Education experts Professor E Jayne White and Dr Ngaroma Williams (Te Arawa | Ngāti Raukawa ki Wharepūhunga | Ngāti Awa) from Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | The University of Canterbury (UC), together with a larger research team, investigated children’s water representations at three early childhood education sites near local waterscapes – an estuary, the sea and a river. They wanted to Understand children’s perspectives on what is happening to these waterscapes.

“We knew from research with older students that many young people are concerned about climate change. According to the United Nations, one in five young people feel unprepared for climate change and are calling for better education to understand its complexity. But we didn’t really know what the situation was like among very young students because no one had asked about it before,” says Professor White.

“While the Sustainable Development Goals and Education for Sustainability guidelines are being implemented by teachers, there is not much research on whether this is leading to our Young children worry about climate changewhy they worry and what consequences these worries have.

“We found that children are very concerned about water: about the quality of drinking water, whether habitats are clean enough for fish, and about the power of water to bring about change in the coastal environment. Depending on how these concerns were framed by their teachers, we found that children’s reactions ranged from feeling stressed and overwhelmed by climate change to activating their awareness of how they might respond.”

According to the researchers, concern itself is not the problem. “We see that concern may even be necessary to inspire action on climate change. But this type of response was heavily dependent on the mediating role of the teacher and in particular how they addressed these issues in the curriculum,” says Professor White.

The study suggests that the best approach for teachers is to create a shared sense of collective power (from ‘we’) rather than imposing a set of sustainability rules that must be followed. “We want our tamariki to feel that they can tackle the challenges before them together. Solutions will be found in relationships ‘with’ people, places and things, including water,” says Professor White.

“Connecting to water through whakapapa Māori provides a positive framework for young children,” says Dr Williams. “Learning about Atua was a common thread in this project, as was Matariki. When children learn that water is the blood of Papatūānuku (Mother Earth), they begin to see deeper levels of encounter and how this gives them a sense of responsibility.”

Researchers have found that learning about atua (Māori deities) – Papatūānuku, Ranginui and Tangaroa – can help young children process their worries by personifying nature and providing children with a foundation for seeing themselves as kaitiaki, or guardians of the waterscapes.

The study is part of an international project led by the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, but locally embedded in the unique cultural context of Aotearoa New Zealand, including Mātauranga Māori (indigenous knowledge). Researchers from Norway, Tanzania and New Zealand spent four days at each early childhood education site, taking part in field trips to waterways where they walked alongside children, took photographs of their representations of water and collected over 80 narratives for analysis.

The results of the New Zealand part of the study were published as “Walking with children and water in ECEC: Exploring the framework for climate change action” in the International Journal of Early Childhood.