Little Learners, Big History, Bigger Future: How Big History Widened the Worldviews of 8-9 Year Olds

This article is based on a workshop I presented at the 2018 Big History International Conference in Philadelphia, where I addressed findings from my recently completed PhD thesis: An Tairseach (threshold): An exploration of connecting the emerging scientific story of the universe to authentic Catholic primary school environmental education. My research investigated the extent to which students’ environmental values could be informed through integrating story, values, environmental education, personal cultural origins, and Big History into the primary school curriculum. The methodology focused on employing Big History as a vehicle to achieve a cohesive, wider worldview for young learners, empowering them to engage in transformative thinking for the future. Semi-structured interviews were conducted along with a 17-week Big History pedagogical program with 8-9 year old students and their teacher. Qualitative analysis of these interviews indicated that primary students could successfully access a shared, evidence-based and flexible narrative. Five interdependent themes emerged: ‘shared vocabulary and knowledge of Big History’ were foundational in allowing students to engage in meaningful discussions, alongside their knowledge of their ‘local cultural origin stories,’ ‘local school values,’ ‘transdisciplinary learning’ and ‘environmental values within socioecological learning.’ The findings have wider implications for the Big History collective, providing evidence that Big History is accessible and relevant to primary students within a transdisciplinary based and critical inquiry-learning structure.


Introduction
I invite you to share in my journey down the PhD rabbit hole.

Literature review
The literature reviewed needed   Hamston et al. 2010;Lovat et al. 2011;MCEETYA 2008;Mitchell 2012 (Sterling, 2011). Snaza and Weaver (2015) request that education "call into question the entirety of the discipline structure" and cut across the divisions (disciplines) "all constructed around the human" (5  (Rodriguez 2002, 6

THEME 1. KNOWLEDGE:
The extent the emerging story of the universe, taught through the vehicle of Big History, contributed to informing students' critical knowledge Justification for the emphasis on teaching explicit knowledge and vocabulary of Big History became evident as students' learning in the pedagogical intervention progressed. The following two interview excerpts were recorded before students' Big History learning. As can be noted, students voiced a variation in the depth of knowledge and vocabulary, but both interview extracts display the lack of a cohesive understanding of the universe timeline.
In comparison, the evidence in the following excerpt, from a post-pedagogical intervention interview, validates students' growth in knowledge and use of appropriate vocabulary while also enabling student initiated inquiry.
The latter excerpt shows the students accessing and confidently sharing their common learning. Aaron, in particular, previously had been reticent to join in with routine class discussions, but in this case, was empowered with his newly learnt Big History knowledge and vocabulary.
The critical importance of informing students' knowledge created a meaningful platform for informed, child-framed discussions in student interviews as revealed in the next excerpts.

Researcher:
Do you think you know everything there is about the universe?
Mia: I reckon a bit more.

Aaron:
A bit more.

Indi:
I know all about it.

Aidan:
The universe has a lot of planets, all the planets, and it holds stars and no oxygen.

Aidan:
No gravity, no oxygen.

Jack:
Because gravity is oxygen, if there is no gravity, there is no oxygen. As the teaching and learning program progressed, students used their knowledge base to express their understanding of the evolving universe story. The analysed data verified that students accessed increasingly complex knowledge and common vocabulary through successive Big History thresholds.
The synthesis of that knowledge into a wider worldview opened the possibility of transformative environmental education learning. When comparing the following two excerpts, it is apparent by the second interview that Imogen's use of 'we' has not only highlighted a growth in knowledge but also transformed her thinking of nature and humans as interrelated.
Excerpt 1: Excerpt 2: Jack likewise, in the last interview, used his Big History knowledge to explain his thinking about the future: "When you grow up, if there's a new Threshold, you can study it and you can maybe add new information to the other Thresholds." The co-researcher teacher emphasised the progression of students' understanding through the teaching of Big History, where she noted they were, ". . . applying and using Big History . . . in their writing and responses throughout the Thresholds and in their journals, . . . they've got a much deeper understanding."

Mia:
It's [zipper is] an example where DNA just keeps on splitting and splitting and splitting . . .

