01 Building education for sustainable futures in early childhood: Transformative learning captured within an intercultural training program for government stakeholders from rural China

The purpose of this study was to address the impact of international collaboration on education for sustainable development in the context of early childhood education in rural China. Government stakeholders in three Chinese provinces participated in a 14-day program in Bergen, Norway, focusing on early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS). The overarching questions were how the participants experienced the transformative learning in a study-abroad program, how they perceived their experiences affected their “glocal” awareness of ECEfS, and how they reflected upon their experiences to form new glocal perspectives of ECEfS. The theoretical framework of the study was inspired by Mezirow’s perspectives on transformative learning. In this study, 11 participants wrote narratives and reports about their experiences in Norway and were later interviewed about their understanding of ECEfS and the steps they were taking after the training period. We identified three E’s: experiencing cultural shocks and “outsider” status, engaging critical reflections upon ECEfS, and envisioning commitment to future action, with five key components of transformative learning—a disorienting scenario, emotional response, critical reflection, perspective change, and commitment to future action within the ECEfS. Implications for intercultural experiences as catalysts to trigger transformative learning, and for building a dialogic relationship and hybrid organizations as agents of positive social change, and recommendations are included in the final section of this paper.