Thematic Teaching of Augmented Reality and Education for Sustainable Development in Preschool—The Importance of ‘Place’

Abstract

In this study, we report on a case study of two Swedish preschool teachers’ first experiences of teaching sustainable development goals through the innovative use of augmented reality. Their statements about thematic work, children’s agency, teachers’ perspective, and augmented reality were analysed qualitatively through a theoretical framework based on transduction and place. The innovative use of augmented reality related to the importance of children’s agency in their exploration of local places associated with sustainable development goals is elaborated on, especially with the value of treating augmented reality as a ‘what’, or content, in teaching before it can be used as a ‘how’, or tool, for teaching sustainable development. It is seen in this exploratory study that transducing meaning between different representations such as physical places and the sustainable development goals in augmented reality applications opens up fruitful discussions regarding, for example, democracy aspects and source criticism between children and preschool teachers. Results indicate that the introduction of augmented reality technology is also worth pursuing in early-year teaching.

1. Introduction

Digitalisation is nowadays a natural part of society and as a result, it has gained an increasingly prominent place in early childhood education around Europe. However, even though the use of augmented reality (AR) has increased in the field of education, only a very limited number of studies have been carried out in preschool [1,2]. Furthermore, studies reporting on the views of preschool teachers on working with AR are lacking. In this article, we report on an exploratory case study of the experiences of two preschool teachers in teaching sustainable development with AR in Sweden. The content of sustainable development was found to fit well with the aim for digitalisation in the current national curriculum for preschool in Sweden.

Education should also give children the opportunity to develop adequate digital skills by enabling them to develop an understanding of the digitalisation they encounter in everyday life. Children should be given the opportunity to develop a critical, responsible attitude towards digital technology, so that eventually they can see opportunities and understand risks, and also be able to evaluate information [3].

Additionally, sustainable development has its base in critical reflections and the question of how we can meet today’s human needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs [4]. The idea is often described as having three dimensions: economic, social, and ecologic. In 2015, all the countries in the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The 17 goals seek to end poverty and hunger, realise human rights, and ensure the protection of natural resources on the planet. In 2022, a report was launched by the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water with recommendations for actions guided by 27 experts in sustainable development. One of the ten key statements addresses that human–nature connectedness should be strengthened in social norms and how we live our everyday lives (e.g., by increasing nature-based education for children and youth). Education, from pre-school to higher education, has been recognised as a key factor in the development of a life-long engagement with sustainability, and transformation, or system changes, is necessary [5]. In line with this, five priority areas in education for sustainable development (ESD) were highlighted in UNESCO’s Global Action Programme: (1) advancing policy; (2) transforming learning environments; (3) building capacities of educators; (4) empowering and mobilising youth; and (5) accelerating local-level actions [6].

1.1. Sustainable Development and Digitalisation in Swedish Preschool

In Sweden, preschool is part of the educational system as a voluntary form of school for children from one to five years of age. According to the statistics, nearly 86% of children in that age range participate, and the cost is nationally subsidised. Preschool teachers (3.5 years university study) are responsible for pedagogical activities, aiming for play and learning in content areas described in the national curriculum for preschool [3]. In the latest version of the curriculum, there is an increased focus on several aspects of sustainable development (SD). Examples of what the preschool should provide each child with the conditions to help them develop, and related to the present study, are:

• An understanding of democratic principles and the ability to cooperate and make decisions in accordance with them;
• A growing responsibility for and interest in sustainable development and active participation in society;
• An understanding of how different choices people make in everyday life can contribute to sustainable development;
• An understanding of relationships in nature and different cycles in nature, and how people, nature, and society affect each other [3].

There are also several goals related to digitalisation:

• An interest in stories, pictures, and texts in different media, both digital and other, and their ability to use, interpret, question, and discuss them;
• An ability to explore, describe with different forms of expression, ask questions, and discuss science and technology;
• An ability to discover and explore technology in everyday life [3].

It is further expressed that the work team should “create conditions for children to develop their ability to communicate, document and convey occurrences, experiences, ideas and thoughts using different forms of expression, both with and without digital tools” [3].

