Broadening Ontological and Epistemological Possibilities within Early Childhood Teacher Education for Sustainability

The dominant sustainability ethos and discourse within early childhood education pursue a normative ontological and epistemological direction aimed at empowering children’s agency and thus, building certain predefined moral values, knowledge, and skills. Likewise, mainstream early childhood teacher education programmes strive to build early childhood pre-service teachers’ sustainability knowledge and skills, especially to enhance their capacity to be transformative agents and motivators for change to engage children with sustainability challenges. In this conceptual article, drawing on posthuman concepts, I highlight the limits of such orthodox assumptions in early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) teacher education and invite broader ontological and epistemic possibilities. I interrogate the human-centric assumptions that unintentionally perpetuate the deep-rooted binary thinking that separates humans from non-humans and other species. In doing so, I offer an expanded understanding of the underlying ontological and epistemic assumptions within teacher education for ECEfS. I conclude by indicating how posthuman theories serve as an impetus for epistemological and ontological multiplicities in early childhood teacher education for sustainability

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

Reconfiguring Environmental Sustainability in Early Childhood Education: a Post-anthropocentric Approach

The purpose of this dissertation is twofold. First, it explores how the notion of sustainability is conceptualized within early childhood education discourses and how it is manifested in early childhood curricula. Second, the dissertation examines post-anthropocentric possibilities of sustainability within early childhood education. A major finding of the two studies, relating to the first purpose, is that early childhood education tends to have an anthropocentric bias and over-emphasizes the importance of children’s agency in enhancing their potential to contribute to sustainability. Using this finding as a backdrop, the major finding of the two subsequent studies, relating to the second purpose, is that post-anthropocentric analysis can help to challenge these shortcomings and offer the emergence of a different sustainability ethos. In doing so, sustainability is reconceptualized as a generative concept that opens up possibilities for children to learn-with, become-with and be/become affected by non-humans, i.e. other species and non-human forces. Specific posthuman concepts such as assemblage, distributed agency and becoming-with are used as thinking tools. Systematic literature review and curricula content analysis are employed as methods for study one and study two respectively. Study three and study four draw ideas from post-qualitative inquiry which employ concepts that allow to experimentally engage with the world and think with/become-with data. The latter two studies empirically demonstrate emerging possibilities of learning for sustainability with the non-human others/material forces and other species. In the end, the dissertation highlights that post-humanist and new materialist perspectives can provide a post-anthropocentric conceptualisation of sustainability, which paves the way for a more relational ontology, one that could in turn create a pedagogical practice supporting sustainability

Prime Time in Preschool Through Teacher-Guided Play with Rectangular Numbers

In preschool, numbers and shapes typically appear as separate topics. This study explores how a game, designed as a guided play activity with figurate numbers, functions in a preschool context. The guided play involved parking Lego cars in a rectangular shape, and to find out for which number of Lego cars this is possible. Thirteen preschool children in three separate age groups, aged from four to six years, together with their teacher, participated in the study. Their communications through words and actions were recorded. The results exemplify how this guided play provides a rich context for engaging young children with mathematical activities such as counting, sorting, shaping, asking, justifying, and inferring, as well as emotional engagement with the activity

Thinking with fire, water and sun - material-discursive entanglements in Swedish outdoor education

In this paper, we empirically demonstrate emerging material-discursive entanglements of different bodies in Swedish outdoor education, and thereby provoke openings for questioning some aspects of the conceptualization of a nature/culture divide. Outdoor and environmental education have been criticized for upholding this divide by not paying attention to the power structures through which bodies become sedimented as either human or nature. By discussing entanglements, and how educators might attend to them as a pedagogical tool, our paper responds to this line of thinking. Vital materialism and agential realism were put to work in a post-qualitative study at a Swedish folk high school. Through engagement with a group of outdoor students, empirical material was created and examples of material-discursive entanglements analyzed. We conclude that outdoor educators can create possibilities for attending to the entanglements of different bodies, thereby making possible a learning with them. This may open alternative ways to conduct outdoor education that challenge the conceptualization of a nature/culture divide

From Autonomous Child to a Child Entangled within an Agentic World : Implications for Early Childhood Education for Sustainability

