Article 4 of 4: The Ecology of Interests: Intentional Planning for Rich Learning Environments
- liliannk
- 7 days ago
- 13 min read
Children as Co-Researchers
A Four-Part Series That Will Transform How You Listen to Children
By Lili-Ann Kriegler and Bronwyn Cron - Project Sustainability Collective
Co-researchers with children, educators, communities and organisations
To contextualise this article in a four-part series, at Presbyterian Ladies College, a group of four-year-old children had been immersed in investigating plants and seeds for weeks. Under the careful guidance of educators Eva and Jasmine, they had germinated various seeds, documented growth and failure, held a requiem for a watermelon seed that didn't germinate, and moved some of their experiments outdoors to compare with indoor controls. The depth of their engagement was evident not only in their scientific observations and artistic documentation but also in how this learning had transformed their relationship with their environment.
The most striking example came from a group of boys who typically used the outdoor garden for physical play. When they discovered what they called a 'sick tree,' they didn't just observe—they acted. They communicated their concerns to educators, requested water, built protective barriers of tanbark, collected smooth stones from the architect-designed water feature, and created a hand-drawn 'no touching' sign. These children had become environmental stewards, demonstrating that when we listen carefully to children's thinking, they reveal themselves as capable agents of change.
When we, as facilitators and co-researchers, joined a conversation between these children and their educators, we witnessed something remarkable. In forty minutes of sustained dialogue, four-year-old children revealed sophisticated understanding of plant ecosystems, demonstrated metacognitive awareness of their learning, and posed questions that opened doorways to profound investigations about interconnectedness, time, care, and wonder.
This wasn't coincidental. It emerged from intentional sustainability education that recognises five domains—environmental, social, economic, cultural, and leadership & governance—woven through authentic, place-based learning experiences.
These children weren't being indoctrinated with predetermined messages about environmental care. Instead, they were being partnered in discoveries that honoured their existing knowledge while expanding their capacity to think systemically about the world they inhabit.
The conversation that unfolded challenged many assumptions about early childhood education, including those regarding attention spans, the value of group meetings, the depth of children's thinking, and the role of educators as facilitators versus knowledge-holders. Most importantly, it demonstrated that when we approach children's ideas with genuine curiosity rather than dismissive charm, we discover that they are profound thinkers already engaged in making sense of complex systems.
This series of four articles explores what we learned about critical reflection through listening to children, offering insights for early childhood educators committed to sustainability education that is both rigorous and joyful, both planned and responsive, and that honours children's agency while recognising educators' professional expertise.
Article 4 of 4: The Ecology of Interests
Intentional Planning for Rich Learning Environments
'We need to find an expert!'
This declaration from a four-year-old investigating plant growth represents the culmination of sophisticated learning design. The child's confident assertion that expert knowledge could help answer her questions about seed development didn't emerge randomly—it grew from carefully planned learning experiences that positioned children as serious investigators whose questions deserve serious attention.
In this case, when the adult facilitator honestly admitted, 'I have no idea how a seed decides what plant to grow into either!' it became clear that expert knowledge was genuinely needed to explore the child's profound question.
This moment illustrates the crucial distinction between child-centred education, which follows children's interests, and child-led education, which abdicates professional responsibility for creating rich learning opportunities.
The conversation at Presbyterian Ladies College, with its depth and duration, its conceptual sophistication and collaborative inquiry, wasn't accidental. It emerged from what we call an 'ecology of interests'—a dynamic relationship between children's demonstrated fascinations and intentional educational planning that creates rather than simply follows meaningful learning opportunities.
Beyond the False Choice: Child-Centred vs. Child-Led
Contemporary early childhood education often presents a false dichotomy between adult-directed learning (seen as restrictive and developmentally inappropriate) and child-led learning (positioned as respectful and authentic).
This binary thinking misses the sophisticated middle ground where skilful educators create conditions for deep learning that honour children's agency while recognising professional expertise in learning design.
