From Worksheets to Nature: Empowering Indonesian Early Childhood Educators Through an Environment-Based Curriculum During and Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic abruptly shifted learning online, leaving early childhood teachers struggling to design age-appropriate activities, often relying on worksheets and WhatsApp-based tasks. To address these limitations, a training program was introduced to promote an environmental-based curriculum. This qualitative phenomenological study, conducted in two phases (August–November 2021 and April–May 2025), engaged 54 early childhood teachers from Tapin Regency, South Kalimantan, Indonesia – a coal-mining-affected region. The study examined changes in teaching practices and parental roles across the curriculum’s implementation, and how teachers’ views on curriculum adaptation shifted after receiving targeted training. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, the findings reveal that while environmental teaching became more contextualized during the pandemic, many teachers reverted to conventional methods post-pandemic. Training helped shift teachers’ fragmented understandings into more integrated, confident approaches. Parents, initially passive, became co-educators during school closures but returned to ceremonial roles post-pandemic. These results highlight the need for sustained pedagogical innovation, institutionalized professional development, and embedded environmental education in early years curricula.