THEME 2. CATHOLIC BELIEF:
The extent that students transferred their prior knowledge of the Catholic teaching on God's Creation to inform their emerging knowledge of the story of the universe The integration of children's newfound vocabulary into their understanding of the Catholic belief system was integral to embracing the local school culture within the wider worldview interpretation of the emerging Big History narrative.
The limited student perception recorded in pre-pedagogical interviews is in contrast to Catholic literature (Australian Catholic Social Justice Council (ACSJC) 2002; Francis I 2015; Sydney Catholic Education Office 2012), which calls for the embracing of the interrelationship of the environment and humans.
The ability of Big History to empower students with a richer worldview within their Catholic traditions was apparent when students' prior knowledge and appreciation of God's creation were interpreted within their new knowledge of Big History learning and environmental education values.
(First pedagogical interview 1 August 2016) The growth in students' Catholic understanding of God as creator was evident in students' ability to correlate their known Catholic story and local school's values framework to the new learning context of the Big History story.
It was reassuring to observe, as the excerpts demonstrate, that students were not disturbed by the scientific evidence that was presented; rather they readily correlated the evidence into a greater sense of awe and wonder at the grander and more complex unfolding of God's creation through the Big History story.
The co-researcher teacher commented on students' ready acceptance of the Big History narrative within their Catholic understanding of God's creation: that God is essential to the unfolding story.

THEME 3. VALUES: The extent that environmental education values, particularly in the context of local school values, were interpreted by students through the lenses of Big History
The importance of analysing values at the local school level, as discussed by Somekh and Zeichner (2009) and Podger et al. (2013), was appropriate to apply to the child-framed methodological basis of my research. The students at the research school were immersed daily in the local values of their school: peace, respect, honesty, justice, empathy, compassion and tolerance. As evidenced in the following excerpt, they voluntarily connected those values to Big History learning, whilst also including the term 'sustainable' in their discussions within the context of student appropriate understanding.
The data represented the local school values as a pivotal point around which students centred their discussions because the values were already so deeply embedded in all classes' daily routines.
Both co-researcher teacher's observations and my journal notes concurred with the advantage of students' previous knowledge of local school values and the ensuing enrichment of interpreting those values through the lens of the Big History universe story.
The above comment validates Dahl's appeal (2012) to incorporate local vocabulary in articulating values, where the important learning of the children corroborates applying values to the past, present, and future from the perspective of the cohesive Big History learning story.

THEME 4. TRANSDISCIPLINARY LEARNING: The extent of impacts on students' environmental education values
Transdisciplinary learning enriched students' understanding of environmental education values when nested in the emerging Big History narrative, their Catholic understanding of God's Creation, and local school values. In the following child-framed dialogue the children named the limits of learning subjects in 'silos' and highlighted their move away from an anthropocentric worldview.
The students' conversation validates the significance of transdisciplinary skills in Big History learning, leading to the ability to articulate a wider worldview. Students' broadening worldview away from anthropocentric thinking unfolded through the teaching of a universal story, language, and Big History learning framework. This became apparent as other students also articulated the need for the interconnection of subjects to enable a deep understanding across subject areas.
The co-researcher teacher, likewise, remarked on the learning across disciplines and the opportunities for children of varying academic abilities to engage in inquiry learning at their own level of understanding, where they were empowered to see themselves as co-learners with the teachers. This is in keeping with cyclical and reflective components of action research as "part of the joy is in the doing" (McNiff, 2002, p. 17;Mertler 2008, 25).
The nesting of diverse knowledge and transdisciplinary skills of the Big History course were powerful in allowing students to interconnect and to apply their understanding to the wonder of the universe's increasing complexity. The extent of the impacts on students' environmental education values was discernible in students' enriched observations, their use of their newly learnt knowledge from Big History and their known local school values and Catholic teaching.

THEME 5. SOCIOECOLOGICAL LEARNER:
The evidence for conformative, reformative, and transformative socioecological learning process The fifth interrelated theme from my analysis, the socioecological learner, demonstrated the extent that students' values were informed within the conformative, reformative, and transformative socioecological learning process of the emerging Big History narrative, as illustrated previously in Figure 1. The data representation I collated as central to my research, revolved around the nesting of the first four themes within this final theme of the socioecological learner. I continued to view each theme not merely as linear, but as nested in and informing each other. Theo expresses it as "If you would know any [only one] subject then you won't be that smart to do anything in science or history or any subjects." The lack of a wider worldview, in how we interact with society and the environment, as noted by Snaza and Weaver (2015), calls into question limited learning that is structured around the human. The evidence I collected is in keeping with the stance Big History Project promotes (2019), which empowers children to integrate a wide range of academic disciplines that aligns with socioecological learning (Gruenewald 2004;Hart 2012;Kyburz-Graber 2012).
The learning journey began as teacher initiated, but by the end of the intervention children had taken ownership as active learners with numerous references to themselves as 'big historians' during interviews and class activities. Aidan commented on the last day of school:

Oh, my Big History journal: Big History was my most favourite subject this year. It was awesome and my Mum is going to be amazed at what I have learnt when I show her this book. She's going to say, "Good job Aidan. You've learnt so much." I've already told her so much about Big History. I loved Big History. I learnt so much because I didn't know anything about how the world was created and how it was so complex.
Aidan's comments are in keeping with the concept of the socioecological learner and the report of the Australian Education for Sustainability Alliance Project (2014), which calls for learning that embraces comprehension, complexity, uncertainty, and risk that can be applied to future sustainability. An empathetic deeper level of learning was expressed by Imogen and Gabby: An overall finding from the analysis of this theme was that a cohesive deep time story empowered students to embrace past, present, and future within a shared language and critical inquiry evaluation techniques. They evaluated the implications of our past, present, and future, moving away from anthropocentric thinking to critically examining the inclusiveness of all that is human and nonhuman in the universe. The following excerpt encapsulates the sense that socioecological learning can happen for any student. The insightful response below comes from a child who initially showed little awareness of the interconnectedness of human and non-human. His simple words echo the Delors Report's four pillars of learning (1996): learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together, and learning to be.
Aaron's observation is in keeping with Sterling's call (2003Sterling's call ( , 2008) that conformative and reformative learning, may lead to the possibility of transforming how we perceive whole systems and worldviews (also see Wattchow et al. 2014).
The final rich data feedback from both co-researcher teacher and students is affirmation for the rich and emerging Big History story that encourages socioecological learners to be informed, and in turn to interpret, local school environmental education values within a Catholic school setting.
The co-researcher teacher's observations are significant; as lead-learner she naturally incorporated the newly learnt Big History terminology and the local school values to express her opinion:

[Students developed] a very good understanding of-you just can't get some more oxygen; you can't get more helium or hydrogen. What happened in the beginning created what we have now, and if we don't care for it now, and if it's not just and fair, and if we don't respect the environment, then it's going to be gone for the people in the future. If we don't respect each other and respect the environment, then parts of the environment will disappear.
She believes Big History gives children a more powerful voice to articulate the socioecological aspect of learning in their own childappropriate language, that humans' relationship with the environment is fragile, and, as such, humans need to play our part for future sustainability.
Socioecological learning became increasingly evident throughout student interviews in their intertwining of deep-time knowledge through the lenses of local school values, their learnt Catholic traditions, and transdisciplinary skills and concepts aligned to the Big History Project.

Aaron:
Big History tells us about stuff that we can't see.
Researcher: So do we need nature? Aaron: We need nature, but nature doesn't need us.

Researcher:
Did you understand why we need nature but nature doesn't need us?

Synthesising the five theme
Like Alice, I needed to take the Queen's advice to correlate the extensive findings from my data analysis. Among the most pertinent was the verification that environmental education is all the richer when teachers and students are empowered with a narrative that embraces a wider worldview, encompassing sociological learning. Most importantly the cohesive Big History story enables students to understand the interconnectedness of the evolution of human life within the history of the universe. This knowledge allows them to critique environmental actions being discussed, alongside an underlying joint responsibility to take care of the Earth and the understanding that everything AND everyone is interconnected from a rich values perspective.
Big History learning empowers students to reflect critically on and evaluate their worldviews from a childframed perspective, which relates to my methods reference to Spyrou (2011) and Kellett (2010), who promote the place of children in education as critical reflective thinkers. The students' immersion in the cohesive story of Big History learning enables them to express confidence in their new, shared knowledge and to articulate a growing sensitivity to and awe of their own interconnection and interdependence as socioecological learners. My research shows that 8-9 year old students easily transferred the emerging scientific story of the universe of the past and present to inform both their local school and environmental values for deeper future thinking. The following written student comments at the conclusion of the pedagogical intervention school and environmental values for deeper future thinking. The following written student comments at the conclusion of the pedagogical intervention uphold my conclusion: Employing Big History as a teaching vehicle for the scientific universe story achieves a cohesive, wider worldview for primary-aged learners, empowering them to engage in transformative, socioecological thinking for the future. These significant findings have wider implications for systems-wide education and curricula development, providing evidence that Big History is accessible and relevant to primary-aged students where environmental education is not taught as a silo discipline but as a transdisciplinary-based and socioecological learning structure.
The child-framed pedagogical intervention empowered students with a common learning platform to connect the new knowledge they had gained from Big History within the lenses of their embedded Catholic traditions and local school values. Building on this substantial foundation the transdisciplinary and socioecological learning inspired students to critically reflect on their environmental values and query their previous assumptions of sustainability.
In light of the findings presented, there is clear evidence of students' sharing story and knowledge of the universe to inquire critically and evaluate their learning, not merely to promote a cause (see Scott 2009). The evidence presented is heartening at a crucial time when we need our students' learning to incorporate informed and shared values within a post-humanist environment for a better future for everyone and everything.