The AERO (Australian Education Research Organisation) discussion paper and meta-analysis on intentional teaching illuminates this middle ground, demonstrating that the most effective early childhood education combines responsive practices with purposeful planning. Children benefit from educators who are both highly responsive to their interests and intentionally create learning opportunities.
At Presbyterian Ladies College, the plant investigations weren't purely child-led—educators Eva and Jasmine had planned provocations, gathered materials, prepared environments, and considered learning goals. Yet the investigations were thoroughly child-centred, emerging from and building on children's genuine fascinations with growth, change, and the mysteries of living systems.
The 5D Framework: Structure for Responsive Planning
The Project Sustainability Collective utilises the 5D framework (Discover, Define, Design, Deliver, Debrief) as a structure for intentional learning design, maintaining responsiveness to children's interests while ensuring educational depth and coherence.
Discover: This phase involves observing children's current interests, documenting their questions and theories, assessing their existing knowledge, and identifying potential learning directions. For the plant investigations, this meant noticing children's fascination with seeds, their questions about growth, and their desire to conduct experiments. It also involves gathering information and identifying possible resources that may stimulate learning.
Define: Here, educators identify the key concepts, learning goals, and investigation focuses that can build on children's interests while addressing broader educational purposes. The team defined concepts like life cycles, interdependence, stewardship, and systems thinking as central to the investigations.
Design: This involves planning specific experiences, gathering materials, preparing environments, and considering how investigations might unfold over time. Educators prepared seeds for germination, set up observation spaces, gathered documentation tools, and planned potential provocations.
Deliver: The implementation phase maintains flexibility within the structure, allowing investigations to unfold responsively while maintaining focus on identified learning goals. The delivery commences with a provocation. The conversation we witnessed was part of this delivery phase—a planned provocation that remained entirely open for unexpected directions. Next steps in delivery use information from both prior planning and how the children respond to the provocation.
Debrief: Ongoing reflection and documentation inform future planning, enabling educators to understand what children have learned, what questions have emerged, and how investigations can continue to develop.
This framework prevents the randomness that can result from purely following children's interests while ensuring that planning remains genuinely responsive to children's thinking and fascinations.
Creating Rather Than Following Interests
One of the most sophisticated aspects of intentional learning design involves creating interests rather than simply following existing ones. This doesn't mean manipulating children into predetermined learning, but rather introducing provocations that spark genuine curiosity and investigation.
The plant investigations at Presbyterian Ladies College began with educators noticing children's emerging interest in seeds, but they expanded this interest through carefully planned provocations:
Providing diverse seeds for experimentation
Creating spaces for both indoor and outdoor growing
Introducing documentation tools for recording observations
Planning conversations that revealed children's existing knowledge
Connecting investigations to broader environmental contexts
These provocations didn't force interest—they created conditions where existing curiosity could flourish and expand in educationally productive directions.
The Provocation as Shared Experience
The conversation we witnessed was structured as a provocation—a planned experience designed to reveal children's thinking while introducing new possibilities for investigation. Significantly, all children experienced this provocation together, creating shared reference points for ongoing learning.
This challenges individualistic approaches that fragment children into interest-based groups from the beginning. Instead, shared provocations allow individual interests to emerge within collective experiences, creating opportunities for peer learning and collaborative investigation while honouring diverse fascinations and learning styles.
The provocation served multiple purposes:
Assessment: Revealing what children already knew about plants, ecosystems, and growth
Community Building: Creating shared vocabulary and reference points for ongoing investigations
Interest Expansion: Introducing new possibilities for investigation that children might not have discovered independently
Documentation: Providing rich material for understanding children's conceptual development and planning future experiences
Planning for Multiple Pathways
Sophisticated learning design anticipates multiple possible directions while maintaining coherent focus.
The plant investigations at Presbyterian Ladies College could have developed in numerous directions:
Scientific Inquiry: Systematic experimentation with growing conditions, documentation of growth patterns, investigation of plant structures and functions.
Environmental Stewardship: Caring for school gardens, understanding human impacts on plant communities and exploring sustainable gardening practices.
