Building Communities of Practice: Training Educators Through Engaging in Experimentation with a Theoretical-Practical Model for Early Childhood Environmental Education

The contribution aims to present some outcomes of a PhD research that involved testing an educational-didactic model through the creation of specific pathways and activities aimed at raising awareness of care and respect for the environment and nature in early childhood. In particular, the paper explores the crucial role of educator training in promoting communities of practice (CoPs) within early childhood educational settings, with a specific focus on environmental and nature education. Integrating environmental education into early childhood education is increasingly imperative, and the creation of strong CoPs among educators serves as a pivotal mechanism for facilitating effective and sustainable practices in this area. The contribution aims to illustrate the involvement of educators in the quasi-experiment, from the co-design phase to the implementation of activities with the children in the experimental sections. The intent is to emphasize the importance of the emerging comparison, bringing out the most suitable strategies and methodologies that contributed to the successful application of the model. Some outcomes of the surveys conducted attempt to highlight the effectiveness of specific training courses for educators in service and the active engagement of the educational staff in research activities, which have fostered the solicitation of transversal skills and the sharing of best practices.