Hence, Swedish preschool is goal-directed, which indicates a continued development of early childhood education didactics [7,8,9,10], with didactic in the Scandinavian sense, meaning that teachers develop knowledge of both the content in focus and how to provide favourable conditions for children’s learning [11,12,13,14]. The argument for science by Fleer, ”The challenge goes beyond content knowledge to teacher beliefs and pedagogy practices” [11] (p. 1074), still holds.

1.2. Thematic Teaching

The didactic of combining two or more different contents in teaching is well-established in the Swedish preschools’ tradition of thematic teaching, where the contents are contextualised and studied for an extended time. Teaching with a thematic approach entails including the children’s experiences and specific situations [15,16]. Hence, the teaching would strive to acknowledge the children’s perspectives and relate to the everyday phenomena that they are interested in [17]. Here, we adopted the classification scheme for thematic teaching in early childhood introduced in [16], consisting of the constructs multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary teaching, from the literature on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education cf. [18,19,20]. A multidisciplinary approach means that concepts from the included content areas are taught separately, in other words, AR and ESD would be taught at different times, and the integration and thematic application would be more or less left to the children on their own. The interdisciplinary approach is characterised by content from different areas being intertwined and linked during teaching. In our case, this would entail that AR and ESD are taught simultaneously and thematically applied in a second step. The transdisciplinary approach takes the thematisation a step further, with concepts and skills being taught based on a real-world situation. The first step would be to select a phenomenon to investigate and learn about, and the second step would include the contents in AR and ESD and intertwine problem-solving and teaching.

1.3. Transduction and the Importance of Place

As stated above, transforming learning environments, empowering and mobilising youth, and accelerating local-level actions are all strategies in UNESCO’s Global Action Programme (2020). They all involve the important aspect of place because, as commented by Geertz [21], “[N]o one lives in the world in general” (p. 259). Places are profoundly pedagogical as centres of experience, where our identities are shaped and where we learn about how the world works [22]. Casey [23] emphasises the deep connection between place and self when he states, ‘there is no place without self and no self without place’, and Scott [24] expresses that a sense of place represents the vital link between where we live and who we are.

The meaning of place, however, varies across different disciplines. Hence, from an ecological standpoint, places are alive, while from the mathematical or computational point of view, place could be a point or a screen. From a model-based view [25], or viewed from a cultural or psychological perspective, one person’s experience of a place would depend on prior experiences and might be different from another person’s (i.e., one would experience different ‘places’). Grünewald describes the problem with traditional schooling not recognising the importance of experiencing places. He discusses that places are produced by people, but at the same time, places introduce certain ways of thinking about the world. To address this issue, Grünewald proposed a critical pedagogy of place, a pedagogy that relates to the students’ experience of the world and improves the quality of life for people and communities [26]. This critical pedagogy is ecologically as well as socially grounded and emphasises our relationships to each other and to our socio-ecological places. Furthermore, the critical pedagogy of place aims at teachers and students taking social action to improve the social and ecological life of both local and distant places [26] (Grünewald, 2003b), and can thus be viewed as a pedagogy for sustainable development.

In order to help learners make fruitful connections between teaching content and different places, the use of representations and different semiotic resources has become part of the teaching process. Tytler and Prain [27,28,29] describe the importance of transduction in science teaching and learning, referring to the process where the meaning of one representation or semiotic resource (e.g., speech) is transduced to and re-articulated in another representation (e.g., image). We see this as also being applicable to learning about AR and SD. They propose, and we agree, that transduction in science learning involves creative reasoning enabled by cognitive and semiotic resources. They discuss the role of the teacher in guiding students to link, confirm, and expand meanings across representations, which is fundamental for students to learn concepts and processes in science. Transduction here refers to the process where children experience meaning from a specific content based on the experience of several different representations of that content that teachers help them link. Consequently, reasoning and inference are based on similarities and analogical transfer from the observed phenomenon to cause (i.e., the formulation of hypotheses of cause). This reasoning about why phenomena are perceived as they are can be seen as related to abductive reasoning [30], which begins with observations and proceeds to formulate possible explanations. Different representations in early-year science teaching convey different aspects of science content, hence, increasing the variation and opportunities for children to experience the teaching content [7,25,31].

