Successful Sustainable Development: Curriculum and Learning Conference

Holme Pierpoint (16 March 2010)

This page was created to share the workshop contribution made by Lifeworlds to the above titled conference, held in Nottingham in March 2010.

You will find elements of the workshop below and links to associated websites, documents and other elements that were used. The workshop was written and presented for Lifeworlds by Rob Bowden and Rosie Wilson

Connecting agendas...building bridges

Sustainable development and community cohesion are just two of the many agendas to have found their way into schools in recent years.

Sustainable Development has emerged through the Sustainable Schools Framework and its 8 doorways. It is not compulsory, but is well supported by its incorporation as a cross-curricula dimension (together with Global Learning) in the new English curricula. It is also supported by a range of initiatives and schemes that are avaliable to schools. The best known of these is perhaps EcoSchools, but others include work by organisations such as FACE, Food For Life, Woodland Trust and others. Click on the document cover to the right to find out more about 'Sustainable Development in Action'

Community Cohesion was introduced into schools through the 'Guidance on the duty to promote Community Cohesion' and has become a statutory requirement for schools, inspected by Ofsted since September 2008.It's take up has been gradual, but there remain many schools unaware of their duty under this policy, or of what they should be doing if they are aware. There are a number of initiatives that support Community Cohesion including the Schools Linking Network (SLN), and Who Do We Think We Are? A number of local organisations, and particularly those belonging to the Development Education Association (DEA) also offer support. Click on the document cover to the right to find out more about 'Community Cohesion in Action'

Lifeworlds offer support around both of these agendas individually, but we are increasingly finding merit in looking at the two together. Strategically, the statutory duty to promote Community Cohesion can be utilised to support work around Sustainable Development that polls and first hand experiences show us young people and teachers are both interested in and passionate about.

Beyond the strategy however, there is also considerable overlap in content when you begin to look at the aims, objectives, and learning outcomes. We have found that even playing with the terminology of the initiatives opens us up to new ways of seeing the connections...

A useful way to begin seeing the connections is to look at the two 'in action' documents linked above. Try reading the two documents with different lenses on - the lens of sustainability for the community document and vica versa. Click on the document to the right to download a pdf with some of the the connections we have identified.

Connections all around us

We have found that once you begin to explore the connections between these agendas, they are suddenly everywhere. A recent example of such a connection was in a Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4. The thought talked about differing notions of politics and their relationship to society (polis) and to the 'common good' - a theme that is strong in both sustainable development and community cohesion. You can read this thought for the day by clicking here.

Sustainable Development ... Community Cohesion

Sustainable Communities ... Cohesive Development

Community Development ... Sustainable Cohesion

Can you have

one

without

the other?

Learning for Sustainable Communities

As part of a Lifeworlds Learning consultation called 'What is Community?' we have ben exploring the learning that might be needed to build sustainable communities. One of our starting points has been to return to some fairly fundamental questions such as:

What do we understand by sustainable development?

What do we mean by community?

In exploring these we have found that many organisations employ models and diagrams as a way to try and understand these complex issues. Earlier work in a session for Global Education Derby (GED) found that most such models had their limitations and could only ever be useful as 'a' perspective.

Returning to the drawing board we stumbled across some work being done by the Center for Ecoliteracy in Canada. They had adopted a different approach to modeling that enabled us to fully engage with the complexity of the models components and begin to see the multiple layers of detail that are necessary for building sustainable communities.

In the workshop, we introduced this work to the participants and asked them to consider just three of the elements that emerge from the Ecoliteracy work. Those three elements were:

In small groups the particpants explored how these elements could be applied to their understanding and thinking about sustainable development and then to their understanding and thinking about community cohesion. What issues were raised for each? What questions did they generate?

Finally they were asked to consider where there was overlap. What did the element say about sustainable commnuties - where is the commonality? The particpants used poster paper to share their ideas with the full group and you can find images of these posters here.

They were then asked by way of a plenary to identify what they felt were the benefits of connected thinking around these agendas and what were the limitations. These were their initial reflections:

Benefits

Opportunity to link with other schools - social and environmental benefits

So much that we are already trying to achieve in school- good to link the two and find links in school, share expertise and knowledge

Connecting the jigsaw - holisitic approach

Both areas are interlinked - aspects of the two areas overlap

Can help to give a context to both

Thought provoking - helps children to think wider

It could happen!

Limitations

Issues too big to know where to start

Time

Barriers to one aspect may hinder development in the other

Sustainability agenda huge on its own

Funding - limited pots from government

Lack of connectivity between key players

Linking things together is difficult