a pluralism of opinions and trends that produce many perspectives and forms of sustainability. These in their turn stem from and are involved in different ideological orientations and juxtapositions. A free word association task was employed to identify the associative meanings of the concept among the participating teachers. Among the results of the study was that many of the teachers either did not know or had misconceived theconcept, although the pluparity of them seem to have a basic understanding of it. The analysis also revealed the three key constituent parts of sustainability: environmental, economic and social. However, participants seem to be unable to connect sustainability to the principles and values of a self-determination process, nor to recognize the importance of empowering people to actively participate in changes that would lead to more sustainable lifestyles and living conditions. The results of the study are discussed in terms of their theoretical relevance and their implications for kindergarten teacher education. © Common Ground, Georgia Liarakou, Maria Daskolia, Evgenia Flogaitis, All Rights Reserved, Permissions.