2. Aim and Research Questions

The aim of this study was to explore how two experienced preschool teachers described their first experiences of the thematic teaching of AR and SD, with a special focus on place-based education. The research questions guiding the analysis were:

• How do preschool teachers describe thematic teaching including AR and SD?
• What is the role of place and transduction in the teaching and learning process?

3. Method

This was an exploratory case study that focused on work in two preschools, with the same preschool principal, in a small town in the southern part of Sweden. The preschools aim to develop work with sustainable development and digital technology, and therefore applied for and received a grant for an innovation project involving AR and sustainable development. Work with the sustainable development goals (SDGs) was ongoing in both preschools, but AR was a new area for the pedagogical staff. In the project, two preschool teachers (30 and 5 years teaching experience, respectively), one at each preschool, had initial training regarding AR and possible applications for preschool children. The preschool teachers next explored the applications together with their respective child groups of 4–5 year-olds (22 children in one preschool and 18 children in the other). The children participated in smaller groups in thematic teaching activities of AR and ESD during a semester. The children had no prior experience with AR applications. We chose to analyse the descriptions of these two experienced preschool teachers of their attempts at thematic teaching including AR and ESD in an explorative case study to develop knowledge of descriptive aspects of such pioneering work.

The researchers collected and analysed the preschool teachers’ pedagogical planning documents and their final written report on the project. The content in these documents served as a foundation for a follow-up semi-structured interview conducted with the two preschool teachers by one of the researchers. The interview was audio-recorded and transcribed in full. A conventional content analysis [32] was conducted separately by the two researchers, who then met, discussed the codes, compared their analyses, and discussed tentative categories. In the next step, the categories were finalised and described as AR + ESD: Thematic teaching; AR + ESD: Children’s agency; AR + ESD: Teacher perspective, and AR: What is real and what is not? In a subsequent step of the analysis, these categories were analysed and discussed by the researchers in relation to the concepts place and transduction. From the triangulation of the three data resources (i.e., planning documents, final written report, and interview), consistency was revealed in the preschool teachers’ expressed experience during and after the project. The interview thereby confirmed and deepened the researchers’ understanding of the content in the planning documents and in the final written report.

Ethical considerations adhere to recommendations by the Swedish Research Council [33]. In this study, this included written consent where the researchers informed the participants about voluntary participation, that the participants had the right to cancel their participation at any time, and that the participants and preschools would be given pseudonyms in the data when the study was reported on. The pseudonyms for the two teachers were Jennifer and Angelica.

4. Results

In the following, the two preschool teachers’ descriptions of their teaching with AR and SD are presented under headings representing the identified categories.

4.1. AR and ESD: Thematic Teaching

In the two preschools, as in the rest of the municipality they are both part of, digitalisation and SD had been determined as prioritised areas of development. In their innovation project, the preschool teachers decided to combine the teaching of SD, in terms of the SDGs, and AR. They identified that the two content areas had a point of intersection where they both offered learning regarding problem solving, critical thinking, and communication. A content area can be described in terms of the didactic question ‘what’, while the teaching arrangements about the same can be described as the ‘how’ of the teaching [34]. The preschools both had previous experience of education for SD (ESD), but AR was a new and untried content area. One preschool teacher from each preschool was designated as the leader for the innovation project, and following an AR workshop, they started to plan the thematic work. When describing their integration of SD and AR in teaching, they concluded that they and the children had to start with learning AR as the first content area (i.e., a first ‘what’) before moving on to including SD, the second ‘what’ (i.e., a multidisciplinary approach). When SD was included and coupled with AR, AR could be described as going from a ‘what’ to a ‘how’ in the teaching, that is, AR then became a tool for learning about SD. The preschool teachers reasoned about this:

Because if we hadn’t had AR as the ‘what’ from the beginning, then it might had become the ‘what’ in the next period, when the ‘what’ was supposed to be SD. Then their [the children’s] focus perhaps had ended up on “Oh, what’s this? We have to explore this further.” And then you lose the aim. So, I mean it could turn into an obstacle, if they don’t have any previous knowledge about the AR technology. If you want to use it as a method, or a ‘how’ for a ‘what’, then it could be an obstacle because they are more captured by the technology itself than…