Cultural Connections: Investigating how different families grow food, exploring traditional plant knowledge and understanding plants' roles in various cultural practices.
Artistic Expression: Scientific illustration, nature-inspired art, storytelling about plant characters, music and movement inspired by growth patterns.
Mathematical Thinking: Measuring plant growth, patterns in seeds and leaves, data collection and analysis, geometric patterns in nature.
The key insight is that educators don't need to pursue all possible directions, but they benefit from anticipating multiple pathways so they can respond flexibly when children's interests take unexpected turns.
The Role of Materials and Environment
Planning involves careful consideration of materials and environments that can support deep investigation without predetermining outcomes. For the plant investigations, this included:
Investigation Tools: Magnifying glasses, measuring tools, cameras for documentation, journals for recording observations and theories.
Growing Materials: Diverse seeds with different characteristics, various growing containers, different soil types and watering tools.
Documentation Supports: Drawing materials, clipboards, chart paper for collaborative recording and cameras for capturing processes over time.
Reference Resources: Plant identification guides, children's books about growth and life cycles and access to online resources for research.
Expert Connections: Relationships with horticulturalists, environmental educators, and community members who could contribute specialised knowledge.
These materials weren't randomly available—they were purposefully selected to support the kinds of investigations that might emerge from children's plant fascinations while remaining open to unexpected uses and discoveries.
Sustainability as Organising Framework
The five sustainability domains (environmental, social, economic, cultural, leadership & governance) provide an organising framework that can encompass virtually any investigation while ensuring connection to broader educational goals.
For plant investigations, these domains offered multiple entry points:
Environmental: Plant ecology, growing conditions, human impacts on plant communities, climate and seasonal influences.
Social: Collaborative gardening, sharing resources, caring for shared spaces and community knowledge about plants.
Economic: Resource use in gardening, food systems, the economic value of plants and sustainable practices.
Cultural: Traditional plant knowledge, family gardening practices, plants in cultural celebrations, diverse food traditions.
Leadership & Governance: Taking responsibility for plant care, making collective decisions about garden spaces and advocating for environmental protection.
This framework ensures that investigations are connected to meaningful real-world issues while remaining authentically relevant to children's interests and developmental levels.
Documentation as a Planning Tool
Sophisticated planning involves ongoing documentation that informs future learning design and informs future learning design. This goes beyond recording what children do to analysing what their actions and words reveal about their thinking, interests, and conceptual development.
From the Presbyterian Ladies College conversation, documentation revealed:
Sophisticated Understanding: Children's knowledge exceeded educators' expectations in multiple areas
Conceptual Connections: Children were naturally making systems-level connections between different aspects of plant life
Investigation Skills: Children demonstrated capacity for hypothesis-building, observation, and collaborative inquiry
Transfer Potential: Children were connecting classroom learning to home experiences and broader environmental awareness
This documentation becomes crucial information for planning next steps that build on demonstrated strengths while introducing appropriate challenges and new learning opportunities.
Balancing Structure and Flexibility
The most sophisticated aspect of intentional planning involves balancing structure with flexibility—having clear purposes and directions while remaining genuinely open to unexpected developments and child-initiated changes.
This requires educators who are:
Confident in Learning Goals: Clear about the critical concepts and capacities they want to support
Flexible in Methods: Willing to adapt approaches based on children's responses and interests
Responsive to Emergence: Able to recognise and build on unexpected learning opportunities
Reflective in Practice: Committed to ongoing analysis of what's working and what might need adjustment
Professional Learning and Development
Creating rich learning environments requires educators who are themselves engaged in ongoing learning and development.
This involves:
Content Knowledge: Understanding sustainability concepts, systems thinking, and the subject areas that might emerge from children's investigations.
Pedagogical Knowledge: Developing skills in observation, documentation, questioning, and responsive planning.
Collaborative Practice: Working with colleagues to analyse children's learning and plan responsive experiences.
Community Connections: Building relationships with experts, families, and community members who can contribute to investigations.
Reflective Practice: Regularly examining assumptions, celebrating successes, and identifying areas for growth in professional practice.
