The Effects of an SDGs-Based Capstone Design Course on Preservice Early Childhood Teachers' Sustainability Competencies

Objectives The purpose of this study is to explore the direction of how to apply capstone design based on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the field of university education for training prospective early childhood teachers in order to raise awareness of prospective early childhood teachers about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to enhance the sustainability capacity of prospective early childhood teachers. Methods As a method for this study, 34 students in 5 teams participated in the 3rd year capstone design course of the Department of Early Childhood Education at D University in Gyeonggi Province for 15 weeks from August 28 to December 8, 2023, in the 2nd semester, and studied for 3 hours per week for 15 weeks to discover capstone design cases. After 15 weeks, a survey was conducted to enhance sustainability capabilities. Results The results of this study confirmed that the capstone design class experience based on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) played an important role in enhancing the problem-solving ability of prospective early childhood teachers for sustainable development, and that the sustainability competencies of prospective early childhood teachers, such as systems thinking, predictive capacity, normative capacity, strategic capacity, collaboration capacity, and critical thinking capacity, were enhanced. Conclusions The capstone design experience of prospective early childhood teachers based on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) played an important role in cultivating the ability of prospective early childhood teachers to practically and creatively address the SDGs for social issues in realizing Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and improved the sustainability capacity of prospective early childhood teachers. Therefore, it is expected that the capstone design curriculum based on the SDGs, which is the educational direction for the future society, will be actively implemented in the prospective early childhood teacher training courses of universities.