Limitations
A clear benefit of my research demonstrates that knowledge of a cohesive and interconnected history of our universe empowers primary-aged socioecological learners to inquire critically beyond anthropocentric models of learning and to embrace an emerging postanthropocentric future.
The lack of a recognised, evidencebased, and systemic educational framework and affirmation of Big History as a valued learning framework in the primary school made it difficult for me to have my research acknowledged by both Catholic education and state education authorities. I approached many schools before my research was seen in the light of authentic and relevant education. The reticence of some schools was articulated as not wanting to counter the perceived, conservative beliefs of school communities. In the case of Catholic schooling, I produced official Catholic documentation to counteract that concern, particularly Pope Francis I's latest official document on caring for our Earth (Francis I 2015). In hindsight this may have been overcome by holding a pre-research whole-staff discussion to validate the educational worth of my project. No objections from parents arose to teaching the Big History course to the class before or during the intervention, which was a positive sign.

Recommendations for future research
Once more Alice found herself in the long hall and close to the little glass table. Taking the little golden key, she unlocked the door that led (back) into the garden. (Carroll, 1886 Chapter 3) The findings from my research are an initial validation that teaching Big History to primary-aged students empowers socioecological learning, informs known values, and invites the possibility of transforming student worldviews to an understanding of human and nonhuman interrelationships and interdependence.
As this is an initial study at a doctoral level into teaching the cohesive Big History story in primary education, the holistic and nested nature of the inquiry alludes to a breadth of future directions; however, I outline below the areas that I have identified as significant.
Implications from this research indicate that researchers and educators in teacher education and primary schooling need to be provided with educational models to empower them to use Big History effectively, in line with transdisciplinary learning that is already embedded in contemporary curricula. Future research requires further qualitative and quantitative studies into teaching the universe story that examine how success is managed and maintained throughout a student's primary schooling years, alongside the extent that children's environmental values are transient or long lasting. Macquarie University Big History School Project (2019) is worthy of ongoing postgraduate research as it promotes a supportive and holistic primary and secondary education curriculum. Such embedded support networks that are authentic to critical enquiry learning would ensure that the socioecological learner, not the Anthropocene, is at the heart of the teaching and learning.
Significantly, I address unfounded concerns that Catholic schools may not be mandated to teach within a Big History-based scientific model. Student responses from my research provide evidence that students were empowered to further their understanding of sustainability threaded throughout the curriculum. They learnt an enriched worldview of amazing awe and wonder of what God has created, alongside the values needed for a sustainable world.
My research has broken new ground into adding original, significant literature to environmental education research beyond Catholic education. Clear evidence exists that my study raises significant issues requiring innovative address by all primary schooling systems. Environmental education is significantly enriched when viewed from the perspective of a shared universe story, inclusive of transdisciplinary socioecological learning perspectives.
The emerging scientific story of the universe is a story of the past and present informing the future through socioecological learning where action requires love, understanding and, equally as important, cohesively taught critical knowledge as emphasised in the following quotation: It is essential to seek comprehensive solutions which consider the interactions within natural systems themselves and with social systems. . . . We lack an awareness of our common origin, of our mutual belonging, and of a future to be shared. A great cultural, spiritual and educational challenge stands before us, and it will demand that we set out on the long path of renewal. (Francis I 2015, 139 -202) The words of Pope Francis summarise my new-found hopes stemming from this research: that Catholic primary school education systems, and education broadly, take up the challenge to evaluate critically the teaching of a cohesive and interconnected history of our universe.
Wider implications from this research open up opportunities for critical inquiry beyond anthropocentric models of learning. The evidence clearly indicates that the deep-time framework of Big History is accessible and relevant to primary-aged students. The research findings were significant in the context of child-framed deep learning pedagogy that informs environmental values for current and future learning. If educators are truly to comprehend the importance that values play in transdisciplinary, socioecological learning, then our universal deep-time story needs to be embedded at all levels of the education continuum, inclusive of primary-aged students.