Over the past decade, the discourse within the early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) field has significantly changed. A central concept in the discussion is the notion of young children as agents of change for sustainability. Recent research has indicated that children are agents who are able to engage with complex sustainability problems and can be part of the solution for sustainability challenges. This belief works with the assumption that humans at large, and children in particular, are agents who can be taught to be ethical and rational to care for and safeguard the world. This approach is inherently anthropocentric, unintentionally overlooking the agentic characteristics of the non-human world. From the very beginning, this approach, albeit often unintentionally, declares ontological and epistemological separation between the human child and the wider more-than-human world, which turns the non-humans into a passive background for humans to act on. In this chapter, we challenge the idea of making the rational, ethical and agentic child, and explore possibilities for the unfolding relational child, and its implications for sustainability. Drawing on a posthumanist and post-anthropocentric perspective, we argue that the child is not a fixed autonomous and self-privileged subject, but rather is a situated being within an agentic, assemblaged world that he/she becomes-with, and is affected by multiple non-human actors and forces. Pedagogically, this moves ECEfS from focusing on the agentic child to recognizing diverse ways of knowing that include: affective learning, embodied learning and learning with others.The discourse within the early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) field has significantly changed. A central concept in the discussion is the notion of young children as agents of change for sustainability. In this chapter, the author challenges the idea of making the rational, ethical and agentic child, and explores possibilities for the unfolding relational child, and its implications for sustainability. Drawing on a posthumanist and post-anthropocentric perspective, the author argues that the child is not a fixed autonomous and self-privileged subject, but rather is a situated being within an agentic, assemblaged world that he/she becomes-with, and is affected by multiple non-human actors and forces. Pedagogically, this moves ECEfS from focusing on the agentic child to recognizing diverse ways of knowing that include: affective learning, embodied learning and learning with others

Evaluation of CORDEX-Africa Model Data Reliability and Bias Correction for Climate Change Impact Assessment: Upper Tekeze River Basin, Tigray (Ethiopia)

Model simulation evaluation is crucial for selecting the best regional climate models, as their performance may vary across different locations or variables. This research aims to examine and correct potential biases in the CORDEX ensemble climate dataset over the period of 1987-2005 so as to establish trust in utilizing the CORDEX ensemble forecasts for climate change impact assessment focusing on the UTRB. The Pearson correlation coefficient is employed to assess the degree of correlation between CORDEX and observation data, and the applicability of the CORDEX ensemble data for the UTRB. The statistical analysis reveals a significant correlation between the monthly mean rainfall and temperature in the CORDEX-Africa ensemble simulation and the corresponding observation data for most of the 18 stations. The finding suggests that the CORDEX-Africa ensemble dataset holds promise for future climate projection in the UTRB. The statistical approaches of bias, RMSE, and MAE are employed to assess the adequacy of the CORDEX ensemble model in reproducing observed data. Various bias correction approaches are employed to enhance the accuracy of rainfall and temperature datasets, addressing discrepancies from over and under simulation. The reliability evaluation results indicate that the CORDEX-Africa ensemble precipitation and temperature data set has undergone bias adjustment in order to accurately reproduce the observed gridded dataset for the same period. This adjustment was performed using various methodologies across the 18 stations. Following the bias modifications, the CORDEX ensemble's precipitation and temperature dataset exhibited a high degree of concordance with the grid observation dataset across all 18 observation stations, for the corresponding time. The approaches utilized in this work possess the potential for practical applicability in generating dependable climate data that may be employed in evaluating and forecasting the consequences of climate change using globally accessible data resources.   Received: 17 October 2023 | Revised: 25 December 2023 | Accepted: 5 January 2024    Conflicts of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.   Supplementary Information Supplementary file

PREDICTIONS AND METHODS OF SEPARATION OF RACEMIC BIDENTATE LIGANDS VIA STEREOSELECTIVE LIGAND-EXCHANGE REACTIONS

The technique of molecular mechanics has been applied to the prediction of isomer distributions of several complexes of chiral quadridentate amine ligands in conjunction with some optically active bidentate substrates. Specifically, the systems reported comprise the cobalt(III) and nickel(II) complexes of N,N'-bis[2(S)-2-pyrrolidinylmethyl]ethane-1,2-diamine (S,S-epm) and N,N'-bis[2(S)-2-pyrrolidinylmethyl]propane-1,3-diamine (S,S-ppm) in combination with the chiral bidentate ligands propane-1,2-diamine, (pn) 2-pyrrolidinylmethanamine (pam), and alanine (ala). Agreement between all predicted and observed isomer ratios was within 5%. The experimentally determined enantiomer ratios were as follows: [Co(S,S-ppm)(pn)]3+, 49/51 R-pn/S-pn; [Ni(S,S-ppm)(pn)]2+, 57/43 R-pn/S-pn; [Ni(S,S-ppm)(pam)]2+, 44/56 R-pam/S-pam; [Ni(S,S-epm)(pn)]2+, 43/57 R-pn/S-pn; [Ni(S,S-epm)(pam)]2+, 70/30 R-pam/S-pam. Various experimental methods are reported for the determination of chiral separation