(Angelica)

Children’s fascination with tools is not unique to digital tools. When preschool teachers plan for scientific inquiry, it has been proposed that they introduce tools such as loupes, magnifiers, etc. to children first. Otherwise, the tools might be more interesting than the tree or insects the preschool teachers had planned to be the object of learning [34] in the teaching. However, based on our previous studies [12,31], our experience is that digital tools are especially interesting to many children. Furthermore, even though a transdisciplinary approach to thematic teaching is considered more advanced, with its starting point in real-life problems that integrate several contents, we see here that a multidisciplinary approach is favourable when one content functions as a tool in supporting learning about another content. Treating AR as a ‘what’ before transforming it to a ‘how’ is therefore seen to be a fruitful didactic strategy for the children’s transduction of meaning in this teaching situation.

In their teaching of the SDGs, the preschool teachers decided to start with SDG6 (Clean water and sanitation) and SDG14 (Life below water). The reason behind their choice was that these goals relate to each other, and they were deemed concrete enough for the children to comprehend. During the activities, the preschool teachers and children visited a place close to each preschool, a pond and a creek, respectively. During the teaching, the children explored water from different sources and purified water. In the multidisciplinary approach, the children were also given opportunities to expand their learning to include more SDGs and their characteristic symbols, present in pictures on walls and tables in the preschools. The preschool teachers described how the children next started to identify that a place could be connected to a specific SDG, resulting in the preschool teachers taking walks or cycling around in the neighbourhood in ‘hunts’ for SDGs:

They started to understand that it’s the actions you do that can be connected to a SDG. So when we were out cycling we stopped perhaps at ICA [a local store] and then someone said “There’s a goal!” Yes, what goal is that? ”Zero hunger, because there’s food. When we eat we’re not hungry anymore.” For example.

(Angelica)

The children took photographs of the places they associated with a SDG and used an AR application to place the symbol of the corresponding SDG in the picture. The preschool teachers’ statements on this are examples of transduction, where the meaning of one representation, the SDG, is transduced to another representation (e.g., the photo of the local food store representing ‘Zero hunger’). Through their thematic teaching, the preschool teachers created prerequisites and links for the children’s transduction of meaning between different representations. The AR application made it possible for the children to superimpose the SDG symbol on the photograph, thus augmenting the representation of reality.

In accordance with the preschool teachers’ planned teaching, the children recreated their experience from a visit to the local recycling centre by building and representing the recycling centre in recycling material. This quickly escalated, and the children had their own ideas about more local places to represent from their experiences during their walks and bicycle tours:

First the thought was that we should build a recycling centre of recycling material and when we had built it the children thought “but where is the water treatment plant?”. So we had to build the treatment plant and then our pond and then all the places we visited.

(Angelica)

The local places represented by the children were marked with associated SDGs (see Figure 1). Their ambitious representation of their small town led to an exhibition in the town library. Through the teaching process, with walks/bicycle tours in the neighbourhood and the subsequent reconstruction leading up to the library exhibition, the children’s understanding was transduced between different representations of SDGs, places, and AR productions. Furthermore, place expanded on two levels during the thematic project as a result of the children’s own ideas, partly in the number of places physically visited by the children, and partly in the number of representations in their recreation in recycling materials.

4.2. AR and ESD: Children’s Agency

The teaching described above can also be reasoned in terms of the children’s agency. In thematic teaching, the children’s perspectives, in the joint process of formulating themes based on the children’s participation and agency, are paramount [16]. Agency is often thought of as the capacity of individuals to influence and steer their own lives, with a view of agency as an internal ability. Another way of viewing agency is as something a group of individuals achieve together in transactions rather than something they possess [35]. Here, we did not want to polarise between the two views and instead defined agency in the sense of children, individuals, or as a group, being able to take action and pursue new lines of exploration and interaction in their everyday lives and places.