Family and Community Partnership
Intentional planning recognises that children's interests and knowledge don't begin and end at the classroom door. The plant investigations at Presbyterian Ladies College revealed extensive home knowledge—children growing radishes and carrots, experiencing gardens with their families, and observing owls and other wildlife in home environments.
Sophisticated planning involves:
Family Knowledge Gathering: Understanding what children experience and learn in home environments
Community Resource Mapping: Identifying local experts, natural spaces, and learning opportunities beyond the classroom
Partnership Development: Creating genuine partnerships where families and community members contribute meaningfully to investigations
Extension Opportunities: Planning ways investigations can continue and expand in home and community contexts
The Ethics of Interest Creation
Creating rather than simply following children's interests raises critical ethical questions about manipulation and authentic learning.
The key distinctions involve:
Genuine vs. Artificial: Provocations should spark authentic curiosity rather than forcing engagement with predetermined content.
Responsive vs. Directive: Planning should remain genuinely responsive to children's reactions, even when introducing new possibilities.
Empowering vs. Controlling: Learning experiences should increase children's agency and capacity rather than directing them towards adult-determined values and opinions.
Collaborative vs. Imposed: Children should be genuine partners in shaping investigations rather than passive recipients of adult-planned experiences.
Assessment and Learning Visibility
When learning is planned intentionally, assessment becomes an ongoing process of observing and documenting children's developing understanding, rather than testing predetermined outcomes.
This involves:
Process Documentation: Recording how children's thinking develops over time, rather than just final products.
Multiple Perspectives: Gathering evidence of learning through various modes—verbal, visual, kinaesthetic, social.
Collaborative Analysis: Involving children in reflecting on their own learning and development.
Portfolio Development: Creating collections of work that show growth and development over extended time periods.
Family Sharing: Making children's thinking and learning visible to families through documentation and conversation.
Scaling and Sustainability
The 5D framework and ecology of interests approach must be scalable and sustainable within realistic educational contexts.
This requires:
Team Planning: Collaborative approaches that distribute planning responsibilities among educator teams.
Resource Development: Building collections of materials, documentation tools, and expert connections over time.
Professional Learning: Ongoing development opportunities that build educator capacity for sophisticated planning.
Administrative Support: Leadership understanding and support for this approach to learning design.
Community Investment: Building broader community understanding and support for in-depth, interest-based learning.
Long-term Learning Trajectories
Intentional planning considers how current investigations connect to longer-term learning trajectories that can develop over months or years.
For plant investigations, this might involve:
Seasonal Cycles: Following plant communities through complete yearly cycles to understand seasonal changes and adaptations.
Ecosystem Development: Expanding from individual plants to understanding complex ecological relationships and dependencies.
Human Impact Studies: Investigating how human actions affect plant communities and what stewardship practices can help.
Cultural Investigations: Exploring how different cultures have developed relationships with plants and what traditional knowledge can teach us.
Action Projects: Developing real stewardship projects where children can apply their learning to make positive differences in their environment.
Professional Artistry in Learning Design
The conversation at Presbyterian Ladies College—with its depth, sophistication, and genuine engagement—represents professional artistry in learning design. It demonstrates what becomes possible when educators combine deep respect for children's thinking with sophisticated planning that creates rather than follows learning opportunities.
This approach challenges early childhood educators to move beyond the false choice between following children's interests and pursuing educational goals. Instead, it invites us into the more complex and rewarding work of creating learning ecologies where children's natural curiosity meets intentional provocations, where individual interests develop within collaborative investigations, and where spontaneous discoveries unfold within thoughtfully prepared environments.
The child's confident assertion that 'we need to find an expert' represents the success of this approach. She had learned to see herself as a serious investigator whose questions matter, to recognise the limits of current knowledge, and to know that expert help is available when needed. These are precisely the dispositions we hope to nurture in future citizens who will inherit complex sustainability challenges requiring collaborative investigation and action.
