Associate Professor Julie Davis

Julie’s teaching and research interests lie at the intersection of science, health, society and environment, with a special interest in early years education for sustainability. Helping teachers understand and grapple with issues of social, environmental and economic sustainability, both for the present and into the future, are matters of interest and concern that are incorporated into her pedagogical approaches. Acting on this interest, Julie co-founded the Qld Early Childhood Environmental Education Network (now the Queensland Early Childhood Sustainability Network), a network designed to bring together teachers, carers, directors, parents and others keen to share resources, ideas and perspectives for incorporating education for sustainability principles and practices into early childhood education.

Research

In research, Julie specialises in action research as a means for developing understanding of a situation and for creating change, using action research for her Masters and doctoral studies. In 2008 she co-led a multi-university action research study aimed at embedding education for sustainability into preservice teacher education courses. This study resulted in the 2009 federal government report Mainstreaming Sustainability into Preservice Teacher Education.

Service/Experience

In 2010, as editor and chapter author, Julie had published the world-first textbook (Cambridge University Press) on early childhood education for sustainability – Young Children and the Environment: Early Education for Sustainability. This text, aimed at both preservice and inservice early childhood teacher education, fills a missing gap in early childhood teacher education theory and practice. 

She is co-author of the popular Research into Practice title Early Childhood Environmental Education: Making it Mainstream, published in 2003 by Early Childhood Australia. In 2004, she led a research project at a childcare centre in Brisbane examining the processes and outcomes of its long-running whole centre sustainability project. A report of this study became a chapter in the international Handbook of Sustainability Research (2005), published to mark the commencement of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014). She also contributed to the National Review of Environmental Education and its Contribution to Sustainability in Australia, Volume Two: School Education (2005), advocating for the early childhood education sector to be better recognised for its potential in changing public attitudes and actions regarding sustainability. A 2006 study investigated water education in early childhood care and education settings, and evaluated, more broadly, the potential impacts of early childhood sustainability education. Results were published in the 2008 report The Impact and Potential of Water Education in Early Childhood Care and Education Settings: A Report of the Rous Water Early Childhood Water Aware Centre Program.

In 2010, Julie conceived of, and led, the inaugural Transnational Dialogues in Research in Early Childhood Education for Sustainabilty, held in Stavanger, Norway, bringing together researchers from Scandinavia and Australasia to promote and build capacity for ECEfS research. In 2007 and 2008, she was invited to the inaugural international workshops on `the role of early childhood education in sustainable development`, in Guttenberg, Sweden. These meetings led to the 2008 UNESCO report The Contribution of Early Childhood Education to a Sustainable Society and the Gothenburg Recommendations on Education for Sustainable Development, adopted in November 2008. This latter set of recommendations – for the first time within international recommendations – recognises early childhood education as a natural starting point for education for sustainability.

Research Reports

• Mainstreaming education for sustainability into pre-service teacher education in Australia: Stage 2
• The Impact and Potential of Water Education in Early Childhood Care and Education Settings: A Report of the Rous Water Early Childhood Water Aware Centre Program.
• Doctoral thesis – Educational Innovation through Action Research in Environment Education: From Project to Praxis. Griffith University.
• Masters research dissertation – Empowering the School Community for Change: An Evaluation of Participatory Action Research in the Ashgrove Healthy School Environment Project. Griffith University.