From the start, the children’s own ideas were important for the preschool teachers to consider for them to be able to offer learning about problem solving, critical thinking, and communication. In one of the preschools, a nearby creek was chosen as a place for teaching, based on the children’s engagement:

And then we had the local environment, we should include that too. And then we had [the creek’s name] nearby where the children already… “It’s dirty!” because they are already little climate activists. “Oh, there’s garbage!” because you can’t take a walk without them collecting.

(Jennifer)

During their walks and bicycle tours, the children and the preschool teachers interacted in different ways with their neighbourhood. For example, they visited the local food store to discuss what fish was most sustainable, they visited the library where a child commented, “This is SDG4! [Quality education]”, and they reasoned about the garbage in the creek. A child suggested that they should put a sign on the bridge over the creek, stating that it was not allowed to throw garbage in the water. This initiated a discussion of whether it was allowed for anyone to put up signs. The preschool teacher and children decided to write a letter to the municipality and ask them to put up a sign, and the municipality responded by doing so (Figure 2).

The children’s engagement in their local places could be connected to the slogan “Think globally, act locally”, attributed to Geddes [36] and referring to the fact that people should consider sustainable development and take action in their everyday lives for the sake of our shared planet. Additionally, research has shown that children need to develop a positive attitude and care for their own local place, in order for them to later care about the environment on a larger scale [26,37,38]. Sobel criticises aiming for too abstract concepts with children and instead emphasises pedagogical strategies that relate to them. In her words, “what’s important is that children have an opportunity to bond with the natural world, to learn to love it before being asked to heal its wounds” [38] (p. 10).

The project is thus an example of place-based learning where the children’s understanding and meaning-making are transduced, through their agency, between different places and representations. Furthermore, democratic processes in society are included in the teaching when children learn that taking action and writing to the municipality has an effect, and that their exhibition in the library can be viewed by other citizens. Their experiences have the potential to make them action-competent citizens in the future.

Other examples of children’s interests were described by the preschool teachers in situations outside the planned teaching. If one child spontaneously took a computer tablet to “do AR”, other children immediately gathered around the child to give tips and to help out:

In the spontaneous teaching, it was like a meeting place, the children were there and gave each other tips and ideas, “but if you try like that, if you do like that.” “I’m placing myself here, can I reach it now or do I need to sit down?”. Then they started to cooperate.

(Angelica)

There were also examples of how the use of the AR-applications strengthened the status of individual children:

You can as a teacher deliberately choose to give this [the computer tablet] to him who maybe doesn’t have the highest status in the group. Then it’s him who gets to take photos and film in this free. Then he gets four-five around him immediately who are super interested in him. So he gets to take place and control it a bit. And then he doesn’t think about that it’s him controlling.

(Jennifer)

Here, the preschool teacher talked about using the computer tablet and the AR applications as a tool to lift a child and let that child take the lead. This example is interesting, given the implication of AR use as a tool for inclusion. It also reflects a result in one of our previous studies [39], where a child who had difficulties playing with other children found it easy when the play involved programming a robot. This indicates a role for digital tools in social inclusion and social sustainable development.

The preschool teachers said that when the children chose to use AR applications outside of the planned teaching, it often involved their own drawings. These were often made in the application Sketches School, where pictures also can be downloaded, prompting discussions among the children and preschool teachers about which pictures you are allowed to download. Children also played with the colourful representations of the SDGs that had been added in the AR-maker application and interacted with the preschool teachers while doing so:

And then it was kind of fun if I was sitting there because then he could put one [symbol of SDG] on the head and then I was supposed to hold my hand like this [holds out her arm with her palm facing upwards] because then he could put one there [in the hand]. So they became good at it and the symbols and understood so they could do it themselves later.

(Jennifer)

The preschool teachers also described how the children were engaged in exploring different orientations and distances in the computer tablet and how this affected the digital scene visible in the AR-maker. They often asked a friend to also place him- or herself in the scene.

The preschool teachers viewed their use of the children’s thoughts and ideas as a crucial part of the children’s learning process. In one of the preschool teachers’ words, “they have been owners of their own learning, I would say.” The preschool teachers also reflected on the children’s awareness of their own learning:

I wrote in the analysis that “the fact that digital competence is integrated in the teaching gives the children a computational thinking and makes them seek knowledge and we give the children a basic critical approach through the AR technology. Then the children become aware of their own learning identity. How they view themselves as a learning individual. We believe we achieve this by creating teaching in different variations.”