The ecology of interests approach requires educators who are themselves committed to ongoing learning, comfortable with uncertainty, and excited by the possibility of being surprised by children's thinking. It demands sophisticated professional practice that can balance structure with flexibility, intention with responsiveness, and educational goals with authentic interest.
Yet the rewards—evident in the sustained engagement, sophisticated thinking, and joyful inquiry we witnessed—demonstrate that this investment in intentional planning creates learning experiences that honour both children's capacity as thinkers and educators' expertise as learning designers.
In our complex world facing unprecedented challenges, we need citizens who can think systemically, collaborate effectively, and remain open to learning throughout their lives. These capacities develop in early childhood learning environments where children experience themselves as capable investigators, where their questions are taken seriously, and where their thinking is extended through thoughtfully designed experiences.
The ecology of interests represents our best understanding of how to create such environments—honouring children's agency while exercising professional responsibility, following children's fascinations while introducing new possibilities, and maintaining spontaneity while ensuring educational depth.
This is the professional artistry our world needs: educators who can create learning environments where children's natural wonder meets intentional design, where individual interests flourish within collaborative communities, and where every child experiences themselves as a capable contributor to understanding our complex, interconnected world.
Series Conclusion: The Future of Listening
These four articles explore what becomes possible when early childhood educators commit to critical reflection in listening to children. Through the lens of sustainability education with its five interconnected domains, we've examined how authentic listening can transform learning communities, deepen understanding, and nurture the capacities our world desperately needs.
The children at Presbyterian Ladies College demonstrated that when we listen carefully, we discover sophisticated thinkers already engaged in making sense of complex systems. Their theories about the influence of the moon on plants, their metacognitive awareness of learning processes, their collaborative knowledge-building, and their confident assertion that expert help should be sought when needed—all reveal capacities that emerge when children experience genuine respect for their own thinking.
This work challenges us to move beyond surface-level responsiveness towards the deeper professional artistry of creating learning environments where children's voices are not just heard but genuinely valued as contributions to collective understanding. It calls us to develop our capacities as listeners, learners, and learning designers committed to honouring both children's agency and our professional responsibility for creating rich educational experiences.
In our interconnected world facing complex sustainability challenges, we need citizens who can think in systems, collaborate across differences, and remain open to learning throughout their lives. These capacities begin to develop in early childhood, in conversations where children's ideas matter, where their questions lead to investigation, and where their thinking is extended through thoughtful planning and authentic partnerships.
The future of our world may well depend on our capacity to listen—really listen—to the wisdom children offer when we create conditions that allow them to share their thoughts and ideas.
This series represents our contribution to that essential work: learning to hear the profound within the everyday, the conceptual within the specific, and the hopeful within the complex challenges we face together.
The authors thank the children, educators, and community at Presbyterian Ladies College for their partnership in this ongoing investigation into sustainability and the power of authentic listening in early childhood education.
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Purchase our books:
Stem Detectives – Bronwyn Cron and Niki Buchanan
The Power of Play – Lili-Ann Kriegler
Professional Bios
Lili-Ann Kriegler (B.A. Hons, H. Dip. Ed, M.Ed.) is an award-winning author and education consultant with over 30 years' experience in educational leadership and cognitive development. As founder of Kriegler Education, she specialises in cognitive enhancement methodologies and Reggio Emilia-inspired project-based learning. Lili-Ann develops comprehensive learning frameworks and facilitates professional development for educators, with a focus on embedding sustainability through project-based action. Her most recent publication is 'The Power of Play: Mastering the 7 Dynamic Learning Zones'. Her work is driven by the belief that education is a transformative force for shaping a better future.
Bronwyn Cron has over 20 years of experience in developing science and sustainability education programs. She has worked with local and state governments, businesses, non-profits, community groups, schools, and early years services. Bronwyn is committed to providing engaging opportunities that support early childhood educators in building skills and confidence in implementing STEM and sustainability into their policies, programs, and practices. She is co-author of 'STEM Detectives' and specialises in creating learning experiences that transform isolated moments of play into cohesive sustainability investigations.
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