<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Could the conventional methods of teaching young children
about waste be re-engineered?</h3>



<p>Could we come up with new ways for children and young
adults to learn about reduce, reuse, recycle, recover, remediate and repair?
According to one ECU researcher, maybe we can.</p>



<p>Professor Mindy Blaise wants to turn the way we teach
young children about waste, water and the world around us on its head.</p>



<p>“Science has been trying to solve the issue of
environmental degradation and climate change, but hasn’t adequately addressed
the problem,” she said.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"><p>“Maybe if we approached these issues differently, we might create a change.”</p></blockquote>



<p>“It’s not just about teaching children and young people
how to reduce, reuse or recycle. Instead, we might need to come up with a
radically different approach.”</p>



<p>Professor Blaise is interested in bringing together early
childhood researchers, artists and waste scholars from the environmental and
social sciences and the humanities to respond to current waste practices in
early childhood education.</p>



<p>Professor Blaise wants to use the creative arts to
analyse, rethink, and transform waste practices in early childhood.</p>



<p>She is hoping to develop new theoretical and empirical
directions for the field of early childhood education that rethink the Rs
(reduce, reuse, recycle, recover, remediate, and repair) and change young
children’s relations with waste.</p>



<p>Professor Blaise is building a research team that will
focus on the Rs by re-envisioning managerial waste practices in locally
meaningful and generative ways.</p>



<p>Exploring how children’s lives are affected by waste
materials and becoming more aware opens up possibilities for imagining and
educating for alternatives to the well-known Rs approach.</p>



<p>She is part of an international research team looking to
engage with innovative disciplinary and interdisciplinary theoretical and
methodological approaches to rethinking the Rs and is hoping to expand the
project in Western Australia.</p>



<p>Professor Blaise is hoping to build on current
relationships with schools, early childhood centres, artists and creative
groups to expand her research in Western Australia.</p>



<p>The research team will also leverage the ECU School of
Education’s expertise and relationships with government and industry.</p>



<p>Professor Blaise is the 19th appointment under ECU’s
Professorial Research Fellow initiative, an ambitious project to recruit more
than 20 professors from around the world to increase research activity and
impact.</p>

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