(Jennifer)

The role of varied teaching is further elaborated on below, in relation to the teacher perspective.

4.3. AR and ESD: Teacher Perspective

The preschool teachers reasoned about the project in relation to their professional role and underlined the importance of having a colleague to discuss ideas with. They also stressed structural prerequisites such as substitutes and time to learn AR:

That this has succeeded… The success factor is that we have had time, we have split it into small parts, we have had small teaching groups, we have also had the time outside to go in and take some children and try out. You don’t have that possibility when you have a full group of children.

(Jennifer)

Several aspects of teaching the children were also discussed. The preschool teachers provided examples of how AR was also integrated in their daily work outside of the project with the SDGs. When baking a cake for a parental meeting, some children baked while other children took pictures of the process for use in AR applications. Here, the preschool teachers talked about the value of daring to try and to fail when learning AR:

Well, not safe really but “let’s try this way then”. If it doesn’t go right, well, then there won’t be a film. But there will be apple pie.

(Jennifer)

The preschool teachers also stated the importance of variation when teaching children, and provided examples of how some children who were normally quiet during a traditional whole-group gathering started expressing their thoughts during activities when they were painting SDGs. Other children became more active when singing songs related to the SDGs, while other children preferred talking while doing the experiments. The varied teaching with possible support from peers and teachers can be seen as crucial for the transduction of meaning from different representations.

Another aspect of AR in teaching is, according to the preschool teachers, the use of the applications in a conscious way. The preschool teachers explained how they had constricted the children’s use of computer tablets to some days being only about specific AR applications such as Tayasui Sketches School™ or AR Makr™. Therefore, the project has improved this conscious use among the preschool teachers in the two preschools:

And that has also derived from the project extra I think, that we now in the staff will emphasize developing a conscious approach to how we use the digital technology in the child groups. To sort of not just place the iPad there, but instead “why are we doing it, are they going to play?”, really think through what obstacles, what possibilities are there with this technology? Does it contribute to your aim or doesn’t it? Does it counteract it or aid it? I think that has got a little extra boost now that we see that we have used the technology in a conscious way like we have done here, then it can also contribute to an enhanced learning in the children.

(Angelica)

The preschool teachers described different challenges in their teaching. One of them involved not taking over when instructing the children about the applications:

Anna: And then you should “and now you touch the white circle at the far end of the screen” and before they find it (laughter). They learn by doing themselves but I found this to be a challenge.

Jennifer: Yes it was.

Anna: To not accidently do like… (grabs the computer tablet to illustrate taking over)

Jennifer: Yes, it was. And then we have opted out on some apps because we thought they were too difficult and we couldn’t even teach it to the children.

The preschool teachers also identified a challenge in the spontaneous teaching of SDGs at local places. Here, they did not always have the content knowledge required to answer the children’s curious questions:

It has been difficult if you all of a sudden have come upon a goal that you don’t know a lot about. We’re cycling on an excursion, comes to [local factory]. Yes, what goal is this? What goal can be connected..?

(Angelica)

Another challenge lies in transferring their new knowledge of AR to their colleagues who do not have the same time to learn the applications that the two preschool teachers had during the project. The teaching of the SDGs has been more ‘alive’ in the two preschools compared to the teaching of the newer content AR. The preschool teachers’ wish is that use of the AR technology in teaching will be as natural as greenscreen or programming have become in preschools. They acknowledge and reason that incorporating new technology takes time:

Exactly, they haven’t had the time. Then it’s also about you as a person. Some goes “Ah, let’s try. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”, while some “No, I need to know this before I…” That is, want to control it before you take it out to the child group. We are also different there.

(Angelica)

The above example illustrates how challenging teaching and building on the transduction of meaning across different representations can also be for teachers, who need to think through, plan, generate, or spontaneously use them.

