Advancing Environmental Stewardship through Action-Based Outdoor Learning: A Community-Based Early Childhood Environmental Education Model in Pigcawayan, North Cotabato, Philippines

Early childhood is an important period for developing familiarity with nature, environmental values, and developmentally appropriate forms of participation. This retrospective study revisits a 2019 to 2022 community-based Early Childhood Environmental Education (ECEE) initiative implemented in three day-care centres in Pigcawayan, North Cotabato, Philippines. The study had two linked purposes: first, to identify environmental education and youth-engagement principles from selected New Zealand practices; and second, to translate relevant principles into a locally contextualized ECEE initiative. An exploratory qualitative and program-development design was used, drawing on literature and institutional materials, key-informant insights, community consultation, implementation records, teacher observations, parent feedback, and observations of children's participation. The available implementation records document 60 children aged 3 to below 5 years, 60 parents, three day-care teachers, and seven facilitators, with two modules and ten activity sessions implemented. Because the surviving records do not contain a complete numerical pre/post dataset, the study does not estimate intervention effects or claim causal changes in children's environmental knowledge, attitudes, or behavior. Instead, it reports formative evidence concerning feasibility, participation, implementation processes, and observed environmental practices. The revised analysis identifies four recurring engagement conditions—knowledge and awareness, motivation and self-efficacy, direct experience in nature, and place attachment—and situates them within experiential learning, place-based education, early childhood environmental education, and collective-action perspectives. These foundations informed the proposed five-stage Connect–Explore–Understand–Act–Engage (CEUAE) model. The model differs from a simple knowledge-to-action sequence by beginning with children's relationships to familiar places and moving through developmentally appropriate exploration and understanding toward concrete action and family/community reinforcement. The findings support the feasibility of action-oriented, nature-rich, community-embedded ECEE in a Philippine day-care context, while also demonstrating the need for stronger measurement, ethical documentation, longitudinal follow-up, and comparative evaluation. CEUAE should therefore be treated as a practice-informed, testable framework rather than a validated causal model.

early childhood environmental education; environmental education; experiential learning; place-based education; nature connection; environmental stewardship; collective action; Philippines; Mindanao; CEUAE

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