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Preschool teachers play an important role in preparing children to become responsible and competent citizens in the future for their communities and globally. EfS equips children with requisite knowledge and skills needed to create a sustainable future. The Swedish curriculum for the preschool Lpfö 2018 explicitly incorporates EfS from a holistic perspective integrating environmental, social and economic dimensions. Despite this, research indicates that many preschool teachers and principals still find the concept of sustainability as complex and abstract, particularly economic sustainability. During this self-organised symposium we present two research projects where preschool teachers and principals implement EfS in their pedagogical planning and activities.

Firstly, we present a Research and Development program (R&D) Sustainable preschool, 2021-2024, coordinated by the Ifous Institute, with approximately 300 participants (200 preschool teachers and 100 leaders) from 8 municipal and 1 private organisations. Sustainable preschools has explored how sustainable development is understood in a preschool perspective, and how principals, preschool teachers, and administration implement and work with sustainability issues in practice. All preschools are using the OMEP ESD Rating Scale. We will give examples from both the practical work in preschools and administration, as well as from research findings.

Secondly, we present the research project Eco-certified Preschools and Children's Learning for Sustainability, 2018-2022, where data was collected from 585 preschool teachers and child minders from 50 preschools in 25 municipalities in Sweden. The data we present was analysed with the OMEP ESD Rating Scale. The most common topics in EfS were related to the economic (389) and the environmental (318) dimensions of sustainability, while the social dimension was markedly lower (85). Collaboration outside of the preschool was unusual, however, the study was partly carried out during the Covid pandemic, which might have had some impact on the study results.