Yet another challenge for the preschool teachers concerned the children’s continued learning in school and later on in life—the ‘being’ or ‘becoming’ perspectives, here and now, or in the future [40,41]. A becoming perspective can be identified in the following statement:

I was a bit frustrated in that, mm, now we work with this. AR technology, sustainable development. Then I will leave them to school, will the school continue on this?

(Jennifer)

Finally, the preschool teachers described a challenge in discussions with the children about what was real and not real. This is further elaborated on in the next section on AR technology.

4.4. AR: What Is Real and What Is Not?

The introduction of AR strategies inherently introduces issues of abstractions, abstract thinking, representations, and metaphors. The children introduced questions concerning authenticity and about what was ’real’ and not, for instance, in comparing photos from ‘real’ (local) places or drawings they had made themselves to photos of unknown sites downloaded from the Internet. This is something that we believe highlights the importance of place and materials from the children’s everyday lives.

Researcher: It’s also exciting this with what is real and what is…

Jennifer: Yes, and it was often expressed, ‘but that’s not for real. That’s AR’ they said.

Initially, the children struggled to understand and were not able to transduce or make sense of the additional information from the AR. It could sometimes be confusing for them that an object in the AR application could appear against a physical background, seen through the camera lens in the computer tablet. The preschool teachers described how the children’s physical paper drawings aided the discussion. When the children were given the opportunity to draw paintings on paper, photograph these paintings, and add the photos to the AR application, they obtained an understanding of the physical versus digital object. This points to an important role for physical material, generated by the children themselves, to help them transduce meaning between physical and digital representations.

Mm, but I thought it became clearer to the children, this with reality and not, when they created their own objects and placed. Because if we took ready-made pictures from the internet and placed, then it was still just a picture. And you keep pictures on an iPad, that’s not unusual. But to be able to take something you yourself has made, that is not a digital picture but to make it into a digital picture that you can place…

(Angelica)

Several examples were raised where the preschool teachers experienced that the AR technology and use of the apps were helping the children to transduce meaning between different representations, for instance, by making the abstract notion of water content in our bodies more accessible.

Then we used AR because we talked about that it’s really important that we drink, it’s really important to get water. And a human being has a lot of water in his body. Well, it’s perhaps a bit abstract but with AR we could make a body that we drew, that we filled to 60–70 percent with water. Then the children could place themselves behind that body and get to see on their own body that ’But about up to here on my body, I have water’. So it became a bit more concrete.

(Angelica)

The children also added extra representation, making it clear to the preschool teachers that they were helped by and enjoyed the opportunities to transduce from multiple inputs.

After we had made the AR-body, then two children took out… We have cubes in different colours with lamps. Then they took the blue lamp, then they started building it like a tower. And then they placed themselves behind it, ”I have this much water in my body.” So I thought the AR technology contributed to an increased understanding for the children in that situation.

The preschool teachers were adamant that functionality without technical issues was very important for the children’s learning and enthusiasm. However, they mostly talked about the problems that they had had themselves in planning and preparing for the activities with the children.

Yes, it has messed up. When it comes to the AR technology… It’s been a challenge I think, to use, especially these digital scenes. To make it good. Because even if I make a digital scene, then I save it. Then, when I should open it again it doesn’t bring out the same… Even if I scan the same place, the scanning won’t be the same. All of a sudden the pictures end up in different places or it changes the angle on it. So it’s not easy to reuse one’s digital scenes that one created for example. There are question marks like that that I find a bit difficult.

(Angelica)

Sometimes the children were not happy about the limitation introduced by the technique, for instance, in terms of drawing with the digital pen. They felt that it was difficult to achieve thin lines, and the pen did not also make the correct sound when moved over the tablet.

Yes, and then they were just irritated and it ended with ”no, I give up because it’s not how I want it.” They wanted to be able to make thin lines and it’s not as easy on an iPad as it perhaps is to do it on a paper. My interpretation is that they thought they should be able to draw the way they can in reality.

(Angelica)

The preschool teachers also let on that technical development is very rapid, and that it is difficult to keep up. There were examples where they realised that things they had learnt to do were no longer valid or necessary.

And then it was also, he taught us a lot on Keynote. I mean to remove the background to insert your object, floating. But all of a sudden iPhone 16 came with that. You just hold… You don’t need Keynote for that anymore.

(Jennifer)

Finally, the preschool teachers reasoned about what reality had been augmented through the project.

Researcher: The question is… What is it that has been augmented concretely? What reality has been augmented?

Angelica: I would probably say the sustainable development goals’ presence in our environments, in our everyday lives. That it’s easy to sit here and talk about sustainable energy or, but through being able to put these cubes in different places, that understanding has deepened. Or become concrete, or how it can be expressed. It has enhanced the reality, if one can put it like that?

Children’s excursions with the computer tablet around their local neighbourhood enabled them to identify SDGs and transduce their understanding from the real-world context to a digital representation of that place.

5. Discussion and Conclusions

In the following, the two research questions guiding the analysis are addressed intertwined, ascertaining coherence between the preschool teachers’ statement and the theoretical framework. Early childhood education is usually situated within ‘a place’, whether this place has been called a preschool, kindergarten, or nursery [42]. According to the preschool teachers in the present study, the preschool children gained a greater understanding of how local places around them were related to different SDGs. Sobel describes place-based education as the process of using the local community and environment as a starting point to teach different subjects in curriculums. She emphasises hands-on, real-world learning experiences due to the ability of these educational strategies to scaffold the students’ academic achievements, appreciation for the natural world, and their heightened commitment to function as active, contributing citizens [43]. Grünewald describes how socially constructed places such as giant shopping malls, urban streets, and schools tend to be taken for granted [22]. Becoming aware of social places as human products requires conscious reflection about how we influence these places. Furthermore, the preschool teachers in this study described how the children’s understanding was enhanced by the use of AR technology. The children transduced their knowledge and meaning of the SDGs between representations in the physical world such as local places, paper drawings and recycled materials and the digital world with the colourful SDG symbols in AR applications. The children’s new awareness of how local places through AR applications can be connected to specific SDGs and their actions when, for example, writing to the municipalities asking for a sign against garbage, could be viewed as important steps for them to become what Grünewald describes as ‘place makers’ [22] (2003a). Even though a transdisciplinary approach to thematic teaching can be desirable, the teachers set out with an interdisciplinary approach, expecting to integrate AR and ESD. However, they ended up with a more multidisciplinary approach where AR was treated separately and in advance. It was seen that in order to be a useful tool in the ESD learning process, some skills in using AR applications were a prerequisite. The preschool teachers’ experiences from the use of AR in preschool settings has, to our knowledge, not been reported on earlier.

Furthermore, Grünewald criticises traditional schooling for their lack of place-based education [26], and the results from this study point to important possibilities for place-based education in preschools. With a less formalised day compared to school, Swedish preschool teachers operate without a classroom, have opportunities to explore local places with their child groups, and to work with these places thematically. At the same time, different preschools around the world have different prerequisites to do so. Heavy traffic or too few staff members are just some of the risk factors that need to be considered. Furthermore, many educators emphasise tragedy and catastrophes in ESD. Sobel responds by stressing the importance of reclaiming the heart in place-based education, where experiences are created for people to connect with places close to home [38]. This more positive take on ESD is believed by us and others to be especially important when working with young children.

To conclude, the results of this study point to four key points in the thematic teaching of AR and SD in preschools:

• There is a value in learning AR first, before using it as a tool for ESD. An initial multidisciplinary approach could be fruitful in thematic teaching that involves digital content previously unknown to the children.
• The children’s own ideas, self-generated images, and familiar places are important motivational factors when learning AR and ESD and their agency should be a crucial part of the teaching of the same.
• Teachers need structural prerequisites to be able to prepare and develop knowledge and consciousness about the teaching of AR and ESD.
• A varied teaching approach is crucial for children in a group to be able to link and transduce the meaning of ESD through multiple representations.
• Children’s linking and transducing of different representations, especially in terms of what is real and not, requires active teaching.
• Pictures of the children’s own physical creations such as drawings may aid in the understanding of what is real and not, in the AR application.

The aim of planned follow-up studies is to investigate the interactions of children and preschool teachers during teaching activities involving AR and ESD.